Perhaps, if she confronted this contradiction, she could start grieving again. I knew her forty-five years ago in college. Since I had them for only a few sessions, I had become adept at helping patients quickly formulate an appropriate and realistic agenda for their therapeutic goals and concentrate on fulfilling it efficiently. I wish I could have supervised him and settled him down. What happened then? Penny had, more than most of us, never come to terms with the inescapability of death. (He was a member of a half-dozen churches because he believed they provided him with ideal pickup opportunities.) But is there any point to dwelling on it?. And if I eradicated the illusion, then I had to be prepared to encounter the despair it had concealed. There had to be some other way. Dave scarcely wondered about the ultimate meaning of his clutch of letters and now, tight and brittle, he would not be receptive to such an inquiry. Existence pain. But are you being completely honest? No, behavioral therapy was the best choice. Soon we spent entire sessions talking about her father. I knew that Dr. K. would read it. . (Yet it was true that I had urged Sarah to take him on: she had been reluctant to introduce a patient with cancer into her group. Once again, Dr. K. gave guarded assent. "Do Not Go Gentle" 7. Once again I began to suspect that he had already sent the fifty thousand dollars and was unwilling to tell me. (parental loss) No! I told myself, shaking myself free. What could be clearer? Now you really know that hes dead. It is a book of its time, as you will notice from the chapter 'Fat Lady'. She hated everything. . I gave her everything she wanted. Saul could barely restrain himself from interrupting and exclaiming, I dont care who was with him, how he died, where he was buried, who spoke at the memorial service! The message:He is building up a case against you. To my great surprise, Carlos made excellent use of therapy; and after six sessions, we agreed to meet in ongoing treatment. You said you hated groups., Well, thats true. I tried to help Thelma talk. I say that often to students. It was an extraordinarily intimate moment. I felt strongly that Thelmas fear of aging and death fueled her obsession. Whether they were compatible in other ways seemed immaterial at this point: they were vastly incompatible in their grieving, each preferring an approach that interfered with that of the other. I stammered, You know, psychiatrists dont ordinarily touch their, Let me interrupt you before you tell any more fibs and your nose gets longer and longer like Pinocchio. Betty seemed amused at my squirming. But she simply smoothed out her long denim skirt, sat back down, and asked if she could smoke. Her only social contacts were at work, where most of her co-workers resented her supervisory role. The dream, I continued, was a dream about death. More signs of thawing: she snapped her neck and sent her long black hair flying to one side and then combed her fingers through it. There she was ridiculing Marges stutter and some of her most familiar comments. She would, for example, introduce what she was about to say with a lengthy, boring preamble. God, thats one for you. She caught it and began. Though there is something reassuring about an omniscient therapist who is always in control of every situation, there can be something powerfully engaging about a fumbling therapist, a therapist willing to flounder with the patient until they, together, stumble upon an enabling discovery. Jay recapitulated, in the group, his life experiences in his family, where he yearned for his fathers love but had nevercould neverask for it. Yet they are so subtle in character that they generally elude most research-outcome questionnaires. Besides, its no secret that men get turned on by rape. Maybe youre right, maybe I do have a serious problem with getting close to people. How could we be when Marge acted so crazy and I patronized her by tolerating her craziness? Well go over them next week.. Remember that every time youve sunk into a depression, youve climbed out again. Aside from a seventeen-year-old son and daughterdizygotic twins, who lived with his ex-wife in South AmericaCarlos, at the age of thirty-nine, found himself virtually alone in the world. Yet he seems to be a particularly screwed-up person. Or that she had invited Matthew here to speak freely and yet immediately mobilized his guilt by reminding him that she had been on antidepressants since he left her. This was all the information I could handle (and all that I thought I needed). And when Im impotent, it is not because I fail sexually as a man but because Im asking sex to do things that sex cant do., Exactly. After I was discharged I immediately flew back to San Francisco, and it was the following day that I met Thelma, sheerly by chance, in Union Square. But of my hundred hours with her, what should I have shared? When Penny told them that he was not home, one of them ordered her to tell Jim to pay the money he owed or he could forget about coming home: there wouldnt be any house left for him to come home to. There were so many rich leads that it was hard to select and concentrate on one. Later I find what I assume was in the envelope on the street, and it is a dirty old shoe with the sole coming off. Ill have to think about it. I hand in my blue book and remember that I havent answered the last question. Phyllis, Marvin and Yalom never met together, Love's Executioner General Chapter Overviews, CH 7 Yalom - Transference & Transparency/ CH, . Yalom believes that researchers will eventually correlate electrical and biochemical activity in the brain with experience. Marvin at sixty-four had suddenly, six months ago, for the first time in his life, developed disabling migraine headaches. Thats why I jumped when I saw the newspaper story. Yalom mentions it once when describing Marie but no more. Her response was, in effect, that her losses had been too greatmore than she could bear. You say shes forgotten all traces of this life?, Its all gone. Somewhere in there, maybe a subtitle (but it couldnt be, because I cant spell it) was the word evolution there was a strong feeling about the word. I flinched for Dave: that man at the advanced age of sixty-three was still six years younger than he. Later it occurred to me that, if Saul had so badly misjudged Dr. K.s sentiments, then he probably misinterpreted my feelings as well. I want to sink into the embrace of some warm daydream. Although Thelma's love obsession with her therapist, and her subjective experiences on life of what is preventing her from living in the present, Yalom attempts to treat a 70-year-old woman only to learn that being love executioner more complicated as he had anticipated. I wanted to linger with the dream but had to return to the needs of the moment. Subscribe. In my many years of work with cancer patients facing imminent death, I have noted two particularly powerful and common methods of allaying fears about death, two beliefs, or delusions, that afford a sense of safety. Yes, a week from Tuesday would be fineno emergency.. He insisted that he had asked me to keep the letters at this time for one reason only: his wife was now doing a major housecleaning and working her way steadily and surely toward his study, where the letters lay hidden. I asked them questions., Sarah suggested that some of your questions were not of the helpful variety., Someone had to get them talking. . What happened was that a woman, Sonia, Here Thelma broke role for a minute and said in a loud stage whisper, Dr. As a patient said in Do Not Go Gentle, Even though youre alone in your boat, its always comforting to see the lights of the other boats bobbing nearby.. Well, in my case you may be right. Books and places are bonded together in my memory. These are tough things to talk about, really tough., He went on to say that Phyllis had paid a price for her insightsshe had become very agitated. Who could have imagined that, out of that woman whose vacuous chatter had so bored me and her previous psychiatrist, this thoughtful, spontaneous, and sensitive person could have emerged? She dont remember, I dont remember. For one thing, Marge stuttered on every word. Love's Executioner. Even insurance forms had to be sent to his secret post office box number. I felt it. She stopped and sank into her chair. 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. Then he began asking us both for more intimate details. She presented her true case history so poignantly and convincingly that I was fully persuaded. Gone completely was his sense of humor. He was concerned about my depression. In a way he stood between me and the grave. We did not know, then, that it was to be a permanent farewell. Alarmed at the prospect of my work disappearing without a trace into the computers innards, I sought help. I wake up in a sweat. Stop stuffing yourself! He could not, would not, face the shame of telling Dr. K. that now, eighteen months later, their article was not yet accepted for publication. It seemed to me that the time was ripe to interrupt that pattern. I turned to look at Thelma, but she averted her glance. Thats going to be my main job in the session.. Occasionally she caught herself and apologized for being bitchy, but invariably, a few minutes later, was once again irritable and self-pitying. Last year I started seeing a therapist for the first time in my life, although not by deliberate choice but rather as a side benefit of something else -- namely, I attended one of those "computer coding bootcamp" programs here in Chicago, and one of the things they provide for their students for no cost is a licensed therapist on staff for weekly sessions. (Yalom's professional rosary). I tried another tack. More than anything else, I resolved to be present with her, and I immediately called her back whenever she started to leave my presence by slipping away into another age or another role. He was the only man, the only person, who told me he loved me. First, I thought of Pennys desperate wish to keep everyone together, to create the stable family she never had as a child, and how that was manifested in her fierce resolve to own a house and a cemetery plot. I then instructed him to say to her, punctually every two hours, phoning her if he were at work, these words precisely: Phyllis, please dont leave the house. His action broke the vicious circle, his wife softened, his own anger diminished, and his sexual performance improved. Even the most liberal system of psychiatric nomenclature does violence to the being of another. I dont want to jeopardize my only chance for some kind of happiness!, But Thelma, its been eight years. She could not remember the dreams except for two recurrent ones that had begun in adolescence, shortly after her fathers death. Phyllis and I have already discussed it, and she is ready to talk to you.. His fantasy about Ruth allowed him to feel that he could still be touched and cared for by another human. What do you make of the fact that the only kind of car you could get was a green Honda Civic?, I hate green and I hate Honda Civics. I thought of ONeills The Iceman Cometh and the fate of Hickey, the disillusioner. When I first began to work as a therapist, I naively believed that the past was fixed and knowable; that if I were perspicacious enough, I could discover that first false turn, that fateful trail that has led to a life gone wrong; and that I could act on this discovery to set things right again. If, for example, she was able to trust and to reveal herself to me more than to anyone previously, then she contained within herself that experience as well as the ability to do it again. Would it be O.K. But why? Needing no reference books for my writing, I traveled light and had only a stack of my session notes for about fifty patients. I had expected that Phyllis would accompany him, but he arrived alone, looking anxious and haggard. The metaphor he used in one of our first meetings was that dying is simply trading in your body for another onelike trading in an old car. I doubted whether it would be possible to separate her from her obsession without first helping her to enrich other realms of her life. They were soon all over the house. Patients need to have faith that their therapists face and resolve their personal problems. Imagine being in therapy for eight years and not talking about the real problem! You tell me Im not readynot ready to stop therapy, not ready to get married, not ready to adopt a child, not ready to stop smoking. This thought, this core false belief, was the enemy. To believe that nothing in life is more important than that he think well of you?, I dont really believe hes trying to drive me to suicide. I feel like nothing, no one. Now that weve decided to do it, he wants to do it as soon as possible. Her cemetery visits were briefer and less frequent; she had given away most of Chrissies clothes and toys and turned her room over to Brent; she removed Chrissies last will and testament from the refrigerator, stopped phoning Chrissies friends and stopped imagining the events Chrissie would have experienced had she livedfor example, her senior prom or her application to college. Im keeping it secret. When he gave me the book, he said to me, "This book reflects my vision of the world". I suspected that Phyllis wanted to expiate her guilt for refusing to see a couples therapist. . There was something going on between the two of us. So I, as a child, am dead. In fact, of the twenty-eight geriatric subjects involved in this study, she had the most positive outcome. Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy > ISBN13: 9780465020119 Summary. I wanted him to continue, and I just waited. When I dance in my dreams, it means Im trying to make everything thats bad disappear. Besides, Ive read your books for years. But, in milder form, countertransference insinuates itself into every course of psychotherapy. To make matters worse, that evening Marge had gone to a public lecture given by an extremely articulate and attractive young woman philosopher. Marie and I endlessly discussed her options. Then Mike discussed pain with her. So I took pains, for example, to tell Marge (I assumed Me heard everything) how much I enjoyed Mes insouciance, vitality, brashness. Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. I have only a dim recollection of the rest of the hour. Most of the time whats important is that he would wish me well., But why is his wish so all-important? Did the sandwiches soothe you?, I had a hard time getting to them. Ill talk all right! Theyre jerks with no cojones, they sit around whimpering and saying nothing., Tell me what happened in the meeting from your perspective., Sarah talked about the rape, she tell you that?, And Martha did, too. I turned my attention to Thelma and dismissed, for the time being, the question of Matthews motivation. Eventually time erodes the memory of the event, and victims gradually return to their prior, trusting state. The two of you cant help one another with this because it was not a shared state. He didnt seem to understand, we talked past each other, he had no interest in the inner meaning of events. Saul suggested they offer a creative synthesis and identify the most promising directions for future research. Nine minutes, Elva reminded me, was all the time required for the GAP to cook dinnerto nuke a slim gourmet TV dinner in the microwave. Alongside her love for her father, she also had negative feelings: she felt ashamed of him, of his appearance (he was extremely obese), of his lack of ambition and education, of his ignorance of social amenities. It was my idea to invite Matthew, my idea to ask him the questions you did. I thought I saw her nod her head. I remember thinking that if everything else failed, I wasnt beyond trying to set up that experiment! For the first four years of her bereavement, Marie made herself totally inaccessible to men. I had tried to help her broaden her horizons, to develop new interests, to value relationships with women. I had thought that he would have terminated therapy long before. These were real people therenot sources of information. Of course, she was still special in that she had special qualities and gifts, that she had a unique life history, that no one who had ever lived was just like her. Something good happened, and she felt great; one criticism from someone, and she was down for days. But that would not be easy. There she was cowering behind her chair as Marge was wont to do when frightened. Although I was less engaged with him than in the past, I was doing what therapists are traditionally supposed to do: I illuminated patterns and meanings; I helped Saul understand why the letters struck him as so fateful, how they not only represented some current professional misfortune but symbolized a lifetimes search for acceptance and approval. They were a mystery to him. The stark images took form immediately in my own mind. This is stirring up a lot of stuff in me. Inspiration came quickly in Bali. Love's Executioner offers us the humane and extraordinary insight of renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom into the lives of ten of his patients - and through them into the minds of us all Why was Saul tormented by three unopened letters from Stockholm? I could hear her listening, and continued. But to make things worse, Im not sleeping. All this power that Matthew hasyouve given it to himevery bit of it!, I get sick in my stomach at the thought of his despising me., What goes on in another persons mind, someone you never even see, who probably isnt even aware of your existence, who is caught up in his own life struggles, doesnt change the person you are., Oh, hes aware of my existence, all right. She began to have acute panic attacks and many disturbing dreams, and, as she put it, she died at least three times a night. Upon this unconscious premise, Elva had built her entire assumptive worlda world featuring safety and benevolent paternalism. I work at it. After ten years, my wife was leaving her position as the administrative head of the Stanford Center for Research on Women, and the campus newspaper had eulogized her extravagantly. Im soooooooo g-g-g-g-glad youre my psychiatrist! On bended knee: D-d-d-o-o-o you like me, D-D-D-Doctor Yalom? This phrase startled me. The therapeutic act, not the therapeutic word! That takes a special type of person, someone who can tolerate considerable duplicity, someone who embraces intimacy in fantasy but may avoid it in life. The letters instantly lost their terror for him, and he fetched them from the desk and opened them. I dismissed this angle as being just thatan angle, one of my dumb, harebrained, manipulative ploys that always backfire. It was a couple days after the funeral, I was still taking off from school. Sorry for stopping you., Well, as you know, hes been generally obnoxioussniffing the women as though he were a dog and they bitches in heat, and ignoring everything else that goes on in the group. When I asked about how we were doing today, or asked her to describe all the feelings she had experienced toward me in the session so far that day, she rarely responded. What would you most like me to do?, I know Ill be all right in a few days. She had been highly promiscuous in her teens; in fact, she had been the school po white slut (her term), and the father could have been any of ten boys. She remained proud, somewhat judgmental, and resistive to new ideas.