love's executioner two smiles summary

Freedom as a given seems the very antithesis of death. Love's Executioner. He had no further migraines. I felt, when I was about eight, that she had lost confidence in me and wouldnt have minded if something bad had happened to me.. Thats when I said, If you believe that, youre fucking ignorant!. Youre doing your best for me. Our web pages use cookiesinformation about how you interact with the site. She was a misfit. It seems the real questions are whenwhen will you open them?and howhow can I best help?, I should just do it. At the end of this session, I was exhausted and very moved. 520 The head in the slidemy head, my vision, my memorygets in the way. Excellent. The flush of pride I first experienced quickly gave way to a sense of deflation: This guy writes a lot better than I can.. Of course, I didnt reach him, but I told his telephone-answering tape about your proposal, and I said for him to phone me or you andand. Together we inspected and discussed each item. Now let me answer the personal part of the questionhow do I feel about working with you? New York, N.Y., Basic Books. Id like to include California in my itinerary, provided that youll be in residence and be willing to see me. Staring at the Sun was revolutionary, and The Gift of Therapy unequivocally changed who I am as a mental health professional. I, personally, like to work with older patients. If the candle flame stays fat, you live.. I had to proceed with delicacy here because of his fear (which Phyllis obviously shared) that therapists snoop out and fan marital problems, but I had to be certain that she was inexorably opposed to couples therapy. Ive got a few minutes before my next patient arrives., Struggling to keep her composure, Sarah began, Carlos is the grossest, most despicable human being I have ever met!, Well, you know, hes not my favorite person either. She knew we were not equals. Perhaps, he suggested, I could understand it. The person who has fallen in love, and entered a blissful state of merger, is not self-reflective because the questioning lonely I (and the attendant anxiety of isolation) dissolve into the we. She had never allowed herself to believe that Chrissie would die. Why dont you believe him?, Hes saying that because he has to. They are often preternaturally revealing and foreshadow the type of relationship I will be able to establish with a patient. I want to sink into the embrace of some warm daydream. Therapists excuses are invariably patent and self-serving rationalizationsfor example, that the therapist is accepting and affirming the patients sexuality. It was not hard to understand why Elva clung to the feeling that Albert was still there, out back in the workshop looking out for her, fixing things. In fact, most of my life goes on in these daydreamsI scarcely take note of whats happening in the present. Nonsense! they say. But they were afraid of me. She was speaking more deliberately, in a bitter, forlorn tone, but there were no more tears. To see how ludicrous, how pathetic, how idolatrous he wasan old man, stumbling toward death, comforted only by a clutch of letters, a marching banner proclaiming that he had loved and been loved once, thirty years before. I knew I was taking a risk. Of course, all these sentiments remained hidden from Mike and Marie. I was interested in, grateful for, his last few words: the once in a while. Those words, added almost as an afterthought, seemed to suggest some scrap of self-consciousness or shame. Last night, Marthashes a really fragile borderline young woman, who has been almost mute in the group started to talk about having been raped last year. The woman was usually baffled or frightened by his assumption that there was some deep bond between them. Locked up in a convent? I grew more disturbed. Never have I had a supervisor like this. If Im not going to get what I want and need, why should I expose myself to the pain? Im going to have to work on thissomeday. I thought the dream answered the question why the letters were loaded for Dave. What difference did it make if she slept next to her daughter? Id be this way with any therapist in the world. You must feel that if Albert were alive, this would never have happened to you. I ignored her flip response that if Albert were alive she wouldnt have been taking three old hens to lunch. The scope and expansiveness of his badness was, of course, evidence of an ominous grandiosity which, in turn, overlay a deeper sense of worthlessness and insignificance. I was reminded of another patient I had treated the year before, a forty-four-year-old excessively responsible, conscientious physician. Compare yourself with someone who doesnt give a damn about others. I . It was time to face the truth: I had botched this case beyond belief, and I could not transfer blame to the patient, or her husband, or the human condition. Look, how many times have you, or any man, walked a woman to her car and not married her?, O.K., O.K., maybe its closer to a one-percent or half-percent chance, but there was still a chanceif I hadnt been such a jerk. . Why should he have a working body and Chrissie, who loved her little body, have hers eaten away by cancer? So I decided to call him to prepare him for your call. I do know that for the entire six months I was at the Stockholm Institute, I took off only three days. Weve got to think about change. But I do the same thing with California. Betty flushed. Nor would it be helpfulnow or probably ever. Furthermore, she had showed, early in therapy, considerable evidence of death anxiety in dreams. A plot next to Chrissie? With me? Im paying you for your opinion. Nothing. If he ever were to know the truth, I honestly believe he would kill Matthew. My secret cache of love letters, my compulsive work habits, my inexcusably unkind, judgmental attitudes toward obese people, my love obsession that prevented me from being fully present at a family beach vacation. He has a gentleness about him that touches the life of everyone who comes into contact with him. I needed someone to hate, too. The fear of death is naturally feminine because you are the givers of life. Had he made a mistake in thinking I was sensitive enough to help him? Garbage. I must have misheard her and asked her to repeat herself. Now was the time we could address the underlying sense of emptiness and futility that had fueled the obsession. Let me try to answer your questionsthe general one you asked and the personal one you didnt. Yet she remained indifferent to me. I want to know what happens to you. But most of all she cried for herself, for the life she dreamed and never lived. My negative feelings toward him were rapidly growing, but I kept them to myself. I was pondering whether onions really do have a lot of sugar when I arrived at Sauls home. I told you she doesnt believe in psychiatry, but it goes far beyond that. Small wonder that child loss is the hardest loss of all to bear, that many parents are still grieving five years later, that some never recover. That has a name. He stated that perhaps the dream referred to some letters he had been keeping secretletters of a certain relationship. The other members, their curiosity aroused, questioned him until Dave related a few things about his old love affair with Soraya and the problem of finding a suitable resting place for the letters. Maybe thats part of the reason you feel empty inside. The problem that night was that she had seen a feature article on my wife in the Stanford Daily. His only motivation to participate would be professionalhelping a sickie whos too incompetent to run her own life. Hence I focused on the themes of losing her house and the washing away of the foundations of her life. My children dont need any money. Yet it is one thing to know about death in general, to grit ones teeth and stoke up a shudder or two; it is quite another to apprehend ones own death and to experience it in the bones and sockets of ones being. In many ways her sons were the real victims of this tragedyas is often true of the siblings of children who die. He didnt answer my questions. The entire course of therapy of another patient (Thelma in Loves Executioner) revolved around the theme of surrender to a former lover (and therapist) and my search for strategies to help her reclaim her power and freedom. Her string purse fell from her lap onto the floor, but she ignored it to listen wide-eyed to me. Bettys father had died of cancer when she was twelve, and since then she had been terrified of the disease. You think Im crazy?, No, I told you before, you dont have the knack for it., She smiled. However good his health, he was sixty-nine. Another reason we can never fully know another is that we are selective about what we choose to disclose. An eighty-pound weight loss! Once I worked in a group with a patient who, during two years of therapy, rarely addressed me directly. You yourself mention his significant sexual problems. I felt that way for thirty years. I want to help you, but Id be making up stuff. Why kill herself to make mortgage payments? The ten years of therapy before Matthew? The mother of God will protect me. Your call would drop my chances to zero, or less.. Otherwise, he was much as Thelma had described himslender, mustached, well tanned. This week has been one long crying jag. And evolution, too, referred to her, not to Chrissie. She was dressed in an attractive, tight royal-blue knit dressa daring outfit for a seventy-year-old woman, but I thought she pulled it off well. It was the flesh-and-blood Marvin who was irritating and uninteresting. I keep looking for him when I walk down the street. I continued, And that one of the most important principles of groups is that the group is a miniature worldwhatever environment we create in the group reflects the way we have chosen to live? Although Marvin had had no nightmares or powerful dreams, he knew there were nocturnal rumblings. . It seemed to me at the time that I had made the right recommendation. It didnt take much experience to recognize the signs of deep distress. What does it mean that Yalom focuses on the here-and-now? But, above all, we talked about her angerabout how it had driven away her family and her friends. Couples treatment may illuminate the sources of marital tension and help each partner to recognize and to respect the others mode of grief. In the last two decades, however, groups talk about sex with some ease, and money has become the private subject. At one point I tried to get beneath the forced hale fellow heartiness. Exploring the discrepancy in our views was treacherous because then she was likely to feel rebuffed. Dave was so hypersensitive. 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. His book Staring at the sun really helped me in my (still ongoing) journey with confronting death anxiety, and I completely agree with you that its so cathartic to hear him admit his own shortcomings, and to relate to his patients case studies so easily. I dont remember exactly what we talked about, but it helped me change a lot.. She was right; those were exactly my thoughts. She had led a rich, eventful life. I can see, I can feel the difference. Ive been telling Phyllis what you and I talk about every hour. I began to objectify him: Saul was no longer a person who was depressed but was instead a depressionspecifically, in terms of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a major depression of a severe, recurrent, melancholic type, with apathy, psychomotor retardation, loss of energy, appetite and sleep disturbance, ideas of reference, and paranoid and suicidal ideation. That was how we began. No one had ever before asked such blunt questions. When she first joined the group, Carlos (who had lost his hair as a result of chemotherapy) was wearing a toupee, but the day he informed the group about his cancer, he came bald to the meeting. Many thingsa simple group exercise, a few minutes of deep reflection, a work of art, a sermon, a personal crisis, a lossremind us that our deepest wants can never be fulfilled: our wants for youth, for a halt to aging, for the return of vanished ones, for eternal love, protection, significance, for immortality itself. Thelma arrived twenty minutes early for the session. Rapprochements occurred; as her anger receded, family and friends reappeared in her life. She dripped with rage and, in our first few hours together, had something vicious to say about everyone she knewsave, of course, Albert. You may not realize it, but the mere fact that Im here today, in a psychiatrists office, talking about myself is in itself a big, big, step.. That one, Thelma informed me when she saw me turning to the second photo, of a sixty-year-old handsome but stolid woman, was taken about eight years ago. You know, Thelma, youve many times asked me questions about my theoretical orientation. The overactive therapist often infantilizes the patient: he does not, in Martin Bubers term, guide or help the other to unfold but instead imposes himself upon the other. ho! Her stutter always annoyed me. He immediately rejoined, Ive been wanting a session like this for years. Penny began that hour by falling heavily into the chair and saying, Boy, am I glad to see you! Furthermore, she insisted that they have unnecessarily frequent medical checkups to screen for cancer. You said you hated groups., Well, thats true. Betty responded by giving herself a ten. I was astonished (I had expected a two or three) and told her so. I envied their ability to pronounce, You are forgiven. What therapeutic power! His lover, Soraya? Whenever his cancer worsened and he was actively facing death, he rearranged his life priorities and became more thoughtful, compassionate, wiser. Because the cable car had lurched, causing her to fall as she was leaving it, she had initiated a lawsuit against the city. I hoped that my reputation in the field would intimidate him into cooperating. Each read every line of his or her story (except for one patient who died before I finished) and gave me approval for publication. You started with a number of people with whom you might have developed close relationships. No, I would not permit him to terminate. I, too, had never reread the letters. I visited them a couple of timesuntil they got adopted. Chrissie, her daughter, died 4 years earlier of Leukemia, but Penny feels guilty about her lack of communication with Chrissie and the inability to let her go sooner, which she tries to make up for by donating her time and energy to memorializing Chrissie. Just what I tell my students. I decided to start with her lack of self-revelation and, toward the end of a particularly soporific session, took the plunge. Then he turned into Matthew. Has not the history of Western civilization been punctuated with yearnings for freedom, even driven by it? I boiled two eggs and made egg salad. Look at all the limp excuses he gave her for leaving the house each week to attend the group (he was retired and had no ongoing business outside the house). Nonetheless, everything, in Spinozas words, endeavors to persist in its own being. At ones core there is an ever-present conflict between the wish to continue to exist and the awareness of inevitable death. When did you move? I could scarcely think of a single person with whom I less wished to be intimate. Consequently, Chrissie was forced to be alone with her thoughts. 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. But it was not until she stumbled upon an extraordinary revelation about the dangers of losing weight that she could make the decision to begin her diet. These changes all signified that we were making progress: we were successfully addressing Bettys isolation and her hunger for closeness. Tell me about the euphoria, all that you remember., It was an out-of-the-body experience. When I was eighteen, I went to a counselor at an alcohol clinic who was an ex-alcoholicshe was good, she asked the right questions. Since Thelma had opposed everything else I suggested, I was preparing my argument to convince her when, to my surprise, she enthusiastically agreed. Had he, through some mystical channel, discovered something vital and real about the other person? Youve got to be kidding. They never resolve anythingthey always make things worse.. I wondered why the authorities would permit them to camp out in the open. Though I had received no messages from the dreamer for the last several weeks, I had not missed them. I could live with that one-percent chance. But I was to struggle with that question many times before the dnouement of this therapy, and could not have guessed then that, of all the riddles in the case of Thelma, it was the riddle of Matthew I was destined to solve most fully. Although impotence had been his explicit reason for choosing to see me, I felt that the real task of therapy was to improve the way he related to others. Think now, for a few minutes, about your daughter. His having forgotten the content of our last session troubled me little. She smoked furiously during the session, often taking two or three drags before angrily snuffing out the cigarette, only minutes later to light up another. I havent had any more fantasies about Matthew, she went on. Besides, most of her therapists were young trainees. I only eat them when Im upsetno lettuce, no tomato, no chopped celery or onion. Im nothing. Wouldnt psychiatrists rather work with younger people?. You can either move up or down.. Take this all away. ); and an old mans clinging to yellowing thirty-year-old letters from his dead lover (Do Not Go Gentle). That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. She could not remember the dreams except for two recurrent ones that had begun in adolescence, shortly after her fathers death. 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. Two Smiles: p. 165: Three Unopened Letters: p. 187: Therapeutic Monogamy: p. 215: In Search of the Dreamer: p. 235: Afterword: On Rereading Lope's Executioner at Age Eighty: p. 279: Table of Contents . I just cant remember. If I left an imprint on your life, maybe I would be someone, someone you wouldnt forget. Ill be as open as possible to any questions.. But Carlos modeled a very different approach to his fate: he was courageous, rational, and open with his feelings about his illness and his approaching death. As though hes my child and I have to answer for him. When one person, the therapist, treats another, the patient, it is understood from the beginning that the treatment pair, the two who have formed a therapeutic alliance, are not equals or full allies; one is distressed and often bewildered, while the other is expected to use professional skills to disentangle and examine objectively issues that lie behind that distress and bewilderment. Therapist and patient conspire to pretend that theirs is a monogamous relationship. Today I felt positively tender toward her. Hence, I was uncomfortable with accepting Maries protection of my professionalism. He organized a cancer self-help group (not without some humorous crack about this being the last stop pickup joint) and also was the group leader for some interpersonal skills groups at one of his churches. I was sorry I had to see him again. For the first four years of her bereavement, Marie made herself totally inaccessible to men. Eight years ago, about a year after I finished my training, I had a serious psychotic break. Did they say may have recurrences?, Youre rightwill have recurrences in the future, unless a cure is found., Carlos, I dont want to be cruel, but be objective. She could deny responsibility for anything elsethe absence of friends in her current life, the tough singles scene, the horrors of suburbiabut I was not going to let her deny responsibility for boring me. The ability to be hypnotized is simply a trait someone is born with. He was cooperative; he relinquished his pugnacious skepticism about psychiatry; he did his homework, came prepared for the sessions, and was determined, as he put it, to get a good return on his investment. For the last forty years hes run the office and Ive run the house. I have to find a way to live out my time. I think it also means being young again., Weve talked very little about your feelings about being seventy. I was also careful to avoid sounding as though I were minutely scrutinizing our relationship: this was a time to nurture its growth. No, really. Nietzsche carries a lot of weight with me, and that citation gave me pause. I couldnt stop thinking about them, yet I couldnt bear to think of them. Then he continued. His parrots perch has a stamp on it Museum of Rouen; and he then shows Barnes a photocopy of a receipt indicating that Flaubert, over a hundred years ago, had rented (and later returned) the municipal museums parrot. She viewed, she told me now, my suggestion about a possible career in nursing as a put-down, and accused me of saying, The girls not smart enough for medical schoolso let her be a nurse!, At times, she was petulant and regressed. Do you know anything about Buddhist meditation practice?. I dont know what I mean, but at times Ive wondered what it would have been like to have married a woman with a sex drive like mine, a woman who wanted and enjoyed sex as much as me., What do you think? In the other, she was lying in a hospital bed with a candle, which represented her soul, burning at the head of the bed. Her company had originally trained her, along with eight other novices, in a three- month intensive course. She also reminded me of Madame Defarge in the movie A Tale of Two Citiesthe one who knitted at the guillotine as heads were lopped off. I always listen carefully to first statements. I told him I would come because I was the only one who could help, but as I started down into the darkness, the stairwell grew more and more narrow and the flimsy banister came off in my hands. As I reread the book now, I am reminded once again that she was absolutely right. And, tucked away into the innermost corners, assorted coins, paper clips, nail clippers, pieces of emery board, and some substance that looked suspiciously like lint. I cringed now at the prospect of colleagues and students asking me in the weeks to come, Fill us in. She was right. I first obtained Marvins agreement to help Phyllis overcome her phobia by promising to follow any suggestions I gave him. Moreover, eight years of Thelmas taped phone messages had to be getting to him, and I was confident that he, too, longed for release. Our final three hours were devoted to work on Bettys distress at our impending separation. Be careful. Until the very end of his life, he and his children were honest with one another about his illness and giggled together at the way he snorted, crossed his eyes, and puckered his lips when he referred to his lymphoooooooooooomma., But he gave no greater gift than the one he offered me shortly before he died, and it was a gift that answers for all time the question of whether it is rational or appropriate to strive for ambitious therapy in those who are terminally ill. Memories of her father permeated these flashbacks. So I had anticipated desperation calls like this. I had placed him in a group six weeks ago to provide him with a community that would both help to penetrate his isolation and also, by identifying and urging him to alter some of his most socially objectionable behavior, help him to create connections in his social life. Published in 1989, Love's Executioner is one of Yalom's collections of case studies. Who or what was he loving? Other patients cannot decide. I hadnt expected her to notice! But Marie felt trapped with Elmer. I finally said, Lets go, a good lay might be just the thing to get rid of some of this tension. Marvin paused. Mike, obviously pleased with Maries response, turned to his final task. I didnt want to stop seeing Betty. Since we had now run almost fifteen minutes over, and I had another patient, also in crisis, waiting, I reluctantly ended the session. I had been contemplating my nails as he spoke, and smiled as I looked up, expecting to see an ironic, playful expression on his face. My pleasure with her progress? She has her whole life ahead of her, and her improved mental condition would benefit her children and her childrens children., I persisted. We had only a few minutes left. How do you feel about the role-playing, Thelma? First, he informed me that Phyllis was doing well: her phobia about leaving the house remained much improved. Of course, Mike had no idea of what I really wanted from him. The first letter was from a Stockholm Institute postdoctoral fellow asking Saul to write a letter supporting his application for a junior faculty position at an American university. The current upheaval began the day after our last session when Penny learned that Jim had, for the last three months, not kept up his payment for their cemetery plot. 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. Instead, she was courageously unfolding her multilayered grief. Until yesterday there was always a chance that Matthew and I could go back to that time. Only after she was spent, only after she had dared to say what she had been feeling over the last eight years (since first hearing that her Chrissie had a killing cancer)that she had given up on both her sons; that Brent, at sixteen, was already beyond help; that she had prayed for years that Jims body could have been given to Chrissie (What did he need it for? For thirty years Saul had admired him from afar and now, in his presence, could barely summon the nerve to look into the great mans eyes. Sometimes she came into my office in tears after a week without food and no compensating weight loss. What about Elva, Yalom's mother, and counter-transference? If you want her to live in a loving world, then its up to you to construct that worldand you have to start with your own behavior. I was musing on the tone of this final commentnot quite sardonic, not quite coquettishwhen Thelma got up, telling me on her way out that she would schedule the next hour with my secretary. On the positive side I guess it would give Dr. Yalom some firsthand observations.. Marge, why are you doing this to yourself? Finally, finally, I had gotten her attention, and she sat silently for several minutes contemplating my words. How did they feel about buying a burial plot? How often Ive heard that! So in a sense she was following your unspoken wishes by not openly expressing her uncertainties, by pretending to be stronger than she felt. 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. I asked Thelma to project herself into the future and to imagine how she might feel several hours from now. How did you decide to get into this field? He hated to displease anyone and wanted my approval almost as much as he wanted Dr. K.s. Yalom was bored by Betty's superficial conversations and denial of responsibility.

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