by Irvin Yalom
Tony turned his head at the sound of Pam slapping her head as she covered her face with her hands and noted that Rebecca, too, had her hands to her head. “Okay, okay, maybe I’ll toss those last cards and just stick with the cards saying, Why now?”
“Good question, Tony. I appreciate your getting me started. A few minutes ago I was wishing I had a cotherapist here to help me, and then you come along and do the job. You’re good at this. Therapy could have been a good career for you. Let’s see. Why now? I’ve asked that question so many times, and yet this may be the first time I’ve had it come my way. First, I think you’re all right-on when you say it’s not because of my bargain with Philip. Yet I can’t dismiss that entirely because there is something to his point about the I-thou relationship. To quote Philip, the idea is ‘not without merit.’” Julius smiled at Philip but received no smile in return.
Julius continued, “What I mean is, there is some problem with the lack of reciprocity in the authentic therapy relationship—it’s a knotty question. So addressing that problem is part of my reason for accepting Philip’s challenge.”
Julius wanted a response. He felt he had been speaking too long. He turned to Philip. “How do you feel about what I’ve said so far?”
Philip jerked his head around, startled at Julius’s question. After a moment’s deliberation he said, “It seems generally agreed here that I’m one of those who have chosen to reveal a great deal. That’s inaccurate. Someone in the group revealed something about their experience with me, and I revealed what I did only in the service of historical accuracy.”
“Want to tell me what’s that got to do with anything?” asked Tony.
“Exactly,” said Stuart. “Talk about accuracy, Philip! First, for the record, I’m not one who’s thought you’ve revealed yourself. But, mainly I want to say your answer is nowhere near the mark. It has zero to do with Julius’s question about your feelings.”
Philip seemed to take no offense. “Right. Okay, back to Julius’s question—I think I was confounded by his question because I had no feelings. There was nothing in what he said to warrant an emotional response.”
“That at least is relevant,” said Stuart. “Your earlier response came out of left field.”
“I am so tired of your pseudodementia game here!” Pam, slapping her thigh in exasperation, spit out her words to Philip. “And I’m pissed at your refusing to give me a name! This referring to me as ‘someone in the group’ is insulting and imbecilic.”
“By pseudodementia you imply I feign ignorance?” said Philip, avoiding Pam’s glare.
“Glory be,” said Bonnie, raising her arms, “A first. The two of you are acknowledging one another, actually speaking.”
Pam ignored Bonnie’s remark and continued speaking to Philip. “Pseudodementia is a compliment compared to its alternative. You say you can find nothing in Julius’s remark warranting a response. How can anyone have no responses to Julius?” Pam’s eyes blazed.
“For example?” asked Philip. “You obviously have something in mind for me to feel.”
“Let’s try gratitude for taking you and your thoughtless and insensitive question seriously. Let’s try respect for keeping his I-thou promise to you. Or how about sorrow for what he went through in the past. Or fascination or even identification with his unruly sexual feelings. Or admiration for his willingness to work with you, with all of us, despite his cancer. And that’s just for starters.” Pam raised her voice: “How could you not have feelings?” Pam looked away from Philip, breaking off their contact.
Philip didn’t answer. He sat still as a Buddha, leaning forward in his chair, gazing at the floor.
In the deep silence following Pam’s outburst Julius wondered how best to continue. Often it was better to wait—one of his favorite therapy axioms was “strike when the iron is cold!”
Viewing therapy, as he so often did, as a sequence of emotion activation followed by integration, Julius reflected upon the abundance of emotional expression today. Perhaps too much. Time to move on to understanding and integration. Choosing an oblique route, he turned to Bonnie, “So, what about the ‘glory be!’”
“Reading my thoughts again, Julius? How do you do it? I was just thinking about that crack and regretting it. I’m afraid it came out wrong and sounded mocking. Did it?” She looked at Pam and then Philip.
“I didn’t think so at the time,” said Pam, “but yeah, looking back, there’s some mocking there.”
“Sorry,” said Bonnie. “But this boiling caldron here, you and Philip sniping, all those carom shots—I just felt relieved by the directness. And you?” she turned to Philip. “You resent my comment?”
“Sorry.” Philip continued looking down. “It didn’t register. I was only aware of the glare in her eyes.”
“Her?” said Tony.
“In Pam’s eyes.” He turned to Pam, his voice quavered for an instant, “in your eyes, Pam,”
“Okay, man,” said Tony, “now we’re rolling.”
“Were you scared, Philip?” asked Gill. “It’s not easy to be on the receiving end of that, is it?”
“No, I was entirely preoccupied in my search for some way of not allowing her glare, her words, her opinion to matter to me. I mean, Pam, your words, your opinion.”
“Sounds like you and I have something in common, Philip,” said Gill. “You’re like me—we both have our problems with Pam.”
Philip looked at Gill and nodded, perhaps a nod of gratitude, Julius thought. When it seemed clear that Philip was not going to offer more, Julius looked around the group to bring in other members. He never passed up an opportunity to widen the interaction network: with the faith of an evangelist he believed that the more members involved in the interaction, the more effective the group. He wanted to engage Pam—her outburst toward Philip was still ringing in the air. To that end, he addressed Gill and said, “Gill, you say it’s not easy to be on the receiving end of Pam’s comments…and last week you referred to Pam as the chief justice—can you say more?”
“Oh, it’s just my stuff, I know, I’m not sure and I’m not a good judge of this, but—”
Julius interrupted, “Stop! Let’s freeze the action right here. At this instant.” He turned to Pam: “Look at what Gill just said. Is that related to your saying you don’t or can’t listen to him?”
“Exactly,” said Pam. “Quintessential Gill. Look, Gill, here’s what you just announced: ‘Don’t pay any attention to what I’m about to say. It’s not important—I’m not important—it’s just my stuff. Don’t want to offend. Don’t listen to me.’ Not only do you disqualify yourself, but it is vapid. Downright tedious. Christ, Gill! You got something to say? Just stand up and say it!”
“So, Gill,” Julius asked, “if you were going to say it straight out without preamble, what would it be?” That good old conditional voice ploy.
“I’d say to her—to you, Pam—you are the judge I fear here. You sit in judgment of me. I’m uneasy—no, I’m downright terrified, in your presence.”
“That’s straight, Gill. Now I’m listening,” said Pam.
“So, Pam,” said Julius, “that’s two men here—Philip and Gill—who express fear of you. Do you have some reaction to that?”
“Yep—a big reaction: ‘That’s their problem.’”
“Any possibility that it’s also your problem?” said Rebecca. “Maybe other men in your life have felt this too.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Feedback, anyone, about this last interchange?” Asked Julius.
“I think Pam’s being a little dodgy,” said Stuart.
“I agree. I get the feeling that you’re not going to think too hard about it, Pam,” said Bonnie.
“Yep, you’re dead right. I think I’m still smarting from Rebecca saying she wanted to protect Philip from my rage.”
“It’s a dilemma, isn’t it, Pam?” said Julius. “As you just said to Gill, you value no-bullshit feedback. Yet when you get it, ouc
h, how it smarts.”
“That’s true—so maybe I’m not as tough as I appear. And, Rebecca, that did hurt.”
Rebecca said, “I’m sorry, Pam; that wasn’t my intention. Supporting Philip is not identical to attacking you.”
Julius waited and wondered in which direction to guide the group. There were many possibilities. Pam’s rage and judgmentalism were on the table. And what about the other men, Tony and Stuart? Where were they? And the competitiveness between Pam and Rebecca was still on the table. Or should the group deal with the unfinished business with Bonnie and her mocking statement? Or perhaps focus more on the outburst from Pam to Philip? He knew it was best to be patient; it would be a mistake to push too fast. After only a handful of meetings there had been definite progress toward détente. Maybe they had done enough today. Hard to gauge, though; Philip gave little away. But then, to Julius’s surprise, the group took an entirely unanticipated direction.
“Julius,” said Tony, “I been wondering. You okay with the response to what you revealed?”
“Well, we didn’t get very far. Let me think about what happened. You told me how you felt and so did Pam, and then she and Philip got into it about his not having feelings about my revelation. And, Tony, I never really answered your question about ‘why now.’ Let me go back to that.” Julius took time to gather his thoughts, keenly aware that his self-revelation, or that of any therapist, always had double implications: first, whatever he got out of it for himself and, second, the modeling that it set for the group.
“I can tell you that I was not about to be deterred from revealing what I did. I mean, almost everyone here tried to stop me, but I felt bullheaded, absolutely determined to continue. This is very unusual for me and I’m not sure I understand it fully, but there’s something important there. You inquired, Tony, whether I was asking for help with it—or maybe asking for forgiveness. No, that wasn’t it; long ago I forgave myself after spending years working on it with my friends and with a therapist. One thing I can tell you for sure: in the past, I mean before my melanoma, I would never, not in a thousand years, have said what I said in the group today.
“Before my melanoma,” Julius continued. “That’s the key. We’ve all got a death sentence—I know you all pay me well for such cheery pronouncements—but the experience of having it certified, stamped, and even dated has sure caught my attention. My melanoma is giving me a strange sense of release that’s got a lot to do with my revealing myself today. Maybe that’s why I’ve been yearning for a co-therapist—someone objective who can make sure that I continue acting in your best interests.”
Julius stopped. Then, he added, “I noted that none of you responded earlier when I commented on how you were taking care of me today.”
After a few more moments of silence, Julius added, “And you’re still not.You see, this is why I miss having a co-therapist here. I’ve always believed that if there’s something big that’s not being talked about, then nothing else that’s important can be worked on either. My job is to remove obstacles; the last thing I want is to be an obstacle. Now, it’s hard for me to get outside myself, but I feel you’re avoiding me, or let me put it this way, avoiding my mortal illness.”
Bonnie said, “I want to discuss what’s happening to you; but I don’t want to cause you pain.”
Others agreed.
“Yep, now you’ve put your finger right on it. Now listen hard to what I’m going to say: there’s only one way you can hurt me —and that is to cut yourself off from me. It’s hard to talk to someone with a life-threatening illness—I know that. People have a tendency to tread gently; they don’t know the right thing to say.”
“That’s right-on for me,” said Tony. “I don’t know what to say. But I’m going to try to stay with you.”
“I sense that, Tony.”
“Isn’t it so,” said Philip, “that people fear contact with the afflicted because they wish not to be confronted with the death that awaits each of them?”
Julius nodded. “That sounds important, Philip. Let’s examine it here.” If anyone but Philip had said this, Julius would have been sure to ask whether they were expressing their own feelings. However, at this stage, he wanted only to support Philip’s appropriateness. He scanned the group, awaiting a response.
“Maybe,” said Bonnie, “there’s something to what Philip said because I’ve had a couple of recent nightmares of something trying to kill me, and then there was that nightmare I described—trying to catch that train which was falling apart.”
“I know that under the surface I’m more fearful than usual,” said Stuart. “One of my tennis chums is a dermatologist, and twice now in the last month I’ve asked him to check out one of my skin lesions. Melanoma is on my mind.”
“Julius,” said Pam, “you’ve been on my mind ever since you told me about your melanoma. There is something to what I’m being told about my being tough on men, but you’re the main exception—you are the dearest man I’ve ever known. And yes, I do feel protective of you. I felt it when Philip put you on the spot. I thought—and still think—it was callous and insensitive of him. And the question of whether I’m more conscious of my own death—well, that may be there, but I’m not aware of it. I can tell you that I’m on the lookout for consolatory things I might say to you. Last night I read something interesting, a passage in Nabokov’s memoir, Speak, Memory, which described life as a spark between two identical pools of darkness, the darkness before we were born and the darkness after we die. And how odd it is that we have so much concern about the latter and so little about the former. I somehow found this enormously reassuring and immediately tagged it to give to you.”
“That’s a gift, Pam. Thank you. That’s an extraordinary thought. And it is a reassuring thought, though I’m not quite sure why. I’m more comfortable with that first pool, before birth—it seems friend-lier—perhaps I imbue it with promise, the potential of things to come.”
“That thought,” said Philip, “was also reassuring to Schopenhauer, from whom, incidentally, Nabokov undoubtedly lifted it. Schopenhauer said that after death we will be what we were before our birth and then proceeded to prove the impossibility of there being more than one kind of nothingness.”
Julius never had a chance to reply. Pam glared at Philip and barked a response: “Right here we have a perfect illustration of why your desire to be a counselor is a monstrous joke. We’re in the midst of tender feelings, and what matters most, what only matters to you, is accuracy of attribution. You think Schopenhauer once said something vaguely similar. Big fucking deal!”
Philip closed his eyes and began reciting: “‘A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence; he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more.’ I’ve committed a great deal of Schopenhauer to memory: third paragraph of his essay ‘Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Vanity of Existence.’ Is that vague enough for you?”
“Children, children, you two quit that,” said Bonnie, in a high-pitched voice.
“You’re getting loose, Bonnie. I like it,” said Tony.
“Other feelings, anybody?” asked Julius.
“I don’t want to get caught in this crossfire. Some big cannons being wheeled out,” said Gill.
“Yeah,” said Stuart, “neither of them can resist the opportunity for a jab. Philip’s got to comment on someone else using Schopenhauer’s phrase, and Pam can’t resist the opportunity to call Philip a monstrous joke.”
“I didn’t say he was a monstrous joke. I said…”
“Get off it, Pam, you’re nitpicking. You know what I meant.” Stuart held his ground. “And anyway that blowup about Nabokov—that was out of line, Pam. You bad-mouth his hero, and then you praise someone else who borrows Schopenhauer’s words. What’s so wrong with Philip setting you straight? What’s the big crime with his pointing out Schopenhauer’s priority?”
&nb
sp; “I gotta say something,” said Tony. “As usual I don’t know who these dudes are—at least not Nabo…Nobo?
“Nabokov,” said Pam, in the soft voice she reserved for Tony. “He’s a great Russian writer. You may have heard of his novel Lolita.”
“Yeah, I saw that. Well, in this kind of talk I get into a vicious circle—not knowing makes me feel stupid, then I clam up, and then I feel more stupid. I’ve got to keep trying to break that pattern by speaking out.” He turned to Julius: “So to answer your question about feelings, that’s one feeling—stupid. Another is that for one instant, when he said, ‘Is that vague enough for you?’ I got a glimpse of Philip’s teeth—and they’re sharp teeth, real sharp. And some other feelings toward Pam,” Tony turned to face her, “Pam, you’re my girl—I really dig you, but I’ll tell you something: I sure don’t want to get on your bad side.”
“I hear you,” said Pam.
“And, and…” said Tony, “I forgot the most important thing I was going to say—that this whole argument has gotten us off the track. We were talking about how we might be protecting or avoiding you, Julius. Then with Pam and Philip we got off the topic quick. So aren’t we avoiding you again?”
“You know, I don’t feel that now. When we work as intimately as we’re doing now, we never stay on a single trail. The stream of thought keeps overflowing into new channels. And, incidentally,” Julius turned to Philip, “I use that term—intimately—quite deliberately. I think your anger—which we see breaking through here for the first time—is truly a sign of intimacy. I think you care enough about Pam to be angry at her.”
