I enjoyed the joking about your shitty habits. The improvement held. Enforced busyness is often the friend of the bereaved and Elmer provided blessed distraction in the early stages of mourning. He had no sense of familiarity with the dream and related to it as though it were some alien text. . My secretary said she always could tell by my smile that I had seen Elva that day. Im not sure whether Ive ever had one.. I often wrote the same article five different ways. I couldn't stand the supercilious sense he gives of being in some way, better than his clients. I didnt know what to do. Obviously renting a car is not a frightening activity, not something that would become a nightmare and keep you up all night. Chrissie was marrying a boy in the neighborhooda real turkey. Is there not a difference between a therapist scrubbing away unseemly countertransference stains and a dancer or a Zen master striving for perfection in each of those disciplines? Several minutes later when she finished that anecdote (complete with a full historical account of how she and her sister first developed the habit of telling long tangential stories), we were hopelessly removed from our starting place and I had been effectively distanced. I had spent too many hours in my youth silently hating my mothers vicious tongue. There was yet another component in this decision. Video. Did he ever realize how much I would have liked to join him, perhaps have a quick cappuccino together? How could medical education, to take one example, survive without student clinical clerkships? Never before had she been as totally open with anyone. I saw that, to work with Penny, I would need to lash myself to the mast of reason. During these sessions we tried to make sense of what had happened, and mapped out a strategic response to future potential stress. She said she felt frightened, like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. So much wanting. This was necessary, functional pain in contrast to the unnecessary pain stemming from irritated, bruised nerves which served no useful purpose. I asked, in return, that he agree not to make any irreversible decisions. Spare me any more psychiatrists home photos!. Ive thought about you every day these eight years. Talking treatments have never helped. Many years ago he had developed a strong belief in reincarnation, a belief that offered him blessed relief from fears about dying. He imagined telling his father how much he had missed him and how much he would have liked to have known him. Patients need to have faith that their therapists face and resolve their personal problems. There seemed much work for Penny to do on her relationships with the livingespecially with her sons and perhaps with her husband; and I assumed that would be how we would spend our remaining six hours. Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom - Audiobook - Audible.com As I had anticipated, Dave kept himself well concealed in the group and, in fact, received reinforcement for his behavior from another secretive member, a beautiful and proud woman who, like him, looked decades younger than her years. Could that have been true for me? Ill be all right. I have no childrenhere his voice turned grayno poor relatives, no desires to give it to good causes., You sounded sad when you talked about not having children., Thats past history. Couples treatment may illuminate the sources of marital tension and help each partner to recognize and to respect the others mode of grief. The irony of it all. Now why, thought I, do her feet not reach the ground? She remembered each of them very well. As memories of my sessions flowed through my mind over the days, a story would, almost without my noticing it, take root and develop such energy as to compel me to put aside all other notes and devote myself to that particular story. Yet here the sequence seemed natural. What precisely, I asked, was helpful to you in our last hour? Primarily, though, my attention was fixed on Matthew. Ordinarily in therapy I would make sure to return and analyze this short sequence, but that day was not the time for such subtleties. I, too, sank back in my chair and took stock of the situation. What I mean is that my attitude about obesity has changed a lot. I remember that Matthew encouraged Thelma to ask more questions. I inquired about the precise content of her daydreams, and Thelma seemed to enjoy talking about them. They entered my mind a couple of times right after Chrissie died, but its only been this last couple of weeks that I dwell on them. How? Ill tell you. It was hard and unrewarding work. I got dressed quickly and tried to stop them. To read the exact words would only tear open the wound even more.. Could she feel the difference? Now thats a facet of psychotherapy we dont learn about in training: have a romance with your patients worst enemy, and then, when you are sure the enemy loves you, use that love to neutralize her attacks upon your patient. They had lain there untouched for fifteen years, and I, too, could not destroy them. At one meeting, she and Dave were asked to state their ages. Was I so rigid, in such a rut that if the first hour didnt proceed just the way I wished it to, I grew cranky and stomped my feet? I kept on trying, but I couldnt find the right one. As she left my office, I thought that even if she decided to talk about her own issues with someone else, I would still try to meet with her later when she settled down to see if we could make this a learning experience for her as well. Required fields are marked *. One might guess twenty-five: perhaps, without her makeup, thirty. I waited to hear from him, and I received the first letter four weeks after publicationright on schedulejust time enough for the journal issue to reach Scandinavia, for Dr. K. to read it, to pass judgment, to deliver sentence. So far it was apparent that Thelmas love for Matthew was, in reality, something else perhaps an escape, a shield against aging and isolation. I want to know what happens to you. 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. Therapy sessions always just stir the pot. Since I doubted very much, after this charming incident, whether Id ever be able to persuade another group therapist to accept him, I persevered. She tried to poke me into joining the fun. It was not difficult to lay out before her the ways she avoided life: her reluctance to engage others (because she dreaded separation); her overeating and obesity, which had resulted in her being left out of so much life; her avoidance of the present moment by slipping quickly into the past or the future. As I turned the pages of Three Unopened Letters, Loves Executioner, The Wrong One Died, among other stories, I felt myself burning with delicious curiosity. I need a solemn promise from you that for the next six months you will do nothing physically self-destructive. This insight could have been a turning point in our therapy: for the first time, Thelma identified and took responsibility for a specific problem. She remembered also how frightened she had been when, on previous strenuous diets, she herself had suffered considerable hair loss. The day before, he had received a phone call from a colleague asking him to review a grant application. Mike, an expert in this field, began a well-practiced, polished presentation. Those twenty-seven days were the high point of my life. But are you being completely honest? When I went to the waiting room to greet Thelma, I was dismayed at her physical deterioration. I wondered, but did not ask, about the relationship between his wife and the key to that safe deposit box. What is Yalom's primary clinical assumption? I felt goose bumps. Ive got to sell some stocks first to raise that much cash., Well, heres what I think. Cemetery plot? He focused solely upon them and, we learned later, tried to arrange to meet socially with two of them outside the group. I felt cruel during these weeks because of the pain our therapy was uncovering. 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. The feeding technique was to repeat one standard question, Marge, what would she say if she were here?, Some of Marges answers were unexpected, some familiar. I thought that now she was closer to ripping or gouging than to crying. I had obviously tapped into an important fantasy. After that, there seemed to be no further work we could do, and we parted. I hit a layer of solid rock, and the vibrations woke me up. Such death awareness is a terror that comes rarely, sometimes only once or twice in a lifetimea terror that Marvin now experienced night after night. Plunge into that feeling, explore it. But I could not. She remembered the precise moment. Everyone wants and welcomes this blissful merger. How to start? My God! Just a week previously, she woke up to find herself in a drugstore checkout line with a gift for Chrissie in hand, a stuffed animal. The lilt was gone from her voice. First, he was still migraine-free. The decades had eroded none of their restorative powers: she exhaled deeply, calmed herself, and sat back in her chair. Im going to have to explain all this to Phyllis. Marvin was scribbling away furiously now. God that's a good title. She could take care, she said, of not being poor. But Im changed as a result of knowing you. . Phyllis enjoys sex. Tell me about the euphoria, all that you remember., It was an out-of-the-body experience. As long as he continued to believe that he was tantalizingly close to being desired and loved by an attractive woman, he could buttress his belief that he was no different from anyone else, that there was nothing seriously wrong with him, that he was not disfigured, not mortally ill. Diving into deep water not uncommonly symbolizes the act of diving into the depths of ones unconscious. I wasnt able to have children, Im afraid of people, Ive never worked outside the home, I have no talents or skills. She paused, wiped her eyes and said to Marvin, See, I can cry if I put my mind to it., She turned back to me. Thelmas voice had a lilt to it now, and she rocked her head in rhythm to a melody of eight years past. All my tension disappears. The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines. Carlos let me know I had made my point: he said that he was getting dizzy, and that this was a lot to deal with in one day. Had we stripped away too much? A brief reflection on Irvin Yalom and Existential Therapy: Love's The escape from destinyfrom social class destiny and from her personal poor-crazy-old-lady destinywas a major motif in Pennys life. 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? She, I, anyone, can be struck down at any time. She knew that, I knew it, and she knew I knew it. There was something conspiratorial about the request. But her belief was deeply held. From time to time, I had to prod myself to remember that the dreamer was Marvin, that the dreamer provided an open channel to Marvins central nucleusthat whorl of the self which possesses absolute wisdom and self-knowledge. Here the letter broke off. For a moment Carlos enjoyed my perplexity, and then proceeded to explain that he had been working with visual imaginga form of self-healing many cancer patients attempt. Six months later, he received a rejection notehis first in twenty-five yearswhich explained, with deference considering the stature of the authors, why the journal could not publish the article: in the previous eighteen months, three other competent reviews of the same literature had been published, and, furthermore, preliminary research reports published in the last few months did not support the conclusions Saul and Dr. K. had reached about promising directions in the field. Maybe I was wrong, but I think her eyes said, Are you satisfied now? I did not comment on her gaze. Dave never returned to another group meeting. And then I slipped into a reverie about my own letters. The last thing we discussed was the timing of Marvins symptoms. But I dont worry about retirement. The three of us ended the hour with round-robin handshakes and parted. The drama of age regression and incest recapitulation (or, for that matter, any therapeutic cathartic or intellectual project) is healing only because it provides therapist and patient with some interesting shared activity while the real therapeutic force the relationshipis ripening on the tree. In reality, they had had a strictly professional relationship which had in no way splashed over the formal patient-therapist boundary. I feel very distressed about that and notice that its been slit open. Fascinating!, Theres a lot of fear of death there, Marvinin this dream and in all the other nightmares. Its gone., Does any memory of it exist? How dare he disclose so many of my private matters? Existential isolation, a third given, refers to the unbridgeable gap between self and others, a gap that exists even in the presence of deeply gratifying interpersonal relationships. The message:Marvin understands, he really understands, that his eyes have been closed, and that he is finally preparing to open them. Gradually she let it go; she grew softer and more gentle. I took the letter out of my pocket and started playing around with it. I followed that rule to the best of my ability, and it felt good now to hear that it had been helpful. My God! Betty experienced emotional flashbacks and would spend much of a therapy hour tearfully discussing startlingly vivid memories, such as the day she left Texas to move to New York, or her college graduation, or her anger at her mother for being too timid and fearful to attend her high school graduation. One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety. It is refreshing. And something else totally unexpected had happened. My irritation? Moreover, eight years of Thelmas taped phone messages had to be getting to him, and I was confident that he, too, longed for release. If Marie left him outside, he howled so incessantly that neighbors, even several doors away, phoned her to plead or demand that she do something. Zen masters endlessly aspire to quiescence of the mind, the ballerina to consummate balance; and the priest forever examines his conscience. Would you move to the other chair, play the role of Matthew, and talk to Thelma here in this chair?. Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy I hated that rolebut saw no other way. His father didnt answer. When people think that we really hadnt loved one another, it belittles the love that we had. They might, if discovered, provide me some cover. She was back in her green jogging suit and had obviously not combed her hair or made any other attempts to groom herself. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. Though Penny didnt yet understand, she was locked into an irreconcilable contradiction between her determination to stay with Chrissie and her reincarnation beliefs. Had I disproven the catechism? Ive been in therapy once removed. On several occasions I refused social invitations, some even from Dr. K., because I would not leave the library.. Her world view was fractured. How much of an effort had Marvin really made to persuade Phyllis to participate with him in treatment? I had strongly suspected from the beginning that he would likely drop out of the group. I was struck in the second interview, as in the first, by Marvins lack of wonderment at his own story. After Harry left my office, I sat there tired and stunned and angry. 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..