The Schopenhauer Cure

by Irvin D. Yalom

  During this period an often-quoted conversation occurred when he gave his mother a copy of his doctoral dissertation, a brilliant treatise on the principles of causation titled "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason."

  Glancing at the title page, Johanna remarked: "Fourfold root? No doubt this is something for the apothecary?"

  Arthur: "It will still be read when scarcely a copy of your writings can be found."

  Johanna: "Yes, no doubt the entire printing of your writings will still be in the shops."

  Arthur was uncompromising on his titles, rejecting any considerations of marketability. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason should have been more properly titled A Theory of Explanation. Nonetheless, two hundred years later, it is still in print. Not many other dissertations can claim that distinction.

  Ferocious arguments continued about money and about Johanna's relationships with men until Johanna's patience was exhausted. She let it be known she would never break off her friendship with Gerstenbergk or anyone else for Arthur's sake. She ordered him to move out, invited Gerstenbergk to move into his vacated rooms, and wrote Arthur this fateful letter.

  The door which you slammed so noisily yesterday after your improper behavior toward your mother is now closed forever between you and me. I am leaving for the country and shall not return until I know you are gone.... You do not know what a mother's heart is like--the more tenderly it loves, the more painfully it feels every blow from a once loved hand.... You yourself have torn away from me: your mistrust, your criticism of my life, of my choice of friends, your desultory behavior toward me, your contempt for my sex, your unwillingness to contribute to my contentment, your greed--this and a lot more makes you seem vicious to me.... If I were dead and you had to deal with your father, would you have dared to schoolmaster him? Or try to control his life, his friendships? Am I less than he? Did he do more for you than I did? Loved you more than I did?...My duty toward you is at an end. Go your way, I have nothing more to do with you.... Leave your address here, but do not write to me, I shall henceforth neither read nor answer any letter from you.... So this is the end.... You have hurt me too much. Live and be as happy as you can be.

  And the end it was. Johanna lived for another twenty-five years, but mother and son were never again to meet.

  In old age, reminiscing about his parents, Schopenhauer wrote: Most men allow themselves to be seduced by a beautiful face.... nature induces women to display all at once the whole of their brilliance...and to make a "sensation"...but nature conceals the many evils [women] entail, such as endless expenses, the cares of children, refractoriness, obstinacy, growing old and ugly after a few years, deception, cuckolding, whims, crotchets, attacks of hysteria, hell, and the devil. I therefore call marriage a debt that is contracted in youth and paid in old age....

  17

  _________________________

  Greatsufferings render lesser

  ones quite incapable of being

  felt, and conversely, in the

  absence of great sufferings

  even the smallest vexations

  and annoyances torment us.

  _________________________

  At the start of the next meeting all eyes were upon Bonnie. She spoke in a soft hesitant voice: "It wasn't such a good idea after all to get myself on the agenda because all week long I've been thinking about what to say, rehearsing my lines over and over, even though I know that a canned presentation is not the way to go here. Julius has been saying all along that the group has to be spontaneous if it's going to work. Right?" Bonnie glanced at Julius.

  Julius nodded. "Bonnie, try to dump the canned presentation. Try this: Close your eyes and imagine picking up your prepared script, holding it up in front of you and ripping it in half and then in half again. Now put it in the wastebasket. Okay?"

  Bonnie, eyes closed, nodded.

  "And now in fresh words tell us about homeliness and beauty. Tell us about you and Rebecca and Pam."

  Bonnie, still nodding, opened her eyes slowly and began. "You all remember me, I'm sure. I was the little fat girl in your grade-school classroom. Very chubby, very clumsy, hair too curly. The one who was pathetic in gym, got the fewest valentines, cried a lot, never had best friends, always walked home alone, never had a prom invitation, was so terrified that she never raised her hand in class even though she was smart as hell and knew all the right answers. And, Rebecca here, well she was my isomer--"

  "Your what?" asked Tony. He sat slouched out nearly horizontally in his seat.

  "Isomer means like a mirror image," responded Bonnie.

  "Isomer refers to two chemical compounds," pronounced Philip, "that have the identical constituents in the same proportions but differ in properties because of the way the atoms are arranged."

  "Thanks, Philip," said Bonnie. "Maybe that was a pretentious word to use. But, Tony, I want to say that I admire the way you've stuck to your resolution to signal every time you don't understand something. That meeting a couple of months ago when you opened up about your shame about your education and your blue-collar work has really given me permission to talk about some of my stuff. Okay, now back to my school days.

  Rebecca was my absolute opposite, in every way--you name it. I would have died to have a Rebecca as a friend--I would killed to have been a Rebecca. That's what's going on in me. The last couple of weeks I've been flooded with memories of my nightmare childhood."

  "That fat little girl went to school a long time ago," said Julius. "What brings her back now?"

  "Well, that's the hard part. I don't want Rebecca to get angry with me..."

  "Best to speak to her directly, Bonnie," Julius interjected.

  "Okay," said Bonnie, and turning to face Rebecca. "I want to say something to you, but I don't want you to be angry with me."

  "I'm all ears," said Rebecca, her attention fully fixed on Bonnie.

  "When I see you operate with men here in the group--how you interest them, how you entice them--I feel totally helpless. All those old bad feelings creep out: chubby, insignificant, unpopular, outclassed."

  "Nietzsche," interjected Philip, "once said something to the effect that when we awake discouraged in the middle of the night, enemies that we had defeated long ago come back to haunt us."

  Bonnie broke out into a big smile and turned toward Philip. "That's a gift, Philip, a very sweet gift. I don't know why, but the idea of enemies I had once defeated rising again makes me feel better. Just to have something named makes it more--"

  "Wait a minute, Bonnie," interrupted Rebecca, "I want to get back to my enticing men here--explain, please."

  Bonnie's pupils widened; she avoided Rebecca's gaze. "It's not about you. There's nothing you do that's off--it's all me, it's my response to perfectly normal female behavior."

  "What behavior? What are you talking about?"

  Bonnie took a deep breath and said, "Preening. You preen. That's the way it seems to me. I don't know how many times in the last meeting you had your barrettes out, your hair down, flouncing your hair, running your fingers through it, but it was more times than I can ever remember before. It's got to be related to Philip's entrance into the group."

  "What are you talking about?" asked Rebecca.

  "To quote the old sage, Saint Julius, a question ain't a question if you know the answer," interrupted Tony.

  "Why don't you let Bonnie speak for herself, Tony?" said Rebecca, her eyes icy.

  Tony was unfazed. "It's obvious. Philip enters the group, and you change--you change into a male...ah...what's the right word?...you're coming on to him. Do I got it right, Bonnie?"

  Bonnie nodded.

  Rebecca reached in her purse for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, carefully protecting the mascara. "That's really fucking insulting."

  "This is exactly where I don't want it to go," pleaded Bonnie. "This is not about you, Rebecca--I keep saying that. You're not doing anything wrong."

  "That d
oesn't wash with me--making an en passant nasty accusation about my behavior and then saying it's not about me doesn't make it less nasty."

  "En passant?" asked Tony.

  "En passant means," interjected Philip, "in passing--a common term in chess used when the pawn takes two squares in its opening move and passes an opposing pawn."

  "Philip, you're a show-off--you know that?" said Tony.

  "You threw out a question. I answered it," said Philip, entirely unaffected by Tony's confrontation. "Unless your question ain't a question."

  "Ouch, you got me there." Tony scanned the rest of the group and said, "I must be gettin' dumber. I feel more out of it. Am I imagining it, or are there more big words getting thrown out here? Maybe having Philip here is getting to others, too--not just Rebecca."

  Julius intervened by using the group therapist's most common and most effective tactic--he switched the focus from content to process, that is, away from the words being spoken to the nature of the relationship of the interacting parties. "Lots going on here today. Maybe we can step back a minute and try to understand what's happening. Let me first put out this question to all of you: what do you see going on in the relationship between Bonnie and Rebecca?"

  "It's a tough call," said Stuart, who was always the first to respond to questions thrown out by Julius. Using his professional/medical voice, he said, "I really cannot tell if Bonnie has one agenda or two."

  "Meaning?" asked Bonnie.

  "Meaning, what's your agenda? Do you wish to talk about issues with men and your competition with women? Or, do you wish to take a swipe at Rebecca?"

  "I see it from both points of view," said Gill. "I can see how this dredges up Bonnie's old bad memories. And then I can also see why Rebecca is upset--I mean she may have not known she was fixing her hair--and personally I don't think that's such a big issue."

  "You're tactful, Gill, "said Stuart. "As usual you try to placate all parties, especially the ladies. But you know if you get so deep into understanding the female point of view, you're never going to speak out in your own voice. That's what Philip said to you last week."

  "I resent these sexist comments, Stuart," said Rebecca. "Frankly, a doctor should know better. This 'female point of view' talk is ridiculous."

  Bonnie held up her hands and made a T. "I've got to call 'time out'--I just cannot go on. This is important stuff, but it's surreal; I cannot go on with it. How can we go on with business as usual when Julius has just announced last week he is dying? This is my fault: I should never have started this topic today about me and Rebecca--it's too trivial.

  Everything's trivial in comparison."

  Silence. Everyone looked down. Bonnie broke the silence.

  "I want to back up. The way I should have started this meeting was to describe a dream, a nightmare, I had after the last group. I think it involves you, Julius."

  "Go," urged Julius.

  "It was night. I was in a dark train station--"

  Julius interrupted, "Try using the present tense, Bonnie."

  "I should know that by now. Okay--it's night. I'm in a dark train station. I'm trying to catch a train that's just beginning to move. I walk faster to get on. I see the dining car pass by filled with well-dressed people eating and sipping wine. I'm not sure where to board. Now the train starts to move faster, and the last cars get shabbier and shabbier, with their windows boarded up. The final car, the caboose, is just a skeleton car, all falling apart, and I see it pull away from me and I hear the train whistle so loud it wakes me about fourA.M. My heart was pounding, I was soaked with sweat, and I never did get back to sleep last night."

  "Do you still see that train?" asked Julius.

  "Clear as can be. Moving away down the track. The dream is still scary. Eerie."

  "You know what I think?" said Tony. "I think the train's the group and that Julius's illness will make it fall apart."

  "Right on," said Stuart, "the train's the group--it takes you somewhere, and it feeds you along the way--you know, the folks in the dining car."

  "Yeah, but why couldn't you get on? Did you run?" asked Rebecca.

  "I didn't run; it was like I knew I couldn't board."

  "Strange. Like you wanted to board, but at the same time you didn't want to," said Rebecca.

  "I sure didn't try hard to board."

  "Maybe you were too scared to board?" asked Gill.

  "Did I tell you all that I was in love?" said Julius.

  A hush fell upon the group. Dead silence. Julius looked around, mischievously, at the puzzled and concerned faces.

  "Yes, in love with this group, especially when it works like it's working today.

  Great stuff, the way you're working on that dream. You guys are something. Let me add my guess--I'm wondering, Bonnie, if that train isn't a symbol for me as well. That train reeked of dread and darkness. And, as Stuart said, it offers nourishment. I try to do that.

  But you're frightened of it--as you must be frightened of me or what's happening to me.

  And that last car, the skeletonlike caboose: isn't that a symbol, a prevision, of my deterioration?"

  Bonnie stammered, got tissues from the box in the middle of the room, and wiped her eyes, "I...uh...I...I don't know how to answer--this whole thing is surreal.... Julius, you floor me, you knock me out the way you talk about dying so matter-of-factly."

  "We're all dying, Bonnie. I just know my parameters better than the rest of you,"

  said Julius.

  "That's what I mean, Julius. I always love your flippancy, but now, in this situation, it kind of avoids things. I remember once--it was during that time that Tony was doing weekend jail time and we weren't talking about it--that you said if something big in the group is being ignored, then nothing else of importance gets talked about either."

  "Two things," said Rebecca. "First, Bonnie, we were talking about something important just now--several important things--and, second, my God, what do you want Julius to do? He is talking about this."

  "In fact," said Tony, "he even got pissed that we heard it from Philip rather than from him personally."

  "I agree," said Stuart. "So Bonnie, what do you want from him? He's handling it.

  He said he's got his own support network to help him deal with it."

  Julius broke it off--it had gone far enough. "You know, I appreciate all this support from you guys, but when it's this strong then I begin to worry. Maybe I'm getting loose, but do you know when Lou Gehrig decided to retire? It happened one game when everyone on the team gushed compliments about how he fielded a routine ground ball.

  Maybe you're considering me too fragile to speak for myself."

  "So, where do we go with this?" said Stuart.

  "First, let me say to you, Bonnie, that you're showing a lot of guts by jumping in and naming the thing that's too hot to touch. What's more, you're absolutely right: I have been encouraging some...no, a lot of denial here.

  "I'm going to make a short speech and lay it all out for you. I've had some sleepless nights lately and a lot of time to think about everything, including what to do about my patients and this group. I haven't had any practice at this. No one practices endings. They only happen once. No textbooks are written about this situation--so everything is improvisation.

  "I'm faced with deciding about what to do with the time I have left. Look, what are my options? Terminate all my patients and end this group? I'm not ready to do that--I've got at least a year of good health, and my work means too much to me. And I get a lot out of it for myself. Stopping all my work would be to treat myself as a pariah. I've seen too many patients with fatal illness who've told me that the isolation accompanying their illness is the worst part of all.

  "And the isolation is a dual isolation: first, the very sick person isolates himself because he doesn't want to drag others down into his despair--and I can tell you for a fact that's one of my concerns here--and, second, others avoid him either because they don't know how to talk to him or because they
want nothing to do with death.

  "So, withdrawing from you is not a good option for me and, what's more, I don't believe for you either. I've seen a lot of terminally ill people who underwent change, grew wiser, riper, and had a great deal to teach others. I think that's already starting to happen to me, and I'm convinced that I'll have a lot to offer you in the next few months.

  But if we're to keep working together, you may have to face a lot of anxiety. You'll not only have to face my approaching death, but you may be confronted with your own. End of speech. Maybe you all have to sleep on this and see what you want to do."

  "I don't need to sleep on it," said Bonnie. "I love this group and you and everyone in it, and I want to work here as long as possible."

  After members echoed Bonnie's affirmation, Julius said, "I appreciate the vote of confidence. But group therapy 101 underscores the daunting power of group pressure. It's hard to buck group consensus in public. It would take superhuman resolve for any of you to say today, 'Sorry, Julius, but this is too much for me, and I'd rather find a healthy therapist, someone hale enough to take care of me.'

  "So, no commitments today. Let's just stay open and keep evaluating our own work and see how everyone feels in a few weeks. One big danger which Bonnie expressed today is that your problems start to feel too inconsequential to discuss. So we have to figure out the best way for me to keep you working on your own issues."

  "I think you're doing it, "said Stuart, "by just keeping us informed."

  "Okay. Thanks, that helps. Now let's go back to you guys."

  A long silence.

  "So, maybe I haven't liberated you. Let me try something. Can you, Stuart, or others, lay out our agenda, what's here on the table--what are the open issues today?"