Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom Page B

voice was pleading rather than threatening. Just the same, he had my full attention—and, as he spoke, I could not help glancing at his large, strangler’s hands. He proceeded, and now reproach entered his voice, to describe how Thelma had gotten progressively worse since she and I had started working together. After hearing him out, I tried to offer some support by stating that a long depression is almost as hard on the family as it is on the patient. Ignoring my gambit, he responded that Thelma had always been a good wife and that perhaps he had aggravated her problem by being on the go and traveling too much. Finally, when I informed him of Thelma’s decision to terminate, he seemed relieved and gratified: he had been urging her in this direction for several weeks.
    After Harry left my office, I sat there tired and stunned and angry. God, what a couple! Deliver me from both of them! The irony of it all. The old fool wants his “old Thelma back again.” Has he been so “absent” he hasn’t noticed that he never had the old Thelma? The old Thelma was never home: for the last eight years she has spent ninety percent of her life lost in the fantasy of a love she never had. Harry, no less than Thelma, chose to embrace illusion. Cervantes asked, “Which will you have: wise madness or foolish sanity?” It was clear which choice Harry and Thelma were making!
    But I got little solace from pointing my finger at Thelma and Harry or from lamenting the weakness of the human spirit—that feeble wraith unable to survive without illusion, without enchantment or pipe dreams or vital lies. It was time to face the truth: I had botched this case beyond belief, and I could not transfer blame to the patient, or her husband, or the human condition.
    My next few days were filled with self-recrimination and worry about Thelma. At first concerned about suicide, I ultimately soothed myself with the thought that her anger was so overt and so outwardly directed that it was unlikely she would turn it against herself.
    To combat my self-recriminations, I attempted to persuade myself that I had employed a proper therapeutic strategy: Thelma was in extremis when she consulted me and something had to be done. Although she was in bad shape now, she was no worse than when she started. Who knows, maybe she was better, maybe I had successfully disillusioned her, and she needed to lick her wounds in solitude for a while before proceeding with any form of therapy? I had tried a more conservative approach for four months and had resorted to a radical intervention only when it was apparent I had no other choice.
    But this was all self-deception. I knew that I had good reason to be guilty. I had, once again, fallen prey to the grandiose belief that I can treat anyone. Swept along by hubris and by my curiosity, I had disregarded twenty years of evidence at the outset that Thelma was a poor candidate for psychotherapy, and had subjected her to a painful confrontation which, in retrospect, had little likelihood of success. I had stripped away defenses without building anything to replace them.
    Perhaps Thelma was right in protecting herself from me at this point. Perhaps she was right in saying that “a little more treatment would kill the patient!” All in all, I deserved Thelma and Harry’s criticism. I had also embarrassed myself professionally. In describing her psychotherapy at a teaching conference a couple of weeks before, I had aroused considerable interest. I cringed now at the prospect of colleagues and students asking me in the weeks to come, “Fill us in. How did it all turn out?”
    As I had expected, Thelma did not keep her next appointment three weeks later. I phoned her and had a brief but remarkable conversation. Though she was adamant in reaffirming her intention to quit the realm of patienthood, I detected less rancor in her voice. Not only was she turned off therapy, she volunteered, but she had no further need of it: she had been