Book excerpt: In the spirit of Mikhail Bulgakov's A Young Doctor's Notebook and Sandeep Jauhar's Intern, this is a deeply honest, searching examination of psychotherapy based on the experiences of a young sceptical trainee in New York City meeting his first patients. "Why is psychotherapy different from talking to a friend?" Hazanov asks. "Because generations of self-interested therapists told us so?" Through ten linked stories, we follow Hazanov as he navigates the maze of psychological theories he's been taught, facing the alarming dissonance between them and the tragic reality of his patients' lives. "How does psychotherapy work? And why do people not get any better?" Frustrated by fancy jargon and unrealistic depictions, Hazanov is on a quest to dispel the myths of psychotherapy and discover its essence. In The Fear of Doing Nothing he illuminates the intimacy, vulnerability and messiness of the therapeutic encounter, providing his answer to the question of what psychotherapy is.