Love's Executioner (25 page)
Read Love's Executioner Online
Authors: Irvin D. Yalom
Tags: #Psychology, #Movements, #Psychoanalysis, #Research & Methodology, #Emotions
Although Elva responded to the purse snatching in ways that
seemed
irrational (for example, proclaiming that she wasn’t fit to live on earth, being afraid to leave her house), it was clear that she was
really
suffering from the stripping away of irrationality. That sense of specialness, of being charmed, of being the exception, of being eternally protected—all those self-deceptions that had served her so well suddenly lost their persuasiveness. She saw through her own illusions, and what illusion had shielded now lay before her, bare and terrible.
seemed
irrational (for example, proclaiming that she wasn’t fit to live on earth, being afraid to leave her house), it was clear that she was
really
suffering from the stripping away of irrationality. That sense of specialness, of being charmed, of being the exception, of being eternally protected—all those self-deceptions that had served her so well suddenly lost their persuasiveness. She saw through her own illusions, and what illusion had shielded now lay before her, bare and terrible.
Her grief wound was now fully exposed. This was the time, I thought, to open it wide, to debride it, and to allow it to heal straight and true.
“When you say you never thought it would happen to you, I know just what you mean,” I said. “It’s so hard for me, too, to accept that all these afflictions—aging, loss, death—are going to happen to me, too.”
Elva nodded, her tightened brow showing that she was surprised at my saying anything personal about myself.
“You must feel that if Albert were alive, this would never have happened to you.” I ignored her flip response that if Albert were alive she wouldn’t have been taking three old hens to lunch. “So the robbery brings home the fact that he’s really gone.”
Her eyes filled with tears, but I felt I had the right, the mandate, to continue. “You knew that before, I know. But part of you didn’t. Now you really know that he’s dead. He’s not in the yard. He’s not out back in the workshop. He’s not anywhere. Except in your memories.”
Elva was really crying now, and her stubby frame heaved with sobs for several minutes. She had never done that before with me. I sat there and wondered,
“Now
what do I do?” But my instincts luckily led me to what proved to be an inspired gambit. My eyes lit upon her purse—that same ripped-off, much-abused purse; and I said, “Bad luck is one thing, but aren’t you asking for it carrying around something that large?” Elva, plucky as ever, did not fail to call attention to my overstuffed pockets and the clutter on the table next to my chair. She pronounced the purse “medium-sized.”
“Now
what do I do?” But my instincts luckily led me to what proved to be an inspired gambit. My eyes lit upon her purse—that same ripped-off, much-abused purse; and I said, “Bad luck is one thing, but aren’t you asking for it carrying around something that large?” Elva, plucky as ever, did not fail to call attention to my overstuffed pockets and the clutter on the table next to my chair. She pronounced the purse “medium-sized.”
“Any larger,” I responded, “and you’d need a luggage carrier to move it around.”
“Besides,” she said, ignoring my jibe, “I need everything in it.”
“You’ve got to be joking! Let’s see!”
Getting into the spirit of it, Elva hoisted her purse onto my table, opened its jaws wide, and began to empty it. The first items fetched forth were three empty doggie bags.
“Need two extra ones in case of an emergency?” I asked.
Elva chuckled and continued to disembowel the purse. Together we inspected and discussed each item. Elva conceded that three packets of Kleenex and twelve pens (plus three pencil stubs) were indeed superfluous, but held firm about two bottles of cologne and three hairbrushes, and dismissed, with an imperious flick of her hand, my challenge to her large flashlight, bulky notepads, and huge sheaf of photographs.
We quarreled over everything. The roll of fifty dimes. Three bags of candies (low-calorie, of course). She giggled at my question: “Do you believe, Elva, that the more of these you eat, the thinner you will become?” A plastic sack of old orange peels (“You never know, Elva, when these will come in handy”). A bunch of knitting needles (“Six needles in search of a sweater,” I thought). A bag of sourdough starter. Half of a paperback Stephen King novel (Elva threw away sections of pages as she read them: “They weren’t worth keeping,” she explained). A small stapler (“Elva, this is crazy!”). Three pairs of sunglasses. And, tucked away into the innermost corners, assorted coins, paper clips, nail clippers, pieces of emery board, and some substance that looked suspiciously like lint.
When the great bag had finally yielded all, Elva and I stared in wonderment at the contents set out in rows on my table. We were sorry the bag was empty and that the emptying was over. She turned and smiled, and we looked tenderly at each other. It was an extraordinarily intimate moment. In a way no patient had ever done before, she showed me everything. And I had accepted everything and asked for even more. I followed her into her every nook and crevice, awed that one old woman’s purse could serve as a vehicle for both isolation and intimacy: the absolute isolation that is integral to existence and the intimacy that dispels the dread, if not the fact, of isolation.
That was a transforming hour. Our time of intimacy—call it love, call it love making—was redemptive. In that one hour, Elva moved from a position of forsakenness to one of trust. She came alive and was persuaded, once more, of her capacity for intimacy.
I think it was the best hour of therapy I ever gave.
6
“Do Not Go Gentle”
I didn’t know how to respond. Never before had a patient asked me to be the
keeper of love letters. Dave presented his reasons straightforwardly. Sixty-nine-year-old men have been known to die suddenly. In that event, his wife would find the letters and be pained by reading them. There was no one else he could ask to keep them, no friend he had dared tell of this affair. His lover, Soraya? Thirty years dead. She had died while giving birth. Not his child, Dave was quick to add. God knows what had happened to his letters to her!”
keeper of love letters. Dave presented his reasons straightforwardly. Sixty-nine-year-old men have been known to die suddenly. In that event, his wife would find the letters and be pained by reading them. There was no one else he could ask to keep them, no friend he had dared tell of this affair. His lover, Soraya? Thirty years dead. She had died while giving birth. Not his child, Dave was quick to add. God knows what had happened to his letters to her!”
“What do you want me to do with them?” I asked.
“Nothing. Do nothing at all. Just keep them.”
“When was the last time you read them?”
“I haven’t read them for at least twenty years.”
“They seem like such a hot potato,” I ventured. “Why keep them at all?”
Dave looked at me incredulously. I think a shiver of doubt went through him. Was I really that stupid? Had he made a mistake in thinking I was sensitive enough to help him? After a few seconds, he said, “I’ll never destroy those letters.”
These words had an edge to them, the first signs of strain in the relationship we had been forming over the past six months. My comment had been a blunder, and I retreated to a more conciliatory, open-ended line of questioning. “Dave, tell me some more about the letters and what they mean to you.”
Dave began to talk about Soraya, and in a few minutes the tension had gone and his self-assured easy jauntiness returned. He had met her while he was managing a branch of an American company in Beirut. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever conquered.
Conquer
was his word. Dave always surprised me with such statements, part ingenuousness, part cynicism. How could he say
conquer?
Was he even less self-aware than I had thought? Or, was it possible that he was far ahead of me and mocked himself—and me, too—with subtle irony?
Conquer
was his word. Dave always surprised me with such statements, part ingenuousness, part cynicism. How could he say
conquer?
Was he even less self-aware than I had thought? Or, was it possible that he was far ahead of me and mocked himself—and me, too—with subtle irony?
He had loved Soraya—or, at least, she was the only lover (and they had been legion) to whom he had ever said, “I love you.” He and Soraya had a deliciously clandestine affair for four years. (Not delicious
and
clandestine but
deliciously clandestine,
for secrecy—and I shall say more about this shortly—was the axis of Dave’s personality around which all else rotated. He was aroused by, compelled by, secrecy, and often courted it at great personal expense. Many relationships, especially those with his three ex-wives and his current wife, had been twisted and torn by his unwillingness to be open or straight about anything.)
and
clandestine but
deliciously clandestine,
for secrecy—and I shall say more about this shortly—was the axis of Dave’s personality around which all else rotated. He was aroused by, compelled by, secrecy, and often courted it at great personal expense. Many relationships, especially those with his three ex-wives and his current wife, had been twisted and torn by his unwillingness to be open or straight about anything.)
After four years Dave’s company transferred him to another part of the world, and for the next six years until her death, Dave and Soraya saw each other only four times. But they corresponded almost daily. He had kept Soraya’s letters (numbering in the hundreds) well hidden. Sometimes he put them in a file cabinet in quirky categories (under
G
for guilty, or
D
for depression—that is, to be read when deeply depressed).
G
for guilty, or
D
for depression—that is, to be read when deeply depressed).
Once, for three years, he had stored them in a safe deposit box. I wondered, but did not ask, about the relationship between his wife and the key to that safe deposit box. Knowing his penchant for secrecy and intrigue, I could imagine what would happen: he would accidentally let his wife see the key and then devise an obviously false cover story to churn her curiosity; then, as she grew anxious and inquisitive, he would proceed to despise her for snooping and for constricting him by her unseemly suspiciousness. Dave had frequently enacted that type of scenario.
“Now I’m getting more and more nervous about Soraya’s letters, and I wondered if you’d keep them. It’s just that simple.”
We both looked at his large briefcase bulging with words of love from Soraya—the long-dead, dear Soraya whose brain and mind had vanished, whose scattered DNA molecules had drained back into the basin of earth, and who, for thirty years, had not thought of Dave or anything else.
I wondered whether Dave could step back and become witness to himself. To see how ludicrous, how pathetic, how idolatrous he was—an old man, stumbling toward death, comforted only by a clutch of letters, a marching banner proclaiming that he had loved and been loved once, thirty years before. Would it help Dave to see that image? Could I help him assume the “witness to himself” posture without his feeling that I was demeaning both him and the letters?
To my mind, “good” therapy (which I equate with deep, or penetrating, therapy, not with efficient or even, I am pained to say, helpful therapy) conducted with a “good” patient is at bottom a truth-seeking venture. My quarry when I was a novitiate was the truth of the past, to trace all of a life’s coordinates and, thereby, to locate and to explain a person’s current life, pathology, motivation, and actions.
I used to be so sure. What arrogance! And
now
what kind of truth was I stalking? I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
now
what kind of truth was I stalking? I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
But there is timing and judgment. Never take away anything if you have nothing better to offer. Beware of stripping a patient who can’t bear the chill of reality. And don’t exhaust yourself by jousting with religious magic: you’re no match for it. The thirst for religion is too strong, its roots too deep, its cultural reinforcement too powerful.
Yet I am not without faith, my Hail Mary being the Socratic incantation, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But that was not Dave’s faith. So I curbed my curiosity. Dave scarcely wondered about the ultimate meaning of his clutch of letters and now, tight and brittle, he would not be receptive to such an inquiry. Nor would it be helpful—now or probably ever.
Besides, my questions had a hollow ring. I saw much of myself in Dave, and there are limits to my hypocrisy. I, too, had my sack of letters from a long-lost love. I, too, had them cutely hidden away (in my system, under B for
Bleak House,
my favorite Dickens novel, to be read when life was at its bleakest). I, too, had never reread the letters. Whenever I tried, they brought pain, not comfort. They had lain there untouched for fifteen years, and I, too, could not destroy them.
Bleak House,
my favorite Dickens novel, to be read when life was at its bleakest). I, too, had never reread the letters. Whenever I tried, they brought pain, not comfort. They had lain there untouched for fifteen years, and I, too, could not destroy them.
Were I my own patient (or my own therapist), I would say, “Imagine the letters gone, destroyed or lost. What would you feel? Plunge into that feeling, explore it.” But I could not. Often I thought of burning them, but that thought always evoked an inexpressible ache. My great interest in Dave, my surge of curiosity and fascination, I knew whence it came: I was asking Dave to do my work for me. Or
our
work for
us.
our
work for
us.
From the outset I had felt drawn to Dave. At our first session six months before, I had asked him, after a few pleasantries, “What ails?”
He responded, “I can’t get it up any more!”
I was astonished. I remember looking at him—his tall, lean, athletic body, his full head of glistening black hair, and his lively elfish eyes belying his sixty-nine years—and thinking, “
Chapeau!
” “Hats off!” My father had his first coronary at forty-eight. I hoped that when I was sixty-nine I’d be sufficiently alive and vital to worry about “getting it up.”
Chapeau!
” “Hats off!” My father had his first coronary at forty-eight. I hoped that when I was sixty-nine I’d be sufficiently alive and vital to worry about “getting it up.”
Dave and I both had a proclivity to sexualize much in our environment. I contained it better than he, and had long since learned to prevent it from dominating my life. I also did not share Dave’s passion for secrecy, and have many friends, including my wife, with whom I share everything.
Back to the letters. What should I do? Should I keep Dave’s letters? Well, why not? After all, was it not an auspicious sign that he was willing to trust me? He had never been able to confide much in anyone and certainly not in a male. Although impotence had been his explicit reason for choosing to see me, I felt that the real task of therapy was to improve the way he related to others. A trusting, confiding relationship is a prerequisite for any therapy and, in Dave’s, might be instrumental in changing his pathological need for secrecy. Keeping the letters would forge a bond of trust between us.
Perhaps the letters might give me additional leverage. I had never felt that Dave was securely lodged in therapy even though we had worked well with his impotence. My tactic had been to focus on the marital discord, and to suggest that impotence was to be expected in a relationship with so much anger and mutual suspicion. Dave, who had been recently married (for the fourth time), described his current marriage in the same way he described his previous marriages: he felt he was in prison and his wife was a prison guard who listened to his phone conversations and read his mail and personal papers. I had helped him realize that, to the extent that he was in prison, it was a prison of his own construction.
Of course,
his wife tried to obtain information about him.
Of course,
she was curious about his actions and correspondence. But it was he who had whetted her curiosity by refusing to share even innocent crumbs of information about his life.
Of course,
his wife tried to obtain information about him.
Of course,
she was curious about his actions and correspondence. But it was he who had whetted her curiosity by refusing to share even innocent crumbs of information about his life.
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