Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy

by Irvin D. Yalom

  The lawsuit dragged on for three years, and she settled for a disappointingly small sum. By that time, her anger toward Dr. Z. had rusted away, and she forgot about her resolution to raise her voice against him. Ultimately she married a sweet, elderly man. I’m not certain whether she was ever truly happy again. But she never smoked another cigarette.

  Epilogue

  Marie’s consultation hour is a testament to the limits of knowing. Though she, Mike, and I shared an hour, each of us had a vastly different, and unpredictable, experience. The hour was a triptych, each panel reflecting the perspective, the hues, the concerns, of its creator. Perhaps if I had given Mike more information about Marie, his panel would have resembled mine more closely. But of my hundred hours with her, what should I have shared? My irritation? My impatience? My self-pity for being stuck with Marie? My pleasure with her progress? My sexual arousal? My intellectual curiosity? My desire to change Marie’s vision, to teach her to look within, to dream, to fantasize, to extend her horizons?

  Yet had I spent hours with Mike and shared all this information, still I would not have adequately conveyed my experience of Marie. My impressions of her, my pleasure, my impatience are not precisely like any others I have known. I reach out for words, metaphors, analogies, but they never really work; they are at best feeble approximations of the rich images that once coursed through my mind.

  A series of distorting prisms block the knowing of the other. Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician listened to the sounds of life with an ear pressed against a patient’s rib cage. Imagine two minds pressed tight together and, like paramecia exchanging micronuclei, directly transferring thought images: that would be union nonpareil.

  Perhaps in some millennium, such union will come to pass—the ultimate antidote for isolation, the ultimate scourge of privacy. For now, there exist formidable barriers to such mind coupling.

  First, there is the barrier between image and language. Mind thinks in images but, to communicate with another, must transform image into thought and then thought into language. That march, from image to thought to language, is treacherous. Casualties occur: the rich, fleecy texture of image, its extraordinary plasticity and flexibility, its private nostalgic emotional hues—all are lost when image is crammed into language.

  Great artists attempt to communicate image directly through suggestion, through metaphor, through linguistic feats intended to evoke some similar image in the reader. But ultimately they realize the inadequacy of their tools for the task. Listen to Flaubert’s lament, in Madame Bovary: Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes over flow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

  Another reason we can never fully know another is that we are selective about what we choose to disclose. Marie sought Mike’s assistance for impersonal goals, to control pain and stop smoking, and so chose to reveal to him little of herself. Consequently, he mistook the meaning of her smiles. I knew more about Marie and about her smiles. But I, too, mistook their meaning: what I knew of her was but a small fragment of what she would and could tell me of herself.

  Once I worked in a group with a patient who, during two years of therapy, rarely addressed me directly. One day Jay surprised me and the other members by announcing (“confessing” was his word) that everything he had ever said in the group—his feedback to others, his self-revelations, all his angry and caring words—everything, had really been said for my benefit. Jay recapitulated, in the group, his life experiences in his family, where he yearned for his father’s love but had never—could never—ask for it. In the group, he had participated in many dramas but always against the horizon of what he might get from me. Though he pretended to speak to other members of the group, he spoke through them to me as he continuously sought my approval and support.

  In that instant of confession, my entire construct of Jay exploded. I thought I had known him well a week, a month, six months before. But I had never known the real, the secret Jay; and, after his confession, I had to reconstruct my image of him and assign new meanings to past experiences. But this new Jay, this changeling, how long would he stay? How long before new secrets would accrue? How long before he revealed this new layer? I knew that, stretching out into the future, there would be an infinite number of Jays. Never could I catch up with the “real” one.

  A third barrier to the full knowing of another lies not in the one who shares but in the other, the knower, who must reverse the sharer’s sequence and translate language back into image—the script the mind can read. It is wildly improbable that the receiver’s image will match the sender’s original mental image.

  Translation error is compounded by bias error. 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. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognize and to which we listen.

  “Each time we see the face . . . it is our own ideas of him which we recognize”—these words provide a key to understanding many miscarried relationships. Dan, one of my patients, attended a meditation retreat where he engaged in treposa, a meditation procedure in which two people hold hands for several minutes, lock gazes, meditate deeply upon one another, and then repeat the process with new partners. 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.

  Whenever Dan discussed such experiences, I had to constrain my skepticism and rationalism: “Spiritual linkage, indeed! What we have here, Dan, is an autistic relationship. You don’t know this person. In a Proustian way, you’ve packed this creature full of the attributes you so desire. You’ve fallen in love with your own creation.”

  Of course, I never explicitly expressed these sentiments. I don’t think Dan would have wanted to work with someone so skeptical. Yet I am sure I aired my views in many indirect ways: a quizzical look, the timing of comments or inquiries, my fascination with some topics and indifference to others.

  Dan picked up these innuendos and, in his own defense, cited Nietzsche who said somewhere that when you first meet someone, you know all about him; on subsequent meetings, you blind yourself to your own wisdom. Nietzsche carries a lot of weight with me, and that citation gave me pause. Perhaps on a first meeting, guards are down; perhaps one has not yet determined what persona to don. Maybe first impressions are more accurate than second or third impressions. But that is a far distance from spiritually communing with the other. Besides, though Nietzsche was a seer in many domains, he was no guide to interpersonal relationships—has there ever lived a lonelier, more isolated man?

  Was Dan right? Had he, through some mystical channel, discovered something vital and real about the other person? Or had he simply packed his own ideas and desires into some human profile—a profile he found attractive only because it ignited cozy, loving, nurturing associations?

  We could never test the treposa situation because such meditation retreats usually follow the rule of “noble silence”: no speech whatsoever is permitted. But on several occasions he encountered a woman socially, locked gazes, and experienced a spiritual melding with her. With rare exceptions he learned that the spiritual union was a mirage. The woman was usually baffled or frightened by his
assumption that there was some deep bond between them. Often it took Dan a long time to see this. Sometimes I felt cruel as I confronted him with my view of reality.

  “Dan, this intense closeness you feel toward Diane—maybe she did allude to the possibility of a relationship some time in the future, but look at the facts. She doesn’t return your calls, she’s been living with a man and now that’s breaking up, she’s making arrangements to move in with someone else. Listen to what she’s telling you.”

  Occasionally the woman into whose eyes Dan was gazing experienced the same deep spiritual linkage, and they were drawn together into love—but a love that invariably passed quickly. Sometimes it simply waned painfully away; sometimes it turned into violent jealous accusations. Often Dan, his lover, or both, ended up depressed. Whatever the route the passing of love took, the final outcome was the same; neither got what they wanted from the other.

  I am persuaded that, in these infatuating first meetings, Dan and the woman mistook what they each saw in the other. They each saw the reflection of their own beseeching, wounded gaze and mistook it for desire and fullness. They were each fledglings with broken wings who sought to fly by clasping another broken-winged bird. People who feel empty never heal by merging with another incomplete person. On the contrary, two broken-winged birds coupled into one make for clumsy flight. No amount of patience will help it fly; and, ultimately, each must be pried from the other, and wounds separately splinted.

  The unknowability of the other inheres not only in the problems I have described—the deep structures of image and language, the individual’s intentional and unintentional decision to conceal, the observer’s scotomata—but also in the vast richness and intricacy of each individual being. While vast research programs seek to decipher electrical and biochemical activity of the brain, each person’s flow of experience is so complex that it will forever outdistance new eavesdropping technology.

  Julian Barnes has, in Flaubert’s Parrot, illustrated in a beautiful and whimsical manner a person’s inexhaustible complexity. The author sets out to discover the real Flaubert, the flesh-and-blood man behind the public image. Frustrated by direct traditional methods of biography, Barnes attempted to catch Flaubert’s essence off-guard by using indirect means: discussing, for example, his interest in trains, the animals for which he felt an affinity, or the number of different methods (and colors) he used to describe Emma Bovary’s eyes.

  Barnes, of course, never captured the quintessence of the man, Flaubert, and ultimately set a more modest task for himself. On visits to the two Flaubert museums—one at Flaubert’s childhood home and the other at the house where he lived as an adult—Barnes sees in each a stuffed parrot that each museum claims to be the model Flaubert used for Lulu, the parrot prominent in his “A Simple Soul.” This situation stirs Barnes’s investigative reflexes: by God, though he can’t locate Flaubert, he will at least determine which was the real parrot and which the imposter.

  The physical appearance of the two parrots is of no help: they resemble one another closely; and both, moreover, satisfy Flaubert’s published description of Lulu. Then, at one museum, the aged guardian offers proof his parrot is the real one. His parrot’s perch has a stamp on it—“Museum of Rouen”; and he then shows Barnes a photocopy of a receipt indicating that Flaubert, over a hundred years ago, had rented (and later returned) the municipal museum’s parrot. Elated at being close to a solution, the author hurries to the other museum only to discover that the competing parrot has the identical stamp on its perch. Later he spoke to the oldest living member of the Société des Amis de Flaubert who told him the true story of the parrots. When the two museums were under construction (long after Flaubert’s death), each of the curators went, separately, to the municipal museum with a copy of the receipt in hand, and asked for Flaubert’s parrot for his museum. Each curator was escorted into a large stuffed-animal room containing at least fifty virtually identical stuffed parrots! “Take your choice,” each was told.

  The impossibility of discovering the authentic parrot puts an end to Barnes’s belief that the “real” Flaubert, or the “real” anyone, can be ensnared. But many people never discover the folly of such a search and continue to believe that, given enough information, they can define and explain a person. Controversy has always existed among psychiatrists and psychologists about the validity of personality diagnosis. Some believe in the merits of the enterprise and devote their careers to ever greater nosological precision. 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. Nonetheless, we find ourselves under ever-increasing pressure (from hospitals, insurance companies, governmental agencies) to sum up a person with a diagnostic phrase and a numerical category.

  Even the most liberal system of psychiatric nomenclature does violence to the being of another. If we relate to people believing that we can categorize them, we will neither identify nor nurture the parts, the vital parts, of the other that transcend category. The enabling relationship always assumes that the other is never fully knowable. If I were forced to assign an official diagnostic label to Marie, I would follow the formula prescribed in the current psychiatric diagnostic and statistical manual and arrive at a precise and official-sounding six-part diagnosis. Yet I know that it would have little to do with the flesh-and-blood Marie, the Marie who always surprised me and outdistanced my grasp, the Marie of the two smiles.

  8

  Three Unopened Letters

  “The first one came on a Monday. The day started out like any other day. I spent the morning working on a paper, and around noontime I strolled down to the end of my driveway to collect the mail—I usually read the mail as I eat lunch. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I had a premonition that this day was not going to be an ordinary day. I got to the mailbox and——and——”

  Saul could go no further. His voice cracked. He put his head down and tried to collect himself. I had never seen him look worse. 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 minutes he tried to continue. “In the mail I saw that it had come . . . I . . . I can’t go on, I don’t know what to do——”

  In the three or four minutes Saul had been in my office, he had worked himself into a state of deep agitation. He began to breathe rapidly, taking short, staccato, shallow breaths. He put his head between his knees and held his breath, but without avail. Then he rose from his chair and paced about in my office, gulping air in great draughts. Much more hyperventilation and I knew Saul would pass out. I wished I had a brown paper bag for him to breathe into but, lacking that old folk remedy (as good as any other for counteracting hyperventilation), I tried to talk him down.

  “Saul, nothing’s going to happen to you. You’ve come to see me for help, and this is just what I’m trained to do. We’ll be able to work this out together. Here’s what I want you to do. Start by lying here on the couch and concentrating on your breathing. First breathe deep and fast; then we’ll gradually slow it down. I want you to focus on one thing, nothing else. You hear me? Just keep noticing that the air entering your nostrils always feels cooler than the air leaving your nostrils. Meditate on that. Soon you’ll notice that, as you breathe more slowly, your exhaling air will feel even warmer.”

  My suggestion was more effective than I anticipated. Within minutes Saul relaxed, his breathing slowed, his look of panic disappeared.

  “Now that you’re looking better, Saul, let’s go back to work. Remember, I need to be filled in—I haven’t seen you in three years. Exactly what’s happened to you? Tell me everything. I want to hear every detail.”

  Details are wonderful. They are informative, they are calming, and they penetrate the anxiety of isolation: the patient feels that, once you have the details, you have entered into his life.

&
nbsp; Saul chose not to give me any background but continued with his description of recent events, continuing his story where he had left off.

  “I picked up my mail and walked back to the house, flipping through the usual batch of junk—advertisements, charity requests. Then I saw it—an oversized, brown, formal envelope from the Stockholm Research Institute. It had finally come! For weeks I’ve dreaded getting that letter, and now that it had finally come, I could not open it.” He paused.

  “What happened then? Don’t skip anything.”

  “I think I just collapsed in a kitchen chair and sat there. Then I folded the letter and jammed it into my rear trouser pocket. I began making lunch.” Another pause.

  “Keep going. Don’t leave out anything.”

  “I boiled two eggs and made egg salad. It’s funny but egg salad sandwiches have always been soothing. I only eat them when I’m upset—no lettuce, no tomato, no chopped celery or onion. Just mashed egg, salt, pepper, mayonnaise served on very fluffy white bread.”

  “Did it work? Did the sandwiches soothe you?”

  “I had a hard time getting to them. First, I was distracted by the envelope—its jagged edges were gouging my ass. I took the letter out of my pocket and started playing around with it. You know—holding it up to the light, feeling its weight, trying to guess how many pages it had. Not that it would make any difference. I knew that its message would be brief—and brutal.”