Lying on the Couch

by Irvin D. Yalom

  The most difficult challenge in Mr. Macondo's therapy was his irrational fear of discussing the prenuptial agreement with his fiancee. Marshal took a systematic and disciplined approach. First, he helped work out the terms of the prenuptial contract: a flat million-dollar sum that would increase sharply according to the

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  longevity of the marriage and would change after ten years to a one-third share of his entire estate. Then he and his patient role-played the discussion several times. But, even so, Mr. Macondo expressed doubt about confronting Adriana. Finally Marshal offered to facilitate the discussion and asked him to bring in Adriana for a three-way session.

  When the two arrived a few days later. Marshal feared he had made a mistake: never had he seen Mr. Macondo so agitated—he could barely stay in his chair. Adriana, however, was the epitome of grace and calm. When Mr. Macondo opened the session with a painfully fumbling statement about conflicts between his matrimonial wishes and family claims to his estate, she immediately interrupted and commented that she had been thinking that a prenuptial marital agreement would be not only appropriate but desirable.

  She said that she could well understand Peter's concerns. In fact, she shared many of them. Just the other day her father, who was quite ill, had spoken to her of the wisdom of keeping her own estate outside of marital community property. Even though her holdings were small compared to Peter's, she would eventually come into a much larger estate—her father was a major shareholder in a large chain of California movie houses.

  The matter was resolved on the spot. Peter nervously presented his terms and Adriana enthusiastically accepted, with the additional proviso that her personal resources remain in her own name. Marshal noted, with displeasure, that his patient had doubled the amounts that they had previously discussed, probably out of gratitude to Adriana for making things so easy. Incurable generosity. Marshal thought. But there are worse diseases, I guess. As the couple left, Peter turned back, clasped Marshal's hand, and said, "I shall never forget what you did for me today,"

  Marshal opened his door and invited Mr. Macondo to enter. Peter wore a luxuriously soft auburn cashmere jacket to match the silky brown hair that slipped gracefully over his eyes and had to be guided back into place again and again.

  Marshal devoted their final session to reviewing and solidifying their gains. Mr. Macondo regretted the end of their work and stressed how incalculably indebted he felt to Marshal.

  "Dr. Streider, all my life I've paid consultants considerable sums

  for what usually amounted to be of little or no value. With you I've had the opposite experience: you've given me something of inestimable value and in return I've given you practically nothing. In these few sessions you've changed my life. And how have I reciprocated.^ Sixteen hundred dollars? If I am willing to endure the tedium, I can make that kind of money in fifteen minutes investing in financial futures."

  He rushed on, speaking faster and faster, "You know me well. Dr. Streider, well enough to realize that this inequality doesn't sit well with me. It's an irritant: it'll stick in my throat. We can't ignore it because—who knows?—it may even cancel out some of the gains I've made as a result of our work. I want, I insist, that we even the score.

  "Now you know," he continued, "I'm not good at direct interpersonal communication. And I'm not too good at fathering. Or at confronting females. But there's one thing I'm very good at, and that's making money. You would be doing me a great honor by allowing me to make you a gift of a portion of one of my new investments."

  Marshal flushed. He felt faint, overcome by a clash of greed and propriety. But he gritted his teeth, did the right thing, and declined the opportunity of a lifetime: "Mr. Macondo, I'm touched but it's entirely out of the question. I'm afraid that in my field it is considered unethical to accept a monetary gift, or any other gift, from patients. One issue we never discussed in therapy is your discomfort in accepting help. Perhaps if we ever work together in the future that should be on the agenda. For now there is only time for me to simply remind you that I have set, and you have paid, a fair fee for my services. I embrace the same position as your father's surgeon, and assure you there is no debt."

  "Dr. Black? What a comparison. Dr. Black charged ten thousand dollars for a few hours' work. And thirty minutes after surgery, he put a bite on me for a million for a Harvard chair in cardiovascular surgery."

  Marshal shook his head emphatically. "Mr. Macondo, I admire your generosity; it's wonderful. And I'd love to accept. I enjoy the idea of financial security as much as anyone—more than most, since I yearn for the free time to write; I have several projects on analytic theory struggling to be born. But I cannot accept. It would violate the ethical code of my profession."

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  "Another suggestion," Mr, Macondo countered quickly: "not a monetary gift. Please permit me to open a futures account for you and trade for you for a month. We'll converse daily and I will teach you the art of making money by daily trading in currency futures. Then I take back my original investment and turn over the profits to you."

  Now this suggestion, this possibility of learning insider trading technique, was extraordinarily appealing to Marshal. It was so painful to refuse that his eyes filled with tears. But he bolstered his resolve and shook his head even more vigorously. "Mr, Macondo, if we were in some other . . . uh . . . situation ... I'd gladly accept. I'm touched by your offer, and would like to learn trading techniques from you. But no. No. It's not possible. Also, something I forgot to say before. I've gotten more than my fee from you. There's something else, and that's the pleasure of seeing your improvement. It's very gratifying to me."

  Mr. Macondo slumped back helplessly in his chair, his eyes filled with admiration for Marshal's professionalism and integrity. He held out his hands palms up, as though to say, "I surrender; I've tried everything." The hour was over. The two men shook hands for the last time. On the way out the door, Mr. Macondo seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he stopped and turned.

  "One last request. This you cannot refuse. Please be my guest for lunch tomorrow. Or Friday. I leave for Zurich on Sunday."

  Marshal hesitated.

  Mr. Macondo quickly added: "I know there are rules against socializing with patients, but with that final handshake a minute ago we are no longer doctor and patient. Thanks to your good services, I'm over my illness and we are both again fellow citizens."

  Marshal considered the invitation. He liked Mr. Macondo and his insider stories of the making of wealth. What was the harm? There was no ethics violation here.

  Seeing Marshal's hesitation, Mr. Macondo added, "Though I will briefly return to San Francisco from time to time for business—certainly twice a year for board meetings, to see my children, and to see Adriana's father and sisters—we will be inhabiting different continents. Surely there is no rule against a post-therapy luncheon."

  Marshal reached for his diary. "One o'clock Friday.^"

  "Excellent. The Pacific Union Club. You know it?"

  Lying on the Couch "^ 169

  "On California, top of Nob Hill. Next to the Fairmont. There's parking in the back. Just mention my name. See you then."

  On Friday morning Marshal received a fax: a copy of a fax Mr. Macondo had received from the University of Mexico.

  Dear Mr. Macondo,

  We are delighted with your generous gift to endow the annual Marshal Streider Lecture Series: Mental Health in the Third Millennia. We will, of course, per your suggestion, invite Dr. Streider to serve on the three-member committee to select the annual speakers. The president of the university, Raoul Menendez, will be contacting him shortly. President Menendez asked me to send you his personal greetings; incidentally, he lunched with your father earlier this week.

  We are indebted to you for this and your many other gifts in support of Mexican research and education. It is painful to imagine the plight of this university without the sustaining force of you and a small group
of like-minded, visionary benefactors.

  Sincerely,

  Raoul Gomez

  Provost, University of Mexico

  Peter Macondo's accompanying note:

  I never say no. Here is a gift even you cannot refuse! See you tomorrow.

  Marshal read the fax twice, slowly, sorting out his feelings. The Marshal Streider endowed lecture series—a memorial that would extend into perpetuity. Who wouldn't be pleased? The perfect self-esteem insurance policy. Years from now, whenever he felt diminished, he could think of his endowed lecture series. Or fly to Mexico City for the lecture and rise, reluctantly, hand held aloft, turning slowly and modestly to acknowledge the applause of a grateful audience.

  But it was a bittersweet gift, poor solace for letting the financial opportunity of a lifetime slip through his fingers. When would he ever again have a mega-wealthy patient who wanted nothing more

  than to make him a wealthy man? Mr. Macondo's offer of a gift— "a portion of one of his investments"—Marshal wondered what it might have been. Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand? God, what a difference that would make in his life! And he could parlay that quickly. Even his own investment strategy—using a computer program to time the market and moving in and out of the Fidelity select funds—had netted him sixteen percent each of the last two years. With Mr. Macondo's offer to trade in the foreign exchange currency markets, he could probably double or triple that. Marshal knew he was the puny trading outsider—any scraps of information that came his way were invariably too late. Here, for the first time in his life, he had been given the chance to be an insider.

  Yes, as an insider he could set himself up for life. He didn't need much. All he really wanted was to free up time and devote three or four afternoons a week to research and writing. And the money!

  And yet he had had to turn all this down. Damn! Damn! Damn! But what choice did he have? Did he want to go the way of Seth Pande? Or Seymour Trotter? He knew he had done the right thing.

  On Friday, as he approached the massive marble doorway of the Pacific Union Club, Marshal was thrilled, almost awed. For years he had felt closed out of such fabled places as the P.U. Club, the Burlingame Club, and the Bohemian Grove. Now doors were opening for him. He paused at the doorstep, took a breath, and strode into the deepest lair of the insiders.

  It was the end of a journey. Marshal thought, a journey that had begun in 1924 in the crowded, foul-smelling steerage class of a transatlantic barge that brought his parents, still children, from Southampton to Ellis Island. No, no, it started before that, in Prussina, a shtetl near the Polish-Russian border built of rickety wooden homes with earthen floors. In one of those homes his father had slept, as a child, in a small warm nook atop the large, clay-bricked oven that filled much of the common room.

  How had they gotten from Prussina to Southampton, Marshal wondered? Overland? Boat? He had never asked them that. And it was too late now. His mother and father had turned to dust, side by side, long ago, in the tall grass of an Anacostia cemetery just outside Washington, D.C. There was only one survivor of that long journey who might still know—his mother's brother, Label, rocking

  out his final years on the long, wooden porch of a urine-reeked Miami Beach nursing home with pink stucco walls. Time to phone Label.

  The central rotunda, a graceful octagon, was rimmed by stately mahogany leather sofas and capped, ninety feet up, by a magnificent ceiling of translucent glass etched with a delicate floral pattern. The majordomo, clad in tuxedo and patent leathers, greeted Marshal with great deference and, upon hearing his name, nodded and directed him into the sitting room. There, at the far end, before an enormous fireplace, sat Peter Macondo.

  The sitting room was huge—half of Prussina would probably have fit under the soaring ceiling supported by walls of gleaming oak alternating with scarlet satin panels of fleur-de-lys. And leather everywhere—Marshal quickly counted twelve long sofas and thirty massive chairs. On some of the chairs sat wizened, gray-haired, pinstriped men holding newspapers. Marshal had to peer closely to determine if they were still breathing. Twelve candelabra on one wall—that meant forty-eight in the room, each with three rows of bulbs, the innermost with five, the next with seven, the outermost with nine, a total of twenty-one bulbs, a grand total of . . . Marshal stopped multiplying as he noticed a pair of three-foot-tall metal bookends on one of the fireplaces, replicas of Michelangelo's bound slaves; in the center of the room stood a massive table piled high with newspapers, mostly financial, from around the world; along one wall a glass case containing an enormous porcelain bowl of the late eighteenth century with a plaque stating that it had been donated by a member and was Ching-te Cheng pottery. Its painted scenes depicted episodes from the novel Dream of the Red Chamber.

  The real thing. Yes, this was the real thing. Marshal thought, as he approached Peter, who was on a sofa chatting amiably with another member—a tall, stately man wearing a red checkered jacket, a pink shirt, and a brightly flowered ascot. Marshal had never seen anyone dress like that—never seen anyone who could dress in clothes that clashed so shockingly and yet have the grace and dignity to pull it off.

  "Ah, Marshal," said Peter, "good to see you. Let me introduce Roscoe Richardson. Roscoe's father was the best mayor San Francisco ever had. Roscoe, Dr. Marshal Streider, San Francisco's leading psychoanalyst. There's a rumor, Roscoe, that Dr. Streider has just been honored by having a university lecture series named after him."

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  After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Peter led Marshal toward the dining room, then turned back for one last comment.

  "Roscoe, I don't believe there's market room for another mainframe system, but I'm not entirely closed to it; if Cisco really decides to invest, I could be interested, too. Convince me and I'll convince my own investors. Please send the business plan to Zurich and I'll turn to it on Monday when I return to the office."

  "Fine man," Peter said as they walked away. "Our fathers knew each other. And a great golfer. His home is right on the Cypress Point course. Interesting investment possibility but I wouldn't recommend it to you: these start-ups are such long shots. Very expensive to play the game—you hit only one start-up in twenty. Of course, when you do hit, they pay better, far better, than twenty to one. Incidentally, I hope I'm not presumptuous in calling you Marshal."

  "No, of course not. First names. We're no longer in a professional relationship."

  "You say you've never been to the Club before?"

  "No," said Marshal. Walked by it. Admired it. Not a part of the grazing grounds of the medical community. I know almost nothing about the Club. What's the profile of its members? Mostly businessmen?"

  "Mostly old San Francisco money. Conservative. Most are coupon clippers, hanging on to inherited wealth. Roscoe's an exception—that's why I like him. At seventy-one he's still a high flyer. Let's see . . . what else? All male, mostly WASPs, politically incorrect—I first raised objections ten years ago, but things move slowly around here, especially after lunch. See what I mean?" Peter subtly gestured toward chairs on which two tweeded octogenarians snoozed, still clutching for dear life their copies of the London Financial Times.

  As they arrived at the dining room, Peter addressed the major-domo, "Emil, we're ready. Any chance for some of that salmon en croute today? // est toujours delicieux."

  "I believe I can persuade the chef to prepare some especially for you, Mr. Macondo."

  "Emil, I remember how wonderful it was at the Cercle Union Interalliee in Paris." Peter then whispered to Emil, "Tell my secret to no one French, but I prefer the preparation here."

  Peter continued to chat animatedly with Emil. Marshal did not hear the conversation because he was staggered by the magnificence of the dining room, including a mammoth porcelain bowl holding

  Lying on the Couch ^ ^ 7 3

  the mother of all Japanese flower arrangements—glorious cymbid-ium orchids cascading down a scarlet-leafed maple branch. If only my wife could
see that, Marshal thought. They paid someone plenty for that arrangement—that might be a way for her to turn her little hobby into something useful.

  "Peter," Marshal said after Emil had seated them, "you're in San Francisco so rarely. You keep a continuously active membership in this club and in Zurich and Paris also?"

  "No, no, no," said Peter, smiling at Marshal's naivete. "At that rate lunch here would cost around five thousand a sandwich. All these clubs—the Circolo dell'Unione in Milan, the Atheneum in London, the Cosmos Club in Washington, the Cercle Union Interal-liee in Paris, the Pacific Union in San Francisco, the Baur au Lac in Zurich—they're all in a network: membership in one club grants privileges in all. Actually, that's how I know Emil: he used to work at the Cercle Union Interalliee in Paris." Peter lifted his menu. "So, Marshal, start with a drink?"

  "Just some Calistoga water. I've still got four patients to see."

  Peter ordered a Dubonnet and soda and, when the drinks arrived, held up his glass. "To you, and to the Marshal Streider lecture series."

  Marshal flushed. He had been so overwhelmed by the Club that he had forgotten to thank Peter.

  "Peter, the endowed lectureship—what an honor. I meant to thank you first thing, but I've been preoccupied with my last patient."

  "Your last patient? That surprises me. Somehow I had the feeling that, when patients exit, they never reenter the therapist's mind until they arrive for their next hour."

  "It would be best that way. But—and this is a trade secret—even the most disciplined analysts carry patients around and have silent conversations with some between sessions."

  "At no extra fee!"

  "Ah, alas, no. Only lawyers charge for thinking time."

  "Interesting, interesting! You may possibly be talking for all therapists. Marshal, but I have a hunch you're talking about yourself. I've often wondered why I've gotten so little from other therapists. Maybe it's because you're more dedicated—maybe your patients mean more to you."