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. Finding no way to be helpful to Marie in her situation with Dr. Z., I strongly urged that she change doctors. You were going to say something else, Phyllis?, Well, this is the hardest thing to say. And so Marie and Dr. Z. were locked in a complex dance, whose steps included a spurned surgeon, a million-dollar lawsuit, a broken jaw, several fractured teeth, and brushed breasts. Her fatty casing began to disintegrate. I want to sink into the embrace of some warm daydream. Now I was really worried but, again, decided not to comment on his withdrawal. Perhaps she had changed significantly and I had not taken note of it. She was a multiple personality whose two personae (whom I shall call Blush and Brazen) waged a deceitful war against each other. What other feelings did you have about them? What stops you from directly asking me the real question?, This is the kind of thing I worked on with Matthew. It is that someone is dying. Or, was it possible that he was far ahead of me and mocked himselfand me, toowith subtle irony? In this book, Yalom discusses ten clients, their therapy journey and his own development as an existential psychotherapist. To be honest, I dont even like to visit sick people or listen to talk about illness. After a short distance he stops, walks around to the front, and, with his black cane, which now has a glowing white tip, he leans over, parts the gauze, and methodically inserts the white tip into the babys vagina. But be forewarned, individual treatment will most likely require many months, even a year or longer, and it will not be a rose garden. What are they like?, What do you think about in the depressions?, Nothing. Within minutes of getting it, I was on the phone with your secretary., The rest I knew. The story depicts my struggle to work through these unruly feelings in order to relate to the patient at a human level. Or our work for us. It was too late: his house had been built, his final examination turned in. It began with: Death is all around me. Get on with it! Though she, Mike, and I shared an hour, each of us had a vastly different, and unpredictable, experience. An enticing, bold glance that Marge has not yet dared to appropriate? Penny was frozen. Every session with her demanded great effort. Loves Executioner was meant to be a collection of teaching stories aimed (like all my subsequent stories and novels) at the young psychotherapist and all other people, including patients, interested in psychotherapy. We soon moved from sex into the deeper waters of her basic sexual identity. Above all, I wished to protect and maintain our relationship. From the point of view of existential psychotherapy, and as a trainee therapist, I really appreciate Yaloms skill in explaining some difficult existential concept with ease and simplicity (unlike Heideggers trudging, heavy words). It was actually doing something for the patient. Perhaps I read too much into it, but I imagined that Dr. K. was looking for something from Saul, something just as crucial for him as the affirmation Saul sought from him. The fact that Penny was in crisis, or said she was, presented me with a dilemma. I try to pierce the blackness with my sexual talisman. Drawing a thick scroll from his briefcase, Marvin asked me to hold one end, and carefully unrolled a three-foot chart upon which was meticulously recorded his every migraine headache and every sexual experience of the past four months. Enforced busyness is often the friend of the bereaved and Elmer provided blessed distraction in the early stages of mourning. I had, once again, fallen prey to the grandiose belief that I can treat anyone. For one thing, Marge stuttered on every word. I feel miserable. 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. He still hasnt told me why he cut me off!. I also wanted support from a colleague. . She knew also that Chrissie was going on to another, healthier, happier life. It looked like Christ but was wearing a flowing orange pastel dress. She put her head between her knees, breathed deeply, and slowly regained her composure. While these are delusions in that they represent fixed false beliefs, I do not employ the term delusion in a pejorative sense: these are universal beliefs which, at some level of consciousness, exist in all of us and play a role in several of these tales. I left a message that he call me, but several hours passed with no word from him. This whole thing is ridiculous, some part of me wanted to say. During the last year of her life, her physicians had installed a permanent intravenous catheter that permitted easy access to her bloodstream. He merely shrugged. It was only when I demonstrated how, in our hours together, her impersonal, shy, distancing manner re-created the same impersonal environment in therapy, that she could begin to explore her responsibility for creating her own isolation. Remember that every time youve sunk into a depression, youve climbed out again. (Not delicious and clandestine but deliciously clandestine, for secrecyand I shall say more about this shortlywas the axis of Daves personality around which all else rotated. Im good at it. But what, I wondered uneasily, about the rights of the patient? 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. I could scarcely think of a single person with whom I less wished to be intimate. Dont ask me any more questions about Dr. Z. I hope you dont know about whats going on between us.. I even ate them the way I used to when I was a kidby sucking out the egg salad filling. Theres a fair chance, I thought, that hes already sent that money and, if so, hes going to get caught in a tangle of lies with me that will really jeopardize our work. Oh no! Thankfully, times have changed. In fact, I stopped reading it halfway through because it was so upsetting, and Im someone who hates leaving things unfinished. What would happen if you stopped trying to entertain me?, I dont see anything wrong with having some fun. She has her whole life ahead of her, and her improved mental condition would benefit her children and her childrens children., I persisted. The other thing is that I start to feel, Why bother? Im here for such a short time. Despite the horror of his cancer and his narrowness of spirit, I was drawn to Carlos. 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. The dream floored me. And there was the matter of her sons bedroom. I couldnt promise more honesty than I was willing to give. In fact, you were suggesting that last week when you talked about Matthew working out his personal problems in his therapy with me. When I make a resolution, I never go back on it., Also, Thelma, I cant work well with a suicide threat hanging overhead. When bonds are issued at a premium the debt declines each period. When Penny told them that he was not home, one of them ordered her to tell Jim to pay the money he owed or he could forget about coming home: there wouldnt be any house left for him to come home to. Marie regarded his behavior as odious and gradually became harsher in her refusals. On the other side of the room there was an actress with a long white dress. I have a lot of regret about what Ive done with my life or, better, what I havent done., My heart went out to Phyllis at that moment, and I desperately wanted to say something helpful. What was nice, though, was that I felt that Yalom tried and often succeeded in showing the reader his process in arriving at his interpretations and interventions rather than simply painting himself as a brilliant therapist with a lot of spontaneous well-timed aha! moments. Her pretentious bridge partner was Dame May Whitey (and Dame May Whitey was spry-minded compared with the rest, with all the Alzheimer zombies and burned-out drunks who, according to Elva, constituted the bridge-playing population of San Francisco). Mike, obviously pleased with Maries response, turned to his final task. Soon our time was up. Consider ten to be the most significant revealing you can imagine and one to be the type of revealing you might do, lets say, with strangers in a line at the movies., A mistake. . When Dr. C. advised me to have a long talk with Dr. Z. about my pain, I suddenly became very ashamed. These two insights, each generated by a different form of therapy, illustrated, in quintessential form, the difference between what one can derive from group therapy, with its focus on communion between, and individual therapy, with its focus on communion within. Saul would fill me in soon enough. (Careful, careful, shes getting close.) Thus, I may advise, argue, badger, cajole, goad, implore, or simply endure, hoping that the patients neurotic worldview will crumble away from sheer fatigue. I, too, sank back in my chair and took stock of the situation. 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. Sooner or later were going to need to find out all about that.. She mollified me: Its not you. Dave looked startled. That Martha. 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. Bettys father had died of cancer when she was twelve, and since then she had been terrified of the disease. Format: Book ISBN: 9780465020119, 0465020119 Physical Desc: xxiii, 285 pages ; 21 cm Status: Withdrawn/Unavailable Add To List SHARE Description Rather than ninety percent of the time, I spend less than twenty percent of my waking time thinking about Matthew, and even that twenty percent is different. It was not her doing: it was the work transfer, or the sterile California culture, or the absence of cultural events, or the jock social scene, or societys miserable attitude toward obese people.