love's executioner two smiles summary

Carlos said goodbye but later grew convinced that he had missed a golden opportunity by not offering to escort her to her car; in fact, he had persuaded himself that there was a fair chance, perhaps a ten- to fifteen-percent chance, he might have married her. I suspected that, in part, he agreed to examine unconscious motivations simply to humor me. And there with large, panic-filled eyes, pleading with me not to give up on her. Then he had to disidentify with the non-core parts: they might represent what he liked, or did, or valuedbut they were not him, not his central being. Then I started asking questions. And then I slipped into a reverie about my own letters. Each checked and approved the disguise, many offered editorial help, one (Dave) gave me the title of his story, some commented that the disguise was unnecessarily extensive and urged me to be more accurate, a couple were unsettled by my personal self-revelation or by some of the dramatic liberties I took but, nonetheless, in the hope that the tale would be useful to therapists and/or other patients, gave me both their consent and their blessing. First and foremost are Yalom and Thelma's first meeting. Rent or Buy Love's Executioner - 9780060958343 by Yalom, Irvin D. for as low as $1.64 at eCampus.com. How would it go? I dont rely on role-playing or chair-switching, but this seemed the perfect place for it. Actually, that was helpful. My predictions of what might happen have come true. I wondered about the amount of intimacy in her daily life. For information, address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10016 -8810. My attention was riveted to her. One of the most irreverent of these was poundage: the heavier the patients clinical chart, the worse the prognosis. She knew we were not equals. Why not now? It was time to finish the job. I just stopped thinking and worrying about me. I told her I knew others, six others, who felt the same way. Before we began therapy, I had informed Marge that we could meet for a maximum of eighteen months because of my sabbatical plans. Consequently, he was shocked when, two months later, Dr. K. expressed his disappointment about the work and recommended it be abandoned. This new Marge was vivacious and outrageously, but enjoyably, flirtatious. Think about your volunteer work with the homeless. But why a year? Whats the risk? I noted with some satisfaction that I wasnt the only one she addressed in the third person. As our third hour drew to a close, there was no longer any point in pretending that Penny was not in therapy with me. That must be the six others who felt the same way in the dream. So I decided to call him to prepare him for your call. And so Marie and Dr. Z. were locked in a complex dance, whose steps included a spurned surgeon, a million-dollar lawsuit, a broken jaw, several fractured teeth, and brushed breasts. In your office.. I think its important for you to know exactly what happened eight years ago. So much was riding on the sexual act that it was overtaxed and, ultimately, overwhelmed. The whole dreadful catastrophe. So I acknowledged it openly and suggested that we meet six more times and try to do as much as we could. Ill be all right. By now I was itching with curiosity, yet took a perverse pleasure in not scratching. Only then can one act on it and change. Yalom viewed the smiles as irony. Mind you, I do not speak of delusion. Shes had it for years and years. In a way no patient had ever done before, she showed me everything. Thus, Thelma clung to the infinitesimal chance that she might once again revive her relationship with her lover, renunciation of that possibility signifying diminishment and death. But somehow, despite her rancor and my dislike of her and the evocation of my mother, we got through these sessions. Its his house mainly, you could sayhis money bought it. 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. Often circumstances favor such a course, but sometimes more problems are generated than solved. Bettys parents had, until the very end, denied the seriousness of her fathers illness. What comes to mind?, I can see her faceround, pudgy, large glasses., No, but I know what youd saythat she looks like me: the round face and oversized spectacles., Oh, theres something there, all right. Was he acting as Marvins agent to help me to help Marvin? You let him influence you. As I thought about the words shed put in Matthews mouth, I could easily understand their appeal and why she had no doubt replayed them so often: they confirmed her view of reality, they absolved Matthew of any responsibility (after all, it was his shrink who advised him to be silent), and they confirmed that there was nothing wrong with her or incongruous about their relationship; it was only that Matthew had a greater obligation to another. You are my last hope.. It was the first new dress she had bought in eight years. And, to my surprise, she offered several good ones. Dave, tell me some more about the letters and what they mean to you.. Instructors praise his group therapy text because it is based on the best available empirical evidence. Three months later, Saul completed the article and, after obtaining Dr. K.s approval, submitted it to the journal, only to be informed, after eleven months, that the editor was gravely ill with a chronic disease and that the publishers had regretfully decided not to continue publication of the journal and were therefore returning all submitted articles. Psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom is married to a feminist scholar, which is highly surprising considering the fact that he regards women in a very sexualized and demeaning way. How do you feel about the role-playing, Thelma? I took my time and thought out my words carefully. Now that weve decided to do it, he wants to do it as soon as possible. I inquired whether we had covered everything. I dont think Dan would have wanted to work with someone so skeptical. During the rest of the hour, Thelma repeated a lot of old material: she talked about her feelings toward Matthew, how they were not transference, how Matthew had given her the best days of her life. Thelma, ever since that hour a couple of months ago when you role-played Matthew and spoke the words that would release you, Ive been deliberating about inviting him into my office and having a three-way sessionyou, me, and Matthew. It feels scary, like Ill need you too much. He looked straight at her and said, Ive thought about you every day for the last eight years! But so much irritation? Dave, being a person who needed extensive time in therapy simply to learn how to use it, scoffed at my interpretation instead of considering whether there was any truth in it. Ignoring my gambit, he responded that Thelma had always been a good wife and that perhaps he had aggravated her problem by being on the go and traveling too much. Though it is true that on that day I regarded him as foolish, in the main I always liked him very much. Jeff had been gone for two years now and wanted nothing more to do with her, alive or dead. The truth was that this was indeed a boring woman, and I needed to confront her with that in some acceptable way. Every session with her demanded great effort. She must have been thinking, Oh, I wouldnt feed him poisoned dog foodnot unless he got a little old and bothersome. If there had been any traffic coming the other way, I wouldnt be here today.. Perhaps my discourse with the dreamer was counterproductive. It really didnt matter. Im going to have to explain all this to Phyllis. Marvin was scribbling away furiously now. Its precisely for this reason that we urge trainees to be in prolonged personal therapy. You look better, you relate better, you are so much more approachable and available now.. Just tell me when he died! Eventually Saul obtained the exact date of death and, through some fast arithmetic, established that Dr. K. must have died before the journal could have reached him, and thus could not have read Sauls article. 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. You mentioned you had never talked to a psychiatrist before., Its not a matter of things being intimate, its more to do with psychiatryI dont believe in psychiatrists.. I finally said, Lets go, a good lay might be just the thing to get rid of some of this tension. Marvin paused. Other hopeful dreams followed:I am at a wedding, and a woman comes up and says she is my long- forgotten daughter. She sensed their dread that she might crowd them by sitting next to them. Should I, under the banner of self-enlightenment, strip away an old womans irrational but sustaining and comforting love illusion? She had given me the warning she wanted, and now she leaned back in her chair. I made an impassioned plea. 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. Here I shot Thelma the sharpest, nastiest look I could muster. The dreamer was advising me how to proceed. Were you, I asked, going to talk about the group today?, Not particularly, its not important. I promised him that, even though he never asked it, and I kept that promiseuntil now. Im sure youll miss my little late-night calls.. Marvin feels youre cold and uninvolved and that youve taken little personal interest in his lifein how he got to be the person he is today.. After his fathers exile, it fell upon Marvin, the youngest son, to become his mothers constant companion: it was his job to escort her to all her social functions. I guess it put an end, too, to my pride. They felt distanced by his reluctance to trust them. Yalom mentions it once when describing Marie but no more. Now your cheek is very numb, indeed. Most of all, she regrets her childlessness and her refusal many years ago to see a fertility doctor., Marvin, Im amazed. I see some people trying to rebuild a house at night. There is no alternative. She had often joked with her friends, Go see a psychiatrist. The other group members would proceed to request and then demand more. The dying words of one of my patients (in If Rape Were Legal . There was no doubt my comment struck home. For the first five weeks, he had made excellent use of the group but, unless he changed his behavior dramatically, he would, I was certain, irreversibly alienate all the group membersif he hadnt done so already! No one had ever before asked such blunt questions. I was drawn so deeply into her despair and pessimism that I could easily understand the allure of suicide. And still it seems outrageous. Later, the same night:I am climbing a mountain trail. He did that twice a day and taught me the practice as well. Imagine two minds pressed tight together and, like paramecia exchanging micronuclei, directly transferring thought images: that would be union nonpareil. She mollified me: Its not you. This dissociative process is unconscious, invisible to us, but we can be convinced of its existence in those rare episodes when the machinery of denial fails and death anxiety breaks through in full force. . 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. On my last day in China, I spent an afternoon alone wandering through the back streets of Shanghai and came upon a handsome but entirely deserted Catholic church. I often wrote the same article five different ways. I hear those angry and judgmental feelings, and I know you really feel them. No commitment - cancel anytime. This is a bad day. Aside from two or three brief periods when she lost forty or fifty pounds on crash diets, she had hovered between two hundred and two hundred fifty since she was twenty-one. Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until ones midlife crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone. Or else theyll talk about it aswhat is it called when the therapist transfers something to the patient?, Yes, countertransference. But there was always fatness, the fat kids, the big asses, the butts of jokes, those last chosen for athletic teams, those unable to run the circle of the athletic track. Ill talk all right! That is precisely the situation with Betty: she completely externalized the problem. Recommended for: Soon we were going through, one by one, all the unsettling events of the week. So I added, It will be important this week to be an observer and recorder of your own inner state. (Fortune cookies anyone?) We had a good talk., God, I dont know. Heady stuff! is a 70-year-old married Caucasian woman who, as a result of a five-month, once-weekly course of therapy, improved significantly. So I then attempted to help her work on her life situation, but I could make little headway. I didnt like the sound of that. The physical appearance of the two parrots is of no help: they resemble one another closely; and both, moreover, satisfy Flauberts published description of Lulu. I turned the session over to them: Weve got a lot to talk about today. He learned that deep inside there is a rich teeming world which, if confronted, brings terrible fear but also offers redemption through illumination. Pennys emphasis began to change. Saul, in Three Unopened Letters, knew that any reasonable man would open the letters; yet the fear they invoked paralyzed his will. Obviously there lay the key and I began the second session by exploring the events of six months ago. Then I couldnt focus the slide. I have a lot of respect for Stanford University. By approximately the sixth session, I had worn her down andto humor me, I believeshe agreed that the obsession was the enemy and had to be extirpated. As I look back on my state of mind at that time, I realize that I simply rationalized away these concerns. 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. That means youll be running late all day, doesnt it?. There was no cue more powerful than the publicly acclaimed success of another woman of her own age: then Marges self-hatred washed over her, and she began to consider, more seriously than usual, suicide. . She was right; those were exactly my thoughts. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional huesall are lost when image is crammed into language. Maybe thats part of the reason you feel empty inside. No distracting questions, no jocular clichs, no struggling to stay on the surface. His mother was outside. Ill get back to you. He left my office, his briefcase and homeless letters in tow. He was considering a letter stating that he was returning the money because he had not used his fellowship time productively at the institute. Four weeks ago you couldnt eat or get out of bed or stop vomiting. This whole story was a comic nightmarea tar baby saga in which, at every step, Sauls social ineptitude glued him more tightly to the impossible predicament. Youre doing your best for me. It had been a long time since I had made a home visit. I grew up in racially segregated Washington, D.C., the only son of the only white family in the midst of a black neighborhood. 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. There was a gypsy camp forming right in the front lobby of my office. 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. She had a gift for imitating accents and mimicked her laid-back Marin County physician, her Chinese customers, and her Midwestern boss. And its your own doing. She was convinced that she could attain happiness only through coupling. For weeks he had been encased in a psychosis, on whose windows and walls I had been frantically rapping. She had an impressive repertory of distancing operations. Her husband called to apologize for his wife, who had overslept, and we agreed upon a meeting two days later. If she loses, you lose. Perhaps I was staying longer with her than I should. The notion of inviting him to come live with her was spurred by guilt rather than concern or love. After a crash accountancy course, he said goodbye to his students and colleagues and opened an accounting firm, which ultimately proved to be highly lucrative. But could I relate to Betty? And there was one outstanding characteristic of our relationshipboredom. And from your individual standpoint, I believe it is possible at seventy to discover a new perspective that will permit you to flood retroactively, as it were, your whole earlier life with new meaning and significance. Gone was the coziness, the softness in her life; gone was the safety. 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. He gamely proceeded, but not without his usual coyness. Even insurance forms had to be sent to his secret post office box number. Intrapersonal isolation occurs when parts of the self are split off, as when one splits off emotion from the memory of an event. First, she responded in a teasing way (I told you all along thats what I needed). But that evening, for reasons Thelma, even now, cannot comprehend, she and Matthew slipped outside everyday reality. I like New York and I dont want to like California. Well, why not? No, we were not off to a good start. A powerful technique, which I use in many of these cases, is the here-and-now focus. At one meeting, however, the tone turned deeply serious. Though Elmer was really Charless dog, and though Marie had an aversion to dogs, she had gradually grown affectionate toward Elmer, who for years had slept in her bed. Betty mentioned that she hadnt liked Dr. Farber because he often fell asleep during their hour. A comment stating that the therapist has been thinking about the patient outside of their scheduled hour has never, in my experience, failed to galvanize the latters interest. She had often talked about epic (and invariably unproductive) struggles she had had with her mother and with other friends who tried to help her control her eating. Probably there was some important oedipal competition going on between the two of us which was making communication more difficult. A rugged, brawny woman: weathered, battered, proudand trembling. What about Yalom, Marvin, and vorbeireden? In his remaining months at the Stockholm Institute, Saul worked like a demon. This should be done on the work of every male therapist IMO. Our final three hours were devoted to work on Bettys distress at our impending separation. Could it be that her thighs and buttocks are so inflated that her feet have to go farther to reach the floor? Without that drive none of us would exist on this earth. I knew that there was rich material here. Its gone., Does any memory of it exist? What I had to do was to get away from the contentto stop, for example, attempting to provide simplistic solutions to Bettyand to focus on processon how we were relating to each other. , . But I was pleased he never believed he knew unknowable things. Matthew entered. The fact that Penny was in crisis, or said she was, presented me with a dilemma. Betty represented the ultimate countertransference challengeand, for that very reason, I offered then and there to be her therapist. She could do it. . Well, I can keep it very brief. Witnessing Carloss alarming weight loss reminded Betty of how, over a twelve-month period, she had watched her father shrink from an obese man to a skeleton wrapped in great folds of spare skin. Many people take issue with this description of death denial. When I was a child, one of my favorite booksI used to take it to Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C., to read on the benches therewas. Instead Ill just say that Yalom, while a phenomenal writer, is a despicable and morally repugnant person. Nothing was going right in her life. No one in her life now, not even her husband, knew about her past, about either her twins or her high school reputationthat, too, was something she had been trying to escape. Her life was a tormentthe disgusting liquid food, the stationary bicycle, the hunger pangs, the diabolic McDonalds hamburger ads on television, and the smells, the ubiquitous smells: popcorn in the movies, pizza in the bowling alley, croissants in the shopping center, crab at Fishermans Wharf.

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