Psychotherapybar | Dr. Radhika Bapat

Podcasts

Hope 🕊️

Hope is often ridiculed as a pipe dream, but it does not require us to reject the reality of suffering. Featuring the Main Theme from the film Cinema Paradiso composed by Ennio Morricone.

Music Notes

This episode features guitarist Adriano de Sal’s arrangement of Ennio Morricone’s Main Theme from the film Cinema Paradiso (1989), directed by Guiseppe Tornatore. The film follows a fictional filmmaker, affectionately known as “Toto” during his boyhood, as he reminisces about growing up in a small Sicilian town in the years following World War II. For Toto, the local cinema hall was a place of hope and wonder, especially after the death of his father in the war.

Justin’s Video Performance

Radhika’s book recommendations:

1. Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was a jewish Viennese psychiatrist and in this book, he writes about his experiences at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps during the Nazi occupation in Austria. He speaks of what gave him strength and the “will to meaning” that kept him going despite the emotional pain and physical tortures he suffered. An apt book to give hope, especially for the Pandemic era.

2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

A thought provoking book situated in 1946, just after World war II, where the protagonist, a writer, suffering from writer’s block, enters into a correspondence with a total stranger as well as other members of the extraordinary Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It throws a light on human nature – the good, the bad and the ugly, but leaves you with hope.

3. The Humans by Matt Haig

An Interesting tale on human nature from the perspective of an alien who visits earth. Although the book is a bit “preachy,” it is an interesting take on how there is hope for humans afterall.