Tonight I picked up my copy of Love’s Executioner by Irving Yalom, one of my favorite books, and re-read the Introduction and the title story, “ Love's Executioner,"which deals with Yalom’s treatment of a 70 year old woman suffering from “love obsession.” Eight years ago she had a month-long affair with her handsome 40 year old psychotherapist, Michael, who it turns out was in an altered state of consciousness when they met, and she hasn’t been able to get the affair or Michael out of her mind for the past 8 years.
I thought what Yalom had to say about love obsession was valuable; so I’d like to share a few quotes from the book with you.
This is how the essay begins: “I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy. I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mastery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love’s executioner.” He then tells of a patient Thelma,aged 70, who came to see him after having already had over 20 years of therapy, which had failed to help her lift her depression. During the past 8 years she had clung to her memory of what she considered to be the peak experience of her life, a month-long affair with one of her therapists.
“I was struck by the tenacity of Thelma’s love obsession, which had possessed her for 8 years with no external reinforcement. The obsession filled her entire life space. She was continually reliving her life 8 years ago. Yalom concluded that "The obsession must draw part of its strength from the impoverishment of the rest of her existence. I doubted that it would be possible to separate her from her obsession without first helping her to enrich other realms of her life.”...
“I wondered about the amount of intimacy in her daily life. From what she’d told me about her marriage, there was apparently little closeness between herself and her husband. Perhaps the function of the obsession was simply to provide intimacy: it bonded her to another—but not to a real person, to a fantasy.”…
“My best hope was to establish a close, meaningful relationship between the two of us, and then to use that relationship as a solvent into which to dissolve her obsession. Her problem fascinated me. Her love obsession was tenacious, having dominated 8 years of her life. I believed that with a little effort a little ingenuity I could dig out the roots of her obsession. And then? Underneath the obsession what would I find? Would I discover the brutal facts of human existence that the fantasy fusion in love conceals? So far, it was apparent [to Yalom] that "Thelma’s love for Matthew was, in reality, something else—perhaps an protective shield against aging and isolation. It was a fantasy.There was little of Matthew in it nor much love”…
“I was fascinated by encountering a love obsession so deeply rooted and in a vulnerable exposed state, and I was not to be swayed from digging it out and investigating it….I said to Thelma: “You cannot live life in the present because you continually play past history over and over. I thought you came to see me because you wanted to stop tormenting yourself.”
“There were so many leads that it was hard to select and concentrate on one. First, however, it was necessary to convince Thelma that the obsession had to be eradicated.[Hence Yalom’s title: he is “love’s executioner, who must destroy his patient’s love obsession, which, he feels, is ruining her life.] “”For a love obsession drains life of its reality, obliterating new experiences, both good and bad—as I know from my own life.” (p.34)…Nietzsche claimed that a philosopher’s system of thought always stems from his autobiography, and I believe that to be true for all therapists, in fact, formal thinking persons.”
He tells Thelma that she and Matthew really never loved each other; they were just “innocent bystanders.”
“Neither of you were relating to each other, but to some fantasy of the other. You fell in love with Matthew because of what he represented to you: someone who would love you totally and unconditionally; who would be entirely devoted to your welfare and growth; someone who would undo your aging, and love you as he young, beautiful Sonia you once were; who provided you the opportunity to escape the pain of being separate and offered you the bliss of selfless merger. You may have been ‘in love’ but one thing’s for sure, you weren’t in love with Matthew; you never knew him.” (p.42) She replied that nothing in her life had ever “been more real to me….Those were 27 days of paradise.”
When Dr. Yalom asked her to describe her experience of euphoria, she replied that “It was an out-of-the- body experience. I had no weight. It was as though I wasn’t there, or at least the part off me that hurts and pulls me down. I just stopped. Thinking and worrying about me. I became a we.” He comments:
“The lonely I ecstatically dissolving into the we. How often I’ve heard that! It’s the common denominator of every form of bliss—romantic, sexual, political, religious, mystical. Everyone wants and welcomes this blissful merger. But it’s different with Thelma; it’s not that she wants it, but she has to have it in order to escape some danger.” (p.43)
“We’ve talked very little about your being 70. How do you feel about that?”
“I guess I’d have a different slant on therapy if I were 40 rather than 70. I’d have something to look forward to.Wouldn’t psychiatrists rather work with younger people?”
“It is positle at 70 to discover a new perspective that will permit you to flood retroactively your whole earlier life with new meaning and significance.”
“I knew that there was rich material here.I felt strongly that Thelma’s fear of aging and death fueled her obsession. One of the reasons she wanted to merge in love, and be obliterated by it, was to escape the terror of facing obliteration by death….Yet here was a wonderful opportunity to work on our relationship.
Although the two themes we’d been exploring (the flight from freedom and from the isolation of separateness) constituted and would continue to constitute, the content of our discourse, I felt that my best chance to help Thelma lay in the development of a meaningful relationship with her.” I hoped that the establishment of an interim ate bond with me might sufficiently attenuate her bond with Matthew so that she could pry herself loose from him. Only then would we turn to the identification and removal of the obstacles that were preventing her from establishing intonate relationships in her social life.” (p.44)
It contains the wisdom of a master existential therapist, who is also a gifted storyteller (Love's Executioner is non-fiction, based on real case histories, but it reads like fine fiction).
And what is existential psychotherapy? It begins with the idea that our fundamental psychological dis-ease results from difficulties baked into human existence, such as our fear of death and our ultimate aloneness. Or as Yalom writes in Love's Executioner prologue: There are "four givens that are particularly relevant to psychotherapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love, the freedom to make our lives as we will, our ultimate aloneness, and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life. However grim these givens may seem, they contain the seeds of wisdom and redemption. I hope to demonstrate, in these ten tales of psychotherapy, that it is possible to confront the truths of existence and harness their power in the service of personal change and growth." *
That paragraph captures the core blueprint of the book, but if you stopped there you'd be missing out. Like all great artists, Yalom brings those essential issues to life so you feel them in your bones. He stops our breath through the stories, intimate details, and insights into the lives of some of his extraordinary patients (or sometimes "ordinary"ish, but made extraordinary in Yalom's capable hands). The tender truth often shimmers in Love's Executioner. We see the art of psychotherapy, and thus living, practiced by a master, both as a writer and a guide to how to midwife psychological wisdom.
Other reviewers here have pointed out that Love's Executioner is must reading for therapists and those undergoing psychotherapy. This is true, and Yalom, is understandably a rock star among therapist, not just for his skillful prose (he is also an accomplished novelist), but his textbooks that have been read by at least two generations of therapists. But it would be a shame if this masterwork--and I do believe it's fair to call Love's Executioner his master work--weren't read by everyone. For it has something for everyone: whether you like fiction or non-fiction. Lovers of fiction get the storytelling and intimacy of a great novel. Readers of non-fiction know these are stories of real patients and get actionable take-aways. As noted, I plan to reread or relisten to this book periodically, knowing I'll pick up something new each time. Books don't get much better than this.
* In Love's Executioner, Yalom notes that he doesn't belong to a psychological school of thought. Since I see existential psychological dilemmas as true for everyone, regardless of your philosophical or religious beliefs, I tend to agree with him. That said, I do believe this is still an outlook, and that there will be others with a different outlook that will consider existential therapy a school of thought. -I originally got a promotional/review copy of the audiobook, but think it is so good, I got extra copies and have given copies to friends and coworkers.
And what is existential psychotherapy? It begins with the idea that our fundamental psychological dis-ease results from difficulties baked into human existence, such as our fear of death and our ultimate aloneness. Or as Yalom writes in Love's Executioner prologue: There are "four givens that are particularly relevant to psychotherapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love, the freedom to make our lives as we will, our ultimate aloneness, and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life. However grim these givens may seem, they contain the seeds of wisdom and redemption. I hope to demonstrate, in these ten tales of psychotherapy, that it is possible to confront the truths of existence and harness their power in the service of personal change and growth." *
That paragraph captures the core blueprint of the book, but if you stopped there you'd be missing out. Like all great artists, Yalom brings those essential issues to life so you feel them in your bones. He stops our breath through the stories, intimate details, and insights into the lives of some of his extraordinary patients (or sometimes "ordinary"ish, but made extraordinary in Yalom's capable hands). The tender truth often shimmers in Love's Executioner. We see the art of psychotherapy, and thus living, practiced by a master, both as a writer and a guide to how to midwife psychological wisdom.
Other reviewers here have pointed out that Love's Executioner is must reading for therapists and those undergoing psychotherapy. This is true, and Yalom, is understandably a rock star among therapist, not just for his skillful prose (he is also an accomplished novelist), but his textbooks that have been read by at least two generations of therapists. But it would be a shame if this masterwork--and I do believe it's fair to call Love's Executioner his master work--weren't read by everyone. For it has something for everyone: whether you like fiction or non-fiction. Lovers of fiction get the storytelling and intimacy of a great novel. Readers of non-fiction know these are stories of real patients and get actionable take-aways. As noted, I plan to reread or relisten to this book periodically, knowing I'll pick up something new each time. Books don't get much better than this.
* In Love's Executioner, Yalom notes that he doesn't belong to a psychological school of thought. Since I see existential psychological dilemmas as true for everyone, regardless of your philosophical or religious beliefs, I tend to agree with him. That said, I do believe this is still an outlook, and that there will be others with a different outlook that will consider existential therapy a school of thought. -I originally got a promotional/review copy of the audiobook, but think it is so good, I got extra copies and have given copies to friends and coworkers.
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