Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 193 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  A good way, he said, to use the commute time from Los Altos to San Francisco. She wasn’t so sure. The hours had been frustrating in the first place, and going through them a second time was only more frustrating. The truck, having gained on her, flashed his lights to pass. Pulling over a lane, she cursed the trucker as he gave her the finger. Suppose she had an accident because she was distracted by listening to the tape? Could she sue her shrink? Take his ass into court? That notion brought a smile to her lips. Leaning over, Myrna pressed “rewind” for a few seconds, then the “play” button. “Stay here in the room with me, Myrna. What’s it been like being here today?” “What do you mean?” “Same thing I always mean. Try to talk about what’s going on here, between us.” “Frustrating! Another hundred-fifty-dollar pop, and I don’t feel better.” “So I failed again today. Took your money and didn’t help. Tell me something, Myrna; see if you can go back over our hour together and answer this question: What could I have done today?” “How should I know? That’s what you get paid for, isn’t it? And paid well too.” “I know you don’t know, Myrna, but I want you to dip into your fantasy. How could I have helped you today?” “You could have introduced me to one of your rich single patients.” “You see ‘Dating Bureau’ on my T-shirt?” “You bastard,” she muttered, punching the “stop” button. “I pay you one-fifty an hour for this smart-ass shit?” She pressed “rewind” and replayed the exchange. “. . . could I have helped you today?” “You could have introduced me to one of your rich single patients.” “You see ‘Dating Bureau’ on my T-shirt?” “Not funny, Doctor.” “No, you’re right. Sorry. What I should have said is that you stay so far away from me—from saying anything about how you feel about me.” “You, you, you. Why always my feelings toward you? You’re not the issue, Dr. Lash. I’m not going to be dating you—though maybe I’d get more out of that than from what we’re doing.” “Let’s go over it again, Myrna. You originally came in to see me saying you wanted to do something about your relationships with men. In our very first session, I said I could best help you examine your relationships with others by focusing on our relationship right here in this office. This space here in my office is, or should be, a safe place, where I hope you can talk more freely than elsewhere.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Yes. And then I thought that when we finish our session, you’ll take your loss up your little garden path to your wife, who’ll be there waiting with the rest of your tidy, cozy life. That’s when it turns red.” My office, only a couple hundred feet from my house, is a comfortable red-tile-roofed cottage enveloped in the lush greens and violets of lupine, wisteria, frangipani, and Spanish lavender. Though Irene loved the serenity of my office, she often made sarcastic comments about my picture-book life. “It’s not just you I feel angry at,” she continued. “It’s everyone whose life is intact. You’ve told me about widows who hate being without a role, who hate being the fifth wheel at dinner parties. But it’s not the role or being the fifth wheel that matters: it’s hating everyone else for having a life; it’s envy; it’s being filled with bitterness. Do you think I like feeling this way?” “A little while ago when you were preparing to walk out of here, you said you weren’t fit to be with anyone.” “Well, am I? Do you want to be with someone who hates you because your wife is alive? Does anyone want that kind of person around? The black ooze—remember? No one wants to be tarred, do they?” “I stopped you from leaving, didn’t I?” No answer. “I’m thinking of how dizzy you must feel to be so angry at me and yet so close, so grateful.” She nodded. “A little louder, Irene. Can’t quite hear you.” “Well, I got dizzy thinking about why you told me about your brother-in-law today.” “You seem suspicious.” “Very.” “You have a hunch?” “More than a hunch. I think you were trying to manipulate me. See how I would react. Giving me a test.” “No wonder you exploded. Maybe it’ll help if I tell you exactly what was going on inside of me today after I got the news of Morton’s death.” I told her how I canceled the rest of my schedule but decided to see her, and why. “I couldn’t cancel it—not after your courage in always coming here no matter what. But,” I continued, “I still had to face the question of how to be with you and deal with my loss at the same time. “So what options did I have today, Irene? To shut down and withdraw from you? That would have been worse than canceling. To try to stay close and honest with you and not tell you about it? Impossible—a recipe for disaster: I learned long ago that when two people have something big between them and don’t talk about it, they don’t talk of anything else of importance either. This area here”—I gestured toward the air space between us—“we need to keep it clean and free, and that’s my job as well as yours. So that’s why I told you what was happening to me straight. Straight as I could—no manipulation, no test, no ulterior motive.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  My office, only a couple hundred feet from my house, is a comfortable red-tile-roofed cottage enveloped in the lush greens and violets of lupine, wisteria, frangipani, and Spanish lavender. Though Irene loved the serenity of my office, she often made sarcastic comments about my picture-book life. “It’s not just you I feel angry at,” she continued. “It’s everyone whose life is intact. You’ve told me about widows who hate being without a role, who hate being the fifth wheel at dinner parties. But it’s not the role or being the fifth wheel that matters: it’s hating everyone else for having a life; it’s envy; it’s being filled with bitterness. Do you think I like feeling this way?” “A little while ago when you were preparing to walk out of here, you said you weren’t fit to be with anyone.” “Well, am I? Do you want to be with someone who hates you because your wife is alive? Does anyone want that kind of person around? The black ooze—remember? No one wants to be tarred, do they?” “I stopped you from leaving, didn’t I?” No answer. “I’m thinking of how dizzy you must feel to be so angry at me and yet so close, so grateful.” She nodded. “A little louder, Irene. Can’t quite hear you.” “Well, I got dizzy thinking about why you told me about your brother-in-law today.” “You seem suspicious.” “Very.” “You have a hunch?” “More than a hunch. I think you were trying to manipulate me. See how I would react. Giving me a test.” “No wonder you exploded. Maybe it’ll help if I tell you exactly what was going on inside of me today after I got the news of Morton’s death.” I told her how I canceled the rest of my schedule but decided to see her, and why. “I couldn’t cancel it—not after your courage in always coming here no matter what. But,” I continued, “I still had to face the question of how to be with you and deal with my loss at the same time. “So what options did I have today, Irene? To shut down and withdraw from you? That would have been worse than canceling. To try to stay close and honest with you and not tell you about it? Impossible—a recipe for disaster: I learned long ago that when two people have something big between them and don’t talk about it, they don’t talk of anything else of importance either. This area here”—I gestured toward the air space between us—“we need to keep it clean and free, and that’s my job as well as yours. So that’s why I told you what was happening to me straight.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  There’s no excuse for getting dry-gulched.” He started pacing the room. “I can show you a couple of moves that’ll leave little lord Gayle wondering what month he’s in.” At dinner that night Dwight had me repeat the story to Skipper and Norma, and then he told a story of his own. “When I was your age,” he said, “there was a kid who used to sit behind me in school and lip off all the time. He had what I call diarrhea of the mouth. Well, he lipped off just once too often and I told him to shut up. Oh yeah? he says. Who’s gonna make me? I am, I tell him. Oh yeah? he says. You and who else’s army? Just the three of us, I say. Me, myself, and I. “Well, after school that day he waits across the street with this friend of his and as soon as I come out of the building he yells something. I guess he thought I was just going to go home and forget about it. But I’ll tell you something. With people like that, you’ve got to hurt them, you’ve got to inflict pain. It’s the only thing they understand. Otherwise you’ve got them on your back for good. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience. “Okay. It was really cold out, really freezing. There were these frozen horse turds lying all over the place—road apples, we called them. So I picked one up and went over to this guy, but not acting tough, okay? Not acting tough. Acting more like, Oh gee, I’m so scared, please don’t hurt me. Sort of like this.” Dwight slumped his shoulders and dropped his chin and simpered up from beneath his eyebrows. “So I came over to him and in this little scaredy-cat voice I say, Excuse me, what’s the problem? He of course starts in on me again, blah blah blah, and while he’s got his mouth open I jam a road apple into it! You should’ve seen the look on his face. Then I hit the sucker in the breadbasket, and down he goes. I sit on him for a while and hold my hand over his mouth until the road apple starts melting, then I get up and leave him there. I caught holy hell for it later on, but so what.” After dinner Dwight took me into the utility room and showed me some moves. He taught me how to stand and shuffle my feet and guard myself. He showed me how to throw a punch from the shoulder instead of winding up and leaving myself open. Then he showed me how to dry-gulch somebody. It wasn’t a thing I should do casually, Dwight said, but only if I had good reason to think that the other fellow might dry-gulch me. There were many techniques but Dwight didn’t want to confuse me, so he showed me two of the best. It was simple, really. You just walked up to someone and acted friendly or

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I was inclined to let it go. But I didn’t like being laughed at, and I didn’t like comments about my hands. Arthur had made other such comments. He was bigger than me, especially around the middle, but I factored out this weight as blubber. I could take him, I felt sure. I had provocation, and I had witnesses to carry the news. It seemed like a good time to make a point. I started things off by calling him Fatso. Arthur continued to smile at me. “Excuse me,” he said, “but has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like a pile of wet vomit?” We went on like this, and then I called him a sissy. The smile left his face. And at that moment it came to me that although everyone referred to Arthur as a sissy, I had never heard anyone actually use the word in front of him. And in the same moment, seeing how everything about him changed after the word was spoken, how suddenly red and awful his face became, I understood that there must be a reason for this. A crucial bit of history I should have known about, and didn’t. His first swing caught me dead on the ear. There was an explosion inside my head, then a continuous rustling sound as of someone crumpling paper. It lasted for days. When he swung again I turned away and took his fist on the back of my head. He threw punches the way he threw balls, sidearm, with a lot of wrist, but he somehow got his weight behind them before they landed. This one knocked me to my knees. He drew back his foot and kicked me in the stomach. The papers in my bag deadened the blow but I was stunned by the fact that he had kicked me at all. I saw that his commitment to this fight was absolute. His dog barked in my face. When I got up Arthur rushed me, arms flailing, fists raining on my shoulders. He almost knocked me down again but I surprised us both by landing one on his eye. He stopped and roared. The eye was already closing up, his face gone scarlet, his nostrils streaming gouts of snot. When I saw his eye I got worried. I was ready to stop, but he wasn’t. He flew at me again. I closed with him and got him in a hug to keep his arms still. We staggered over the road like drunken dancers, and then he hooked my leg and tripped me and we rolled off the shoulder and down the long muddy embankment, both of us flailing and kicking with our knees and screaming gibberish in each other’s ears. He had gone insane, I could see that, and it seemed to me that my only chance was to go insane too.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  For the most part she was contemptuous of the men she met and angry at me for suggesting she examine her judgmentalism. Any practical suggestion I offered ignited a major eruption. “If I want to date,” she said furiously, “I can figure out how to do it! Why pay you good money for dating advice when my friends can give me the same thing?” She grew angry if I offered concrete suggestions about anything: “Stop trying to ‘fix’ things!” she said. “That’s what my father tried to do my whole life.” She was angry at my impatience with her slow progress and at my failing to acknowledge the efforts she had made to help herself (but never mentioned to me). Irene wanted me strong and healthy. Any infirmity—a sprained back, a knee injury requiring meniscus surgery, a cold, a case of flu—elicited much annoyance. I knew that she was apprehensive as well, but she kept that well concealed. Most of all, she was angry at my being alive when Jack was dead. None of this was easy for me. I have never relished angry confrontations and, in my personal life, generally avoid angry people. Because I am a deliberate thinker and writer, and confrontation tends to slow my thoughts, I have throughout my career declined public debate and discouraged all inquiries about my becoming a departmental chairman. So how did I cope with Irene’s anger? For one thing, I leaned on the old therapy adage that one must separate role and person. Often much of a patient’s anger toward a therapist is related to his or her role, not person. “Don’t take it personally,” young therapists are taught. Or at least, don’t take everything personally. Make an attempt to discriminate between what belongs to your person and what to your role. It seemed self-evident that much of Irene’s anger belonged elsewhere—life, destiny, God, cosmic indifference—but she simply discharged it upon her nearest target: me, her therapist. Irene knew that her anger oppressed me and let me know in many ways. One day, for example, when my secretary called her to reschedule an appointment because I had to see the dentist, Irene replied, “Oh, well, seeing the dentist is probably a pleasure for him compared to seeing me.” But perhaps the main reason I was not ground down by Irene’s rage was that I always knew that it masked her profound sadness, despair, and fear. When she expressed anger toward me, I sometimes responded with reflexive irritation and impatience, but more often with compassion. Many of Irene’s images or phrases haunted me. One, in particular, set up housekeeping in my mind and never failed to soften my experience of her grief rage. It was in one of her airport dreams (during the first two years after her husband’s death, she often wandered through airports in her dreams). I am dashing through a terminal. Looking for Jack. I don’t know the airline.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She pulled into a side street, parked, rewound, and listened: “. . . I feel demeaned. She is a vulgar lady. Does everything possible to eliminate any shred of closeness between us. Nothing I do is good enough for her. Presses so many of my buttons that there’s got to be something of my mother in this. Every time I ask her about our therapy relationship, she gives me that wary look as though I’m coming on to her. Am I? Not a whisper of it when I check into my feelings. Would I if she weren’t my patient? Not a bad-looking woman—I like her hair, gleaming—carries herself well—great-looking chest, popping those buttons— that’s definitely a plus. I worry about staring at those breasts but don’t think I do—thanks to Alice! In high school once, I was talking to a girl named Alice and hadn’t any idea that I was staring at her tits until she put her hand under my chin and tilted my face up and said, ‘Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo, I’m up here!’ I never forgot. That Alice did me a big favor. “Myrna’s hands are too big; that’s a turnoff. But I do like that great slick, sexy swish of her stockings as she crosses her legs. Yeah, I guess there are some sexual feelings there. If I had run into her when I was still single, would I have hit on her? Probably yes, I’d be attracted to her physically, until she opened her mouth and started whining or demanding. Then I’d want to get away fast. There’s no tenderness, no softness to her. She’s too self-focused, all sharp angles—elbows, knees, ungiving—” [A click as the tape came to an end.] In a daze, Myrna started the car, drove a few minutes, and turned right on Sacramento Street. Only a few blocks now to Dr. Lash’s office. She noticed, with surprise, that she was trembling. What to do? What to say to him? Quickly, quickly—only a few minutes until his goddamn clock started ticking off that $150 hour. One thing for sure, she told herself, there is no way I’m going to give back the tape as I usually do. I’ve got to hear it again. I’ll lie, say I forgot it, left it at home. Then I can rerecord his comments onto another tape and bring back the original next week. Or maybe I’ll just say I lost the tape. If he doesn’t like it—tough shit! The more she thought about it, the more sure she was that she would not tell him she’d heard his dictation. Why give away her hand? Maybe she’d tell him some time in the future. Maybe never. The bastard! She pulled up to his office. Four o’clock. Talking time. “Myrna, come in, please.” Ernest always called her Myrna, and she called him Dr. Lash, even though he had often pointed out the asymmetry and invited her to call him by his first name.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Instead he responded, “But keep in mind, I was not critical of Dr. Lash’s feelings about Ms. Myrna. What therapist who has ever lived has not had such thoughts about an irritating patient? No, I do not criticize his thought. I criticize only his incontinence, his inability to keep his feelings to himself.” That triggered another round of protests. Some defended Ernest’s decision to express his feelings openly. Others criticized Dr. Werner for not building a trusting environment in the seminar. They wanted to feel safe there. They most definitely did not want to dodge broadsides about their therapeutic technique, especially when the critique was based on a traditional analytic approach inappropriate to their current clinical setting. Finally Ernest himself suggested that the discussion was no longer productive and urged the group to return to the topic of his countertransference. A few members then spoke of similar patients who had drained and bored them, but Barbara’s comment most piqued Ernest’s interest. “This is not like any other resistant patient,” she said. “You say she gets to you like no one else and that you’ve never been so disrespectful to a patient before.” “It’s true, and I’m not sure why,” Ernest responded. “Several things about her tick me off. I get infuriated at her persistent reminders of the money she’s paying me. She is constantly turning this process into a commercial transaction.” “It’s not a commercial transaction?” interposed Dr. Werner. “Since when? You give her a service, and in return she gives you a check. Looks like commerce to me.” “Well, parishioners tithe, but that doesn’t make a church service an act of commerce,” said Ernest. “Oh, yes, it does!” insisted Dr. Werner. “The circumstances are just more refined and concealed. Read the genteel fine print at the end of a prayer book: no tithing, eventually no service.” “Typical analytic reductionism, everything reduced to its basest level,” said Ernest. “I’m not buying it. Therapy is not commerce, nor am I a merchant. That’s not why I’m in the field. If money were uppermost, I’d have gone into something else—law, investment banking, even one of the rich medical specialties like ophthalmology or radiology. I see therapy as something else—call it an act of caritas. I signed up for a life of service. For which I also, incidentally, happen to get paid. But this patient keeps slapping me in the face with the money.” “You give and give,” Dr. Werner purred in his most professional sonorous voice, appearing to relent. “But she gives nothing back.” Ernest nodded. “Right! She gives nothing back.” “You give and give,” repeated Dr. Werner. “You give her your best stuff and she keeps saying, ‘Give me something worthwhile.’” “That’s exactly the way it feels,” said Ernest more softly.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  He’s a novice at this kind of assertiveness. Choosing a restaurant or a movie is hard for him; telling her he wants to stay in New York for Thanksgiving (and not see her entire extended family, as they do every year) is almost impossible. I never suggest to Jed that he needs to reconfigure his sexuality. But I do urge him to learn to wield power in other areas of his life as well. It’s important for Jed to know that his wants will be honored outside the rituals of S-M. By the same token, he wouldn’t mind it if Coral transferred some of her directorial boldness from the editing room to their four-poster bed. Jed makes the point that Coral, too, could bring some assertiveness to their sex life. “When you finish brushing your teeth and putting on your pajamas, and then you ask me if we’re going to have sex tonight in this matter-of-fact, nudg ing way, it just doesn’t do anything for me. I need more of a charge. Tell me you want me, unzip my pants, walk naked into the room. Something, anything, besides, ‘Are we going to have sex tonight?’ I do it for you. I light the candles, create the mood you like, make love to you slowly. I do the vanilla for you. I try; you don’t.” For Coral’s part, she may never like Jed’s sexual kinks, but I encourage her to be open to understanding them. By holding court, judging him, and failing to grasp his red-light tastes, she’s condemned to feeling demeaned. Sadly, she fails to see that Jed is actually taking a big risk by trusting her to enter the primal bog of his erotic self. Rebalancing the “Dominant” Culture Most fans of kinky sex, at least those I’ve encountered, are drawn by the erotics of power and not, as it may appear to an outsider, by violence or pain. In fact, the carefully negotiated contracts, which specify what can and cannot be done, by whom, to whom, and for how long, are meant to guarantee both pleasure and safety. You submit only as much as you’re willing; you dominate only as far as you’re allowed. In the parallel universe of sex, power bids become a plaything, an experiment, a way to temporarily experience relations we’re loath to inhabit in real life. If, in our daily life, we shun dependence, in our erotic life we might welcome it. If it is our aggression that makes us twitch with discomfort, sexual enactments can permit a safe experience of power. Whether our real-life aversion is to submission, as it is for Elizabeth, or to autonomy, as it is for Jed, the sexual drama can offer catharsis.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Five years. For five years I led a daily therapy group on a psychiatric ward. At ten every morning I left my cozy book-lined office in the Stanford University Medical School, bicycled over to the hospital, entered the ward, winced at my first breath of sticky, Lysol-laced air, and poured my coffee from the staff caffeinated urn (no caffeine for the patients, nor tobacco, alcohol, or sex—all part of an effort, I suppose, to discourage them from settling too comfortably and for too long into the hospital). Then I arranged the chairs into a circle in the multipurpose room, unpocketed my baton, and for eighty minutes conducted a group therapy meeting. Though the ward had twenty beds, my meetings were small, sometimes only four or five patients. I was picky about my clientele and opened my doors only to higher-functioning patients. The ticket of admission? Orientation times three: time, place, and person. My group members had only to know when it was and who and where they were. While I didn’t object to members being psychotic (as long as they were quiet about it and did not interfere with the work of others), I did insist that each member be able to talk, pay attention for eighty minutes, and acknowledge the need for help. Every prestigious club has entrance criteria. Perhaps my requirements for membership made my therapy group—the “agenda group,” as it was called for reasons I shall explain later—more desirable. Those without the ticket of admission—the more disturbed, regressed patients—off with them to “communication group,” the other group on the ward, which held shorter, more structured, less demanding meetings. And, of course, there were always those in social exile, those who were too intellectually impaired, distracted, belligerent, or manic to be accommodated in any group at all. Often some agitated patients in social exile would be permitted to attend the communication group after medication had settled them down, perhaps in a day or two. “Permitted to attend”: that phrase would crack a smile in the face of even the most withdrawn patient. No! Let me be honest. Never in hospital history has there been a sighting of disturbed patients pounding on the doors of the group therapy room, demanding admission. A far more familiar scene is the pregroup roundup, the posse of attendants and white-cloaked nurses galloping through the ward, rousting members out of their hiding places in closets, johns, and showers, and herding them into the group room. The agenda group had a distinct reputation: it was tough and challenging and, worst of all, had no corners—no place to hide.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  But it’s not going to work. Admit it; you know there’s truth in what I say.” “No; I disagree. You’re totally overlooking the training of therapists! That’s what training in my field is all about—to acquire sensitivity, empathy—to be able to enter the world of another, to experience what the patient experiences.” I was irritated all right. And I had learned not to hold back. We worked much better together when I just cut loose with my feelings. Irene could come into my office so depressed she could hardly speak. But once we tangled about something, she inevitably became enlivened. I knew I was assuming Jack’s role here. He was the only one ever to stand up to her. Her icy demeanor was daunting to others (her surgery residents referred to her as “the Queen”), but Jack never deferred to her. She told me he took no pains to conceal his feelings, often walking out of the room muttering, “I don’t have time for this bullshit.” Not only was I irritated at her insistence that only bereaved therapists can treat bereaved patients but I was also angry at Eric for reinforcing her view that bereavement is never-ending. That idea was part of an ongoing debate between me and Irene. I was taking a well-established, sound position, namely, that the work of mourning consists of gradually detaching oneself from the one who died and redirecting one’s energy toward others. Freud first elaborated this understanding of grief in 1915 in Mourning and Melancholia, and since then this approach has been supported by much clinical observation and empirical research. In my own research, completed just before I took on Irene’s case, every single widow and widower I studied gradually detached from the dead spouse and then reinvested in something or someone else. And that was true for even those who had had the most loving of marriages. In fact, we found strong evidence that many of the widows who had had the best marriages went through the bereavement and detachment process more easily than those who had had a deeply conflicted one. (The explanation for this paradox lay, it seemed to me, in “regret”: for those who had spent their lives married to the wrong person, bereavement was more complicated because they also had to grieve for themselves, for their many squandered years.) Since Irene’s marriage appeared to me to have been exceptionally loving and supportive, I had initially predicted a relatively uncomplicated bereavement. But Irene was highly critical of most traditional attitudes about bereavement. She hated my comments about detachment and dismissed my research out of hand: “We bereaved have learned to give the answers investigators want. We have learned that the world wants us to recover quickly and that it becomes impatient with those who cling too long to losses.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  The window is open.” Sudden silence. Then Merges bounded in, ripping and shredding the thin linen curtains. Hissing, his head raised, his red eyes blazing, his glistening claws unsheathed, he circled Ernest. “I’ve been expecting you, Merges. Won’t you please sit down?” Ernest settled into a massive redwood burl chair next to the night table, beyond which all was darkness. The bed, Artemis, and the rest of the room had vanished. Merges stopped hissing. He looked up at Ernest, spittle dripping from his fangs, his muscles tensed. Ernest reached into his overnight bag. “Won’t you have something to eat, Merges?” he said, opening some of the dinner containers he had carried upstairs. Merges peered cautiously into the first container. “Five Mushroom Beef! I hate mushrooms. That’s why she always makes them. That chanterelle ragout!” He uttered these last words in a high-pitched, mocking singsong, then repeated them: “Chanterelle ragout! Chanterelle ragout!” “Here, here,” Ernest said in the soothing drone he used sometimes in therapy sessions. “Let me pick out the beef pieces for you. Oh, my God, I am so sorry! I could have gotten the whole baked cod. Or the Peking Duck. Even the Hunan Meatballs. Perhaps the Pork Shue Mai. Or the Beggar’s Chicken. Or the Ming’s Beef. Or the—” “All right, all right,” Merges snarled. He swiped at the chunks of beef and devoured them in a single gulp . Ernest droned on: “Or I could have gotten the Seafood Delight, the salted shrimp, the whole roasted crab, the—” “You could have, you could have, you could have, but you didn’t, did you? And even if you had, then so what? Is that what you think? That some stale scraps would redress the wrong? That I would settle for leftovers? That I am nothing but brute appetite?” Merges and Ernest stared silently at each other for a moment. Then Merges nodded toward the container with the Rolling Chicken and Cilantro in Lettuce Cups. “And what’s in there?” “It’s called Rolling Chicken. Delicious. Here, let me pick out the chicken for you.” “No, leave it be,” said Merges, batting the container out of Ernest’s hand. “I like the green stuff. I come from a family of Bavarian grass eaters. Hard to find good grass that’s not soaked in dog piss.” Merges gobbled down the cilantro and chicken, then licked the lettuce cups clean. “Not bad. So you could’ve gotten roast crab?” “I only wish I had, but as it was, I got too much meat. Turns out Artemis is a vegan.” “Vegan?” “A vegetarian who eats no animal products at all—not even dairy products.” “So she’s stupid as well as a murdering bitch.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  What luxury! A therapist’s nirvana. In contrast, the landscape of my inpatient groups was nightmarish—the continual rapid turnover of members; the frequent psychotic outbursts; the conning, manipulative members; the patients burned out by twenty years of depression or schizophrenia who were never going to get better; the tangible level of despair in the room. But the real killer, the ball-breaker in this work, was the hospital and insurance industry bureaucracy. Every day surveillance teams of HMO agents would swoop through the wards, nose through hospital charts, and order the discharge of one or another confused, despairing patient who had functioned relatively well the previous day and whose chart had no MD-signed note stating explicitly that he or she was suicidal or dangerous. Was there really a time, not so long ago, when the care of the patient was paramount? When physicians admitted the sick and kept them in the hospital until they got well? Was all that only a dream? I no longer talk much about it, no longer risk my students’ patronizing smiles by prattling on about that golden era when the administrator’s job was to help the doctor help the patient. The bureaucratic paradoxes were maddening. Consider the case of John, middle-aged, paranoid, and mildly retarded. Having once been attacked in a shelter for the homeless, he thereafter avoided state-sponsored shelters and slept outside. John knew the magic hospital-opening words, and often on cold, wet nights, usually around midnight, he would scratch his wrists in front of an emergency room and threaten deeper wounds unless the state found him a safe, private sleeping space. But no agency had the authority to provide twenty dollars for a room, and since the emergency room physician could not be certain—that is, medically and legally certain—that John would not make a serious suicide attempt if he were forced to sleep in the shelter, he spent many nights a year sleeping soundly in a $700-a-day hospital room, courtesy of an inept and inhumane medical insurance system. The contemporary practice of brief psychiatric hospitalization works only if there is an adequate posthospital outpatient program. Nonetheless, in 1972 Governor Ronald Reagan with one bold, brilliant stroke abolished mental illness in California by not only closing the large state psychiatric hospitals but also eradicating most of the public aftercare programs. As a result hospital staffs were forced, day after day, to go through the charade of treating patients and discharging them back into the same noxious setting that had necessitated their hospitalization. It was like suturing up wounded soldiers and sending them back into the fray. Imagine breaking your ass taking care of patients—initial workup interviews, daily rounds, presentations to the attending psychiatrists, staff planning sessions, medical student workups, writing orders in the hospital charts, daily therapy sessions—knowing all the while that in a couple of days there would be no option but to return them to the same malignant environment that had disgorged them. Back to violent alcoholic families.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  They most definitely did not want to dodge broadsides about their therapeutic technique, especially when the critique was based on a traditional analytic approach inappropriate to their current clinical setting. Finally Ernest himself suggested that the discussion was no longer productive and urged the group to return to the topic of his countertransference. A few members then spoke of similar patients who had drained and bored them, but Barbara’s comment most piqued Ernest’s interest. “This is not like any other resistant patient,” she said. “You say she gets to you like no one else and that you’ve never been so disrespectful to a patient before.” “It’s true, and I’m not sure why,” Ernest responded. “Several things about her tick me off. I get infuriated at her persistent reminders of the money she’s paying me. She is constantly turning this process into a commercial transaction.” “It’s not a commercial transaction?” interposed Dr. Werner. “Since when? You give her a service, and in return she gives you a check. Looks like commerce to me.” “Well, parishioners tithe, but that doesn’t make a church service an act of commerce,” said Ernest. “Oh, yes, it does!” insisted Dr. Werner. “The circumstances are just more refined and concealed. Read the genteel fine print at the end of a prayer book: no tithing, eventually no service.” “Typical analytic reductionism, everything reduced to its basest level,” said Ernest. “I’m not buying it. Therapy is not commerce, nor am I a merchant. That’s not why I’m in the field. If money were uppermost, I’d have gone into something else—law, investment banking, even one of the rich medical specialties like ophthalmology or radiology. I see therapy as something else—call it an act of caritas. I signed up for a life of service. For which I also, incidentally, happen to get paid. But this patient keeps slapping me in the face with the money.” “You give and give,” Dr. Werner purred in his most professional sonorous voice, appearing to relent. “But she gives nothing back.” Ernest nodded. “Right! She gives nothing back.” “You give and give,” repeated Dr. Werner. “You give her your best stuff and she keeps saying, ‘Give me something worthwhile.’” “That’s exactly the way it feels,” said Ernest more softly. This exchange happened so smoothly that none of the seminar members, perhaps not even Dr. Werner himself, was conscious of his switch into his seductive professional voice—or, it seemed, of Ernest’s eagerness to snuggle into the warmth of the therapeutic comforter. “You said there’s something of your mother in it,” remarked Barbara. “I never got much good stuff from her either.” “Does her ghost influence your feelings toward Myrna?” “It was different with my mother. I was the one who kept pulling away.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  My calf muscles tensed—I believe I was preparing myself to tackle her if she bolted for the door. “Oh, no, you’re not. Not after that. You’re staying right here and talking this out.” “I can’t. Can’t work, can’t stay here with you. Not fit to be with anyone.” “There’s only one rule here in this office: that you say exactly what’s on your mind. You’re doing your job. You’ve never done it better.” Dropping her purse on the floor, Irene slumped back in her chair. “I told you that after my brother died I always ended my relationships with men the same way.” “How? Tell me again.” “They’d have some mishap, some problem, maybe get sick, and I’d get nasty and cut them out of my life. A quick surgical incision! I cut clean. And I cut sharp. ” “Because you’d compare their problem to the immensity of losing Allen? That would make you bitter?” She nodded her appreciation. “That was most of it, I’m pretty sure. Also that I just didn’t want them to matter to me. I didn’t want to hear about their puny problems.” “And with me today?” “Color it red! Rage! I wanted to throw something at you!” “Because it felt like I was comparing my loss with yours?” “Yes. And then I thought that when we finish our session, you’ll take your loss up your little garden path to your wife, who’ll be there waiting with the rest of your tidy, cozy life. That’s when it turns red.” My office, only a couple hundred feet from my house, is a comfortable red-tile-roofed cottage enveloped in the lush greens and violets of lupine, wisteria, frangipani, and Spanish lavender. Though Irene loved the serenity of my office, she often made sarcastic comments about my picture-book life. “It’s not just you I feel angry at,” she continued. “It’s everyone whose life is intact. You’ve told me about widows who hate being without a role, who hate being the fifth wheel at dinner parties. But it’s not the role or being the fifth wheel that matters: it’s hating everyone else for having a life; it’s envy; it’s being filled with bitterness. Do you think I like feeling this way?” “A little while ago when you were preparing to walk out of here, you said you weren’t fit to be with anyone.” “Well, am I? Do you want to be with someone who hates you because your wife is alive? Does anyone want that kind of person around? The black ooze—remember? No one wants to be tarred, do they?” “I stopped you from leaving, didn’t I?” No answer. “I’m thinking of how dizzy you must feel to be so angry at me and yet so close, so grateful.” She nodded. “A little louder, Irene. Can’t quite hear you.” “Well, I got dizzy thinking about why you told me about your brother-in-law today.” “You seem suspicious.” “Very.” “You have a hunch?” “More than a hunch.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “This is Dr. Lash dictating notes for countertransference seminar. Notes on Myrna, Thursday, 28 March. Typical, predictable, frustrating hour. She spent most of the session whining as usual about the lack of single available men. I get more and more impatient . . . irritable—lost it for a moment and made an inappropriate remark: ‘Do you see “Dating Bureau” on my T-shirt?’ Really hostile thing for me to do—very unlike me—can’t remember last time I’ve been so disrespectful to a patient. Am I trying to drive her away? I never say anything supportive or positive to her. I try, but she makes it hard. She gets to me . . . so boring, rasping, crass, narrow. All she ever thinks about is making her two million in stock options and finding a man. Nothing else . . . narrow, narrow, narrow . . . no dreams, no fantasies, no imagination. No depth. Has she ever read a good novel? Ever said something beautiful? Or interesting . . . just one interesting thought? God, I’d love to see her write a poem—or try to write a poem. Now, that would be therapeutic change. She drains me. I feel like a big tit. Over and over the same material. Over and over hitting me over the head about my fee. Week after week I end up doing the same thing—I bore myself. “Today, as usual, I urged her to examine her role in her predicament, how she contributes to her own isolation. It’s not such a difficult concept, but I might as well be speaking Aramaic. She just can’t get it. Instead she accuses me of not believing that the singles scene is bad for women. And then, as she often does, she threw in a crack about wishing she could date me. But when I try to focus on that, on how she feels toward me or how she makes herself lonely right here in this room with me, things get even worse. She refuses to get it; she will not relate to me, and she will not acknowledge that she doesn’t—and insists it’s not relevant anyway. She can’t be stupid. Wellesley graduate—high-level graphics work—huge salary, hell of a lot bigger than mine—half the software companies in Silicon Valley competing for her—but I feel I’m talking to a dumb person. How many goddamn times do I have to explain why it’s important to look at our relationship? And all those cracks about not getting her money’s worth—I feel demeaned. She is a vulgar lady. Does everything possible to eliminate any shred of closeness between us. Nothing I do is good enough for her. Presses so many—” A passing car’s honk roused her to the fact that her car was weaving. Myrna’s heart pounded. This was dangerous. She switched off the Walkman and drove the few minutes to her turnoff. She pulled into a side street, parked, rewound, and listened:

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And spiritual depth?” Deliberately, without speaking, Dr. Lee looked over at her, all the while tossing the chalk into the air and catching it a couple of times. Finally he turned and wrote Paula’s suggestions on the board. Although I thought them not unreasonable, I knew—and knew that everyone else knew—that as Dr. Lee watched the tumbling chalk, he was thinking, Somebody, anybody, please get that old lady out of here! Later, at lunch, he referred to Paula contemptuously as an evangelist. Although Dr. Lee was an eminent oncologist whose support and referrals were essential to the project, I risked antagonizing him and defended her staunchly by emphasizing her critical importance in the formation and functioning of the groups. Though I failed to alter his impression of her, I felt proud of myself for standing by her. That evening Paula phoned me. She was furious. “All of the medical professionals at the workshop are automatons, inhumane automatons. We patients who struggle with cancer twenty-four hours a day—what are we to them? I’ll tell you: we are nothing more than ‘maladaptive coping strategies.’” I spoke with her for a long time and did all I could to mollify her. I tried to suggest gently that she not stereotype the doctors and urged her to be patient. Affirming my loyalty to the principles with which we had started the group, I concluded, “Remember, Paula, none of this makes any difference because I have my own research plan. I’m not going to be controlled by their mechanistic perspective. Trust me!” But Paula was not to be mollified, nor, as it turned out, would she trust me. The workshop festered in her mind. For weeks she ruminated about it and finally directly accused me of selling out to the bureaucracy. She submitted a minority report of one to the National Cancer Institute, and it did not lack vigor or rancor. Finally, one day Paula came into my office and announced that she had decided to leave the group. “Why? ” “Well, I’m just tired of it.” “Paula, there’s more to it than that. What’s the real reason?” “I told you, I’m tired of it.” No matter how I probed, she continued to insist on that excuse, though we both knew that the real reason was that I had disappointed her. I used all my cunning (and after all my years of practice, I knew a few ways to get around people), but to no avail. Each of my attempts, including some ill-advised bantering and appeals to our long friendship, was greeted by an icy glare. I had no more rapport with her and had to endure the sorrow of a deceptive discussion. “I’m just working too hard. It’s too much for me,” she said. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying for months, Paula? Cut down all your visits and phone calls to the dozens of patients on your roll. Simply come to the group. The group needs you.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 4: Further, the husband is bound to correct his wife. But correction is given by inflicting a just punishment. Since then the just punishment of adultery is death, because it is a capital sin, it would seem lawful for a husband to kill his adulterous wife. On the contrary, It is stated in the text (Sent. iv, D, 37) that “the Church of God is never bound by the laws of this world, for she has none but a spiritual sword.” Therefore it would seem that he who wishes to belong to the Church cannot rightly take advantage of the law which permits a man to kill his wife. Further, husband and wife are judged on a par. But it is not lawful for a wife to kill her husband if he be discovered in adultery. Neither therefore may a husband kill his wife. I answer that, It happens in two ways that a husband kills his wife. First, by a civil judgment; and thus there is no doubt that a husband, moved by zeal for justice and not by vindictive anger or hatred can, without sin, bring a criminal accusation of adultery upon his wife before a secular court, and demand that she receive capital punishment as appointed by the law; just as it is lawful to accuse a person of murder or any other crime. Such an accusation however cannot be made in an ecclesiastical court, because, as stated in the text (Sent. iv, D, 37), the Church does not wield a material sword. Secondly, a husband can kill his wife himself without her being convicted in court, and thus to kill her outside of the act of adultery is not lawful, neither according to civil law nor according to the law of conscience, whatever evidence he may have of her adultery. The civil law however considers it, as though it were lawful, that he should kill her in the very act, not by commanding him to do so, but by not inflicting on him the punishment for murder, on account of the very great provocation which the husband receives by such a deed to kill his wife. But the Church is not bound in this matter by human laws, neither does she acquit him of the debt of eternal punishment, nor of such punishment as may be awarded him by an ecclesiastical tribunal for the reason that he is quit of any punishment to be inflicted by a secular court. Therefore in no case is it lawful for a husband to kill his wife on his own authority. Reply to Objection 1: The law has committed the infliction of this punishment not to private individuals, but to public persons, who are deputed to this by their office. Now the husband is not his wife’s judge: wherefore he may not kill her, but may accuse her in the judge’s presence.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “Yet you see her request for a breather as rejection,” I respond. “You know, desire acts in weird ways. Here she is asking you to ignore her, not to want her, as a way for her to want you. I can see why this makes no sense. Why such detours? And I understand your reaction. But you see, she needs to separate the intimate from the erotic, and for that she needs space. She invited you into a scheme that would allow her to do just that. It wasn’t a rebuff; it was an invitation. You have to imagine it not literally, but as a form of sexual play. Play at not needing me. Play at ignoring me.” But Jimmy could not play, because he was caught in a struggle with Candace. He didn’t want to engage in such contortions to elicit her desire. He wanted her to want him his way. Jimmy had felt deprived and rejected for so many years that the main feeling that escorted him was anger. His bile only highlighted the extent of his longing and need. The way they neutralized the threat of rage was through massive affection. Their almost constant physicality acted like a sexual appetite suppressor. This kind of contact can sustain itself for years without turning into desire. Unconditional love does not drive unconditional want. That’s what we have with friends, and Jimmy and Candace were friends who wanted to be lovers. Knowing that Candace had already expressed a need for distance, I saw an opening to intervene. I sought to introduce a disruption into the cozy, affectionate touch that had come to replace sex. “Do you touch each other?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. “All the time,” she replied. “Do you cuddle?” “Yes,” Jimmy said. “A lot?” “Yes,” they said in unison. “Well, it’s got to stop.” They looked at me wide-eyed. Here they had been emphasizing one aspect of their relationship that they both cherished, and I was taking it away from them. But by the way Candace responded, I knew I was on to something. “You don’t know what you’re doing to me,” she said. “I’m so touch-sensitive. For me, it’s all about touch. I’ll take it from anyone, even a relative stranger. I’m a touch whore.” Jimmy added, “When we visited my family last week, my mother’s best friend was rubbing her shoulders. You know, now that I think about it, I remember wondering if it even mattered whether it was me or Mrs. Monahan.” “So, this is going to be the goal of therapy,” I interjected. “We’re going to differentiate between Jimmy and Mrs. Monahan.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  More important, we’ll lose our funding if we don’t follow federal guidelines for a consultation workshop. If we can persevere, complete the research, and demonstrate the value of our approach to dying cancer patients, we will benefit more patients, many more, than could be directly helped by the five thousand dollars. Let’s not be penny-wise and pound-foolish, Paula. Compromise, please,” I pleaded, “this one time.” I could sense her disappointment with me. Shaking her head slowly, she replied, “Compromise once, Irv? No such thing as a single compromise. They breed.” During the workshop the consultants all made the contribution for which they had been recruited (and were well paid). One discussed psychological testing to measure depression, anxiety, modes of coping, locus of control; another talked about health care delivery systems; another about community resources. Paula threw herself fully into the workshop. I assume she felt that with little time left, one doesn’t play a waiting game. She acted the Socratic gadfly to the solemn consultant panel. When, for example, they discussed such objective evaluation indices of maladaptive coping as a patient’s not getting out of bed, not dressing, withdrawing, and crying, Paula argued that for her, each of these activities was at times a stage of incubation that eventually ushered in another stage, sometimes a period of growth. She rejected the experts’ attempts to convince her that when one uses a large enough sample, aggregate scores, and a control group, such considerations can be easily dealt with statistically in the data analysis. Then came the moment when the workshop participants were asked to suggest important antecedent variables, that is, factors that might predict a person’s psychological adjustment to cancer. Dr. Lee, a cancer specialist, wrote these factors on the blackboard as the participants called them out: marital stability, available environmental resources, personality profile, family history. Raising her hand, Paula suggested, “How about courage? And spiritual depth?” Deliberately, without speaking, Dr. Lee looked over at her, all the while tossing the chalk into the air and catching it a couple of times. Finally he turned and wrote Paula’s suggestions on the board. Although I thought them not unreasonable, I knew—and knew that everyone else knew—that as Dr. Lee watched the tumbling chalk, he was thinking, Somebody, anybody, please get that old lady out of here! Later, at lunch, he referred to Paula contemptuously as an evangelist. Although Dr. Lee was an eminent oncologist whose support and referrals were essential to the project, I risked antagonizing him and defended her staunchly by emphasizing her critical importance in the formation and functioning of the groups. Though I failed to alter his impression of her, I felt proud of myself for standing by her. That evening Paula phoned me. She was furious. “All of the medical professionals at the workshop are automatons, inhumane automatons. We patients who struggle with cancer twenty-four hours a day—what are we to them?