love's executioner two smiles summary

But his fixation on women had long predated his cancer. You know shes a creep. You asked for more and more until it reached the point when I couldnt find a way to give any more. 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. In part she cried because of her loss, but in large part because she considered her fathers life to have been such a tragedy: he never obtained the education he wanted (or that she wanted for him), and he died just before he retired and never enjoyed the years of leisure for which he had longed. He was trying to make a point to her, but she was looking away from him. Marvin at sixty-four had suddenly, six months ago, for the first time in his life, developed disabling migraine headaches. What a wonderful proof of the unconscious realm! Much more hyperventilation and I knew Saul would pass out. Had I disproven the catechism? On several occasions I refused social invitations, some even from Dr. K., because I would not leave the library.. As you say, Im being rational, but one of us has to stay rational. Saul didnt crack a smile. God knows what had happened to his letters to her!. Perhaps the function of the obsession was simply to provide intimacy: it bonded her to anotherbut not to a real person, to a fantasy. I think her suicide try was a murder attempt, and I now believed that her decision to stop therapy was also a form of double homicide. I slink around on the refuse dumps outside of human camps. I was thinking of my father lying beneath the ground and how cold he must have been, and I suddenly heard a voice from above saying to me, Youre next!, Betty stopped and looked at me. . Why open it? Awaking to extraordinary pain, she felt desperately alone: she had no close friends, and her two daughters were vacationing in Europe. Could I be intimate with her? Vaguely profound statements are the best. Her housekeeper, whom she had hired to attenuate her loneliness, was Looney Tunes, and so dumb that she tried to hide her smoking by exhaling the smoke down the flushing toilet. Loves Executioner was a pivotal turning point for me. No amount of patience will help it fly; and, ultimately, each must be pried from the other, and wounds separately splinted. He was right: the correlation was impressive, but I was growing edgy. Instead, we must speak of us and our problems, because our life, our existence, will always be riveted to death, love to loss, freedom to fear, and growth to separation. Thus far I had persevered, but my patience was not unlimited, and I felt relieved to share the burden with Mike. Then Penny told me that she had a deep belief in reincarnation, a belief that began when she was a teenager and miserable and poor and so tormented by the thought that she had been gypped in life that she could find consolation only in the thought that she would have another chance. Perhaps, he said, that was a symbol for him: he had been temperate, too temperate. . My God! Keep going., Well, Ive had to keep it under rein all my life because Phyllis has got strong ideas about how much sex we will have. This dissociative process is unconscious, invisible to us, but we can be convinced of its existence in those rare episodes when the machinery of denial fails and death anxiety breaks through in full force. While I struggled internally with these feelings, I had not expected my patient to perceive them. Only then would we turn to the identification and removal of the obstacles that were preventing her from establishing intimate relationships in her social life. Her gaze was averted. The research team is not entirely clear about the nature of the therapy which produced these impressive results because the patient continues to be unaccountably secretive about the details of therapy. And dresses? Perhaps (in an effort to conceal my negative feelings) I tried too hard, and I made the beginners mistake of suggesting other options. Could it be that he found me? If, indeed, he were bedridden, who was helping him? Her silly commentary was equally offputting. There was another vehicle with problems with the rear-vision mirror. The welfare agency said I was an unfit motherthey were right, I guessbut I refused to give em up and tried to take care of them but, after about six months, they took them away. 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. Just the same, he had my full attention and, as he spoke, I could not help glancing at his large, stranglers hands. Marvins dysfunction was acute and would respond, I thought, to a brief cognitive-behavioral approach. I thought of how, when I was eight or nine, I had developed a large ganglion on my wrist. She probably would never marry. It was my hope that I would change as Betty and I progressed in her (our) therapy. I thought. One is isolated not only from other beings but, to the extent that one constitutes ones world, from world as well. She was working in a bookstore. I took my time and thought out my words carefully. Saul demurred, of course, raising many objections, predictable objections: he wasnt my only patient, I was much too busy, he was already feeling better, it was no emergency, he should be able to travel to my office soon. Soon it would be clear that I had nothing to conceal. Thelma would have been a seventy-year-old ten pounder at least, and no one, absolutely no one, would have recommended psychotherapy. That was how we began. The collection of ten absorbing tales by master psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom uncovers the mysteries, frustrations, pathos, and humor at the heart of the therapeutic encounter. He lacked the confidence provided by an established school of thought, a professional home such as a Freudian, a Jungian, a Lacanian, an Adlerian, or a cognitive-behavioral one with an all- embracing explanatory system. Finding no way to be helpful to Marie in her situation with Dr. Z., I strongly urged that she change doctors. . And then a dream providing specific grievances:Im watching a heart transplant. She did not seem surprised by my offer and immediately agreed to return next week at the same time. And, even though we wont meet again, Ill still retain that change.. But it was many years before I was ever willing to shake hands with a doctor again! For the first four years of her bereavement, Marie made herself totally inaccessible to men. She had been herself, in a fully spontaneous way, in only two situations in her adult lifewhen she danced and when she and Matthew had been in love for twenty-seven days. Marvin and I met only a few more times. So here goes. By: Irvin D. Yalom. This time it was different, you went beyond words.. And I liked his willingness to put up with uncertainty and to undertake the laborious task of inventing a different therapy for each patient. Penny had never finished school, and Chrissie was going to do it for both of them (and was also going to attend Stanford for both of them). Now that weve decided to do it, he wants to do it as soon as possible. Above all, I wished to protect and maintain our relationship. That was good. Theres a time for thinking and analyzing but theres also a time for action. And when direct exhortation fails, the therapist is reduced, as these stories bear witness, to employing any known means by which one person can influence another. I believe youre operating in the having to mode right now. Ultimately she married a sweet, elderly man. I wondered whether Dave could step back and become witness to himself. He did that twice a day and taught me the practice as well. She wont see any doctor, shes not had a GYN exam in fifteen years. Thelma was remote and stiff in our first meeting. I was so stimulated by this idea that I could hardly wait until the hour was over so I could think more about it. My own words heartened me: the problem seemed suddenly clearer, more familiar, far more manageable. She felt stripped, ordinary, unprotected. Published in 1989, Loves Executioner is one of Yaloms collections of case studies. Hes not in the yard. My desire to change Maries vision, to teach her to look within, to dream, to fantasize, to extend her horizons? We agreed to concentrate on maintaining her new weight of one hundred sixty and, to that end, Betty bought a whole new wardrobe. Buried somewhere within Marvins walls was a dreamer tapping out an urgent existential message. That dream about the candleI must have had it twenty times., That dream makes me think of what you said before about your fear of losing weight, about having to stay heavy to avoid dying of cancer like your father. Its cold out and I feel empty. I had left my door ajar, and we could hear that Matthew had arrived and was speaking to my secretary. He was smooth. Theyre not real people. We considered the men in her life: a father (faded from personal memory but forever reviled by her mother) who deserted her, through death, when she was eight; her mothers loversa lineup of unsavory night characters who vanished at daybreak; a first husband who deserted her one month after their wedding, when she was seventeen; and a cloddish, alcoholic second husband who ultimately deserted her in her grief. The first step in all therapeutic change is responsibility assumption. For a short time we both lapsed into silence. I pass quickly from feeling good to feeling that its the end of the world. Her husband, whom she had met while a student at the university in Mexico, had been a surgeon and was killed in an automobile accident one evening while rushing to the hospital on an emergency call. I dont give a shit, not one shit, about the people in the group. I empathized with her and told her that I had heard many others in her situationincluding my wifecomplain of similar treatment. Penny nodded, sobered by my analytic tone, and her sobbing stopped. These changes all signified that we were making progress: we were successfully addressing Bettys isolation and her hunger for closeness. How excitingto be given another chance, to paint his life all over again on a blank canvas.. She then cleared her apartment of foodevery can, every package, every bottle. I knew her forty-five years ago in college. Now Im getting more and more nervous about Sorayas letters, and I wondered if youd keep them. When that old person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from living memory. When I finally got a beat, Id start to wonder whether it was coming from my radial artery or from the tiny arterioles in my fingers squeezing my wrist. A wounded healer, a Christ figure who had sacrificed his own integrity for Thelma? But it was also true that her group was down to five, and she needed new members.) Saul had always been ingratiating, and much of our previous therapy had focused upon the meaning and correction of that trait. But to make things worse, Im not sleeping. I was impressed by two things: you were clearI could understand your writingand you were willing to speak openly about death. Matthews statement, I thought, bore an uncanny resemblance to the releasing scenario Thelma had shared in our role-playing session. 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. In fact, her behavior with her sons was the most tangible evidence of change. Those were twenty-seven days of paradise, and Id give anything to have them back!. As she said this, Betty broke down and sobbed. Then life seems to be attacking on all fronts: parents feel guilty and frightened at their own inability to act; they are angry at the impotence and apparent insensitivity of medical caregivers; they may rail at the injustice of God or of the universe (many ultimately come to understand that what has seemed injustice is in reality cosmic indifference). I grew concerned with the amount of resistance in the group. What does Yalom think about an intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself and an emotional experience of it? Memories of her father permeated these flashbacks. She finished him off in another dream: he squeezed into a crowded elevator into which she couldnt fit (because of her size). Sex, itself, didnt play too important a role., This helps us understand the dream you had a couple of weeks ago.. Ill get to the point. Betty agreedshe could hardly refuse me; and I now had at my disposal an enormously liberating device. Vorbeireden, vorbeireden: we talked past each other, past each other. All in all, I considered her anger, despite its irrational components, an excellent development. Im tempted to read this soon, so thank you! There turned out to be only one printer in Denpasar, the major city of Bali, and it was located in a computer school. Maries view of psychiatry? This woman, Sonia, entered on the scene, and I realized that a life with her was the proper way for me. Marie and he locked gazes for a moment. Her dental sessions in his office were humiliating: whenever his assistant left the room, he would make sexually suggestive comments and manage frequently to brush his hands across her breasts. You called me a dozen times a day. Obviously something important was up. She had always walked her dog every morning at six. At that time he had tried energetically, but unsuccessfully, to court her. Penny said she hardly noticed his going. Marvin feels youre cold and uninvolved and that youve taken little personal interest in his lifein how he got to be the person he is today.. But I never asked since I knew such inquiries would drive him further away. Thelmas eyes were fixed on me. I decided to remain matter-of-fact about it. You kept putting the responsibility onto me, making me take charge of the session. Many years ago he had developed a strong belief in reincarnation, a belief that offered him blessed relief from fears about dying. The time has run out. Maybe Im a slow learner.. In that one hour, Elva moved from a position of forsakenness to one of trust. But what? The surgeon admits that was true. I wasnt so sure. Because the cable car had lurched, causing her to fall as she was leaving it, she had initiated a lawsuit against the city. I fumbled for words of comfort. I never beat around the bush. To adapt to the reality of death, we are endlessly ingenious in devising ways to deny or escape it. 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. And my daughters husband has a six-figure salary. I did not want Pennys guilt, so recently pried loose, to discover her great neglect of her boys and attach itself to this new object. Since guilt seemed to be the primary problem, I set about, for the rest of the two-hour interview, learning as much as possible about Pennys guilt. Julian Barnes has, in Flauberts Parrot, illustrated in a beautiful and whimsical manner a persons inexhaustible complexity. But that is a far distance from spiritually communing with the other. How would it go? I dont rely on role-playing or chair-switching, but this seemed the perfect place for it. I knew we were entering an area where once I would never have dared to go. It was clear that a direct appeal would be of no value. To compound the problem, I had just had a poignant but exhausting session with an elderly, distraught widow whose purse had recently been stolen. All this power that Matthew hasyouve given it to himevery bit of it!, I get sick in my stomach at the thought of his despising me., What goes on in another persons mind, someone you never even see, who probably isnt even aware of your existence, who is caught up in his own life struggles, doesnt change the person you are., Oh, hes aware of my existence, all right. Without front windows you dont know where youre heading., How would that apply to you, by what youre facing ahead of you in your life now?, Retirement. Saul was stuck. Nothing in her life gave her pleasure. She had grown up, an only child, on a small, poor ranch in Texas where her mother has lived alone since her fathers death fifteen years ago. I was becoming more convinced that my hunch about his behavior was correct: namely, that he had major psychosexual problems which he had acted out on Thelma (and probably other unfortunate patients). I thought of ONeills The Iceman Cometh and the fate of Hickey, the disillusioner. It had been a long time since I had made a home visit. It is a story about countertransferencethat is, irrational, often shameful, feelings a therapist experiences toward a patient that constitute a formidable obstacle in therapy. 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. Soon he reported a series of dreams with explicit material about aging and death. When driving home, her son would call his wife on his automobile telephone to say he wanted dinner right away. His emotional tone flattened, his face grew more frozen, he volunteered less and less informationand he lost all humor and sense of proportion. Id have something to look forward to. The inevitable decision loomed. At least for someone who finds people and their motivations and the reasons behind the development of their quirks and personalities to be interesting. Love's Executioner 2. She had often joked with her friends, Go see a psychiatrist. Would our confrontation break the ice jam? Id like to include California in my itinerary, provided that youll be in residence and be willing to see me. In fact, though there had been considerable sexual caressing during her twenty-seven days with Matthew, they had had intercourse only once, the first evening. I told her that I had read an alumni bulletin and noted that six persons in my college class have died. I was certain that Me, the other Marge, was in love with me. In fact, you were suggesting that last week when you talked about Matthew working out his personal problems in his therapy with me. My best hope might be to establish a close, meaningful relationship between the two of us and then use that relationship as a solvent in which to dissolve her obsession. We had a good talk., God, I dont know. The head in the slidemy head, my vision, my memorygets in the way. Other survivors feel guilty for other things, for not having done enough, for not having sought medical help sooner, for not having cared more, nursed better. What difference does it make what he thinks of you?, I cant tell you why. Thats an important part of the reason Matthews acceptance of her loomed so large: He knew me as very few people ever haveas I really am, completely open, nothing held back.. Hed foul himself as much as me. We spent the rest of this hour and part of our final one exploring the ramifications of this new information. If not, bingo! The process has been long and Ive no doubt lost names along the way. I tried another tack. Also, you didnt fall asleep. 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. Ill be frank (like you tell me to be in therapy): that grates on me. In search of the dreamer. Later I had a long talk with Mike about the hour. The last time I saw him was at twelve-thirty p.m. on July 16. Its an honor to meet you., Hes not without some charm, I thought, but I did not want to get involved in a distracting personal or professional discussion with Matthew: it was best for me to keep a low profile in this session and for Thelma and Matthew to interact as much as possible. She told my secretary that she was thirty-eight years old and divorced, that she had lost her daughter four years previously, and that it was urgent for her to be seen immediately. But I want to. 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.. No, not just women, but everybody. Elmer grew old, crochety, and arthritic and, after Charless death, had commanded so much of Maries attention that he may have done her a service. 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. Betty began to feel unsafe. Part of my attention was still with her, and I had to spur myself to give Marvin the attention he deserved. I often felt euphoric when I was dancing. Marges face was frozen. Finally, finally, I had gotten her attention, and she sat silently for several minutes contemplating my words. Without them I might run wild., That was a curious comment. About how its done, about the rape victims experience?, Oh, come on, Carlos, if thats what you were after, you could have read about it in a book. Cookies on OCLC websites. My initial plan was to follow each story with a few paragraphs discussing the theoretical points it illustrated. Ive never met anyone who wouldnt cut you dead for a dollar, a job, or a cunt. He had been married only briefly and had had no other significant relationships with women. Youve just finished a difficult course of chemotherapy. Was there any moment when we began to enjoy it? Not every thing you say is maaaaaarvelllous. Maybe youre right, Doctor. It didnt matter whether I was or not. I was just getting over my worst migraine, and I was afraid Id fail and get another migraine. She had a gift for imitating accents and mimicked her laid-back Marin County physician, her Chinese customers, and her Midwestern boss. Carlos readily agreed to meet with me. It was only when he started acting professionally, when he went back into a formal role, that he hurt me. Damn, she was stubborn! Theyre jerks with no cojones, they sit around whimpering and saying nothing., Tell me what happened in the meeting from your perspective., Sarah talked about the rape, she tell you that?, And Martha did, too. Their shoes were on the wrong feet. And then it was that Marie smiled. I never could find out whywhy it was over, just like that. But I was chilled to learn there was no play: Saul was deadly serious. Could I possibly be serious? Bettys year-and-a-half assignment in California was now drawing to a close. But I might as well have been talking to the wind. As observer, one must be sufficiently objective to provide necessary rudimentary guidance to the patient. In fact, Irwin Yalom is a professor who studies deteriorating inflictions in the field of psychiatry. His uncle, a coarse, brusque man whom Saul had rarely mentioned, procured him a spot near a subway entrance and dropped him off every morning at five-thirty and retrieved him three hours later to deposit him at schoolno matter that Saul was invariably late by ten or fifteen minutes and began every school day with a reprimand. These are true stories, but I have had to make many changes to protect the identity of the patients. 1 For a detailed discussion of this existential perspective and the theory and practice of a psychotherapy based upon it, see my Existential Psychotherapy (New York: Basic Books, 1980). As for you, pointing to his son, you get all the ass you can!. After many such interactions, Dan could clearly discriminate between partners: with some he felt little connection, while with others he felt a strong bond, one so powerful, so compelling that he was convinced he had entered into a spiritual linkage with another kindred soul. Well, I ate the sandwiches. Its just that Ive been so hurt by Matthew that Im not going to make myself vulnerable again to another therapist., Youve got good answers for everything, but what it all adds up to is Dont get close. You cant get close to Harry because you dont want to hurt him by telling him your intimate thoughts about Matthew and suicide. If only I had a son, I might through him spew myself into the future past the death line.. As the evidence mounted that no meaningful relationship was developing between us, I felt baffled and rejected. "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 imagined that Dave would not only refuse to share important (or trivial) information about himself but do so in a coy or provocative way. What did Penny's work with Yalom start and end as? She caught it and began. There had to be some other way. Maries first step, Mike suggested, was to learn more about her pain: to differentiate between functional and unnecessary pain. Perhaps she had changed significantly and I had not taken note of it. I was reduced to prescribing Marie sedation sub rosa. Her eyes were almost closed, sorely trying my patience. . If I worry, even if I keep it completely silent, he senses it and gets upset. Our next session started uneventfully. He had also had enough experience on editorial boards to know that the journal editors were merely being polite: the article was beyond salvage unless he and Dr. K. put in massive amounts of time revising it. Saul, nothings going to happen to you. I was well enough acquainted with Marge to know exactly what she would do with my blunder: she would say that I had let my true feelings out, that I think shes so hopeless that the only persons with whom she might compare favorably would be the most hapless souls on earth. Carloss improvement increased exponentially. Two Smiles: The Story of Marie Concerns/Issues Marie's stiffness in the relationship Yalom's physical attraction to Marie Marie's unwillingness to try hypnosis Marie's inability to trust Yalom and other doctors Interpreting Marie's two smiles during hypnosis "we can never fully know another" (p. 180) She cried every night about her husband's death The markers of ones life stages are always significant, and few markers more so than retirement. No one ever touches me. , . Huge chunks of time devoured. She dont remember, I dont remember. I think he was overcome with pitypity for Phyllis, for himself, for all small, helpless people. Impossible, I insisted, and posed the same question many different ways. Another possibility was to give a simple outright gift to the Stockholm Institutea gift that would appear to be unrelated to anything else. I was sitting Vipassana for three to four hours a day. So much inconsistency, so much anger, almost mockery, standing cheek by jowl with such reverence. But paradox can be effective in those instances where the therapeutic foundation is solid and the prescribed behavior explodes the meaning of the symptom. A stab right through my sternum. In the remaining time, he reinforced his instructions on self-hypnosis and taught her how to respond to cigarette craving with auto-hypnosis and increased awareness (hyperception, as he put it) of the fact that she needed her body to live and that she was poisoning it. I need a solemn promise from you that for the next six months you will do nothing physically self-destructive. Try deepening a friendship with the people you already know., I saw a smile begin to form on Carloss lips. When Saul called later that evening, I was alarmed by the somber and aloof timbre of his voice. But are you being completely honest? I have heard many dying patients remark that the most awful thing about dying is that it must be done alone. Perhaps if I had given Mike more information about Marie, his panel would have resembled mine more closely.

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