Read Love's Executioner Online
Authors: Irvin D. Yalom
Tags: #Psychology, #Movements, #Psychoanalysis, #Research & Methodology, #Emotions
Love's Executioner (2 page)
In my many years of work with cancer patients facing imminent death, I have noted two particularly powerful and common methods of allaying fears about death, two beliefs, or delusions, that afford a sense of safety. One is the belief in personal specialness; the other, the belief in an ultimate rescuer. While these are delusions in that they represent “fixed false beliefs,” I do not employ the term
delusion
in a pejorative sense: these are universal beliefs which, at some level of consciousness, exist in all of us and play a role in several of these tales.
delusion
in a pejorative sense: these are universal beliefs which, at some level of consciousness, exist in all of us and play a role in several of these tales.
Specialness
is the belief that one is invulnerable, inviolable—beyond the ordinary laws of human biology and destiny. At some point in life, each of us will face some crisis: it may be serious illness, career failure, or divorce; or as happened to Elva in “I Never Thought It Would Happen to Me,” it may be an event as simple as a purse snatching, which suddenly lays bare one’s ordinariness and challenges the common assumption that life will always be an eternal upward spiral.
is the belief that one is invulnerable, inviolable—beyond the ordinary laws of human biology and destiny. At some point in life, each of us will face some crisis: it may be serious illness, career failure, or divorce; or as happened to Elva in “I Never Thought It Would Happen to Me,” it may be an event as simple as a purse snatching, which suddenly lays bare one’s ordinariness and challenges the common assumption that life will always be an eternal upward spiral.
While the belief in personal specialness provides a sense of safety from within, the other major mechanism of death denial—
belief in an ultimate rescuer
—permits us to feel forever watched and protected by an outside force. Though we may falter, grow ill, though we may arrive at the very edge of life, there is, we are convinced, a looming, omnipotent servant who will always bring us back.
belief in an ultimate rescuer
—permits us to feel forever watched and protected by an outside force. Though we may falter, grow ill, though we may arrive at the very edge of life, there is, we are convinced, a looming, omnipotent servant who will always bring us back.
Together these two belief systems constitute a dialectic—two diametrically opposed responses to the human situation. The human being either asserts autonomy by heroic self-assertion or seeks safety through fusing with a superior force: that is, one either emerges or merges, separates or embeds. One becomes one’s own parent or remains the eternal child.
Most of us, most of the time, live comfortably by uneasily avoiding the glance of death, by chuckling and agreeing with Woody Allen when he says, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But there is another way—a long tradition, applicable to psychotherapy—that teaches us that full awareness of death ripens our wisdom and enriches our life. The dying words of one of my patients (in “If Rape Were Legal . . .”) demonstrate that though the
fact,
the physicality, of death destroys us, the
idea
of death may save us.
fact,
the physicality, of death destroys us, the
idea
of death may save us.
Freedom, another given of existence, presents a dilemma for several of these ten patients. When Betty, an obese patient, announced that she had binged just before coming to see me and was planning to binge again as soon as she left my office, she was attempting to give up her freedom by persuading me to assume control of her. The entire course of therapy of another patient (Thelma in “Love’s Executioner”) revolved around the theme of surrender to a former lover (and therapist) and my search for strategies to help her reclaim her power and freedom.
Freedom as a given seems the very antithesis of death. While we dread death, we generally consider freedom to be unequivocally positive. Has not the history of Western civilization been punctuated with yearnings for freedom, even driven by it? Yet freedom from an existential perspective is bonded to anxiety in asserting that, contrary to everyday experience, we do not enter into, and ultimately leave, a well-structured universe with an eternal grand design. Freedom means that one is responsible for one’s own choices, actions, one’s own life situation.
Though the word
responsible
may be used in a variety of ways, I prefer Sartre’s definition: to be responsible is to “be the author of,” each of us being thus the author of his or her own life design. We are free to be anything but unfree: we are, Sartre would say, condemned to freedom. Indeed, some philosophers claim much more: that the architecture of the human mind makes each of us even responsible for the structure of external reality, for the very form of space and time. It is here, in the idea of self-construction, where anxiety dwells: we are creatures who desire structure, and we are frightened by a concept of freedom which implies that beneath us there is nothing, sheer groundlessness.
responsible
may be used in a variety of ways, I prefer Sartre’s definition: to be responsible is to “be the author of,” each of us being thus the author of his or her own life design. We are free to be anything but unfree: we are, Sartre would say, condemned to freedom. Indeed, some philosophers claim much more: that the architecture of the human mind makes each of us even responsible for the structure of external reality, for the very form of space and time. It is here, in the idea of self-construction, where anxiety dwells: we are creatures who desire structure, and we are frightened by a concept of freedom which implies that beneath us there is nothing, sheer groundlessness.
Every therapist knows that the crucial first step in therapy is the patient’s assumption of responsibility for his or her life predicament. As long as one believes that one’s problems are caused by some force or agency outside oneself, there is no leverage in therapy. If, after all, the problem lies out there, then why should one change oneself? It is the outside world (friends, job, spouse) that must be changed—or exchanged. Thus, Dave (in “Do Not Go Gentle”), complaining bitterly of being locked in a marital prison by a snoopy, possessive wife-warden, could not proceed in therapy until he recognized how he himself was responsible for the construction of that prison.
Since patients tend to resist assuming responsibility, therapists must develop techniques to make patients aware of how they themselves create their own problems. A powerful technique, which I use in many of these cases, is the here-and-now focus. Since patients tend to re-create
in the therapy setting
the same interpersonal problems that bedevil them in their lives outside, I focus on what is going on at the moment between a patient and me rather than on the events of his or her past or current life. By examining the details of the therapy relationship (or, in a therapy group, the relationships among the group members), I can point out on the spot how a patient influences the responses of other people. Thus, though Dave could resist assuming responsibility for his marital problems, he could not resist the immediate data he himself was generating in group therapy: that is, his secretive, teasing, and elusive behavior was activating the other group members to respond to him much as his wife did at home.
in the therapy setting
the same interpersonal problems that bedevil them in their lives outside, I focus on what is going on at the moment between a patient and me rather than on the events of his or her past or current life. By examining the details of the therapy relationship (or, in a therapy group, the relationships among the group members), I can point out on the spot how a patient influences the responses of other people. Thus, though Dave could resist assuming responsibility for his marital problems, he could not resist the immediate data he himself was generating in group therapy: that is, his secretive, teasing, and elusive behavior was activating the other group members to respond to him much as his wife did at home.
In similar fashion, Betty’s (“Fat Lady”) therapy was ineffective as long as she could attribute her loneliness to the flaky, rootless California culture. It was only when I demonstrated how, in our hours together, her impersonal, shy, distancing manner re-created the same impersonal environment in therapy, that she could begin to explore her responsibility for creating her own isolation.
While the assumption of responsibility brings the patient into the vestibule of change, it is not synonymous with change. And it is change that is always the true quarry, however much a therapist may court insight, responsibility assumption, and self-actualization.
Freedom not only requires us to bear responsibility for our life choices but also posits that change requires an act of will. Though
will
is a concept therapists seldom use explicitly, we nonetheless devote much effort to influencing a patient’s will. We endlessly clarify and interpret, assuming (and it is a secular leap of faith, lacking convincing empirical support) that understanding will invariably beget change. When years of interpretation have failed to generate change, we may begin to make direct appeals to the will: “Effort, too, is needed. You have to try, you know. There’s a time for thinking and analyzing but there’s 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. Thus, I may advise, argue, badger, cajole, goad, implore, or simply endure, hoping that the patient’s neurotic worldview will crumble away from sheer fatigue.
will
is a concept therapists seldom use explicitly, we nonetheless devote much effort to influencing a patient’s will. We endlessly clarify and interpret, assuming (and it is a secular leap of faith, lacking convincing empirical support) that understanding will invariably beget change. When years of interpretation have failed to generate change, we may begin to make direct appeals to the will: “Effort, too, is needed. You have to try, you know. There’s a time for thinking and analyzing but there’s 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. Thus, I may advise, argue, badger, cajole, goad, implore, or simply endure, hoping that the patient’s neurotic worldview will crumble away from sheer fatigue.
It is through
willing
, the mainspring of action, that our freedom is enacted. I see willing as having two stages: a person initiates through wishing and then enacts through deciding.
willing
, the mainspring of action, that our freedom is enacted. I see willing as having two stages: a person initiates through wishing and then enacts through deciding.
Some people are wish-blocked, knowing neither what they feel nor what they want. Without opinions, without impulses, without inclinations, they become parasites on the desires of others. Such people tend to be tiresome. Betty was boring precisely because she stifled her wishes, and others grew weary of supplying wish and imagination for her.
Other patients cannot decide. Though they know exactly what they want and what they must do, they cannot act and, instead, pace tormentedly before the door of decision. Saul, in “Three Unopened Letters,” knew that any reasonable man would open the letters; yet the fear they invoked paralyzed his will. Thelma (“Love’s Executioner”) knew that her love obsession was stripping her life of reality. She
knew
that she was, as she put it, living her life eight years ago, and that, to regain it, she would have to give up her infatuation. But that she could not, or would not, do and fiercely resisted all my attempts to energize her will.
knew
that she was, as she put it, living her life eight years ago, and that, to regain it, she would have to give up her infatuation. But that she could not, or would not, do and fiercely resisted all my attempts to energize her will.
Decisions are difficult for many reasons, some reaching down into the very socket of being. John Gardner, in his novel
Grendel,
tells of a wise man who sums up his meditation on life’s mysteries in two simple but terrible postulates: “Things fade: alternatives exclude.” Of the first postulate, death, I have already spoken. The second, “alternatives exclude,” is an important key to understanding why decision is difficult. Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word
decide
means “slay,” as in
homicide
or
suicide).
Thus, Thelma clung to the infinitesimal chance that she might once again revive her relationship with her lover, renunciation of that possibility signifying diminishment and death.
Grendel,
tells of a wise man who sums up his meditation on life’s mysteries in two simple but terrible postulates: “Things fade: alternatives exclude.” Of the first postulate, death, I have already spoken. The second, “alternatives exclude,” is an important key to understanding why decision is difficult. Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word
decide
means “slay,” as in
homicide
or
suicide).
Thus, Thelma clung to the infinitesimal chance that she might once again revive her relationship with her lover, renunciation of that possibility signifying diminishment and death.
Existential isolation, a third given, refers to the unbridgeable gap between self and others, a gap that exists even in the presence of deeply gratifying interpersonal relationships. One is isolated not only from other beings but, to the extent that one constitutes one’s world, from world as well. Such isolation is to be distinguished from two other types of isolation: interpersonal and intrapersonal isolation.
One experiences
interpersonal
isolation, or loneliness, if one lacks the social skills or personality style that permit intimate social interactions.
Intrapersonal
isolation occurs when parts of the self are split off, as when one splits off emotion from the memory of an event. The most extreme, and dramatic, form of splitting, the multiple personality, is relatively rare (though growing more widely recognized); when it does occur, the therapist may be faced, as was I in the treatment of Marge (“Therapeutic Monogamy”), with the bewildering dilemma of which personality to cherish.
interpersonal
isolation, or loneliness, if one lacks the social skills or personality style that permit intimate social interactions.
Intrapersonal
isolation occurs when parts of the self are split off, as when one splits off emotion from the memory of an event. The most extreme, and dramatic, form of splitting, the multiple personality, is relatively rare (though growing more widely recognized); when it does occur, the therapist may be faced, as was I in the treatment of Marge (“Therapeutic Monogamy”), with the bewildering dilemma of which personality to cherish.
While there is no solution to existential isolation, therapists must discourage false solutions. One’s efforts to escape isolation can sabotage one’s relationships with other people. Many a friendship or marriage has failed because, instead of relating to, and caring for, one another, one person uses another as a shield against isolation.
A common, and vigorous, attempt to solve existential isolation, which occurs in several of these stories, is fusion—the softening of one’s boundaries, the melting into another. The power of fusion has been demonstrated in subliminal perception experiments in which the message “Mommy and I are one,” flashed on a screen so quickly that the subjects cannot consciously see it, results in their reporting that they feel better, stronger, more optimistic—and even in their responding better than other people to treatment (with behavioral modification) for such problems as smoking, obesity, or disturbed adolescent behavior.
One of the great paradoxes of life is that self-awareness breeds anxiety. Fusion eradicates anxiety in a radical fashion—by eliminating self-awareness. The person who has fallen in love, and entered a blissful state of merger, is not self-reflective because the questioning lonely
I
(and the attendant anxiety of isolation) dissolve into the
we.
Thus one sheds anxiety but loses oneself.
I
(and the attendant anxiety of isolation) dissolve into the
we.
Thus one sheds anxiety but loses oneself.
This is precisely why therapists do not like to treat a patient who has fallen in love. Therapy and a state of love-merger are incompatible because therapeutic work requires a questioning self-awareness and an anxiety that will ultimately serve as guide to internal conflicts.
Furthermore, it is difficult for me, as for most therapists, to form a relationship with a patient who has fallen in love. In the story “Love’s Executioner,” Thelma would not, for example, relate to me: her energy was completely consumed in her love obsession. Beware the powerful exclusive attachment to another; it is not, as people sometimes think, evidence of the purity of the love. Such encapsulated, exclusive love—feeding on itself, neither giving to nor caring about others—is destined to cave in on itself. Love is not just a passion spark between two people; there is infinite difference between falling in love and standing in love. Rather, love is a way of being, a “giving to,” not a “falling for”; a mode of relating at large, not an act limited to a single person.
Though we try hard to go through life two by two or in groups, there are times, especially when death approaches, that the truth—that we are born alone and must die alone—breaks through with chilling clarity. I have heard many dying patients remark that the most awful thing about dying is that it must be done alone. Yet, even at the point of death, the willingness of another to be fully present may penetrate the isolation. As a patient said in “Do Not Go Gentle,” “Even though you’re alone in your boat, it’s always comforting to see the lights of the other boats bobbing nearby.”
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