Lying on the Couch

by Irvin D. Yalom

  Yes, that was the right approach. But Ernest had a problem: Carolyn was beginning to arouse him. All his adult life Ernest had felt unattractive to women. All his life he believed he had to work hard, to use his intellect, sensitivity, and charm, to overcome his nerdy appearance. It felt wildly exciting to hear this lovely woman describe masturbating to the thought of undressing him and dragging him to the floor.

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  Ernest's arousal limited his freedom as a therapist. If he asked Carolyn for more intimate details of her sexual fantasies, he could not be clear of his motives. Would he be doing this for her benefit or for his own titillation? It would feel like voyeurism, like getting off on verbal sex. On the other hand, if he avoided her fantasies, would he be shortchanging his patient by not allowing her to talk about what was uppermost in her mind? And wouldn't avoidance be saying to her that her fantasies were too shameful to discuss?

  And what about his self-disclosure contract? Should he not simply share with Carolyn exactly what he was thinking? But, no, he was certain that would be an error! Was there another principle of therapist transparency in there? Perhaps therapists should not share things about which they are heavily conflicted. Best that the therapist first work out those issues in personal therapy. Otherwise the patient gets saddled with the task of working on the therapist's problems. He jotted that principle down on his notepad—it was worth remembering.

  Ernest grasped the first opportunity to shift the focus. He returned to Carolyn's anxiety attack the previous night and wondered whether she might also have been anxious because of some of the hard questions he had raised in the previous session. For example, why she had stayed so long in a bitter, loveless marriage? And why she had never tried to improve the marriage in couples therapy?

  "It's hard to convey how utterly, utterly hopeless I feel about my marriage, or about marriage in general. There hasn't been a spark of happiness or respect in our marriage for years. And Wayne is as nihilistic as I am: he's had many, many expensive, fruitless years of therapy."

  Ernest was not to be so easily thwarted.

  "Carolyn, as I think about your despair about your marriage, I can't help wondering what role the failed marriage of your parents has played in your own. When I asked you last week about your parents, you said that you never heard your mother mention your father in any but a hateful and contemptuous manner. Maybe your mother did you no service by feeding you such a steady hateful diet. Maybe it wasn't in your best interests to have drilled into you day after day, year after year, that no man could be trusted to look after anything but his own self-interests?"

  Carol wanted to get back to her sexual agenda but couldn't help rushing to her mother's defense: "No picnic for her, raising two children, all alone, no help from anyone."

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  "Why all alone, Carolyn? What about her own family?"

  "What family? Mother was all alone. My mother's father took off, too, when she was young—one of the pioneer deadbeat dads. And she had little help from her mother—a bitter, paranoid woman. They hardly ever spoke."

  "Your mother's social network? Friends?"

  "Nobody!"

  "Did your mother have a stepfather? Your grandmother remarry?"

  "No—out of the question. You'd have to know Grandma. Wore black forever. Even black handkerchiefs. Never saw her smile."

  "And your mother? Other men in her life?"

  "Are you kidding? I never saw a man in our house. She hated men! But I've been over all this before in therapy. This is ancient history. Thought you said you weren't a rummager."

  "Interesting," said Ernest, ignoring Carol's protests, "how closely your mother's life script followed her mother's. As though there's this legacy of pain in the family being passed down, like a hot potato, from one generation of women to the next."

  Ernest caught Carol's impatient look at her watch. "I know we're out of time, but stay with me on this a minute longer, Carolyn. You know, this is really important. I'll tell you why . . . because it raises the urgent question of what you may be passing on to your daughter! You see, maybe the best thing we can do in your therapy is to help you break the cycle! I want to help you, Carolyn, and I'm committed to that. But perhaps the real, the major beneficiary, of our work together is going to be your daughter!"

  Carol was absolutely unprepared for this comment and it stunned her. Despite herself, tears welled up and overflowed. Without another word, she rushed out of the office, still weeping, and thinking. Goddamn him, he's done it again. Why am I letting the bastard get to mef

  Descending the stairs, Carol tried to sort out which of Ernest's comments applied to the fictional persona she had created and which truly applied to her. She was so shaken and so lost in thought that she almost stepped on Jess, who was sitting on the bottom step.

  "Hello, Carol. Jess. Remember me?"

  "Oh, hi, Jess. Didn't recognize you." She wiped away a tear. "Not used to seeing you sitting still."

  "I love jogging, but I've been known to walk. The reason you

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  always see me running here is because I'm chronically late—a tough problem to work on in therapy because I always get there too late to talk about it!"

  "Not late today?"

  "Well, I've changed my hour to eight A.M."

  Justin's hour, Carol thought. "So you don't have an hour with Ernest now?"

  "No. I stopped by to speak to you. Wonder if we could talk sometime—perhaps jog together. Or lunch? Or both?"

  "I don't know about jogging. Never done it." Carol swiped at her tears.

  "I'm a good teacher. Here's a handkerchief. I can see you've had one of those hours today. Ernest gets to me, too—uncanny how he knows where the pain is. Anything I can do? Take a walk?"

  Carol started to return Jess's handkerchief but began sobbing again.

  "No, keep the handkerchief. Look, I've had those kind of sessions, too, and I almost always want time by myself to digest things. So I'll take off. But might I call you? Here's my card."

  "And here's mine." Carol fished a card out of her purse. "But I want my reservations about jogging to go on record."

  Jess looked at the card. "Noted and entered, counselor." With that he tipped his yachting cap and took off jogging down Sacramento Street. Carol stared after him, at his long blond hair flowing in the wind and at the white sweater tied around his neck which rose and fell with the undulations of his powerful shoulders.

  Upstairs Ernest entered his notes on Carolyn's chart:

  Progressing well. Hard working hour. Heavy self-disclosure about sex and her masturbatory fantasies. Erotic transference increasing. Need to find a way to address that. Worked on relationship to mother, on family role modeling. Defensive about any perceived criticism of mother. I ended session with comment about the type of family model she will pass on to her daughter. Ran weeping out of office. Expect another emergency phone calU Error to end hour with such a powerful message?

  Besides, Ernest thought, as he closed his folder, / can't have her charging out of my office like that —/ missed my hug!

  FIFTEEN

  fter Marshal's lunch with Peter Macondo the previous week, he immediately sold ninety thousand dollars' worth of stock with the intent of wiring the money to Peter as soon as it cleared. But his wife insisted that he discuss the investment with his cousin Melvin, a tax attorney for the Department of Justice.

  Shirley generally played no part in the S'.reider family finances. As she had become involved in meditation and in ikebana, she had grown not only unconcerned about material goods but increasingly contemptuous of her husband's obsession with acquiring them. Whenever Marshal reveled in the beauty of a painting or glass sculpture and lamented the fifty-thousand-dollar price tag, she would respond simply by saying, "Beauty? Why don't you see it there?" And then point to one of her ikebana arrangements—a graceful minuet of a swirling oak branch and six Morning Dawn camellia blossoms�
�or to the elegant sloping lines of a gnarled and proud five-needle-pine bonsai.

  Z30

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  Though indifferent to money, Shirley was fiercely interested in one thing money could provide: the finest education possible for her children. Marshal had been so expansive, so grandiose, in describing the future returns of his investment in Peter's bicycle helmet factory that she grew concerned and, before agreeing to the investment (all stocks were held jointly), she insisted that Marshal call Melvin,

  For years, Marshal and Melvin had had an informal, mutually profitable barter arrangement: Marshal offered Melvin medical and psychological advice and Melvin reciprocated with investment and tax guidance. Marshal phoned his cousin about Peter Macondo's plan.

  "I don't like the smell of it," Melvin said. "Any investment promising that rate of return is suspect. Five hundred, seven hundred percent return—come on. Marshal! Seven hundred percent! Get real. And the promissory note you faxed to me? You know what that's worth? Zilch, Marshal! Exactly zilch!"

  "Why zilch, Melvin? A promissory note signed by a highly visible businessman? This guy's known everywhere."

  "If he's such a great businessman," Melvin said in his rasping voice, "tell me, why does he give you an unsecured piece of paper— an empty promise? I don't see any collateral. Say he decides not to pay you? He can always create defenses to payment—excuses not to pay. You would have to sue him—that would cost thousands and thousands—and then you would only have another piece of paper, a judgment, and you would still have to find his assets to collect. That would cost you even more money. The note does not remove this risk. Marshal. I know what I'm talking about. I see this stuff all the time."

  Marshal dismissed Melvin's comments out of hand. First, Melvin was paid to be suspicious. Second, Melvin had always thought small. He was just like his father. Uncle Max, who, alone of all the relatives who had come from Russia, had failed to prosper in the new country. His father had begged Max to go partners in a grocery store, but Max scoffed at the idea of getting up at four in the morning to go to the market, working sixteen hours, and ending the day by throwing out rotting, cockroach-brown apples and grapefruits with green ulcers. Max had thought small, had chosen the safety and security of a civil service job, and Melvin, his gawky, gorilla-eared schlemiel of a son with arms that practically reached the floor, had followed in his father's footsteps.

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  But Shirley, who had overheard their conversation, did not so easily dismiss Melvin's warnings. She grew alarmed. Ninety thousand dollars would pay for an entire college education. Marshal tried to conceal his annoyance at Shirley's interference. During their nineteen-year marriage, not once had she shown the slightest interest in any of his investments. And now, when he was poised to grab the economic opportunity of his life, now she chose to stick her uninformed nose in. But Marshal calmed himself—he understood that Shirley's alarm grew out of her ignorance of financial affairs. It would have been different had she met Peter. Her cooperation, however, was essential. To obtain it, he would have to placate Melvin.

  "All right, Melvin, tell me what to do. I'll follow your recommendations."

  "Very simple. What we want is a bank to guarantee the payment of the note—that is, an irrevocable and unconditional commitment by a prime bank to honor the note whenever you demand your money. If this man's holdings are as extensive as you describe, he should have no difficulty obtaining this. If you wish I'll personally draw up an iron-clad note from which Houdini couldn't escape."

  "That's good, Melvin. Do that," said Shirley, who had joined the discussion on the extension phone.

  "Whoa, wait a minute, Shirley." Marshal was now growing angry at these small-minded obstructions. "Peter promised me a secured note by Wednesday. Why don't we just wait and see what he sends? I'll fax it to you, Melvin."

  "Okay. I'll be around all week. But don't send money till you hear from me. Oh, and one other thing: you say that Rolex came in a Shreve's Jewelry Store box? Shreve's is a reputable jeweler. Do me a favor. Marshal. Take twenty minutes, take the watch to Shreve's and let them verify it! Fake Rolexes are the rage—they sell them on every street corner in downtown Manhattan."

  "He'll go, Melvin," said Shirley, "and I'll go with him."

  The trip to Shreve's reassured Shirley. The watch was, indeed, a Rolex—a thirty-five-hundred-dollar Rolex! Not only had it been purchased there but the salesman remembered Peter well.

  "Fine-looking gentlemen. Most beautiful coat I've ever seen: double-breasted gray cashmere, reached almost to the floor. He was on the verge of buying a second, identical watch for his father but then thought better of it—said he was going to fly to Zurich that weekend and he'd buy a watch there."

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  Marshal was so pleased he offered to buy Shirley a gift. She chose an exquisite two-mouthed green ceramic vase for ikebana.

  On Wednesday, as promised, Peter's note arrived and, to Marshal's great pleasure, it met Melvin's specifications precisely—a note guaranteed by Credit Suisse for ninety thousand dollars plus interest at prime, payable upon demand at any of the hundreds of worldwide branches of Credit Suisse. Even Melvin could find no fault with it and grudgingly admitted it did, indeed, appear to be iron-clad. Just the same, Melvin reiterated, he was uneasy with any investment that hinted at that rate of return.

  "Does that mean," Marshal said, "you wouldn't want a part of this investment?"

  "You offering a piece of it?" asked Melvin.

  "Let me think about it! I'll get back to you." Fat chance, Marshal thought, as he hung up the phone. Melvin'll have a long wait to get a piece of this.

  The following day the money from Marshal's stock sale entered his account, and he wired ninety thousand to Peter in Zurich. He played great basketball at noon and had a quick lunch with Vince, one of the players, a psychologist whose office adjoined his. Although Vince and he were confidants. Marshal did not speak about the investment with him. Or with anyone in his field. Only Melvin knew. And yet, Marshal reassured himself, this transaction was squeaky-clean. Peter was not a patient; he was an ex-patient, and an ex-brief therapy patient at that. Transference was not an issue. Even though he knew there was no professional conflict of interest. Marshal reminded himself to tell Melvin to keep this entirely confidential.

  Later that afternoon, when he met with Adriana, Peter's fiancee, Marshal took care to maintain the boundaries of their professional relationship by avoiding any discussion of his investment with Peter. He graciously acknowledged her congratulations for his endowed lectureship, but when she informed him that she had learned yesterday from Peter that a bill requiring juvenile bicyclists to wear helmets had been placed before the legislature in both Sweden and Switzerland, he nodded only briefly and then immediately turned to her issues: an investigation of her relationship with her father, a basically benevolent man who, however, was so intimidating that no one dared confront him. Adriana's father had very positive feelings toward Peter—indeed, he was one of Peter's group of investors—but

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  he nonetheless strongly opposed a marriage that would take not only his daughter but his future grandchildren and heirs out of the country.

  Marshal's comments to Adriana about her relationship with her father—about how good parenting consists of preparing children to individuate, to become autonomous, to be able to leave their parents—proved useful. For the first time Adriana began to comprehend that she did not necessarily have to accept the guilt that her father laid upon her. It was not her fault that her mother had died. Not her fault that her father was growing old or that his life was so unpeopled. They ended the hour with Adriana raising the question of whether she might continue for longer than the five hours Peter had requested.

  "Might it also be possible. Dr. Streider," Adriana asked as she rose to leave, "for you to meet jointly with me and my father?"

  The patient had no
t yet been born who could force Marshal Streider to extend a session. Even by a minute or two. Marshal prided himself on that. But he couldn't resist a reference to Peter's gift and gestured toward his wrist, saying, "My new watch, accurate to a millisecond, says two-fifty precisely. Shall we begin our next session with your questions, Miss Roberts?"

  SIXTEEN

  arshal was pumped up as he prepared to see Shelly. What a great day, he thought. It doesn't get much better than this: the money finally wired to Peter, a brilliant session with Adriana, and glorious basketball—that final driving lay-up, lane opening up like magic, no one daring to get in his way.

  And he was looking forward to seeing Shelly. It was their fourth hour. Their two sessions earlier in the week had been extraordinary. Could any other therapist possibly have worked so brilliantly? He had begun a deft, efficient sector analysis on Shelly's relationship with his father, and with the precision of a surgeon had methodically replaced Seth Pande's corrupt interpretations with correct ones.

  Shelly entered the office and, as always, stroked the orange bowl of the glass sculpture before taking his seat. Then, with no coaxing from Marshal, he immediately began.

  "You remember Willy, my poker and tennis chum? I talked about

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  him last week. He's the one who's worth about forty, fifty milHon. Well, he's invited me to La Costa for a week to be his partner in the annual Pancho Segura invitational doubles tournament. I thought I was okay with that, but . . . well, there's something about it that doesn't sit right. I'm not sure what."

  "What are your ideas about it?"

  "I like Willy. He's trying to be a good buddy. I know the couple thou he'll be laying out for me at La Costa is nothing for him. He's so loaded there's no way he can even spend the interest on his money. Besides, it's not like he's not getting something back. He's set his sights on a national ranking at senior doubles and, let me tell you, he's not going to find a better partner than me. But I don't know. This still doesn't explain the way I feel."