Love's Executioner (32 page)

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Authors: Irvin D. Yalom

Tags: #Psychology, #Movements, #Psychoanalysis, #Research & Methodology, #Emotions

BOOK: Love's Executioner
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Saul was stuck. He could not—without mentioning the fate of their collaborative venture—write Dr. K. to obtain his permission to credit him. Again, Saul did nothing.
Several months later, his paper (with no mention of Dr. K. and no citation of their collaborative work) appeared as the lead article of an outstanding neurobiology journal.
“And that,” Saul told me with a great sigh, “brings us up to now. I’ve been dreading the publication of this article. I knew that Dr. K. would read it. I knew what he would think and feel about me. I knew that, in his eyes and in the eyes of the entire Stockholm Institute community, I would be a fraud, a thief, worse than a thief. I waited to hear from him, and I received the first letter four weeks after publication—right on schedule—just time enough for the journal issue to reach Scandinavia, for Dr. K. to read it, to pass judgment, to deliver sentence. Just time enough for his letter to reach me in California.”
Saul stopped here. His eyes pleaded with me: “I can’t go on. Take this all away. Take away this pain.”
Though I had never seen Saul so abject, I was convinced that I would be able to render help quickly. Hence I assumed my efficient, task-oriented voice and wondered what plans he had made, what steps taken? He hesitated and then said that he had decided to return the fifty-thousand-dollar stipend to the Stockholm Institute! Knowing, from our previous work, that I disapproved of his penchant for buying his way out of difficult situations, Saul left me no time to respond but rushed ahead, saying that he had yet to decide upon the best method. He was considering a letter stating that he was returning the money because he had not used his fellowship time productively at the institute. Another possibility was to give a simple outright gift to the Stockholm Institute—a gift that would appear to be unrelated to anything else. Such a gift might be a deft move, he thought—an insurance policy to quell any possible censure of his behavior.
I could see Saul’s discomfort as he revealed these plans to me. He knew I would disagree. He hated to displease anyone and wanted my approval almost as much as he wanted Dr. K.’s. I felt relieved that he had been willing to share so much with me—the only bright spot I saw in the session so far.
For a short time we both lapsed into silence. Saul was spent and leaned back, exhausted. I, too, sank back in my chair and took stock of the situation. This whole story was a comic nightmare—a tar baby saga in which, at every step, Saul’s social ineptitude glued him more tightly to the impossible predicament.
But there was nothing funny about Saul’s appearance. He looked awful. He always minimized his pain—always fearful of “bothering” me. If I multiplied every sign of stress by ten, I would have it: his willingness to pay fifty thousand dollars; his morbid, suicidal ruminations (he had made a serious suicide attempt five years before); his anorexia; his insomnia; his request to see me sooner. His blood pressure (he had told me earlier) had risen to one hundred ninety over one hundred twenty; and six years before, at a time of stress, he had had a severe, nearly fatal coronary.
So it was clear that I must not underestimate the gravity of the situation: Saul was
in extremis,
and I must offer some immediate help. His overwrought reaction was, I thought, totally irrational. God knows what was in those letters—probably some irrelevant announcement, a scientific meeting or a new journal. But I was certain of one thing: those letters, despite their timing, were
not
letters of censure from either Dr. K. or the Stockholm Institute; and, without doubt, as soon as he read them, his distress would evaporate.
Before proceeding, I considered alternatives: Was I being too hasty, too active? What about my countertransference? It was true I felt impatient with Saul. “This whole thing is ridiculous,” some part of me wanted to say. “Go home and read those goddamn letters!” Perhaps I was annoyed that my previous therapy with him was showing signs of wear. Was my piqued vanity causing me to be impatient with Saul?
Though it is true that on that day I regarded him as foolish, in the main I always liked him very much. I had liked him from the moment I met him. One of the things he said at our first meeting endeared him to me: “I’m going to be fifty-nine soon, and some day I’d like to be able to stroll down Union Street and spend the afternoon window shopping.”
I have always felt drawn to patients who struggle with the same issues I do. I know all about the longing to take a noonday stroll. How many times have I yearned for the luxury of a carefree Wednesday afternoon walk through San Francisco? Yet, like Saul, I have continued to work compulsively and to impose a professional schedule on myself that makes that stroll impossible. I knew we were both chased by the same man with a rifle.
The more I looked into myself, the surer I was that my positive feelings for Saul were still intact. Despite his offputting physical appearance, I felt very warm toward him, I imagined cradling him in my arms and found the idea agreeable. I was certain that I, even in my impatience, would act in Saul’s best interests.
I also realized there are certain disadvantages in being too energetic. The overactive therapist often infantilizes the patient: he does not, in Martin Buber’s term, guide or help the other to “unfold” but instead imposes himself upon the other. Nonetheless, I felt convinced that I could resolve this whole crisis in one or two sessions. In the light of that belief, the perils of overactivity seemed slender.
Also (as I was able to appreciate only later with a more objective view of myself), it was unfortunate for Saul that he had consulted me at a stage of my professional career when I was impatient and managerial, and insisted that patients promptly and fully confront their feelings about everything, including death (even if it killed them). Saul called me at approximately the same time that I was attempting to dynamite Thelma’s love obsession (see “Love’s Executioner”). It was also about the time that I was coercing Marvin into recognizing that his sexual preoccupation was in reality deflected death anxiety (see “In Search of the Dreamer”), and unwisely badgering Dave into understanding that his attachment to ancient love letters was a futile attempt to deny physical decline and aging (“Do Not Go Gentle”).
And so, for better or worse, I decided to focus sharply upon the letters and to get them opened in one or, at the most, two sessions. During those years I often led therapy groups of hospitalized patients, whose hospital stay was generally brief. Since I had them for only a few sessions, I had become adept at helping patients quickly formulate an appropriate and realistic agenda for their therapeutic goals and concentrate on fulfilling it efficiently. I drew on those techniques in my session with Saul.
“Saul, how do you think I can help today? What would you most like me to do?”
“I know I’ll be all right in a few days. I’m just not thinking clearly. I should have written Dr. K. immediately. I’m working on a letter to him now which reviews, step by step, every detail of what’s happened.”
“Is it your plan to send that letter before opening the three letters?” I hated the thought of Saul ruining his career with some foolish action. I could only imagine the perplexity on Dr. K.’s face when reading Saul’s long letter defending himself against charges he, Dr. K., had never made.
“When I think about what to do, I often hear your voice asking rational questions. After all, what can the man do to me? Would someone like Dr. K. write a letter to the journal belittling me? He’d never stoop to that. He’d foul himself as much as me. Yes, I can hear the kind of questions you’d ask. But you’ve got to remember that I’m not thinking in a completely logical fashion.”
There was a veiled but unmistakable rebuke in these words. Saul had always been ingratiating, and much of our previous therapy had focused upon the meaning and correction of that trait. So I was pleased with his being able to take a more forceful stand toward me. But I also felt chagrined at his having to remind me that people in distress don’t necessarily think logically.
“O.K., then tell me about your illogical scenario.”
Dammit! I thought, that hadn’t come out right! There’s some condescension in there that I don’t feel at all. But before I had time to modify my response, Saul had dutifully proceeded to respond. Ordinarily in therapy I would make sure to return and analyze this short sequence, but that day was not the time for such subtleties.
“Maybe I’ll give up science. A few years ago I had a severe headache and the neurologist sent me for X rays, saying undoubtedly it was a migraine but there was a slight chance it was a tumor. My reaction then was that my aunt was right: there
is
something basically wrong with me. I felt, when I was about eight, that she had lost confidence in me and wouldn’t have minded if something bad had happened to me.”
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.
“If it were true,” I asked, “that she thought so poorly of you, would she have put so much pressure on you to marry her daughter?”
“That only happened when her daughter reached thirty. No fate—not even having me for a son-in-law—was worse than having a spinster daughter.”
Wake up! What am I doing? Saul did what I asked and shared his illogical scenario, and here I am, dumb enough to get lost in it. Stay focused!
“Saul, what kind of timetable are you on? Put yourself into the future. One month from now—will you have opened the three letters?”
“Yes, without question, they’ll be open in one month.”
Well, I thought, that was
something!
More than I had expected. I tried for more.
“Will you open the letters before you mail that letter to Dr. K.? As you say, I’m being rational, but one of us has to stay rational.” Saul didn’t crack a smile. Gone completely was his sense of humor. I had to stop bantering, I could no longer connect to him in that way. “It would seem rational to read them first.”
“I’m not sure. I absolutely do not know. I do know that for the entire six months I was at the Stockholm Institute, I took off only three days. I worked Saturdays and Sundays. On several occasions I refused social invitations, some even from Dr. K., because I would not leave the library.”
He’s scrambling for diversions, I thought. He keeps tossing me enticing tidbits. Stay focused!
“What do you think, will you have opened the letters before you send back the fifty thousand dollars?”
“I’m not sure if I will or I won’t.”
There’s a fair chance, I thought, that he’s already sent that money and, if so, he’s going to get caught in a tangle of lies with me that will really jeopardize our work. I’ve got to find out the truth.
“Saul, we’ve got to start out on the same trusting footing we had before. Please tell me, have you already sent that money?”
“Not yet. But I’ll be honest with you—it makes a lot of sense and I probably will do it. I’ve got to sell some stocks first to raise that much cash.”
“Well, here’s what I think. It seems clear that the reason you’ve come to see me is to get help in opening those letters.” I was being a little manipulative here—he hadn’t quite said that. “We both know that eventually, certainly in the next month”—more manipulation: I wanted to transform Saul’s rough guess into a firm commitment—”you’ll open them. We both also know—and I’m speaking to the rational part of you—that it’s unwise to take major irreversible steps before you open them. It seems the real questions are
when
—when will you open them?—and
how
—how can I best help?”
“I should just do it. But I’m not sure. I absolutely do not know.”
“Is it that you want to bring them here and open them in my office?” Was I acting on Saul’s behalf now or merely being voyeuristic (much like watching Al Capone’s vault or the
Titanic
’s safe being opened on TV)?
“I could bring them in and open them here with you and have you take care of me if I collapse. But I don’t want to. I want to go about it in an adult manner.”
Touché!
Hard to quarrel with that. Saul’s assertiveness today was impressive. I had not anticipated such tenacity. I just wished it weren’t in the service of defending this craziness about the letters. Saul was really digging in but, though I began to question my choice of a direct approach, I persisted.
“Or is it that you want me to visit you at home and help open them there?” I suspected I would have cause to regret this crude pressure, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Or any other way? If you could plan our time together, what would be the best possible way for me to help?”
Saul didn’t budge. “I absolutely do not know.”
Since we had now run almost fifteen minutes over, and I had another patient, also in crisis, waiting, I reluctantly ended the session. I was left with such concern about Saul (and about my choice of strategy) that I wanted to see him again the next day. There was no time in my schedule, however, and we arranged another session in two days.
During my meeting with my next patient, it was hard to get my mind off Saul. I was astounded by the resistance he had put up. Time and again I had hit against a concrete wall. Not at all like the Saul I had known who had always been so pathologically accommodating that many people had exploited him. Two previous wives had obtained enormously generous and uncontested divorce settlements. (Saul felt so defenseless in the face of others’ demands that he had chosen to remain single these last twenty years.) Students routinely extracted extravagant favors from him. He habitually undercharged for his professional consultative services (and was habitually underpaid).

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