love's executioner two smiles summary love's executioner two smiles summary

Or was it my sense of obligation to my career as a teacher? These are tough things to talk about, really tough., He went on to say that Phyllis had paid a price for her insightsshe had become very agitated. You saw it. Let me start by giving, you the reader, a summary of Thelma who is the client in "Love's Executioner". With what physical problem was Carlos dealing? I had helped him realize that, to the extent that he was in prison, it was a prison of his own construction. In one dream she and he wore identification badges and kept switching them with each other. Carlos, do you really believe that if you had walked Ruth to her car youd have a ten- to fifteen-percent chance of marrying her?, One thing could lead to another. Maybe thats something I ought to be talking about in the group. Love's executioner, and other tales of psychotherapy (Book) Author: Yalom, Irvin D., 1931- Published: New York, N.Y. : Basic Books, 2012. His visual metaphors for his new chemotherapy (referred to by his oncologists as BP) were giant Bs and PsBears and Pigs; his metaphor for his hard cancerous lymph nodes was a bony-plated armadillo. The dream, I continued, was a dream about death. They warded off aging and kept Daves passion frozen in time. She sat high in the chair, as though she were sitting in her own lap. Gone was the man who had been awash in despair, stripped of his humanity, his laugh, and self-awareness. Huge chunks of time devoured. Why have you come? I asked. Or the responsibility? He had, she noted, mentioned none of her positive features, and Thelma convinced herself that his basic posture to her had been unfriendly.. However grim these givens may seem, they contain the seeds of wisdom and redemption. And?, Well, youve got more clout than I thought. You yourself mention his significant sexual problems. In a couple of minutes, I could get my pulse up to one hundred twenty. He did not say that the affair was thirty years over. And was there any point now in continuing to waste her life in the same way? He will never forgive me for it., But, Thelma, hes a therapist. And She stopped. Nietzsche claimed that a philosophers system of thought always arises from his autobiography, and I believe that to be true for all therapistsin fact, for anyone who thinks about thought. 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. The group focused upon the issue of secrecynot the issue that now most fascinated me, though nonetheless a relevant therapeutic issue. Soon I was to have another writerly experience, one of the peak experiences of my life. Or had she known for some brief period and then repressed the knowledge because it clashed with her own vital lie? As I thought back over the two hours, I was also aware that he had resisted every one of my invitations to dig deeper into his feelings. While we dread death, we generally consider freedom to be unequivocally positive. The psychotherapists single most valuable practical tool is the process focus. Why do we, I mused, pursue these unfavorable comparisons? My head tells me that youre right. dispenses itif Im good. I knew we were entering an area where once I would never have dared to go. In fact, she waits at the door for me to return home from the sessions and gets annoyed if I delayfor example, if I suggest we wait until dinner because it gives us such interesting table conversation., What types of things seem most important to her?, Almost everything. Though we try hard to go through life two by two or in groups, there are times, especially when death approaches, that the truththat we are born alone and must die alonebreaks through with chilling clarity. There was little of Matthew in it, norif love is a caring, giving, need-free relationshipmuch love. Her plans and her family were shattered: her daughter was dead, her husband gone, one son was in jail, the other in hiding. I was musing about Matthews professional decision, even wondering whether he had evolved to the point where he should go back to doing therapyperhaps he now might make an exceptional therapistwhen I noticed that our time was almost up. Now quickly, lets pass on to another subject. Her voice became louder, her tone more self- accusatory. Her son? I know youre listening professionally. And so it went: the entire hour with her was an exercise of my sweeping from my mind one derogatory thought after another in order to offer her my full attention. Youve gotten your meaning out of working. For a few minutes she sat on the floor at the opposite corner of my office and curled up like a Feiffer cartoon character. Yaloms tone manages to be both enjoyable on a literary level and enlightening on a professional level. 9780465020119 Our cheapest price for Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy is $8.33. University of Idaho. Meaning ensues from meaningful activity: the more we deliberately pursue it, the less likely are we to find it; the rational questions one can pose about meaning will always outlast the answers. A slide with a head in it obstructs the view. After hearing him out, I tried to offer some support by stating that a long depression is almost as hard on the family as it is on the patient. Everyone wants and welcomes this blissful merger. I went back to the first issue he had raised in the hour: his belief that he had missed a golden opportunity with Ruth, the woman he had met briefly at a church social, and his subsequent head pounding and self-recrimination for not having walked her to her car. Try to see that. Her revenge upon me was to frustrate each of these aims. I was disappointed then, but that was a long time ago, thirty-five years ago. Suppose Dave did die on me? The following year, when Matthew took a full-time position at a state hospital, he had to terminate therapy with all his private patients. A well-intentioned victim? I suspected that Phyllis wanted to expiate her guilt for refusing to see a couples therapist. The message:There are vital parts of me that I have buried all my lifethe little boy, the woman, the artist, the meaning-seeking part. She was a heavy smoker and one of her motives in agreeing to the consultation with him was to enlist his help in stopping. His first association to the car, the curious black box on wheels, was to say, It is not a coffin. Noticing my raised eyebrows, he smiled and said, Was it one of you fellows who said you give yourself away by protesting too much?, The car has no front windows, Marvin. First, she lamented that Matthew had such a low opinion of her. I understood what Saul meant. I was facing a stone wall. Yes, he had known Saul. Maybe I was wrong, but I think her eyes said, Are you satisfied now? I did not comment on her gaze. What I mean is that my attitude about obesity has changed a lot. His lover, Soraya? I dont know why, but Im even relating differently to the men in the group. It didnt fit with the rest of her presentation. Sometimes Id feel this tightness in my chest and think I was having a coronary, a silent coronary. If she could play all those roles, she must be the concealed, guiding intelligence behind them all. There she was complaining melodramatically and mockingly of a dreadful stabbing pain in her womb and breast. Shortly afterward, at a party, I met a young man who had just returned from the Stockholm Institute. If you want to help methen teach me how to hate armadillos!. Though Mike knew that his patient had grasped the concept, he nonetheless pressed the point home: Then why not treat your body as well as you would treat your dog?. Carlos was never the same person after that session. Her commitment was to attend regularly and to participate in a psychotherapy research project, which entailed a research interview and a battery of psychological tests to measure outcome, to be completed twice, at the beginning of therapy and six months after termination. And there with her face in spasm, like Quasimodos, horribly distorted, barely able to talk. Carlos, with his incurable cancer, was so isolated and felt so shunned that I had decided to support him by going out of my way to touch him. I turned to look at Thelma, but she averted her glance. He did that twice a day and taught me the practice as well. I tried to teach her the ABCs of the language of intimacy: for example, how to use the pronouns I and you, how to identify feelings (starting with the difference between feelings and thoughts), how to own and to express feelings. Carlos was indeed isolated. Unless I could protect and remain faithful to that relationship, any hope of therapy was lost. I dont like to feel invisible. It is a story about countertransferencethat is, irrational, often shameful, feelings a therapist experiences toward a patient that constitute a formidable obstacle in therapy. We are really talking now. I was sitting Vipassana for three to four hours a day. The dreamer was advising me how to proceed. Of the many risks, I feared one particular scenario. Maybe Im a slow learner.. is a 70-year-old married Caucasian woman who, as a result of a five-month, once-weekly course of therapy, improved significantly. I dont know what you want., How can you be so sure Im listening professionally? Before proceeding, I considered alternatives: Was I being too hasty, too active? Besides, most of her therapists were young trainees. The fact that Phyllis was unwilling to talk to me, even once, to help her husband, who was now in extremis, belied Marvins account of his idyllic, harmonious marriage. Soon he reported a series of dreams with explicit material about aging and death. I have never touched her. Youre putting feelings into my mouth. But it was also important that he continue attending his therapy group. I remember amusing myself by imagining introducing her to patients on long-term tranquilizer medication who had developed tardive dyskinesia (a drug-induced abnormality of facial musculature). What sort of resolutions? No real need for my question, since Thelma had been on the verge of describing the resolutions, but I had to have some exchange with her. Instead there arose a haunting question: In this relationship, who had exploited whom? I hadnt been out very long when I heard about Thelmas suicide attempt. They both giggled the first few times Marvin told Phyllis not to leave the house: it seemed ridiculous and artificial; she had not left the house in months. (Maybe that would be sufficient. She cried even for her poor old mother and the sisters she had blotted from her life twenty years ago. My head is spinning. We both agree that your reaction to Dr. K. has been excessive. I rolled up the chart, told Marvin Id like to study it in detail later, and attempted to restore some rhythm to the session by asking him to tell me the whole story of his illness from the beginning. It was ineffable. So what sense does it make to elevate him so? However I may deplore those feelings, I can take pride in the denouement expressed in the storys final words: I could get my arms all the way around her.. I find them repulsive: their absurd sidewise waddle, their absence of body contourbreasts, laps, buttocks, shoulders, jawlines, cheekbones, everything, everything I like to see in a woman, obscured in an avalanche of flesh. She felt that she was talented but had never developed her talents because, since the age of thirteen, she had had to earn a living. It was typical of Thelma not to think that I might have some wishes, too. I have often made symbolically equivalent substitutes for aspects of a patients identity and life circumstances; occasionally I have grafted part of another patients identity onto the protagonist. You know, I think I still believe that.. Though she had an active sexual fantasy life, she had never had any physical contact with a mannot a hug, not a kiss, not even a lascivious grab. Bettys parents had, until the very end, denied the seriousness of her fathers illness. What do you do with your problems? Marge had appropriated the bold parts of the other Marge as I urged her to do, and it was important that I be receptive and respectful to each of her questions. It seemed natural for Matthew to describe his new pad in the Haight, and so very natural for Thelma to say she was dying to see it. 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. Later, when I invited her into my office, I complimented her on it and she told me, with a conspiratorial hush and a finger crossing her lips, that she had spent most of the week shopping for it. I asked Betty to talk about her first experiences and early conceptions of death. We were coming to the end of our eleventh hourno time for me to be withholding. The judges would be thrown into disarray. It was also about the time that I was coercing Marvin into recognizing that his sexual preoccupation was in reality deflected death anxiety (see In Search of the Dreamer), and unwisely badgering Dave into understanding that his attachment to ancient love letters was a futile attempt to deny physical decline and aging (Do Not Go Gentle). A group member asked, What about the dirty old shoe with the sole coming off?, I didnt know, but before I could make any response at all, another member said, That stands for death. When you and I first began to meet, we had a brief flurry of talking. I had been badly shaken by having expressed some monstrous feelings about my mother, and Olive Smith leaned over the couch and said gently, That just seems to be the way were built.. It must have taken you days., I liked doing it. After Matthew, Thelma started therapy with other therapists, but none ever reached her or helped her value her life the way he had. Hence I assumed my efficient, task-oriented voice and wondered what plans he had made, what steps taken? Sometimes, as in Pennys family, the surviving children suffer because so much of the parents energy is bound up with the dead child, who is both memorialized and idealized. What are the charges?. Yes, I can hear the kind of questions youd ask. No. "Do Not Go Gentle" 7. I have to find a way to live out my time. All you do is ask questions.. More and more frequently he rambled on interminably about the research ideas he had stolen, the lives he had ruined, the marriages destroyed, the students unjustly failed (or promoted). Its just that simple.. Id like, if you two agree, to have the role of timekeeper today and to keep us focused. In this book I tell the stories of ten patients who turned to therapy, and in the course of their work struggled with existence pain. My respect for him grew. For example, I might point out that she was staking out a role of fragility that would immediately discourage the open discussion she said she wished. I, for my part, had reservations because I was so pessimistic about treatment: I agreed to work with him because I saw no other viable therapy option. Cervantes asked, Which will you have: wise madness or foolish sanity? It was clear which choice Harry and Thelma were making! But what, I wondered uneasily, about the rights of the patient? Transference - feelings that the patient attaches to the therapist that originated out of earlier relationships. When I think about what to do, I often hear your voice asking rational questions. The metaphor he used in one of our first meetings was that dying is simply trading in your body for another onelike trading in an old car. I propose that, until youre well enough to travel, I visit you at home.. If youre caught in a dilemma, or have two strong conflicting feelings, then the best thing you can do is to share the dilemma or share both feelings with the patient. In fact, her behavior with her sons was the most tangible evidence of change. He had wisely decided to bail himself out of trouble by telling the group about his cancer. It was ironic, too, that her drive to escape the destiny of poverty and failure was halted only by a deeper destinythe finitude inherent in life. By this time I was certain that Daves caginess, his avoidance and denial, would have ultimately led to the same result. I recommended reading material and urged her to visit a female gynecologist and to explore these issues with her girlfriends and her therapy group. She was ashamed, ashamed to tell me that she didnt know the identity of the father. Several things, he said. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Heart transplantwhat an inspired visual symbol for psychotherapy!] 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? Impossible, I insisted, and posed the same question many different ways. 4.8 (674 ratings) Try for 0.00. (She had good recall of the scene that had just occurred.) Since therapists, no less than patients, must confront these givens of existence, the professional posture of disinterested objectivity, so necessary to scientific method, is inappropriate. She almost leaped out of her chair, cleared her voice, pantomimed putting on a necktie and buttoning a suit jacket, assumed a saintly smile and a delightfully exaggerated expression of benevolent magnanimity, cleared her voice, sat down in the other chair, and became Matthew. That concern gradually evaporated and in its place was left a bitter residuea residue expressed by the phrase I never thought it would happen to me. Along with her purse and her three hundred dollars, an illusion was snatched away from Elvathe illusion of personal specialness. Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love. How old? Use an excuse, any excuse: my time all filled, leaving the country for a few years, embarking on a full-time research career. Characters like that do not come along often in life. Other hopeful dreams followed:I am at a wedding, and a woman comes up and says she is my long- forgotten daughter. They were a mystery to him. Thelmas life was saved only by heroic medical efforts. What to do? Most of our time together we devoted to Matthew. But Betty said she didnt know how else to be: I was asking her to dump her entire social repertoire. I can take other guesses. Im not proud of it, but Im having a lot of trouble leaving the house, let alone traveling halfway around the world. 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. And those shots of the California coast. love's executioner two smiles summary Call us today! For the first time I know Im seventy years old, seven zerothats older than ninety-nine percent of the people walking around. He was something else, something I had never anticipated. At that time he had tried energetically, but unsuccessfully, to court her. Im sure you know your business. A life sentence?. Betty, whats the danger in letting me matter to you?, Im not sure. Having received only a brief consultation note from the neurologist, I knew practically nothing about Marvin and began the hour, after we completed the opening eyeglass ritual, by asking What ails? That was when he volunteered that you fellows think sex is at the root of everything.. Then Id think about speeding up my pulse to let the blood out faster. I empathized with her and told her that I had heard many others in her situationincluding my wifecomplain of similar treatment. It was her depression speaking, and I was foolish enough to be persuaded by it. You put yourself on trial for the crime of not letting Chrissie go when she was about to die, and you sentenced yourself to self-hatred. You tell me that the pain is unbearabletheres a good possibility a one-hour consultation will offer some relief., It may sound simple to you, but I dont want to be made a fool of. . Heres what I want you to do. Under ordinary conditions Marie could be a difficult patient, but after her accident she was astonishingly resistive and caustic. He tiptoed in and saw Phyllis kneeling by her bed, praying, chanting the same phrase over and over: The mother of God will protect me. Its always possible, if you want to torment yourself, to find someone to compare yourself with unfavorably. My comment had been a blunder, and I retreated to a more conciliatory, open-ended line of questioning. For example, he dreamed of walks in a large, unfinished, underground concrete building. I considered, momentarily, what recourse I had with Matthew, but supposed he was beyond the statute of limitations. In a way he stood between me and the grave. But the main thing is that he is willing to come in for a three-way meeting. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. 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 wanted time to think about it during the week. Her eyes blazed as she continued to defile Marge who, she said, was incurable, hopeless, and pathetic. I didnt know what Saul was talking about. Youve fallen in love with your own creation.. Does anyone, do I, want to invest time and energy in a project of such evanescence? I ended up responding so well to the process, though, that I've continued seeing her in private practice ever since. And, of course, she had to be particularly solicitous when he was in distresswhich meant, recently, that she had to be solicitous almost all the time. I could not possibly treat her; I had no hours available to take on a new patient. Nonetheless, during these three weeks I felt her deprivation more keenly. Carlos didnt seem to listen. He wants to meet people at church socialsO.K., Noticing my quizzical look about church socials, Thelma explained, For the last three years, ever since I knew I would eventually commit suicide, I havent wanted to meet anyone new. Another possibility was to give a simple outright gift to the Stockholm Institutea gift that would appear to be unrelated to anything else. I am yet to read Staring at the Sun so its going straight to the top of the list I know I still have a long way to go on my death anxiety journey! My general comment may have been a guess about the whole field and not an expression of my personal feelings about you. 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. If he tried to force the issue, it would be, he said, a month of Sundays before he got laid again. Consequently, as he had done many times before, he spent the better part of a day packing up his whole collection to exhibit it in his office. Ill give you a hint. By examining the details of the therapy relationship (or, in a therapy group, the relationships among the group members), I can point out on the spot how a patient influences the responses of other people. But, of course, it is all illusion. Marie and I endlessly discussed her options. It had finally come! Penny devoted so much energy and attention to Chrissie that her marriage deteriorated, and her husband left for good about two years before. And the length of the sentence! He had kept Sorayas letters (numbering in the hundreds) well hidden. People forget that we accountants have graphic skills that are never used in tax work. But I was currently funded by a research institute to study the psychotherapy of the elderly and could see Thelma for a minimal fee. Until yesterday there was always a chance that Matthew and I could go back to that time. But what I really disliked about Elva was her anger. It wasnt the intrusion into my lifeId learned to expect that: it goes with the territory. I even ate them the way I used to when I was a kidby sucking out the egg salad filling. I decided to start with her lack of self-revelation and, toward the end of a particularly soporific session, took the plunge. Remember how great you felt about yourself two weeks ago? Its cold out and I feel empty. Listen to what shes telling you.. Why slit open and empty? Life doesnt seem worth living. When she began to digress furtherextending the discussion to airline seats and how seated passengers faces grew white with fear when she started down the aisle searching for her seatI interrupted her, repeated my request, and defined one as casual conversation at work.. No sense of spending good money and sitting here and lying to you. His overwrought reaction was, I thought, totally irrational. You tell me: Whats the perfect scenario to drive an ex-lover to suicide? Saul was spent and leaned back, exhausted. "I Never Thought It Would Happen to Me" 6. When I handed her an ashtray, she lit up and, in a strong deep voice, began: I need to talk, all right, but I cant afford therapy. I spurred myself to get moving. And that was how Phyllis entered therapy. 2 These differing visions were later published as Every Day Gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy (New York: Basic Books, 1974). What had happened in their lives that might have pushed them into the choices they made? Maybe she would have wished them to be girls? 541-301-8460 love's executioner two smiles summary Licensed and Insured love's executioner two smiles summary Serving Medford, Jacksonville and beyond! I hardly recognize that Marvin of a year ago. All the bluster was gone. How are you two doing it? Marie was not one of the easy ones. My hunch was, I told Betty, that when she entered more fully into life, she would lose her terror of deathsome, not all of it. I picked up my mail and walked back to the house, flipping through the usual batch of junk advertisements, charity requests.