Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
Irvin D. Yalom, 1989
A seventy-year-old woman has spent eight years unable to forget an affair that lasted twenty-seven days. A scholar is afraid to open three letters. A widow, after her handbag is stolen, feels that her whole world has collapsed. Irvin Yalom tells the stories of ten of his patients and shows the common fear hidden behind the strangest troubles.
Who it is for
For anyone who keeps coming back, for years, to one thought, one person or one fear, and wants to understand what lies behind it. And for anyone who wants to look into a psychotherapist’s office and see how the cause of a strange trouble is sought there.
I do not like working with patients who are in love.
Strange troubles and one common fear
Picture a psychotherapist’s office in California. A woman of seventy comes in, who for eight years has been thinking about an affair that lasted twenty-seven days. A scholar comes in who for weeks has been unable to open three envelopes. A widow comes in whose handbag was stolen, and she weeps as if her whole life had been taken from her. From the outside such troubles look strange and minor. The psychiatrist Irvin Yalom saw the same fear behind each of them.
In the book “Love’s Executioner” he tells the stories of ten of his patients. His approach is called existential psychotherapy. Yalom identifies four givens of life that everyone meets sooner or later, and he believes that many of our anxieties grow out of them. There is the inevitability of death, freedom, for which we ourselves are responsible, loneliness, which not even the closest love entirely cancels, and the absence of a ready-made meaning that someone might hand us in advance.
What is also unusual in this book is how Yalom writes about himself. He does not pose as an all-knowing doctor. He admits to irritation, boredom, mistakes and doubts, and shows that the therapist searches for the answer together with the patient rather than bringing it in finished form.
Six of these stories lie ahead. In each there is an illusion that helps a person avoid looking at the truth, and the moment when that illusion cracks. You may recognize yourself in one of them, and that is a good sign: it means you are ready to look at yourself honestly.
Being in love as a shelter from time
Yalom opens the book with an admission that is hard to expect from a psychotherapist: he does not like working with patients who are in love. Perhaps out of envy, he writes, since he too wants the enchantment. Or perhaps because therapy seeks clarity, while being in love lives on mystery. The light a therapist brings can put out the enchantment.
Thelma came to him at the age of seventy. Eight years earlier she had had an affair with Matthew, her former therapist, who was much younger than she was. The affair lasted twenty-seven days, and then Matthew ended it. Thelma was married, yet her whole life since then had revolved around that one month. She kept replaying those meetings and could not move on.
Yalom decided on an unusual step: he invited Matthew to a joint meeting with Thelma. The conversation showed her what she did not want to see. The mutual love she remembered, and had kept for years like a treasure, was not there in the form she believed. Thelma herself had built much of that story.
Beneath the obsession Yalom saw fear. While Thelma lived in the past, she did not have to look at old age, the emptiness ahead and her own death. Being in love worked like a warm blanket pulled over the head: under it you cannot see that the room is growing dark.
Such love also offers one more comfort. Yalom notes that being in love gives a feeling of merging with another person, in which loneliness disappears. By dissolving into another, you stop feeling that in the most essential things each of us is alone. That is why such love is so hard to give up: along with it, the loneliness it let you forget comes back.
Yalom is not sure that he helped her. He writes that he hates being love’s executioner. Taking an illusion away from a person and giving nothing in return can be cruel, so the central question here is not only whether it is true, but what the person will receive instead of the comfort.
If you keep coming back, for years, to one person, one episode or one missed chance, it is worth asking yourself not “why can’t I forget?” but “what is this thought shielding me from?” Sometimes behind an obsessive love stands a fear of emptiness, of aging or of loneliness. The love itself is not bad. Trouble begins when it becomes a place to hide from your own life.
About the author
Irvin D. Yalom is an American psychiatrist, professor emeritus at Stanford University and one of the founders of existential psychotherapy. He is the author of textbooks on group therapy and of novels, among them “When Nietzsche Wept.”
All books by this author: Irvin D. Yalom
Terms from the book
- Dave
- existential psychotherapy
- givens: Yalom’s word for the four unavoidable conditions of life: death, freedom, loneliness and the absence of ready-made meaning. It is the author’s frame, not a diagnosis.
- Thelma: The patient from the book’s first story, a seventy-year-old woman who for eight years could not forget a brief affair with her former therapist.
- Matthew: Thelma’s former therapist, much younger than she was. Yalom invited him to a joint meeting with her.
- Elva: A recently widowed patient whose handbag was stolen. Her story in the book is titled “I Never Thought It Could Happen to Me.”
- Monterey: A small seaside town in California, United States.
- Albert: Elva’s late husband.
- Sol: The patient from the story “Three Unopened Letters,” a scientist who did not dare to open letters from Stockholm.
- neurobiologist: A scientist who studies the nervous system and the brain.
- Soraya: The woman Dave loved in his youth, whose letters he kept for thirty years.
- Betty: The patient from the story “The Plump One,” whom Yalom at first disliked and openly confessed to disliking.
- countertransference: The therapist’s feelings toward a patient that come from his own life and past, rather than from what the patient does.
- Marvin: A sixty-four-year-old accountant from the book’s last story, “In Search of the Dreamer.”
- migraine: A severe, recurring headache, often on one side of the head, sometimes with nausea and sensitivity to light.
- Phyllis: Marvin’s wife, who in time also came to meetings with Yalom.
- agoraphobia: A strong fear of open or crowded places, which can make it difficult for a person to leave home.
All terms
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