It was an extraordinarily intimate moment. Which Marge? . I was so preoccupied with these thoughts and with plans for our future work that I missed the first part of Thelmas next commentbut I heard the ending of the sentence all too clearly. It was true that Betty offered an opportunity to improve my personal skills as a therapist. Or the responsibility? After a decade of study and research, I wrote a textbook, Existential Psychotherapy , intending not to establish a new field but to make all therapists more aware of existential issues. Intrapersonal isolation occurs when parts of the self are split off, as when one splits off emotion from the memory of an event. I nodded but assured him that I had time to meet with him. I hit a layer of solid rock, and the vibrations woke me up. She looked up at me, and her face was a hideous mucous-filled skull. Ive told you precisely what you can expect. Or had she known for some brief period and then repressed the knowledge because it clashed with her own vital lie? Then she simply made it clear that I no longer had the right to make personal inquiries. But to lose a child is to lose the future: what is lost is no less than ones life projectwhat one lives for, how one projects oneself into the future, how one may hope to transcend death (indeed, ones child becomes ones immortality project). For example, during one hour when I was reminding him of how much gratuitous teaching he had given to the Stockholm Institute fellows and junior faculty, he stated that, as a result of what he had done to these bright young students, he had set the field back twenty years! Later it occurred to me that, if Saul had so badly misjudged Dr. K.s sentiments, then he probably misinterpreted my feelings as well. She said that, if it were true for me, it was true in spades for herthat she had led a totally self-centered life, that shes never given anything of herself., I reminded her of that. Ive thought it before but never said it out loud., She put her head down, almost into her lap. My husbands been dead for a year now, but things arent getting any better. During the first few sessions, Betty described, in endless detail, problems she encountered at work with customers, co-workers, and bosses. But he did join the group and attended the first several meetings faithfully. I wonder why what I think and feel about you doesnt count?, She responded to the content but not to the emotion. Good Lord, what had I gotten myself into? I dont want to be just another patient. I wanted to be special. I want to be something, anything. She had never been asked on a date and never attended a school dance or party. 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. I must not make that error. Here, with a big grin on her face, she paused to let the suspense build. What payoff did Dave get from a belief that he was imprisoned by a woman? She knew that I was weary, weary of Marges whimpering and stuttering, that I was weary of her panics, her curling up in corners and hiding under desks, and weary of her thready childlike voice. He gritted his teeth and tried to force feelings out. He hadnt, for example, told the group that Soraya had been dead for thirty years, that he was sixty-nine and felt near death, that he had asked me to be the keeper of the letters. Instead, the opposite occurred: she withdrew even more, claiming that her problem with intimacy doomed our work in therapy. She walked back to her chair and sat down. But what, I wondered uneasily, about the rights of the patient? Im sure shes gone: that performance required great vital energy, and by now Marge and I have sucked all that juice out of her. Think of process as opposed to content. (The fact that I was a better prophet than therapist, however, gave me little solace.). Sometimes Id imagine the blood filling a paper cup. He was a British commando officer during the Second World War and specialized in teaching methods of hand-to- hand killing.. I reinforced their new, more open mode of communication and instructed them in some fundamentals of sexual functioning: how Phyllis could help Marvin sustain his erection; how she could help him avoid premature ejaculation; how Marvin could approach sex less mechanically; and how he could, if he lost his erection, bring Phyllis to orgasm manually or orally. That would have been treating her like an equal.). I was startled, when I looked into the face of that dancer, to meet Thelmas large eyes peering out at me across the decades. We started going faster and then went up into a big arc in the sky. Nor was it necessary to sweep from my mind derogatory thoughts about her appearance. But now she was engrossed in her own words, holding her body and her head absolutely still as she talked. Often I feel I dont have much else to offer. Careful, careful! Furthermore, it would be difficult to complete a revision by international mail: face-to-face collaboration was necessary. Afterward, I mused about the hour we three had shared. I remember times youve walked out of the office feeling much better than when you entered. She usually knew what was going on in my life, but shed want to know about her friends and her brothers. Itll be difficult to dislodge it. That sense of specialness, of being charmed, of being the exception, of being eternally protectedall those self-deceptions that had served her so well suddenly lost their persuasiveness. Even now, long after her depression had lifted, there remained a stiffness in our work and a coldness and remoteness in our relationship that I had never been able to alter. How much of her grief, then, was for all her unrealized hopes? Love's Executioner - Love's Executioner. While I was considering shifting to a hard, uncomfortable chair, it suddenly occurred to me that when I was in therapy with Rollo May, he used to sit in a straight-backed wooden chair. Needless to say, Marvins new family assignment did not increase his popularity with his father, who became a thin presence in the family, then a mere shadow, and soon evaporated forever. Shortly after termination of therapy, about three years ago, Saul, an accomplished neurobiologist, had received a distinguished awarda six-month fellowship at the Stockholm Research Institute in Sweden. Your email address will not be published. The singles world is impossible for obese people. It has been translated into twelve languages and is now in its fourth edition. Ive had some difficulties with sexnot as bad as nowwhich caused me to flip back and forth in my moods for twenty years. Instead Ill just say that Yalom, while a phenomenal writer, is a despicable and morally repugnant person. The surgeon admits that was true. Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy. Occasionally she caught herself and apologized for being bitchy, but invariably, a few minutes later, was once again irritable and self-pitying. they asked me. I couldnt promise more honesty than I was willing to give. Environmental impact statements outline the _______. She waited a couple of minutes for me to read it. But we had not progressed very far in our exploration of life purpose (not that progress can be expected: absence of purpose is a problem of life rather than of a life) when Penny changed course yet again. Ive got to find out the truth. In the group, he had participated in many dramas but always against the horizon of what he might get from me. And what do you make of the allusions to deathundertakers, silence, blackness, the whole atmosphere of dread and foreboding?. Everyones going to die. My mouth is so dry I can hardly talk. She had first met him twenty years before when they were college classmates in Mexico City. Today I felt positively tender toward her. I know how busy he is. There she was in an autotrance, eyes closed, flickering eyelids covering frenetic REM-like activity. Sometimes he gets so upset, he takes my upsetness away from me.. Which is good. It feels scary, like Ill need you too much. He immediately rejoined, Ive been wanting a session like this for years. whats the word? She had grown up, an only child, on a small, poor ranch in Texas where her mother has lived alone since her fathers death fifteen years ago. She saw me watching, turned, and said, Dont you worry about me. Saul could go no further. His lover, Soraya? Much more hyperventilation and I knew Saul would pass out. Chrissie, I surmised, was Pennys hope for the future: it was she who could have rescued the family from its destiny of poverty and crime. I considered, momentarily, what recourse I had with Matthew, but supposed he was beyond the statute of limitations. Has a focus on the ontological anxiety that has been evoked by passing a major milestone. I agreed to help in anyway I could, to see him through the crisis, to visit him at home for as long as necessary. Yet I am not without faith, my Hail Mary being the Socratic incantation, The unexamined life is not worth living. But that was not Daves faith. Painful thoughts or memories may emerge which will temporarily make you more uncomfortable than you are right now.. It made me feel better for a few minutes. She hated everything. He seemed pasted to the surface of things. First, we explored guilt, a state of mind few survivors escape. I recall a patient I saw twenty years ago whose therapy was pockmarked with duplicity. If I were too honest, Marge would see how much I preferred the other Marge. Most of all, he grieved for the vast empty spaces of his life: the unused potential within him, the children he had never had, the father he had never known, the house that had never brimmed with family and friends, a life work that might have contained more significance than the accumulation of too much money. She began to have acute panic attacks and many disturbing dreams, and, as she put it, she died at least three times a night. Learn how your comment data is processed. And outrageously activeoften charging at a patients defenses with a battering ram! [PDF] [EPUB] Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy Download She had never had a positive relationship with a man, and it is possible her sons had paid the penalty for that. But there is timing and judgment. These thoughts all occurred to me but I found them dismissible. And I know just where Id start!. Finally, I stowed it away in a drawer in my study., Yes, unopened. We might as well have been in separate rooms. It arrived about ten days after the second. . The most important fact about a dream is its emotion, and this dream, despite its benign content, was full of terror: it had awakened him and flooded him with anxiety for hours. Then Matthew, ingenuously, turned to me and began: This is not easy for me. Every severely obsessional patient has a core of anger, and I was not unprepared for its emergence in Thelma. I wonder if Dr. K. and the Stockholm Institute dont represent a real haven. Marie had a low threshold for pain, especially dental pain, and dreaded her frequent visits to the oral surgeon. I wondered what medication I should try, and where I should hospitalize him. Despite the fact that I was used to Pennys making new major disclosures, I was not prepared for the bombshell she dropped in our eleventh, penultimate, session. First of all, she never revealed anything intimate about herself. Despite my best efforts, Betty denied any personal contribution to her unhappy life situation. And, of course, why my letters were loaded for me. First, however, it was necessary to establish to Thelmas satisfaction that the obsession had to be eradicated. Harry is full of Boy Scout honor slogansthe Boy Scouts, thats all he thinks aboutbut underneath hes a violent man. If none of this is necessary, then its still 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. Obviously renting a car is not a frightening activity, not something that would become a nightmare and keep you up all night. The patients are here for their therapy, not mine. I dont know what youre getting at. I became a we.. Once again, Saul proposed to do 95 percent of the work. Though he pretended to speak to other members of the group, he spoke through them to me as he continuously sought my approval and support. When Im depressed I get impotent, and then because Im impotent I get more depressed. Thelma grew deeply despondent after all attempts to contact Matthew failed. She just stared at me. Well, you might be interested in something sexual that happened yesterday afternoonthat would be about ten hours before the dream. 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 ). Marvin spoke in a deliberate, pedantic manner. What stops you from directly asking me the real question?, This is the kind of thing I worked on with Matthew. Matthew came to visit but stayed only fifteen minutes and his presence, Thelma said, was worse than his silence: he evaded any allusions she made to their twenty-seven days of love and insisted on remaining formal and professional. I knew that I had good reason to be guilty. I had a giant auger and knew that I would have to drill down sixty-five feet to save the house. Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy > ISBN13: 9780465020119 Summary. The enabling relationship always assumes that the other is never fully knowable. I was determined to pursue my research plans: to learn as much as possible about chronic bereavement and to design a structured interview protocol. She did not seem surprised by my offer and immediately agreed to return next week at the same time. I often wrote the same article five different ways. He was older than I expected, perhaps in his early forties, and conservatively dressed in an un-Californian three-piece suit. At an early age, far earlier than is often thought, we learn that death will come, and that from it there is no escape. I soon learned that over the last twenty years she had been chronically depressed and in psychiatric treatment almost continuously. I just couldnt bear the disgrace now of coming back to see you. I am overtaking her and realize that death is inevitable. Dr. Z. contained his feelings during his initial major surgical procedures (apparently he had done an excellent job), but they came pouring out during the postoperative course. In a way he stood between me and the grave. Moreover, for the first time, she was accompanied by her husband, Harry, a tall, white-haired man with a large bulbous nose, who sat there squeezing a grip strengthener in each hand. Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician listened to the sounds of life with an ear pressed against a patients rib cage. Perhaps, he suggested, I could understand it. However good his health, he was sixty-nine. She seemed phlegmatic, her skirt was wrinkled and twisted, her hair unkempt, and her face lined with discouragement and fatigue. I only eat them when Im upsetno lettuce, no tomato, no chopped celery or onion. Though not bingeing, she was no longer dieting. He was considering a letter stating that he was returning the money because he had not used his fellowship time productively at the institute. But on several occasions he encountered a woman socially, locked gazes, and experienced a spiritual melding with her. Something good happened, and she felt great; one criticism from someone, and she was down for days. All of my arguments met a similar fate. Research has shown that contrary to the expectation that the tragedy of a childs death might bind a family together, many bereaved parents report increased marital discord. I know I need to be seen, I cant manage without it. Since patients tend to resist assuming responsibility, therapists must develop techniques to make patients aware of how they themselves create their own problems. I was getting plenty of information, but we were not making contact. But there was nothing funny about Sauls appearance. Its not like I expect anything more. Indeed, he seemed so distant that I decided the first thing I had to do was tend to our relationship. I let it go. When I spoke to Dr. Z. about the need for pain relief, he grew belligerent and reminded me he knew a lot more than I did about surgical pain.