The Schopenhauer Cure

by Irvin D. Yalom

  He pressed Gill, "Say more about what passed through your mind during all those months of group meetings."

  "What do you mean?" said Gill.

  "Well, you said, 'It wasn't easy.' Say more about that, about those meetings and why it wasn't easy."

  "I'd come here all primed but never could unload; something

  always stopped me."

  "Dig into that--the something that stopped you." Julius rarely was so directive in the group, but he was convinced that he knew how to move the discussion in a beneficial direction that the group might not take on its own.

  "I like this group," Gill said. "These are the most important people in my life. I've never been a real member of anything before. I was afraid I'd lose my place, lose any credibility--exactly like what's happening now. Right now. People hate drunks...the group will want to boot me out...you'll tell me to go to AA. The group will judge me, not help me."

  That was exactly the cue Julius had been waiting for. He moved quickly.

  "Gill, look around the room--tell me, who are the judges here?"

  "Everyone's a judge."

  "All identically? I doubt it. Try to discriminate. Look around the group. Who are the main judges?"

  Gill kept his gaze on Julius. "Well, Tony can come down on you pretty hard, but no, not on this--he likes his booze, too. That what you want?"

  Julius nodded encouragement.

  "Bonnie?" Gill continued to speak directly to Julius. "No, she's no judge--except of herself and, once in a while, of Rebecca--she's always gentle with me. Stuart, well, he's one of the judges; he definitely has a self-righteous streak. Pretty goody-goody sometimes. And Rebecca, for sure--I hear a lot of directives: be like me, be sure, be thorough, be dressed right, be washed, be neat. That why I felt released when Rebecca and Stuart showed so much vulnerability: that made it possible for me to open up. And Pam--she's the judge. Chief justice. No doubt about it. I know she thinks I'm weak, unfair to Rose, you name it, everything about me is wrong. I don't have much hope of pleasing her--in fact, I don't have any hope." He halted. "Guess that's it," he said, scanning the group.

  "Oh yes, Philip." He spoke to Philip directly, unlike the other members.

  "Let's see...I don't think of you judging me, but I'm not sure if that's entirely a compliment. It's more that you wouldn't get close enough or involved enough with me even to bother judging me."

  Julius was well pleased. He had defused the nonconstructive moan of betrayal and the punitive grilling of Gill. It was a matter of timing; sooner or later the details of his alcoholism would be aired, but not at this moment and in this manner.

  What's more, Julius's focus on horizontal disclosure had yielded a bonus--Gill's ten-minute gutsy go-round was a bonanza of data--enough there to fuel a couple of good sessions.

  Turning to the group, Julius said, "Reactions anyone?"

  There was hesitation--not, he imagined, because there was so little to say but too much. The agenda groaned with its own weight: the members had to have reactions to Gill's confession, to his alcoholism, and his sudden toughness in the last few minutes. He waited expectantly. Good stuff was on its way.

  He noted that Philip was looking at him, and, for a moment, their gazes met--that was unusual. Perhaps, Julius thought, Philip was signaling his appreciation of the finesse with which he had conducted this meeting. Or perhaps Philip was pondering Gill's feedback to him. Julius decided to inquire and nodded at Philip. No response. So he said, "Philip, your feelings so far about this meeting?"

  "I've been wondering whether you were going to participate."

  "Participate?" Julius was astounded. "I've been wondering if I were too active, too directive today."

  "I meant participate in the sharing of secrets, " said Philip.

  Will the time ever come, Julius thought, when Philip will say

  something even vaguely predictable? "Philip, I'm not evading your question, but there are some pressing loose ends here." He turned to Gill: "I'm concerned about where you are now."

  "I'm on overload. My only issue is whether you'll allow me to stay in the group as an alcoholic," said Gill, whose forehead glistened with perspiration.

  "Sounds like this is the time you need us most. I wonder, though, if your bringing it up today indicates that you're gathering resolve to do something about it. Perhaps entering a recovery program?"

  "Yep. After this meeting, I can't keep doing what I'm doing. I may need to call you for an individual session. Okay?"

  "Of course--as many as you'll need." Julius's policy was to honor requests for individual sessions with the proviso that members share the details of those sessions at the following group meeting.

  Julius turned back to Philip. "Back to your question. There's an old therapist trick which provides a graceful evasion of embarrassing questions, and that is to reply, 'I wonder, why are you asking that question?' Well, I am going to ask you that, but I'm not going to evade you. Instead I'll offer you a proposition: I promise to answer your question fully if you agree first to explore your motivations for asking it. Do we have a deal?"

  Philip hesitated, then responded. "Fair enough. My motivation for the question is not complicated. I want to understand your approach to counseling and, if possible, integrate any parts that might improve my own counseling practice. I work very differently from you: I don't offer an emotional relationship--I'm not there to love my client. Instead I am an intellectual guide. I offer my clients instruction in thinking more clearly and living in accord with reason. Now, perhaps belatedly, I'm beginning to understand what you're aiming for--a Buber-like I-thou encounter..."

  "Buber? Who?" asked Tony. "Hate to keep sounding like a jerk, but I'm damned if I'm going to sit here and not know what's going on."

  "Right on, Tony," said Rebecca. "Every time you ask a question, you're doing it for me too. I don't know who Buber is."

  Others nodded agreement. Stuart said, "I've heard the name--

  something about" I-thou "--but that's it."

  Pam jumped in: "Buber's a German Jewish philosopher, died about fifty years ago, whose work explores the true encounter between two beings--the 'I-thou,' fully present, caring relationship--as opposed to the 'I-it' encounter that neglects the 'I-ness' of the other and uses rather than relates. The idea has come up a lot here--what Philip did to me years ago was to use me as an it."

  "Thanks, Pam, I got it," said Tony, and then turned to Philip. "Are we all on the same page?"

  Philip looked at Tony in a quizzical manner.

  "You don't know what that means?" said Tony. "Gotta get you a dictionary of twentieth-century talk. Don't you ever turn on your TV?"

  "I don't have a TV," said Philip in an even, nondefensive tone. "But if you are asking, Tony, whether I agree with Pam's response about Buber, the answer is yes--I could not have said it as well."

  Julius was fascinated: Philip uttering Tony's and Pam's name?

  Philip complimenting Pam? Were these merely evanescent events, or might they be heralding a momentous change? How much he loved being alive, Julius thought--alive in this group.

  "You still got the floor, Philip. I interrupted you," said Tony.

  Philip continued, "So I was saying to Julius...I mean, I was saying to you"--he turned to Julius--right?"

  "Right, Philip," Julius replied. "I think you're going to be a fast learner."

  "So," Philip went on, speaking in the measured tone of a

  mathematician, "First proposition: you wish to have an I-thou encounter with each client. Second proposition: an 'I-thou' consists of a fully reciprocal relationship--by definition it cannot be a unilateral intimacy.

  Third: in the last couple of meetings people here have revealed a lot about themselves. Hence my entirely justifiable question to you: are you not required to reciprocate?"

  After a moment of silence Philip added, "So that's the conundrum. I intended only to observe how a counselor of your persuasion handles a client's request for parity."

 
; "So, your motivation is primarily a test of whether I'll be consistent in my approach?"

  "Yes, not a test of you, personally, but of your method. "

  "Okay, I appreciate your position that the question is in the service of your intellectual understanding. Now just one further query and then I'll proceed to answer you. Why now? Why ask this particular question at this particular time? "

  "First time it was possible. That was the first slight break in the pace."

  "I'm not convinced. I think there's more. Again, why now ?" Julius repeated.

  Philip shook his head in confusion. "This may not be what you're asking, but I've been thinking of a point Schopenhauer made to the effect that there are few things that put people in a better humor than to hear of another's misfortune. Schopenhauer cites a poem of Lucretius"--"first centuryB.C. Roman poet," Philip said in an aside to Tony--"in which one takes pleasure from standing on the seashore and watching others at sea struggle with a terrible storm. 'It is a joy for us,' he says, 'to observe evils from which we are free.' Is this not one of the powerful forces taking place in a therapy group?"

  "That's interesting, Philip," said Julius. "But entirely off the point.

  Let's stay focused now on the question of ' why now? '"

  Philip still appeared confused.

  "Let me help, Philip," Julius prodded. "I'm belaboring this for a reason--one which will provide a particularly clear illustration of the differences between our two approaches. I'd suggest that the answer to ' why now? ' is intimately related to your interpersonal issues. Let me illustrate: can you summarize your experience in the last couple of meetings?"

  Silence. Philip appeared perplexed.

  Tony said, "Seems pretty obvious to me, Professor."

  Philip looked at Tony with raised eyebrows. "Obvious?"

  "Well, if you want it spelled it out, here it is: you enter this group and make a lot of deep-sounding pronouncements. You pull some things out of your philosophy bag that we all dig. Some people here think you're pretty wise--like Rebecca and Bonnie, for example. And me, too. You supply all the answers. You're a counselor yourself, and it looks like you're competing some with Julius. Same page?"

  Tony looked questioningly at Philip, who nodded slightly,

  indicating that he should continue.

  "So here comes good ole Pam back, and what does she do? Pulls

  your cover! Turns out you've got a messy past. Real messy. You're not Mister Clean after all. In fact you really fucked Pam over. You're knocked off your pedestal. Now you got to be upset about this. And so what do you do? You come in here today and say to Julius: what's your secret life? You want to knock him off his pedestal, level the playing ground. Same page?"

  Philip nodded slightly.

  "That's the way I see it. Hell, what else could it be?"

  Philip fixed his eyes on Tony and responded, "Your observations are not without merit." He turned and addressed Julius: "Perhaps I owe you an apology--Schopenhauer always warned against allowing our subjective experience to contaminate objective observation."

  "And an apology to Pam? How about Pam?" asked Bonnie.

  "Yes, I suppose. That too." Philip glanced fleetingly in her

  direction. Pam looked away.

  When it became apparent that Pam had no intention of responding, Julius said, "I'll let Pam speak for herself at her own pace, Philip, but as for me--no apology is necessary. The very reason you're here is to understand what you say and why you say it. And as for Tony's

  observations--I think they're right on target."

  "Philip, I want to ask you something," said Bonnie. "It's a question that Julius has asked me many times. "How'd you feel after you left the meeting the last couple of sessions?"

  "Not good. Distracted. Even agitated."

  "That's what I imagined. I could see that," said Bonnie. "Any

  thoughts about Julius's final comment to you last week--about being given a gift by Stuart and Rebecca?"

  "I didn't think about that. I tried but just felt tense. Sometimes I fear that all the strife and clamor here is a destructive distraction taking me away from the pursuits I really value. All this focus on the past and on our desires for change in the future only makes us forget the fundamental fact that life is nothing but a present moment, which is forever vanishing. What is the point of all this turmoil, given the ultimate destination of everything?"

  "I see what Tony means about you never having any fun. It's so bleak," said Bonnie.

  "I call it realism."

  "Well, go back to that bit about life being only a present moment,"

  Bonnie insisted. "I'm just asking about the present moment--your present response to being given a gift. Also, I've got a question about our postgroup coffee sessions. You charged out pretty quickly after the last two meetings. Did you think you weren't invited? No, let me put it this way: what is your present moment feeling about a coffee session after this meeting?"

  "No, I am unaccustomed to so much talking--I need to recover. At the end of this meeting I will be very glad to be through for the day."

  Julius looked at his watch. "We've got to stop--we're running over.

  Philip, I won't forget my contract with you. You fulfilled your part. I'll honor mine next meeting."

  27

  _________________________

  Weshould set a limit

  to our wishes, curb

  our

  desires,

  and

  subdue

  our

  anger,

  always

  mindful

  of

  the fact that the

  individual

  can

  attain

  only

  an

  infinitely

  small

  share of the things

  that

  are

  worth

  having...

  _________________________

  After the session the group gathered for about forty-five minutes at their usual Union Street coffee shop. Because Philip was not present, the group did not talk about him. Nor did they continue to discuss the issues raised in the meeting. Instead they listened with interest to Pam's lively description of her trip to India. Both Bonnie and Rebecca were intrigued by Vijay, her gorgeous, mysterious, cinnamon-scented train companion, and encouraged her to respond to his frequent e-mails. Gill was upbeat, thanked everyone for their support, and said that he was going to meet with Julius, get serious about abstinence, and begin AA. He thanked Pam for her good work with him.

  "Go Pam," said Tony. "The tough-love lady strikes again."

  Pam returned to her condo in the Berkeley hills just above the university. She often congratulated herself for having the good sense to hold on to this property when she married Earl. Perhaps, unconsciously, she knew she might need it again. She loved the blond wood in every room, her Tibetan scatter rugs, and the warm sunlight streaming into the living room in the late afternoon. Sipping a glass of Prosecco, she sat on her deck and watched the sun sink behind San Francisco.

  Thoughts about the group swirled in her mind. She thought about Tony doffing the costume of the group jerk and, with surgical precision, showing Philip how clueless he was about his own behavior. That was priceless. She wished she had it on tape. Tony was an uncut gem--bit by bit, more of his real sparkle was becoming visible. And his comment about her dispensing "tough love"? Did he or anyone else sense how much the "tough" outweighed the "love" in her response to Gill? Unloading on Gill was a great pleasure, only slightly diminished by its having been helpful to him. "Chief justice," he had called her. Well, at least he had the guts to say that--but then he tried to undo it by unctuously complimenting her.

  She recalled her first sight of Gill--how she was momentarily

  attracted to his physical presence, those muscles bulging out of his vest and jacket, and how quickly he had disappointed her by his pusillanimous contortions to please everyone and his
whining, his endless whining, about Rose--his frigid, strong-willed, ninety-five-pound Rose--who had the good sense, it now turns out, not to be impregnated by a drunk.

  After only a few meetings Gill had assumed his place in the long line of male losers in her life, beginning with her father, who wasted his law degree because he couldn't stand the competitive life of an attorney and settled for a safe civil service position of teaching secretaries how to write business letters and then lacked the fortitude to fight the pneumonia that killed him before he could start drawing his pension. Behind him in line there was Aaron, her acne-faced high school gutless boyfriend who passed up Swarthmore to live at home and commute to the University of Maryland, the school nearest home; and Vladimir, who wanted to marry her even though he had never gotten tenure and would be a journeyman English composition lecturer forever; and Earl, her soon-to-be ex, who was phony all the way from his Grecian formula hair dye to his Cliff note mastery of the classics and whose stable of women patients, including herself, offered easy pickings; and John, who was too much of a coward to leave a dead marriage and join her. And the latest addition, Vijay? Well, Bonnie and Rebecca could have him! She couldn't rouse much enthusiasm for a man who would need an all-day equanimity retreat to recover from the stress of ordering breakfast.

  But these thoughts about all the others were incidental. The person who compelled her attention was Philip, that pompous Schopenhauer clone, that dolt sitting there, mouthing absurdities, pretending to be human.

  After dinner Pam strolled to her bookshelves and examined her

  Schopenhauer section. For a time she had been a philosophy major and had planned a dissertation on Schopenhauer's influence on Becket and Gide. She had loved Schopenhauer's prose--the best stylist of any philosopher, save Nietzsche. And she had admired his intellect, his range, and his courage to challenge all supernatural beliefs, but the more she learned about Schopenhauer the person, the more revulsion she had felt.

  She opened an old volume of his complete essays from her bookshelf and began reading aloud some of her highlighted passages in his essay titled "Our Relation to Others."