Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom

Author:Irvin D. Yalom [Yalom, Irvin D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Movements, Psychoanalysis, Research & Methodology, Emotions
ISBN: 9780465031603
Google: anRSNigZ8bIC
Amazon: 0465020119
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

At the onset of therapy, Betty had indeed wanted only the trim painted but had been drawn inexorably into reconstructive work on the deep interior of the house. Moreover, the painter-therapist had sprayed death—her father’s death, her own death—into her house. Now she was saying she had gone far enough; it was time to stop.

As we neared our final session, I felt a mounting relief and exhilaration—as though I had gotten away with something. One of the axioms of psychotherapy is that the important feelings one has for another always get communicated through one channel or another—if not verbally, then nonverbally. For as long as I can remember, I have taught my students that if something big in a relationship is not being talked about (by either patient or therapist), then nothing else of importance will be discussed either.

Yet I had started therapy with intense negative feelings about Betty—feelings I had never discussed with her and that she had never recognized. Nevertheless, without doubt, we had discussed important issues. Without doubt, we had made progress in therapy. Had I disproven the catechism? Are there no “absolutes” in psychotherapy?

Our final three hours were devoted to work on Betty’s distress at our impending separation. What she had feared at the very onset of treatment had come to pass: she had allowed herself to feel deeply about me and was now going to lose me. What was the point of having trusted me at all? It was as she had said at first: “No involvement, no separation.”

I was not dismayed by the re-emergence of these old feelings. First, as termination approaches, patients are bound to regress temporarily. (There is an absolute.) Second, issues are never resolved once and for all in therapy. Instead, therapist and patient inevitably return again and again to adjust and to reinforce the learning—indeed, for this very reaso, psychotherapy has often been dubbed “cyclotherapy.”

I attempted to address Betty’s despair, and her belief that once she left me all our work would come to naught, by reminding her that her growth resided neither in me nor in any outside object, but was a part of her, a part she would take with her. If, for example, she was able to trust and to reveal herself to me more than to anyone previously, then she contained within herself that experience as well as the ability to do it again. To drive my point home, I attempted, in our final session, to use myself as an example.

“It’s the same with me, Betty. I’ll miss our meetings. But I’m changed as a result of knowing you—”

She had been crying, her eyes downcast, but at my words she stopped sobbing and looked toward me, expectantly.

“And, even though we won’t meet again, I’ll still retain that change.”

“What change?”

“Well, as I mentioned to you, I hadn’t had much professional experience with . . . er . . . with the problem of obesity——” I noted Betty’s eyes drop with disappointment and silently berated myself for being so impersonal.

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