love's executioner two smiles summary
Her plans and her family were shattered: her daughter was dead, her husband gone, one son was in jail, the other in hiding. I was concerned by her clinical condition and felt responsible for it: week by week, as new material emerged, she had grown progressively more depressed. Stay focused! I knew from our work three years before that this aunt, the one who had brought him up after his parents death, was a bitter, vindictive woman. Obviously, she gave him that power in an effort to deny her own life. What conclusions can be drawn from these data concerning the inventories? I felt disloyal to Marge for finding her rival so attractive, for being so bemused by her mimicry of Marge. Go on, Carlos, this is importantapply that to yourself and to your life., He bit off each word slowly. Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician listened to the sounds of life with an ear pressed against a patients rib cage. Everything wrong about themalways has been. It was impossible to think that she was forty. Its four years now. In the past he had so much difficulty sharing potentially embarrassing material that I instituted, in the last fifteen minutes of each hour, a designated secrets time, when I explicitly asked him to take a leap and share the secrets he had sheltered over the earlier part of the therapy hour. My secretary said you sounded desperate. After two months, I had an entirely new and deep appreciation of an old anecdote I had heard in high school about the nineteenth-century English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray: in it, as he came out of his study, his wife asked how the days writing had gone. Love's Executioner offers a tragic, deeply felt vision of the human condition. After an unusually long silence, Thelma stated that she needed more time to think about it. I could see Marge flicker her eyelids and then close them. It was hard to remember the giggling, superficial woman of a few months before. Nothingnot anger, pride, or hostile brushing of her breaststook precedence over her functional and cosmetic recovery. I dont like to feel invisible. But when he got out to the lot, the only car available was greenhis least favorite color! I resolved to give him everything, to give in to him on every issue. In a way no patient had ever done before, she showed me everything. She turned and smiled, and we looked tenderly at each other. It was as though I wasnt there, or at least the part of me that hurts and pulls me down. Now let me answer the personal part of the questionhow do I feel about working with you? Nonetheless, possibly because there was so much therapy to be done, I found myself forgetting the research and, little by little, slipping into a therapeutic mode. It stands to reason that there is more to be gained in working with, say, a young mother with three children. 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 had her attention. Ive got a one- or two-percent chance now that hell come around. Where was his curiosity that his life had changed so dramatically, that his sense of direction, his happiness, even his desire to live was now entirely dictated by whether he could sustain tumescence in his penis? I hoped that my reputation in the field would intimidate him into cooperating. Those were twenty-seven days of paradise, and Id give anything to have them back!. Pennys small house had three small bedrooms, and the boys had always shared one while Chrissie had her own room. But her behavior was not entirely reactive to Marvins problems. And, of course, behind the scenes, I was subtly guiding her toward that decision. Marvin had applied to his relationship with Phyllis the insights he had obtained from a confrontation with the deep sources of his despair. I hoped that when I was sixty-nine Id be sufficiently alive and vital to worry about getting it up.. Though she had an active sexual fantasy life, she had never had any physical contact with a mannot a hug, not a kiss, not even a lascivious grab. She explains that the affair lasted roughly a month and that it was "magical" (19). At first I thought I would be encountering myself as a very young man, but a bit of arithmetic led to the realization that I was no sapling when I wrote this book: I was in my mid-fifties! What a relief to have a break from Marges droning voice and relentless whining. For the first time I know Im seventy years old, seven zerothats older than ninety-nine percent of the people walking around. Carlos, Im going to be blunt. I need to know you are there at all times to take care of me and prevent me from being frightened.. It is through willing, the mainspring of action, that our freedom is enacted. I struggled to find some handhold. So you avoid me now because you wont always have me?, I know it doesnt make sense. Its been quite a week.. Two years later, his older brother received a postcard from their father saying he was alive and well and was sure the family was better off without him. I could hear her listening, and continued. It had been a long time since I had made a home visit. Everything was going well. I was certain that I, even in my impatience, would act in Sauls best interests. Should I keep Daves letters? First, I couldnt get a slide out of the projector to put in another. They were soon all over the house. Ive gotten my moneys worth today. Penny responded matter-of- factly that what she did was best for her and best for them. There was Marge timidly meeting me for the first time. We talked for a while about the bad marriage she made in the dream. During the rest of the hour, Thelma repeated a lot of old material: she talked about her feelings toward Matthew, how they were not transference, how Matthew had given her the best days of her life. The message:There are vital parts of me that I have buried all my lifethe little boy, the woman, the artist, the meaning-seeking part. It was Marge, but it was not Marge. I dont remember exactly what we talked about, but it helped me change a lot.. I didnt want to get involved with that. The main thing is that shes afraid of going out of the house. I saw a shrink, and it was he who advised complete silence. Since then he has never left my mind. You look uncomfortable. He was eating a sandwich and had about twenty minutes before he had to lead a therapy group. But its different with Thelmaits not that she wants it, but that she has to have it in order to escape some danger. Where is that moment now?, Well, where is it? Four more? If we stare too hard into the past, its easy to be overcome with regret. Besides, he was a person who wanted to try everything once, and he had never before spoken to a psychiatrist. So we agreed to meet once a week for six months (with the possibility of a six-month extension, if we thought it necessary). In those days I would have deepened Marges hypnotic state, regressed her in age, asked her to explore early traumasfor example, her fathers sexual abuseand urged her to experience and discharge all the attendant feelings, the fear, the arousal, the rage, the betrayal. Youve thought that maybe he was trying to drive you to suicide. But what have I been doing instead? I wondered what position I should take about the fifty thousand dollars? She followed my advice to have a direct confrontation; and when the tenant refused to alter her cooking habits, Marie scarcely hesitated to ask the woman to move. Theyre printing those things for somebodytheres gotta be a market out there. This was all the information I could handle (and all that I thought I needed). But he did join the group and attended the first several meetings faithfully. Always overweight, she became markedly obese in late adolescence. Furthermore, he was especially kind to Bettyperhaps it was that he knew she was my patient, perhaps that she came along when he was in a generous (everybody has got a heart) state of mind, perhaps simply that he always had a fondness for fat women (which, I am embarassed to say, I had always considered further proof of his perversity). The fear of death is naturally feminine because you are the givers of life. She was right: she was living her life eight years ago. How would it go? I dont rely on role-playing or chair-switching, but this seemed the perfect place for it. First, I thought of Pennys desperate wish to keep everyone together, to create the stable family she never had as a child, and how that was manifested in her fierce resolve to own a house and a cemetery plot. But he was composing himself. For years he endured his friends jibes about dating his mother. Number three,. If he would call me once a year, talk to me for even five minutes, ask about me, show me his concern, then I could live happily. After that, there seemed to be no further work we could do, and we parted. First, youve got to know exactly what I mean. How? His colleague said that Dr. K. had suddenly died of a pulmonary embolus, and proceeded to describe the circumstances around the death. He never missed an opportunity to describe to me in graphic terms what he would like to do to Sarah, as though he considered that we were rivals for her. I had promised myself to Marge. Her tongue, always visible, changed radically in size as it darted in and out or circled her moist, rubbery lips. After all, eating was her life. More than anything else, I place high value on the therapists presence and engagement in the therapy process, but now I noted that the relationship between Saul and me was full of concealmentmine no less than his. My God! That must be the six others who felt the same way in the dream. Did the rapist tear our clothing? Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. A scene I hadnt thought of in decades entered my mind: I was a student in a medical school interviewing class. Where is the actress who played Marge with such brilliance? Upon this unconscious premise, Elva had built her entire assumptive worlda world featuring safety and benevolent paternalism. All names, identifying characteristics, and other details of the case material in this book have been changed. (Youve had a highly successful academic career. At a second- rate university in a third-rate department. Two hundred and sixty-three publications? Ive been publishing for forty-two years, thats only six a year. My answer soothed Thelma. What could be clearer? 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. So now, hearing the litany again, I pondered how to shift her from this state of mind. 2 These differing visions were later published as Every Day Gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy (New York: Basic Books, 1974). Then I might really learn something about the function of love. And so much pain, so close to the surface, only minutes deep. Heart transplantwhat an inspired visual symbol for psychotherapy!] It was my idea to invite Matthew, my idea to ask him the questions you did. I thought I saw her nod her head. Does that sound like a crazy thought?, I dont know if its crazy, but it sounds like a desperate and terribly painful thought., Hes trying to drive me to suicide. It was time to face the truth: I had botched this case beyond belief, and I could not transfer blame to the patient, or her husband, or the human condition. My irritation? And yet every time I talk about whats happened, I have a miserable week. with you if, from now on in our future sessions, I interrupt and point out when youre entertaining methe moment it occurs?. Hers was malfunctioning: it was located too close to the surface of her body. Some people are wish-blocked, knowing neither what they feel nor what they want. Some patients are easy. Maybe I should give them to Mort or Jay or Pete to store for me. It was apparent that both he and I had reservations. We were both on the edge of our chairs when the clock said we had to finish. The shoe is losing its soul, spelled S-O-U-L.. I was transfixed by the dream. Thats why I felt uncomfortable with her somehow, and so set about exploring it. it is our own ideas of him which we recognizethese words provide a key to understanding many miscarried relationships. Painful thoughts or memories may emerge which will temporarily make you more uncomfortable than you are right now.. I was pondering whether onions really do have a lot of sugar when I arrived at Sauls home. He was also highly judgmental. Marge returned to the topic of her lack of success and how much more accomplished was her thirty-year-old boss. Bjrn Borgs pulse is fifty, Ive heard. A little more of this treatment would be unendurable. She added, with a grim smile, A little more treatment would kill the patient..