This letter was too devastating. I was going to say more when Thelma looked at her watch and said, I see that my fifty minutes are up and, if nothing else, Ive learned not to overstay my welcome in therapy.. When I am healed and my lawsuit settled, Ill talk to his wife and everybody I know. Maybe I need a shrink whos lost a kid! (Nor, it turned out, was he willing to resume individual therapy with me or anyone else. My general comment may have been a guess about the whole field and not an expression of my personal feelings about you. None of this is remarkable. But part of you didnt. Furthermore, he was especially kind to Bettyperhaps it was that he knew she was my patient, perhaps that she came along when he was in a generous (everybody has got a heart) state of mind, perhaps simply that he always had a fondness for fat women (which, I am embarassed to say, I had always considered further proof of his perversity). They think theyre swimming when theyre on a dry stage, or that theyre rowing a boat when sitting in a chair. . I could live with that one-percent chance. I thought psychiatrists werent supposed to give direct advice. More and more these dayshere Thelma lowered her voice almost to a whisperI believe he is intentionally trying to drive me to suicide. Thelmas voice had a lilt to it now, and she rocked her head in rhythm to a melody of eight years past. When driving home, her son would call his wife on his automobile telephone to say he wanted dinner right away. He learned that his eyes, like those of a newborn kitten, had been closed. The teacher said I should return when I felt ready. 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. Pointing this out to Marie, I also questioned the advisability of yanking an eighty-year-old, non-English-speaking man out of his culture. A patient can tolerate the therapists being unfaithful outside of the hour that is the patients own. Having already overscheduled himself with teaching and consultation commitments to younger colleagues, he was forced to work much of the night preparing for his sessions with Dr. K. At the end of his six months, the project was still unfinished, but Saul assured Dr. K. he would complete it and see it published in a leading journal. How did it all turn out?. Love's Executioner, Irvin Yalom . Afterward, I mused about the hour we three had shared. Sarah stopped here and dabbed her eyes. It was into this extraordinary tangle that Mikeof course, knowing none of thishad dropped his innocent, rational suggestion that Marie seek her doctors help in understanding her pain. Though charmed by her ingenuous compliment, I was made uncomfortable by both thoughts: the mysterious somehow, and the vision of me as a miracle worker. Every one of my notes of these early sessions contains phrases such as: Another boring session; Looked at the clock about every three minutes today; The most boring patient I have ever seen; Almost fell asleep todayhad to sit up in my chair to stay awake; Almost fell off my chair today.. "If Dr. C only knew what really happened." Others, especially men, had noticed the change, and now touched and poked her during conversations. But, obviously, I had miscalculated. Getting into the spirit of it, Elva hoisted her purse onto my table, opened its jaws wide, and began to empty it. Knowing he had a married daughter living nearby, I had intimated, in passing, that I assumed she was looking after his needs. She was savvy, willful, very sexy. Such encapsulated, exclusive lovefeeding on itself, neither giving to nor caring about othersis destined to cave in on itself. Feed me!. She was so scared, sobbing so hard, having so much trouble saying it, that it was incredibly painful. Now imagine cans of dog food with labels marked poison. You wouldnt feed your dog poisoned dog food, would you?, Once again, Marie and Mike locked gazes; and, once again, Marie smiled and nodded. But I had never known the real, the secret Jay; and, after his confession, I had to reconstruct my image of him and assign new meanings to past experiences. Freedom means that one is responsible for ones own choices, actions, ones own life situation. He was emaciated, knobby (with swollen, highly visible lymph nodes at elbows, neck, behind his ears) and, as a result of the chemotherapy, entirely hairless. In a soft voice Carlos asked, So where does that leave me?, If what you really want now is closeness, then its time to take all this heat off yourself about finding a wife. I drew on those techniques in my session with Saul. Over the next several months of therapy, I continued faithful to Marge. We continued to ingest the other Marge. Though the dream was not a nightmare, it was full of frustration and anxiety:There was a wedding going on. I want! I guess it put an end, too, to my pride. She claimed that our sessions succeeded only in stirring the pot, in increasing her discomfort, and she regretted having committed herself to six full months of therapy. I was willing to be her executioner, to sacrifice her for you. When the emergency room nurse asked her for the name of her doctor, she moaned, Call Dr. Z. By general consensus he was the most talented and experienced oral surgeon in the area, and Marie felt that too much was at stake to gamble with an unknown surgeon. Hes a person like anyone else, he struggles to live, hell age, hell fart, hell die.. At first they startled, then irritated, her. I encouraged her to plunge into her grief; I wanted her to explore and express every facet of it. I feel miserable. I knew that he had not injured his back (he often avoided unpleasant confrontations by malingering), and he knew I knew it; but the crisp tone of his voice signaled unmistakably that I no longer had the right to comment on it. Thelma, when you ask whether psychiatry doesnt prefer to work with younger patients, it sounds to me that there is a personal question in there., Thelma, as usual, avoided the personal. He arrived at the conclusion that getting rich was what life was all about. No wonder sex has been difficult. What are you going to tell her about your health?, When I get to know her better, Ill tell her the truththat Ive got cancer, that its under control now, that the doctors can treat it., That the doctors arent sure whats going to happen, that there are new treatments discovered every day, that I may have recurrences in the future., What did the doctors say to you? Shes not that short. Once I accept someone for treatment, I commit myself to stand by that person: to spend all the time and all the energy that proves necessary for the patients improvement; and most of all, to relate to the patient in an intimate, authentic manner. The robbery changed everything. Its his house mainly, you could sayhis money bought it. He was, by far, the best therapist she had ever had, and she had grown fond of him, very fond, and for those twenty months looked forward all week to her therapy hour. And now she found that Jim had been lying to her and not making his payments. Thelma rhapsodized about Matthew for several minutes. . Of course, she knew that Albert was dead. It took me a week, until our next session, to realize that the litany was depression-spawned propaganda. And these were things I should have said before. Phyllis enjoys sex. I sighed even more deeply. One night he couldnt sleep and heard some whispering from her room. What a wonderful proof of the unconscious realm! Ive seen hypnosis on TV the victims look like idiots. No doubt he regretted losing his exclusive relationship with me and resented the idea of sharing me with the group members. And there was one outstanding characteristic of our relationshipboredom. I reminded him now of that metaphor. I felt calmer, we were coasting in familiar waters. She dreaded the end of therapy for several reasons: naturally she would miss my professional guidance, and she would miss me personallyafter all, she had never before been willing to trust and to accept help from a man. With tall black stovepipe hats, long- tailed coats, black spats and shoes, they resemble Victorian undertakers or temperance workers. Wed be relating together as two bad little boys. They were having the same problems in living that I was. After forty-one years I still feel my wife is a great lady. I wanted another to bear witness to what I had been going through with Marie, someone to say to me, Shes tough. What did it stir up in you?, I felt like an idiot! Much as I love to do group therapy, the format has one important drawback for me: it often does not permit the exploration of deeper existential issues. (child loss). At the onset of therapy, Betty had indeed wanted only the trim painted but had been drawn inexorably into reconstructive work on the deep interior of the house. You said before that one could hardly have deliberately designed behavior more likely to hurt you. Yet her despair deepened. Well, the last eight cant be counted as therapy because of Thelmas secretiveness. How honest? I imagined that Dave would not only refuse to share important (or trivial) information about himself but do so in a coy or provocative way. I asked him to associate to the dream, to think about it, and to say anything that came to mind. Life doesnt seem worth living. These discussions released a flood of painful memories about a lifetime of rejection by males. The worlds finest tennis players train five hours a day to eliminate weaknesses in their game. In her next stage of grief work, Penny allowed her two dreamsthe soaring train and evolution, and the wedding and the search for a changing roomto guide her to the exceptionally important discovery that her grief for Chrissie was mingled with grief for herself and for her own unrealized desires and potential. In summary, T.H. Mike, an expert in this field, began a well-practiced, polished presentation. If I really think about it (which I dont), I guess it boils down to an exchange of goodsI humor Dr. Z. and let him have his disgusting little feels in exchange for his help in my lawsuit., My smile saidWhy are you so interested in my smile?, I guess my smile said, Please, Dr. C., go on to something else. When I saw her two days later, she seemed guilty and depressed. I asked, in return, that he agree not to make any irreversible decisions. The group members, bless their hearts, were doing just what they should have been doing. But, even though I dont show it very muchIm not good at saying thank youI really appreciate what youve done for me these last months. I cant tell you my thoughts about the dream without revealing information you shared with me before you entered the group. (Maybe that would be sufficient. One who is also a skilled writer. Tears poured down upon her new blue dress until Matthew, outracing me, handed her the box of tissues. He gave me a chilling description of his first contact with money. I know this, Dr. K. knows it now, and if you knew something about neurobiology, youd know it, too. Even our views of what was helpful varied. There was another reasonthat voice, the voice of that being who had created those astonishing dreams. It was an effort for me to locate her face, so layered and swathed in flesh as it was. Yesterday I was talking to Phyllis about all our friends who have died and also about a newspaper article about people who die immediately after retirement. Often I feel I dont have much else to offer. I was careful to respect Daves privacy by not revealing his age or any extraneous material. Yalom love's executioner - SlideShare Later when we compared them, it was at times difficult to believe that we described the same hour. |a Love's executioner -- "If rape were legal ." -- "The wrong one died" -- Fat lady -- "I never thought it would happen to me" -- "Do not go gentle" -- Two smiles -- Three unopened letters -- Therapeutic monogamy -- In search of the dreamer -- Afterword [by the author]: On rereading Love's executioner at age eighty. I was so fascinated by the dreamer that I began to lose sight of his motivation. If there had been any traffic coming the other way, I wouldnt be here today.. Nors susilauius koj kreipiams gydytoj ir net nesusimstom, jog tai kakokia gda. Betty spent several minutes explaining why she wouldnt go to the movies alone. This was her chance to ask the questions that had plagued her for eight years. What I do remember most clearly was that lying in Matthews arms was transportingone of the greatest moments in my life., The next twenty-seven days, June 19 to July 16, were magical. At the next meeting, Dave related a powerful dream he had had the night after the previous session. You just help get me started. Still, the roots of the obsession seemed extraordinarily friable. 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). But I dont want to. You are you, you have your own existence, you continue to be the person you are from moment to moment, from day to day. For the first four years of her bereavement, Marie made herself totally inaccessible to men. We are free to be anything but unfree: we are, Sartre would say, condemned to freedom. I was reminded of another patient I had treated the year before, a forty-four-year-old excessively responsible, conscientious physician. . Id rather give the money now to the Stockholm Institute than have one of my ex-wives snatch it later. Keeping the letters would forge a bond of trust between us. I saw a painter with a stocking over his face spraying inside the house. He said the words, but no feelings came with them. She had died while giving birth. A powerful technique, which I use in many of these cases, is the here-and-now focus. It sounds important. love's executioner two smiles summary Today I felt positively tender toward her. Betty now felt definitely engaged in therapy. Subscribe. Why should I do it? Thelma got out of her chair and walked over to the window. Love's executioner, and other tales of psychotherapy. Brief Summary of Book: Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom. If one feels in no way responsible for ones predicament, then how can one change it? As I look back on my state of mind at that time, I realize that I simply rationalized away these concerns. All my tension disappears. I never heard anything about them since. Now, I pointed out to Betty, she was taking risks. On the negative side, I can think of several possibilities. We are, all of us, in this together. Then she smiled and nodded. And Im going to be open with you: Im almost certain I will eventually commit suicide. I tried for more. She had been crying, her eyes downcast, but at my words she stopped sobbing and looked toward me, expectantly. Thelma stopped battling on every point and, to my surprise, began one session by telling me that she had spent many hours during the last week making a list of all her close relationships and what happened to each. 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. Love's Executioner and other Tales of Psychotherapy It had finally come! How are you two doing it? As I walked through Sauls house on my way to his bedroom, I glanced around trying to locate that desk in which they were stored. Did I want to ally myself in any way with Matthew? Though Penny didnt yet understand, she was locked into an irreconcilable contradiction between her determination to stay with Chrissie and her reincarnation beliefs. 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. Each session he described all of his encounters with women that week (often they consisted of nothing more than catching a womans eye in the grocery store) and obsessing about what he might have done in each instance to have consummated a relationship. I asked Marvin whether he had any associations to any aspect of these dreams. All rights reserved. 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. Well, you might be interested in something sexual that happened yesterday afternoonthat would be about ten hours before the dream. I collected my thoughts, trying to decide how to help her see what she was doing to herself. The ending of our relationship led Penny to discover one final layer of grief. The opposition stiffened. In one meeting when one of the women members pressed him to tell his age, Dave offered an exchange: his secret, his age, for her home telephone number. I used the metaphor of a thermostat regulating self-esteem. She rebuffed him angrily, but he was not deterred. God knows what was in those lettersprobably some irrelevant announcement, a scientific meeting or a new journal. I dont want to be just another patient. I wanted to be special. I want to be something, anything. Her suicidality, extremely high at the onset, was reduced to the point where she may no longer be considered a suicidal risk. 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. Twenty-six times four is one hundred and four a minute. Lets be very realisticas you say, this is the place to be honest. Love's Executioner is a collection of ten true stories (identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity, of course) of patients in psychotherapy with Irvin Yalom and how his work with them progressed. Every day was a bad day. I heard her exhale. "Do not go gentle" -- Two smiles -- Three unopened letters -- Therapeutic monogamy -- In search of the dreamer -- Afterword [by the author]: On rereading Love's executioner at age eighty. I thought thats the way I, too, will pass. 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. This is not the book to read while you are actually in therapy. He knew he had not lived the life he really wanted. I was back in a nearly forgotten role. I have never touched her. Helping Relationships Reading Paper .pdf. Failure had always inflicted terrible wounds, which healed slowly and deeply intensified his feeling of insignificance and loneliness; success offered stupendous but evanescent exhilaration. His relationship with his mother had been exclusive, overly intimate, prolonged in its closeness and had disastrous consequences for his relationship with men; indeed, he imagined he had, in some substantial way, contributed to his fathers disappearance. He became perversely incontinent: he refused to urinate outdoors but, waiting till he had gained entry to the house, drenched the living room carpet. Freedom, another given of existence, presents a dilemma for several of these ten patients. That they foreshadow the type of relationship he will be able to establish with a patient. I felt one with Thelma. I was certain that Me, the other Marge, was in love with me. At any rate, I wish to dissociate myself from the work.. He remained remarkably clinical. I hate to be loves executioner. For most people, the greatest loss to bear is the death of a child. His death was not one of the dark, muffled, conspiratorial passings. How much do you think about it?, I guess Id have a different slant on therapy if I were forty rather than seventy. She retreated to bed for entire weekends; she had long crying jags; suicide suddenly seemed appealing again. Furthermore, it had been a good personal experience after a bad week, in which he had hospitalized two patients and had a run-in with the department chairman. The dying words of one of my patients (in If Rape Were Legal . What comes to you?, I dont know. Im good at it. a. environmental effects of proposed industry actions, b. environmental effects of proposed government agency actions, c. environmental effects of entities in the private sector, d. environmental effects of government and business actions. Though the nature of the event was never revealed to Marvin, he now believes, on the basis of a few stray comments by his mother, that his father had either been unfaithful or a compulsive gambler. None of our hours passed without a good laugh. I had seen Marvin for the first time only a few minutes earlier when I went out to my waiting room to fetch him. But they corresponded almost daily. Love's Executioner, & Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom You were going to say something else, Phyllis?, Well, this is the hardest thing to say. I thought of my medical student days, of my home-visit clerkship in South Boston, of the faces of patients long gone, of the smells of the Irish tenementsthe cabbage, the staleness, yesterdays beer, the bedpans, the aging flesh. I have always been repelled by fat women. Thelma, I came to you remembering you pleasantly from the work we did together in therapy and wanting you as a friend. He had always prowled for women and regarded them in highly sexualized and demeaning terms. One of the things he said at our first meeting endeared him to me: Im going to be fifty-nine soon, and some day Id like to be able to stroll down Union Street and spend the afternoon window shopping.. Do not get caught in a crossfire. Dave, tell me some more about the letters and what they mean to you.. It was then that Pennys latchkey days began. I understood what Saul meant. It was only at this moment that his smile narrowed and a trace of irritation entered his voice (I kept telling you, Thelma, that straight people live in the Haight, too). It was typical of Thelma not to think that I might have some wishes, too. Besides, if I were in any way to label her behavior as problematic, she would feel humiliated and would never forgive me for that. She seemed phlegmatic, her skirt was wrinkled and twisted, her hair unkempt, and her face lined with discouragement and fatigue. The truth was that this was indeed a boring woman, and I needed to confront her with that in some acceptable way. He majored in mathematics at a small city college and briefly considered graduate school. Wentworth, a partner of mine, who weighs two hundred fifty pounds, was in the room. She looked up at me, and her face was a hideous mucous-filled skull. At times I, almost mischievously, inquired about others of her family circle. Could Marvin have possibly dreamed them? Many years ago he had developed a strong belief in reincarnation, a belief that offered him blessed relief from fears about dying. Now I knew why! His mother was outside. Now Im getting more and more nervous about Sorayas letters, and I wondered if youd keep them. Before parting, I extracted some commitments from Thelma: she agreed to think more about her decision and to meet with me again in three weeks, and she promised to honor her commitment to the research project by meeting, six months hence, with the research psychologist and completing the battery of questionnaires. On the day she died, I brought her spirit back home again.