Dont question me more about my dog. Born difficult? I was musing about Matthews professional decision, even wondering whether he had evolved to the point where he should go back to doing therapyperhaps he now might make an exceptional therapistwhen I noticed that our time was almost up. (He was a member of a half-dozen churches because he believed they provided him with ideal pickup opportunities.) Where transference refers to feelings that the patient erroneously attaches (transfers) to the therapist but that in fact originated out of earlier relationships, countertransference is the reversesimilar irrational feelings the therapist has toward the patient. Penny had never finished school, and Chrissie was going to do it for both of them (and was also going to attend Stanford for both of them). Marvin simply took her hand. Marvin grew up in New York, the child of impoverished first-generation Jewish parents. My sexual arousal? After Harry left my office, I sat there tired and stunned and angry. Sorry you have to hear this whole thing yet again, Thelma.. I could hear each spurt splatter against the waxed walls of the cup. She had never before talked openly about these issues: perhaps the sheer catharsis helped; perhaps it was useful for her to recognize the magical nature of her thinking; perhaps some of her horrifying thoughts were simply desensitized by talking about them in the daylight in a calm, rational manner. Though the word responsible may be used in a variety of ways, I prefer Sartres definition: to be responsible is to be the author of, each of us being thus the author of his or her own life design. We're meant to appreciate his honesty and study his counter-transference, but I'm telling you right now. The first dreams that patients bring to therapy, especially rich and detailed ones, are often deeply illuminating. Here, with a big grin on her face, she paused to let the suspense build. She was certain, and soon convinced me she was correct, that the guilt about her shameful behavior was the reason she couldnt let Chrissie go, the reason her grief had been frozen for four years. Ill tell you. After a minute or a minute and a half (a long silence in therapy), Thelma stood up, offered me her hand, and said, You have my promise.. It is when these unattainable wants come to dominate our lives that we turn for help to family, to friends, to religionsometimes to psychotherapists. In Penny's case, who died and what was the story? For now, there exist formidable barriers to such mind coupling. It was as though he, too, sensed that she could be released only by information, that her illusions could not endure the beam of truth. Miles), Im Calling the Police (with Robert Berger), and my children, Eve, Reid, Victor, and Ben. (Nor, it turned out, was he willing to resume individual therapy with me or anyone else. It was, however, also true that my future patients would benefit from whatever growth I could attain. I take with deep seriousness Thomas Hardys staunch words: If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.. She saw through her own illusions, and what illusion had shielded now lay before her, bare and terrible. Rereading Loves Executioner evoked a stream of delicious memories that began in 1987 when my youngest child left home for college, and my wife and I set off around the world for a years sabbatical. Therapists have a dual role: they must both observe and participate in the lives of their patients. Now that youre looking better, Saul, lets go back to work. She had underlined with red pencil a paragraph that claimed that suicides are, in actuality, double homicides. K's review of Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy Im not certain whether she was ever truly happy again. She told my secretary that she was thirty-eight years old and divorced, that she had lost her daughter four years previously, and that it was urgent for her to be seen immediately. Yet she chose her terms so deliberately that I assumed they had been Matthews words, maybe an example of his fine technique! Perhaps it was his love for his children or the plaintive way he grasped my hand with both of his when he was leaving my office. Not only was Dave not seriously working in therapy, but his bantering and flirtatiousness had shifted the entire discourse of the therapy group to a superficial level. The third letter was a short note from Dr. K.s widow, who wrote that she assumed that Saul had by now heard of Dr. K.s death. Gender is not a construct it is based on biology and your projections are the perfect evidence of a soon to be old white female. Marie viewed the smiles as "Go on, change the subject. Penny said nothing. The first one came on a Monday. In the book "Love's executioner and other tales of psychotherapy", Irvin compiles ten of his documented cases with approval from his patients and changes names of the patients for confidentiality purposes. She also knew that it helped when we carefully examined the incidents that precipitated a depression. Yet the blade is not extinct. But go on. Marvin continued to be refreshingly open during the first several weeks of therapy. Other survivors feel guilty for other things, for not having done enough, for not having sought medical help sooner, for not having cared more, nursed better. Following that, we reviewed her phone conversation once again and planned the next hour. The strange, full contralto voice pronounced: As long as youre going to pretend to be a Jewish intellectual, you might as well furnish your office like one. In fact, everything of importance was elsewhere. I had met him once before: in the third or fourth session I saw him together with Thelma for a fifteen-minute discussionprimarily to see what kind of person he was and to learn about the marriage from his perspective. Its gone., Does any memory of it exist? At least for someone who finds people and their motivations and the reasons behind the development of their quirks and personalities to be interesting. Love's executioner and other tales of psychotherapy . You care about the poor, about ants and plants and ecological systems. The author of two definitive psychotherapy textbooks, Dr Yalom has written several books for the general reader, including Momma and the Meaning of Life and Love's Executioner, collections of true and fictionalised tales of therapy; Staring at the Sun; and the novels When Nietzsche Wept; The Schopenhauer Cure, and The Spinoza Problem. She almost leaped out of her chair, cleared her voice, pantomimed putting on a necktie and buttoning a suit jacket, assumed a saintly smile and a delightfully exaggerated expression of benevolent magnanimity, cleared her voice, sat down in the other chair, and became Matthew. Penny burst out crying. He gamely proceeded, but not without his usual coyness. I felt myself almost a bystander as I watched it develop organically. Within three or four sessions, her entertaining behavior disappeared as she, for the first time, began to speak of her life with the seriousness it deserved. Another insisted, I want to fuck every woman I see, as his lymphatic cancer invaded the crawl spaces of his body. But such interpretations would only result in most of the hour being used as a conventional individual therapy sessionexactly what none of the three of us wanted. Chrissie was marrying a boy in the neighborhooda real turkey. We soon moved from sex into the deeper waters of her basic sexual identity. Thelma, what I have to say now is not pleasant, but I think its important. But he had overstepped himself. (My secretary, whose office is immediately next to mine, habitually took prolonged coffee breaks during Pennys therapy hour.). Dan, this intense closeness you feel toward Dianemaybe she did allude to the possibility of a relationship some time in the future, but look at the facts. All of my arguments met a similar fate. Barnes, of course, never captured the quintessence of the man, Flaubert, and ultimately set a more modest task for himself. It was everything else, the silent footsteps, the blackness, the sense of deep foreboding. Driving home that evening I thought more about him, the two MarvinsMarvin the man, Marvin the idea. Irvin Yalom Love's Executioner Analysis - 1671 Words | Cram The impact of death on her sons? But knowing that doesnt stop it, doesnt break the vicious circle., Youd think, after six months, Id know the answer. I often wrote the same article five different ways. Meditate on that. I told you that before I referred him to you. I had been seeing Carlos in individual treatment for about six months and, a few weeks ago, referred him to Sarah for inclusion in her therapy group. In thousands of group meetings, whose members supposedly bare all, I have yet to hear group members disclose their incomes. Often everything disappeared then, me and everything else, there was just the dance and the moment. (As a general rule, the less ones sense of life fulfillment, the greater ones death anxiety.) . With wise investments in California real estate, he had become a wealthy man. I could have, for example, given more serious consideration to Thelmas twenty years of psychiatric care! love's executioner two smiles summary. As I thought back over the two hours, I was also aware that he had resisted every one of my invitations to dig deeper into his feelings. Three years ago, as we ended therapy, Saul and I had taken great pride in the changes he had made. Harry, no less than Thelma, chose to embrace illusion. Instead, she . Most of the time whats important is that he would wish me well., But why is his wish so all-important? She never even heard them! She did not pass up the opportunity and began our next regular therapy hourfortunately the following morningby expressing that very sentiment. She had never had a positive relationship with a man, and it is possible her sons had paid the penalty for that. By consulting three different doctors for her insomnia and obtaining from each a prescription for sleeping medication, she soon collected a lethal amount. Lets go back over it.. I was impressed by her use of therapy: I had never had a patient who had worked as productively. Can you see how impossible it would be for each of you to re-create the particular mental state you were in? But he was impatient to get marriedhe had dated Phyllis since he was fifteenand, since he had no financial resources, decided to become a high school teacher. Two Smiles Marie is frozed in life since her husband's death. The roll of fifty dimes. (I did not give specific details. Of course, I am not alone in my bias. Christ! To be truthful, I wanted to see Me again. Take this all away. It was her depression speaking, and I was foolish enough to be persuaded by it. But in the group discussion, Dave took it upon himself. There was little of Matthew in it, norif love is a caring, giving, need-free relationshipmuch love. What we have here, Dan, is an autistic relationship. In that event, his wife would find the letters and be pained by reading them. Sometimes the dreams, like the first ones, were frightening expressions of ontological anxiety; sometimes they foreshadowed things to come in therapy; sometimes they were like subtitles to therapy, providing a vivid translation of Marvins cautious statements to me. Her company had originally trained her, along with eight other novices, in a three- month intensive course. I had anticipated crisis after crisis. Penny, youre a tough judge. For eight years I havent stopped thinking about him. Should I, under the banner of self-enlightenment, strip away an old womans irrational but sustaining and comforting love illusion? My negative feelings slowed me down. Never before had a therapist been so scrupulously honest, direct, and gentle with her. I was not certain what would happen in this extraordinary three-way meeting, yet I felt strangely confident that all would be for the best. She viewed, she told me now, my suggestion about a possible career in nursing as a put-down, and accused me of saying, The girls not smart enough for medical schoolso let her be a nurse!, At times, she was petulant and regressed. I was pondering whether onions really do have a lot of sugar when I arrived at Sauls home. Somehow it afforded me little comfort. I couldnt help smiling: I was pleased that I and Me shared some secrets. Her associations to the building in the dream corroborated this view: the dream building bore a striking resemblance to the clinic that housed my office. I wonder about this because Yaloms late wife, Marilyn Yalom, was a feminist writer from the beginning of their marriage (as he states in his recently released autobiography Becoming Myself ). Its the only thing he can say., Matthew did his best, but communication was difficult because of her sobbing. When Saul called later that evening, I was alarmed by the somber and aloof timbre of his voice. Just keep them., I havent read them for at least twenty years., They seem like such a hot potato, I ventured. She said that it was important to her to be listened to, that she had no one else but me and nowhere else but my office to express her pain. The patient, who had been enumerating ghastly deeds committed by his tyrannical father, ended by commenting, And he eats raw hamburger! The interviewer, who had struggled hard to maintain his neutrality, was no longer able to contain his outrage, and bellowed back, Raw hamburger? For the rest of that year, the phrase raw hamburger was often whispered in lectures and invariably cracked up the class. I fought to keep my equilibrium. I worried about rash decisions. I remembered my discovery a few weeks before that Thelma knew how to punish and didnt need my help. Marie and he locked gazes for a moment. I thought it was odd that he accompanied her that day. She stayed home all day staring out the window; she could not sleep; her movements and speech slowed down; she lost her enthusiasm for any activities. What was Carlos's reaction when Yalom asked him to think about his daughter and the legalization of rape? Because of my vindictive feelings toward Matthew, I was not displeased with Thelmas words. I recognized that the chances for success in therapy were not good: Thelmas self-deception, her lack of psychological mindedness, her resistance to introspection, her suicidalityall signalled, Be careful!. Penny began that hour by falling heavily into the chair and saying, Boy, am I glad to see you! I remembered Thelmas telling me about his teaching hand-to-hand combat in wartime. And now she found that Jim had been lying to her and not making his payments. I was careful to respect Daves privacy by not revealing his age or any extraneous material. Marie sought Mikes assistance for impersonal goals, to control pain and stop smoking, and so chose to reveal to him little of herself. Does that sound like a crazy thought?, I dont know if its crazy, but it sounds like a desperate and terribly painful thought., Hes trying to drive me to suicide. I told him to come in to your office at my regular hour next week, but he told me to ask you if we could make it sooner. Why should I do it? Thelma got out of her chair and walked over to the window. Nothing offers more false security in psychotherapy than a crisp summary, especially a summary containing a list. I dont remember exactly what we talked about, but it helped me change a lot.. What I was going to say was that this obsessionlets find a better word if obsession offends you, No, its O.K. Saul, if youre as bad as you say, if, as you insist, you lack all virtues and all discriminating mental faculties, why is it that you think your judgment, especially your judgment of yourself, is impeccable and beyond reproach?. Meil- tai ne aistros blyksnis tarp dviej moni; yra didiulis skirtumas tarp simyljimo ir meils. On the basis of data patients choose to provide about events taking place long before, therapists routinely believe they can reconstruct a life: that they can discover the crucial events of the early developmental years, the real nature of the relationship with each parent, the relationship between the parents, between the siblings, the family system, the inner experience accompanying the frights and bruises of early life, the texture of childhood and adolescent friendships. But Saul, failing to respond to conventionally correct therapy, sank deeper, with each hour, into despair. I was so stimulated by this idea that I could hardly wait until the hour was over so I could think more about it. From the beginning, of course, I had known that the pure forcefulness of my argument would not penetrate deep enough to effect any change. It is a cat chasing a mouse. Maybe first impressions are more accurate than second or third impressions. There are no rear windows. I was entirely satisfied with my words: I had covered myself and had been clear enough to prevent any misunderstandings. For some reason, Im not sure why, I had a premonition that this day was not going to be an ordinary day. He had done all the work he was to do that day. To lose a parent or a lifelong friend is often to lose the past: the person who died may be the only other living witness to golden events of long ago. I, for my part, had reservations because I was so pessimistic about treatment: I agreed to work with him because I saw no other viable therapy option. If they are helpful to patients at all, ideological schools with their complex metaphysical edifices succeed because they assuage the therapists, not the patients, anxiety (and thus permit the therapist to face the anxiety of the therapeutic process). They confronted him directly: Cmon, Dave, how much extra would it cost to come out and say love letters?. Chapter 5 I Never Thought It Would Happen to Me, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, (with Morton A. Lieberman and Matthew B. But she apparently never again developed an appetite for my type of treatment, and I did not hear from her again. She smoked furiously during the session, often taking two or three drags before angrily snuffing out the cigarette, only minutes later to light up another. Maries consultation hour is a testament to the limits of knowing. Yet Penny had gotten what she had set out to get: therapy, free of charge, from a Stanford professor. Her daughters, her friends, her veterinarian, all urged her to have Elmer put to sleep. Decisions are difficult for many reasons, some reaching down into the very socket of being. We had only just begun our first session, and there was much more I wanted to know before I would feel ready to examine Marvins chart. I even added that, though there was a chance that talking might help, it was also possible that talking might be temporarily unsettling. I felt one with Thelma. I am now my mothers age when she died. He is excited for Phyllis, who is also about to open her eyes. Much good the interpretation didlike throwing pebbles at a rhino: the mere utterance of the word sex was enough to summon the spasms. She sat high in the chair, as though she were sitting in her own lap. Though Marvin continued to feel anxious and depressed, he gamely continued to work in therapy. There were several reasons. Now, maybe because Ive slowed downmy age, my weight, my emphysematheyve overtaken me. They might have even been his friends.. They could communicate fully, they could try to achieve a deep authentic relationship which, since authentic love is an absolute state, should approximate what they had before. They moved from one tenement flat to another, often being evicted for nonpayment of rent. Thank you for saving my life.. Within seconds after seeing him, before he said a word, I was aware that he had profoundly changed: the old Saul was suddenly back with me. Much more hyperventilation and I knew Saul would pass out. Far from wanting to take back her freedom from Matthew, she had a lust for . Moved by my answers, Marge grew ever bolder but gentler in her talks with me. If any patients have ever been helped in that fashion, it wasnt because of the search and the finding of that false trail (a life never goes wrong because of a false trail; it goes wrong because the main trail is false). Another theme was escape, not just physical escape from Atlanta, from her family, from the cycle of poverty and alcoholism, but escape from her destiny of becoming a poor crazy old lady like her mother, Penny having recently learned that her mother had, over the last several years, had several psychiatric hospitalizations. I ached for her when she described the starving child within her howling, Feed me! Or was he chiefly acting to alleviate his own isolation by taking pains to preserve the relationship he had with me? Tell me about the therapy youve had in the last eight yearssince your suicide attempt., During that time Ive never been without a therapist. Ive been sleeping twelve hours a day. Its O.K. Gone was the man who had been awash in despair, stripped of his humanity, his laugh, and self-awareness. I remain convinced that a therapists judicious self- disclosure facilitates the course of therapy. Thelma would have been a seventy-year-old ten pounder at least, and no one, absolutely no one, would have recommended psychotherapy. Besides, where in the hell would I store them? Whenever his cancer worsened and he was actively facing death, he rearranged his life priorities and became more thoughtful, compassionate, wiser. His colleague said that Dr. K. had suddenly died of a pulmonary embolus, and proceeded to describe the circumstances around the death. After that we got along famously. Though it is true that on that day I regarded him as foolish, in the main I always liked him very much. Matthew entered. The concept of sexual identification has been around at least since De Beauvoirs seminal work The Second Sex, but Yalom fails to mention or even notice that he might be objectifying his clients. Gradually she despaired of ever having a true social life. She had worked and worried Matthews statement that he cared for her until it now seemed an insult. First, there is the barrier between image and language. Youre punishing yourself for something youre doing now, something youre continuing to do this very moment. No matter that the cataclysm she meant for me would engulf her as well: in fact, her sadomasochistic trends were so pronounced that she was attracted by the idea of dual immolation. They werent certain how honest he was willing to be with himself. I decided upon a general strategy: my basic position would be that I wanted to get closer to her but that her behavioral traits got in the way. Of course, Mike had no idea of what I really wanted from him. Thats when I said, If you believe that, youre fucking ignorant!. For the first time, she began asking me personal questions. I insisted that we had made real progress. Love's Executioner Irvin D. Yalom Love's Executioner Thelma "Eight years ago, I had a love affair with my therapist. But we talked past each other. Weary of traveling alone on these little subterranean excursions, I decided to stay closer to Marvins concerns. Arent all men? More and more these dayshere Thelma lowered her voice almost to a whisperI believe he is intentionally trying to drive me to suicide. . In the past he had so much difficulty sharing potentially embarrassing material that I instituted, in the last fifteen minutes of each hour, a designated secrets time, when I explicitly asked him to take a leap and share the secrets he had sheltered over the earlier part of the therapy hour. Theyre printing those things for somebodytheres gotta be a market out there. It means shes been reborn into another life., No. I wondered what medication I should try, and where I should hospitalize him. There had been another odor polluter in the house, a tenant who, according to Marie, dieted on decomposed fish. Often dialogue is fictional, and my personal reflections post hoc. Against this dread, he lacked even the most common defenses: childless, he could not be comforted by the illusion of immortal germ cells; he had no sustaining religious beliefneither of a consciousness-preserving afterlife nor of an omnipresent, protective personal deity; nor did he have the satisfaction of knowing that he had realized himself in life. Such people tend to be tiresome. During this time, Carlos was particularly helpful. She was counting on a sizable financial settlement, and she feared antagonizing Dr. Z., whose strong testimony about the extent of her injury and suffering would be essential in winning the suit. Marvin, in effect, was saying, Im a different person now. I plunged her into reminiscence and encouraged her to express everything she could remember about his illness, his dying, his appearance in the hospital the last time she saw him, the details of his funeral, the clothes she wore, the ministers speech, the people who attended. Sometimes, as in Pennys family, the surviving children suffer because so much of the parents energy is bound up with the dead child, who is both memorialized and idealized. He gave me a chilling description of his first contact with money. I said, Dave, its really hard for me to respond to your question. "If Rape Were Legal." 3. I thought she had finished, but it was hard to tell since she spoke like a simulacrumwith uncanny stillness, with nothing moving but her lips, not her breath, or her hands, or her eyes, or even her cheeks. Nothing came. Pennys grief was stuck, gridlocked. In Chrissie? Im going to have to explain all this to Phyllis. Marvin was scribbling away furiously now. Her fondest wish for the next life, for both herself and Chrissie, was to be stinking rich.. No one ever exhaustively analyzes a dream; instead, most therapists approach dreams expediently by examining the dream themes that will accelerate the immediate work of therapy. Instead, the opposite occurred: she withdrew even more, claiming that her problem with intimacy doomed our work in therapy. He was so proud of the insights that he had christened them. I didnt know what to do. In our first session Penny had said to me, Just get me started. I upped the ante. " " . The symptoms were those of classical migraine: a premonitory visual aura (flashing lights) and a unilateral distribution of excruciating pain which incapacited him for hours and often necessitated bedrest in a darkened room. My children dont need any money. I knew we were both chased by the same man with a rifle. Only then can one act on it and change. She imagined people pitied her for having no friends. Many relationships, especially those with his three ex-wives and his current wife, had been twisted and torn by his unwillingness to be open or straight about anything.). Im not her, you know! I felt calmer, we were coasting in familiar waters. She had been doing so well that, just before the time of the purse snatching, I had been considering raising the question of termination. He was certain the decision to teach school had been a serious mistake and, at the age of thirty, set about rectifying it. I was irritated with Marvin. One of the reasons she wanted to merge in love, and be obliterated by it, was to escape the terror of facing obliteration by death. Ultimately she married a sweet, elderly man. She had always craved sex and was angry that societys attitude toward the obese sentenced her to sexual frustration. Most likely that was the point of his preoccupationthat he might forget his infestation. She had always lived in the privileged circle, outside the unpleasantness, the nasty inconveniences visited on ordinary peoplethose swarming masses of the tabloids and newscasts who are forever being robbed or maimed. If not, I hope youll help me die and help me find a way to cause as little pain as possible to my family., I told Thelma that I thought we could work together, but I suggested we have another consultation hour to consider things further and also to let her assess whether she could work with me. I was being cruel, yet the option of not being cruel, of simply humoring him, of tacitly acknowledging that he was incapable of seeing reality, was crueler yet. I dont give a shit, not one shit, about the people in the group. Theres some condescension in there that I dont feel at all. These disturbing feelings had vastly compounded Bettys weight problems. If he would call me once a year, talk to me for even five minutes, ask about me, show me his concern, then I could live happily. What does running wild mean? They forced me to take my bearings and to review what had been happening in therapy. Think of your jaw and cheek growing more and more numb. Ive gained around twenty pounds in the past three months, and I cant get into most of my clothes.. Would you move to the other chair, play the role of Matthew, and talk to Thelma here in this chair?. Was I simply to escort him through this course of chemotherapy? I promised myself not to be a patient any more, and Im going to keep that promise.. Bettys year-and-a-half assignment in California was now drawing to a close.
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