love's executioner two smiles summary

One was that she had been gypped, that the cards were stacked against her by the time she was eight. Had anyone talked to them about death? It seems the real questions are whenwhen will you open them?and howhow can I best help?, I should just do it. They forced me to take my bearings and to review what had been happening in therapy. Still, I wanted him to know about the damage he had done. I knew that by acting immediately I could help her avoid a great deal of pain. Thelma was remote and stiff in our first meeting. What happened then? The monks took me to Bombay, and an Indian doctor put me on antipsychotic medication and called my brother, who flew to India to take me home. In the other, she was lying in a hospital bed with a candle, which represented her soul, burning at the head of the bed. Upon this unconscious premise, Elva had built her entire assumptive worlda world featuring safety and benevolent paternalism. Despite her two hundred and fifty pounds, Betty and I had rarely discussed her eating and her weight. The weeks passed, the campaign continued. 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. Thus, the problem in therapy is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience of it. As a result of her discontent, our time together became ungratifying for me as well. (whom she was convinced would treat her better if she would even now, with her mouth and face throbbing with pain, accept his sexual advances). The event is severe (his migraines are exceptionally disabling); it is unexpected (sex never presented any unusual problems previously); and it is sudden (it erupted in full force precisely six months ago). 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. . The message I believed the dreamer was sending me:I try to look back but my vision fails. How did you decide to get into this field? Before we begin, this is not a new book. I like to donate books, not ever throw them away, but this one here.pfffffft. However good his health, he was sixty-nine. 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. I heard a small child crying below in the darkness, calling for help. My intellectual curiosity? I felt myself almost a bystander as I watched it develop organically. Whats the point of it all? I get into moods when I know its the only way out. But I decided to say something else. Marvin listened attentively to what I said, but his facial expression was so frozen that I had no hint of what he felt. I thought about Thelmas speculation that he was gay. Saul, if youre as bad as you say, if, as you insist, you lack all virtues and all discriminating mental faculties, why is it that you think your judgment, especially your judgment of yourself, is impeccable and beyond reproach?. But it is too late, too late to change any of my answers. I dont think Ive had a good girlfriend for thirty years. 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. In search of the dreamer. His search was so frantic, his need so pressing, that he defeated himself. I liked the way you admitted you didnt know and then invited me to explore it together with you.. I hear those angry and judgmental feelings, and I know you really feel them. If I say the wrong thing, she can make my life hellturn off the sexual spigot altogether., Im afraid of my impulsesmy murderous and sexual impulses., Do you remember, years ago, a news story of a man who killed his wife by pouring acid on her? You and I are very much alikein one way, at least. Dr. K. responded, I cant prevent you, of course, but I consider it ill advised. I picked up my mail and walked back to the house, flipping through the usual batch of junk advertisements, charity requests. Free delivery worldwide on all books from Book Depository Therapists; lay-people interested in the therapeutic process. Though she, Mike, and I shared an hour, each of us had a vastly different, and unpredictable, experience. I felt overwhelmed. She reached into a faded red drawstring purse and handed me two old photographs. We are meaning-seeking creatures. No problem. Perhaps Thelma was right in protecting herself from me at this point. But we talked past each other. Perhaps I was intrigued by her beauty, by her ebony hair in bangs framing her astonishingly white, perfectly featured face. But all our work had come to a halt four weeks before when Marie was thrown from a cable car in San Francisco and fractured her jaw, suffering extensive facial and dental damage and deep lacerations in her face and neck. I was impressed by her use of therapy: I had never had a patient who had worked as productively. When her father died, everything changed. Was it possible to help him go further than I have gone? As this material unfolded, it was possible to understand Marvins current problems from each of three very different perspectives: the existential (with a focus on the ontological anxiety that had been evoked by passing a major life milestone); the Freudian (with an emphasis on oedipal anxiety which resulted in the sexual act being welded to primitive catastrophic anxiety); and the communicational (with an emphasis on how the marital dynamic equilibrium had been unsettled by recent life events; more about this was to emerge shortly). Lets figure it out together.. His blood pressure (he had told me earlier) had risen to one hundred ninety over one hundred twenty; and six years before, at a time of stress, he had had a severe, nearly fatal coronary. She, I, anyone, can be struck down at any time. . Though Dave seemed a little anxious, he was refreshingly engagedno game playing today. With his usual care, Marvin had come prepared with one-year follow-up notes which reviewed and assessed the tasks we had addressed in therapy. Penny had, more than most of us, never come to terms with the inescapability of death. I really did, but I cannot. Somewhere Saul had found the power to take a stand against me. Summary. I tried, also, to point out that regret was extraordinarily painful to endure once it was in place, but that we could do much to prevent further regret from taking root. He knows it. Her eyes blazed as she continued to defile Marge who, she said, was incurable, hopeless, and pathetic. She hated even more those who offered false hope. I began making lunch. Another pause. What difference did it make if she slept next to her daughter? He cogitated for a couple of minutes. She was right: she was living her life eight years ago. He turned away, blew his nose, and wiped his eyes surreptitiously. Im not asking for any longer commitment, but I wont start without this. His face was lined with despair, causing him to look far older than his sixty-three years; his puffy, hangdog eyes were reddened; his blotchy skin glistened with perspiration. After a few days she went to the library alone, then shopping, and in the next few weeks ventured farther than she had for years. Marvin looked at me incredulously. Something good happened, and she felt great; one criticism from someone, and she was down for days. I struggled to find some handhold. Stop expecting to find a wife right now, its too much to ask of yourself. Author Biography. When, on the other hand, he was in remission, he was guided, as he put it, by his pecker and grew noticeably more coarse and shallow. Dont skip anything.. I was delighted for her and commended her strongly each week on her efforts. But is there any point to dwelling on it?. I absolutely do not know. What is Yalom's favorite first question to his patients? Then, without waiting for any comment from me and without unbuttoning the heavy jacket she wore over her jogging suit, she took a sharp deep breath and began: Eight years ago I had a love affair with my therapist. The inevitability of DEATH for each of us and for those we love. Frightening dreams with similar messages followed rapidly:It was night, I was perched high on the balcony of a building. Show me the parent who could have done otherwise. I end this retrospective with an observation my younger self would have found surprising: namely, that the view from eighty is better than expected. That was an improvement on Dr. Farber., The second reason is that I could understand how you felt. Uh-oh, I knew I was cornered now. The fate of Pennys marriage is, unfortunately, all too common in families that have lost a child. The last gift a parent can give to children is to teach them, through example, how to face death with equanimityand Carlos gave an extraordinary lesson in grace. And dont exhaust yourself by jousting with religious magic: youre no match for it. Perhaps most impressive was her decision to address adaptively her concern about her lack of educationby enrolling in several college extension courses. Matthews been on my mind nonstop. One of the most interesting things I learned was that, when Marvin was seven or eight, a cataclysmic secret event shattered his family and resulted in his mother banishing his father permanently from her bedroom. And what do you make of the allusions to deathundertakers, silence, blackness, the whole atmosphere of dread and foreboding?. I drifted back into the landscape of the dream, back into the silent, dark world of the gaunt men, the black meadow, and the black- gauzed baby girl. In those days I would have deepened Marges hypnotic state, regressed her in age, asked her to explore early traumasfor example, her fathers sexual abuseand urged her to experience and discharge all the attendant feelings, the fear, the arousal, the rage, the betrayal. No sense of spending good money and sitting here and lying to you. We are really talking now. And what could be worse for Harry than for his wife to cry last week and share nothing with him? I like Yalom because he is raw and honest in this book and he is unafraid to showcase his mistakes, fears and vulnerabilities. (Thelma in "Love's 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. Or was he chiefly acting to alleviate his own isolation by taking pains to preserve the relationship he had with me? (I forgot for a moment that in this theater the actress was not really the actress but only one of the roles. We distort others by forcing them into our own preferred ideas and gestalts, a process Proust beautifully describes:We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds, those ideas have certainly the principal place. The migraines, his reason for seeking therapy, had never returned. In recounting his patients' dilemmas, Yalom not only gives us a rare and enthralling glimpse into their personal desires and motivations but also tells us his own story as he struggles to reconcile his all-too human responses with his sensibility as a psychiatrist. Carlos had been intrigued by this construct. Its true, you were more open than the other men in the group. But of my letters I did not speak: there are limits to my courage. There was a man at every window with a spray gun. 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. After all, in some ways you must feel that I got you into the fix you are in now. His doctors were running out of options: they had given him maximum radiation exposure and had exhausted their pharmacopeia of chemotherapy agents. During their conversation the friend asked, en passant, whether he had heard the news about Dr. K. Apprehensive, Saul replied that he had been confined to bed and out of touch with everyone for the past few weeks. Others, and among them I include myself, marvel that anyone can take diagnosis seriously, that it can ever be considered more than a simple cluster of symptoms and behavioral traits. And there was one outstanding characteristic of our relationshipboredom. So I decided to take your advice, but Phyllis will not cooperate. . Ive never been unfaithful to Phyllis! Wed be relating together as two bad little boys. We had only a couple of hours to talk. The feeding technique was to repeat one standard question, Marge, what would she say if she were here?, Some of Marges answers were unexpected, some familiar. Im going to have to leave California in a year, remember., A years a long time. A little more of this treatment would be unendurable. She added, with a grim smile, A little more treatment would kill the patient.. He is excited for Phyllis, who is also about to open her eyes. But it was not callousness. Though my response asking whether she worried about entering nonvirgin territorywas a sorry joke, it nonetheless initiated an important discussion about sex. There were several reasons. It did not keep her self-esteem stable but instead fluctuated wildly according to external events. I, too, had never reread the letters. I could hear each spurt splatter against the waxed walls of the cup. I know that thats difficult to see nowbut, trust me, it often happens. I saw that, to work with Penny, I would need to lash myself to the mast of reason. I fantasized Mickey Mouse, the sorcerers apprentice in Fantasia, sweeping away my distracting thoughts until I had to sweep away that image, too, in order to attend to Betty. When people think that we really hadnt loved one another, it belittles the love that we had. I could see it was hard for her to tell me thisbut at this point I couldnt be sure what hurt worse: telling me about the rape, or how she had excessively revealed herself to her group. I want to go about it in an adult manner.. Since I hoped to establish a confederacy or fusion of the two Marges, I was careful to stay on the positive side of each. I want to see you. 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. His overwrought reaction was, I thought, totally irrational. After that, there seemed to be no further work we could do, and we parted. He was right: I was not truly engaged with Marvin! Id like you to check in on your internal state every four hours, when you are awake, and jot down your observations. In fact, as a result of his psychosis and what had happened with Thelma, he had, several years ago, realized that his psychological problems posed an insurmountable barrier, and he had stopped being a therapist. If he would call me once a year, talk to me for even five minutes, ask about me, show me his concern, then I could live happily. I wanted to leave an imprint on your life. My head tells me that youre right. Speak for her., Marge took a deep breath and revved up her voice. I could only sit and listen and from time to time reassure her that these were human feelings, and that she was only human for thinking them. He said he didnt bother to ask Phyllis: he knew shed raise hell. Chrissie, I surmised, was Pennys hope for the future: it was she who could have rescued the family from its destiny of poverty and crime. In the story Loves Executioner, Thelma would not, for example, relate to me: her energy was completely consumed in her love obsession. He had not been found out! She never even heard them! Miles), Im Calling the Police (with Robert Berger), and my children, Eve, Reid, Victor, and Ben. Having persuaded himself that Marie was hysterically overreacting, he refused to prescribe adequate medications for pain relief or sedation. And I liked his willingness to put up with uncertainty and to undertake the laborious task of inventing a different therapy for each patient. One night she had two dreams about a lost twin brother. It seemed to me that if I were to keep the letters, I would be colluding, in a countertherapeutic way, with his penchant for secrecy. Marie regarded his behavior as odious and gradually became harsher in her refusals. It is a book of its time, as you will notice from the chapter Fat Lady. (They slept in separate bedrooms because of his snoring.) Go ahead. 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. Perhaps she loved me enough to change her behavior! During this discussion I recalled one of the first patients I had been assigned during my residencya red- faced, sandy-haired, psychotic farmer who insisted that he had started the Third World War. But I kept silent. She had joined a womens therapy group and was working on her fear of attending social functions. Would he ultimately embrace a religious solution? But, even worse, the sentence is so severeso damn tough on yourself. 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! Whats the big deal? he asked, and then claimed he personally wouldnt mind being raped by an attractive woman. I was prepared for his directness and sincerity and, therefore, not thrown off by it. The change in behavior (even though conceived out of a neurotic wish to gain and retain my love) initiated an adaptive spiral and begot many other salubrious changes. Should I keep Daves letters? What other feelings did you have about them? He was in one place and you were in another. Sorrow for Dave, for his isolation, for his clinging to illusion, for his want of courage, for his unwillingness to face the naked, harsh facts of life. She caught herself and slowed down. Ive a hunch theres something scary about giving it up., Who needs it? I knew that Thelma would take the rest of the hour spinning obsessional webs. And theres one additional bonus to aging: reading your own work can be more exciting! I even ate them the way I used to when I was a kidby sucking out the egg salad filling. From it, through either begging or bribing (Ive forgotten which), I obtained a precious hard copy of my work to date. Throughout Love's Executioner, Irvin Yalom uses several different theories when working with patients. A good working formula is: the more unlived life, or unrealized potential, the greater ones death anxiety. I call to leave taped messages for him on important dates: his birthday, June 19 (our first date), July 17 (our last date), Christmas, and New Years. Youve fallen in love with your own creation.. He responded, Oh a terrible day! He mentions that Carlos had grown up as an only child in Argentina, but never refers back to this again. 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. It is a cat chasing a mouse. I must have talked too much because later Harry stated that he believed that Matthew was in some way responsible for my suicide attempt. Suddenly, when I asked for other examples of Phyllis being set in her ways, some unexpected things came pouring out. Any thoughts about this happening on a dance floor?, I said earlier that it was only those twenty-seven days that I ever felt euphoric. Poor Saul strained chin and neck to reach five foot six. At first concerned about suicide, I ultimately soothed myself with the thought that her anger was so overt and so outwardly directed that it was unlikely she would turn it against herself. You look better, you relate better, you are so much more approachable and available now.. 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. love's executioner two smiles summary I had always had warm feelings toward my father and would have welcomed the opportunity to invite him to live in my home. Just keep them., I havent read them for at least twenty years., They seem like such a hot potato, I ventured. They were distracting and I didnt know how to answer them. My negative feelings slowed me down. What could be clearer? As for you, pointing to his son, you get all the ass you can!. How could I reject the letters without his feeling I was rejecting him? Mind you, I do not speak of delusion. Now, there is nothing, Penny told me, more important to her than her house. They moved from one tenement flat to another, often being evicted for nonpayment of rent. There was something going on between the two of us. Well, you might be interested in something sexual that happened yesterday afternoonthat would be about ten hours before the dream. Bettys father had died of cancer when she was twelve, and since then she had been terrified of the disease. Ill take care of me. At first I thought it was to catch his breath: he had been racing through his sentences. I thought of ONeills The Iceman Cometh and the fate of Hickey, the disillusioner. As our third hour drew to a close, there was no longer any point in pretending that Penny was not in therapy with me. But today I saw the dream in a different light. 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. The smile said, Yes, yes, Dr. C., I get the point. Marge and I were in the midst of an ordinary hour. Never have I had a patient who was willing to uncover such painful material in such a short time. Hard to quarrel with that. I feel like a zombie, run out of gas, my lifes a void, a dead end. I had invaded his two innermost temples: his love for his children and his reincarnation beliefs. Except in your memories., Elva was really crying now, and her stubby frame heaved with sobs for several minutes.

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