Gratitude

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.

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

  One of my most formative personal experiences underlying this book may seem circuitous, but I must reveal it to you, as it sheds a light on the deeper motivations that fuel my passion. My parents were survivors of Nazi concentration camps. For a number of years, they stood face-to-face with death every day. My mother and father were the sole survivors of their respective families. They came out of this experience wanting to charge at life with a vengeance and to make the most of each day. They both felt that they had been granted a unique gift: living life again. My parents were unusual, I think. They didn’t just want to survive; they wanted to revive. They possessed a thirst for life, thrived on exuberant experiences, and loved to have a good time. They cultivated pleasure. I know absolutely nothing about their sexual life except that they had two children, my brother and me. But by the way they lived, I sensed that they had a deep understanding of eroticism. Though I doubt that they ever used this word, they embodied its mystical meaning as a quality of aliveness, a pathway to freedom—not just the narrow definition of sex that modernity has assigned to it. It is this expanded understanding that I bring to bear on my discussion of eroticism in this book. There is yet another powerful influence that has helped shape this project. My husband is the director of the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University. His work is devoted to assisting refugees, children of war, and victims of torture as they seek to overcome the massive trauma they’ve experienced. By restoring their sense of creativity and their capacity for play and pleasure, these survivors are ultimately helped to reconnect with life and the hope that fuels it. My husband deals with pain; I deal with pleasure. They are intimately acquainted. The individuals I write about do not appear in the acknowledgments, though I owe them a great deal. Their stories are authentic and almost verbatim, but their identities are masked. Throughout this project, I’ve shared excerpts with them in the spirit of collaboration. Many of my ideas were developed through my work, and not the other way around. My ideas also draw on the wealth of careful considerations made by many professionals and authors who have previously tackled the ambiguities of love and desire.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I dread to think how my accident might have turned out had I lacked my knowledge or not had the good fortune to be helped by that woman pediatrician and her scent of holding kindness. Finding Method Over the past forty years, I have developed an approach to help people move through the many types of trauma, including what I went through that February day when I was struck by a car. This method is equally applicable directly after the trauma or many years later—my first serendipitous client, described in Chapter 2, was able to recover from a trauma that occurred about twenty years prior to our sessions together. Somatic Experiencing ® , as I call the method, helps to create physiological, sensate and affective states that transform those of fear and helplessness. It does this by accessing various instinctual reactions through one’s awareness of physical body sensations. Since time immemorial, people have attempted to cope with powerful and terrifying feelings by doing things that contradict perceptions of fear and helplessness: religious rituals, theater, dance, music, meditation and ingesting psychoactive substances, to name a few. Of these various methods for altering one’s way of being, modern medicine has accepted only the use of (limited, i.e., psychiatric) chemical substances. The other “coping” methods continue to find expression in alternative and so-called holistic approaches such as yoga, tai chi, exercise, drumming, music, shamanism and body-oriented techniques. While many people find help and solace from these valuable approaches, they are relatively nonspecific and do not sufficiently address certain core physiological mechanisms and processes that allow human beings to transform terrifying and overwhelming experiences. In the particular methodology I describe in these pages, the client is helped to develop an awareness and mastery of his or her physical sensations and feelings. My observations, in visiting a few indigenous cultures, suggest that this approach has a certain kinship with various traditional shamanic healing rituals. I am proposing that a collective, cross-cultural approach to healing trauma not only suggests new directions for treatment, but may ultimately inform a fundamentally deeper understanding of the dynamic two-way communication between mind and body. Over my lifetime, as well as in writing this book, I have attempted to bridge the vast chasm between the day-to-day work of the clinician and the findings of various scientific disciplines, particularly ethology, the study of animals in their natural environments. This vital field reached a pinnacle of recognition in 1973 when three ethologists—Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch— shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. * All three of these scientists utilized patient and precise observation to study how animals express and communicate through their bodies. Direct body communication is something that we reasoning, language-based human animals do as well. Despite our apparent reliance on elaborate speech, many of our most important exchanges occur simply through the “unspoken voice” of our body’s expressions in the dance of life.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Organizing, educating, nursing, agitating, starting up lupus self-help groups, castigating her doctors—sounded like Paula, all right. I thanked the young woman and later that day dialed Paula’s number, which I still knew by heart, even though it had been a decade since I had last called. As I waited for her to answer, I thought of some recent geriatric research that showed a positive correlation between personality style and longevity: cantankerous patients who are paranoid, vigilant, and assertive tend to live longer. Better a feisty, irritating, living Paula, I thought, than a placid dead one! She seemed pleased by my call and invited me to lunch at her home; the lupus had, she said, made her too sun sensitive to venture out to restaurants in the daytime. I accepted gladly. The day of our lunch I found Paula in her front garden. Wrapped in linen from head to toe and wearing an enormous broad- brimmed beach hat, she was weeding a beautiful patch of tall, fragrant Spanish lavender. “This disease is probably going to kill me, but I’m not going to let it keep me out of my garden,” Paula said, clasping my arm and escorting me inside. She led me to a dark purple velvet sofa and, sitting down next to me, immediately began on a serious note. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, Irv, but I think of you often. You’re much in my prayers.” “I like your thinking of me, Paula. But as for your prayers, you know my shortcomings there.” “Yes, yes, I realize that in this one area you have yet to open your mind. It reminds me,” she said, smiling, “that my job with you isn’t yet complete. Do you remember the last time we talked about God? It’s years ago, but I remember your telling me that my feeling of the holy was not much different from gas pains in the night!” “Out of context that sounds harsh, even to me. But I didn’t mean to be insulting. I only meant that a feeling is merely a feeling. A subjective state can never substantiate an objective truth. A wish, a fear, a sense of awe, of the tremendum, doesn’t mean that—” “Yes, yes,” Paula interrupted me with a smile, “I know your hard-line materialist litany. I’ve heard it many times, and I’ve always been struck by the amount of passion, of devoutness, of faith you put into it. I remember that in our last conversation you told me you had never had a close friend, never known anyone whose mind you respected, who was a devout believer.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And not in any fancy metaphysical way. I needed just one thing: for you to stay with me and be willing to expose yourself to the lethal stuff radiating from me. That was your task. “Therapists don’t generally understand this,” she continued. “No one but you could do this. My friends couldn’t stay with me. They themselves were too busy grieving for Jack, or distancing themselves from the ooze, or burying the fear of their own deaths, or demanding—and I do mean demanding— that I feel okay after the first year. “That’s what you really did best,” Irene went on. She spoke quickly, fluently, and stopped only to sip her cappuccino. “You had good staying power. You hung in there close to me. More than just staying close, you kept pushing for more and more, urging me to talk about everything, no matter how macabre. And if I didn’t, you were likely to guess—pretty accurately, I’ll hand it to you—what I was feeling. “And your actions were important—words alone wouldn’t have done it. That’s why one of the best single things you did was to tell me I had to see you an extra session every time I got really enraged with you.” When she paused, I looked up from my notes. “Other useful interventions?” “Coming to Jack’s funeral. Phoning me when you were away on long trips to check on how I was doing. Holding my hand when I needed it. That was precious, especially when Jack was dying. Sometimes I felt like I’d just drift off into oblivion if it weren’t for your hand anchoring me to my life. It’s funny, most of the time I thought of you as a magus—someone who knows ahead of time exactly what’s going to happen. That vision of you began to fade only a few months ago when you started to get smaller. Yet all along I had an opposing, antimagus, feeling—a feeling that you had no script whatsoever, no rules, no planned procedure. It was as if you were improvising on the spot.” “What did that improvising feel like to you?” I asked, scribbling quickly. “Very scary sometimes. I wanted you to be the Oz wizard. I was lost, and I wanted you to know the way home to Kansas. Sometimes I was suspicious of your uncertainty. I wondered if your improvisation was real or whether it was just a pretense at improvisation, just your wizard’s way. “Another thing: you knew how much I insist on figuring out how to fix things for myself.

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

  Objection 2: Further, Gregory reckons fasting together with these three, as stated in the Decretals (xiii, Q. ii, Cap. 22): “The souls of the departed are released in four ways, either by the offerings of priests, or the alms of their friends, or the prayers of the saints, or the fasting of their kinsfolk.” Therefore the three mentioned above are insufficiently reckoned by Augustine (De Cura pro Mort. xviii). Objection 3: Further, Baptism is the greatest of the sacraments, especially as regards its effect. Therefore Baptism and other sacraments ought to be offered for the departed equally with or more than the Sacrament of the altar. Objection 4: Further, this would seem to follow from the words of 1 Cor. 15:29, “If the dead rise not again at all, why are they then baptized for them?” Therefore Baptism avails as suffrage for the dead. Objection 5: Further, in different Masses there is the same Sacrifice of the altar. If, therefore, sacrifice, and not the Mass, be reckoned among the suffrages, it would seem that the effect would be the same whatever Mass be said for a deceased person, whether in honor of the Blessed Virgin or of the Holy Ghost, or any other. Yet this seems contrary to the ordinance of the Church which has appointed a special Mass for the dead. Objection 6: Further, the Damascene (Serm.: De his qui in fide dormierunt) teaches that candles and oil should be offered for the dead. Therefore not only the offering of the sacrifice of the altar, but also other offerings should be reckoned among suffrages for the dead. I answer that, The suffrages of the living profit the dead in so far as the latter are united to the living in charity, and in so far as the intention of the living is directed to the dead. Consequently those whose works are by nature best adapted to assist the dead, which pertain chiefly to the communication of charity, or to the directing of one’s intention to another person. Now the sacrament of the Eucharist belongs chiefly to charity, since it is the sacrament of ecclesiastical unity, inasmuch as it contains Him in Whom the whole Church is united and incorporated, namely Christ: wherefore the Eucharist is as it were the origin and bond of charity. Again, chief among the effects of charity is the work of almsgiving: wherefore on the part of charity these two, namely the sacrifice of the Church and almsgiving are the chief suffrages for the dead. But on the part of the intention directed to the dead the chief suffrage is prayer, because prayer by its very nature implies relation not only to the person who prays, even as other works do, but more directly still to that which we pray for. Hence these three are reckoned the principal means of succoring the dead, although we must allow that any other goods whatsoever that are done out of charity for the dead are profitable to them.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  She tells me that she recently took a course in “trauma first-aid” called Critical Incident Debriefing. “They tried it with us at the hospital. We had to talk about how we felt after an accident. But talking made me and the other paramedics feel worse. I couldn’t sleep after we did it—but you weren’t talking about what happened. You were, it seemed to me, just shaking. Is that what brought your heart rate and blood pressure down?” “Yes,” I told her and added that it was also the small protective spontaneous movements my arms were making. “I’ll bet,” she mused, “that if the shaking that often occurs after surgery were allowed rather than suppressed, recovery would be quicker and maybe even postoperative pain would be reduced.” “That’s right,” I say, smiling in agreement. Horrible and shocking as this experience was, it allowed me to exercise the method for dealing with sudden trauma that I had developed, written about and taught for the past forty years. By listening to the “unspoken voice” of my body and allowing it to do what it needed to do; by not stopping the shaking, by “tracking” my inner sensations, while also allowing the completion of the defensive and orienting responses; and by feeling the “survival emotions” of rage and terror without becoming overwhelmed, I came through mercifully unscathed, both physically and emotionally. I was not only thankful; I was humbled and grateful to find that I could use my method for my own salvation. While some people are able to recover from such trauma on their own, many individuals do not. Tens of thousands of soldiers are experiencing the extreme stress and horror of war. Then too, there are the devastating occurrences of rape, sexual abuse and assault. Many of us, however, have been overwhelmed by much more “ordinary” events such as surgeries or invasive medical procedures. 1 Orthopedic patients in a recent study, for example, showed a 52% occurrence of being diagnosed with full-on PTSD following surgery. Other traumas include falls, serious illnesses, abandonment, receiving shocking or tragic news, witnessing violence and getting into an auto accident; all can lead to PTSD. These and many other fairly common experiences are all potentially traumatizing.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In putting this book together I am indebted to the creative challenge and tremendous editorial help from Laura Regalbuto, Maggie Kline and Phoebe Hoss; also thanks to Justin Snavely for his awesome technical help. And, once again, I appreciate the cooperative endeavor of a continuing partnership with North Atlantic Books; with Emily Boyd, project manager, and Paul McCurdy, the line editor. To my parents, Morris and Helen, I give thanks for the gift of life, the vehicle for the expression of my work, and for their unequivocal support from the “other side” of the physical plane. To Pouncer, the Dingo dog who had been my guide into the animal world as well a constant companion, I have fond body-memories of play and goodness. At the age of seventeen (arguably, over a hundred human years), he continued to show me the vital joy of corporeal life. Finally, I stand in awe of the many “coincidences,” “chance” meetings, synchronicities and fateful detours that have impelled and guided me on my life’s journey. To have been blessed by a life of creative exploration and the privilege to contribute to the alleviation of suffering has been a precious gift, a pearl beyond price. Thanks for all my teachers, students, organizations and friends throughout the world who are carrying out the legacy of this work. P ETER A. L EVINE Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Acknowledgments Foreword PART I — Roots: A Foundation to Dance On CHAPTER 1 The Power of an Unspoken Voice CHAPTER 2 Touched by Discovery CHAPTER 3 The Changing Face of Trauma CHAPTER 4 Immobilized by Fear: Lessons Learned from Animals CHAPTER 5 From Paralysis to Transformation: Basic Building Blocks CHAPTER 6 A Map for Therapy CHAPTER 7 Mapping the Body, Mending the Mind: SIBAM PART II — The Body as Storyteller: Below Your Mind CHAPTER 8 In the Consulting Room: Case Examples CHAPTER 9 Annotation of Peter’s Accident PART III — Instinct in the Age of Reason CHAPTER 10 We’re Just a Bunch of Animals CHAPTER 11 Bottoms-Up: Three Brains, One Mind PART IV — Body, Emotion and Spirituality: Restoring Goodness CHAPTER 12 The Embodied Self CHAPTER 13 Emotion, the Body and Change CHAPTER 14 Trauma and Spirituality Epilogue Notes About the Author PART I Roots: A Foundation to Dance On We must go down to the very foundations of life. For any merely superficial ordering of life that leaves its deepest needs unsatisfied is as ineffectual as if no attempt at order had ever been made … —I Ching , Hexagram #34 “The Well” (circa 2500 BC ) Foreword I N AN UNSPOKEN VOICE IS PETER LEVINE ’ S MAGNUM OPUS , the summation of his lifelong investigation into the nature of stress and trauma and of his pioneering therapeutic work. It is also the most intimate and poetic among his books, most revealing of his own experience both as a person and as a healer.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I. Title. RC552.T7L483 2010 616.85′21—dc22 2010023653 v3.1_r1 In all things in nature there is something of the marvelous. —Aristotle (350 BC) F Acknowledgments Everything responsible for our “human existence” is due to an anonymous multitude of others who lived before us, whose achievements have been bestowed upon us as gifts. —H. Hass (1981) OR WHERE I STAND TODAY, I am indebted to the great scientific tradition and lineage of the ethologists, those scientists who study animals in their natural environments, who have contributed greatly to my naturalistic vision of the human animal. A most personal thanks to Nobel Laureate Nikolaas Tinbergen, whose suggestions and kind words of support encouraged me to pursue this naturalistic worldview. Though I have never met them, except through their written gifts to history, I would like to honor Konrad Lorenz, Heinz von Holst, Paul Leyhausen, Desmond Morris, Eric Salzen and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. Other “virtual” teachers include Ernst Gellhorn, who informed my early neurophysiological thinking, and Akhter Ahsen, who helped consolidate my vision of the “undifferentiated and welded unity of the body and mind.” A giant, whose broad shoulders I stand on, is Wilhelm Reich, MD. His monumental contribution to the understanding of “life-energy” was taught to me by Philip Curcuruto, a man of few words and simple wisdom. My deep appreciation and personal debt go to Richard Olney and Richard Price, who taught me what little I know about self-acceptance. Having known (and been inspired by) Dr. Ida Rolf has been a catalyst in forming my identity as a scientist-healer. To Dr. Virginia Johnson, I thank you for your critical understanding of altered states of consciousness. And to Ed Jackson, thanks for trusting my nascent body/mind practice in the 1960s and for referring Nancy, my first trauma client. I am grateful for the tremendous support and help from my friends. Over the years (beginning in 1978) I have had many stimulating discussions with Stephen Porges, already a leading figure in the field of psychophysiology. Over the following decades, our paths have continued to cross as we shared our parallel and interwoven developments and a special friendship. Thanks and admiration to Bessel van der Kolk for his voracious inquiring mind, his broad comprehensive vision of trauma, his professional life of research advancing the field of trauma to its modern status, and his courage to challenge existing structures. I fondly recollect our sharing Vermont summers on the banks of East Long Lake, swimming, laughing and talking trauma into the wee hours.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 25. in Matt) Moreover, by this, not only did He not take away the opinion of Him entertained by the leper, but He confirmed it; for He puts to flight the disease by a word, and what the leper had said in word, He filled up in deed; wherefore there follows, And when he had spoken, immediately, &c. BEDE. (ubi sup.) For there is no interval between the work of God and the command, because the work is in the command, for He commanded, and they were created. (Ps. 148:5) There follows: And he straitly charged him, and forthwith, &c. See thou tell no man. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 25) As if He said, It is not yet time that My works should be preached, I require not thy preaching. By which He teaches us not to seek worldly honour as a reward for our works. It goes on: But go thy way, shew thyself to the chief of the priests. Our Saviour sent him to the priest for the trial of his cure, and that he might not be cast out of the temple, but still be numbered with the people in prayer. He sends him also, that he might fulfil all the parts of the Law, in order to stop the evil-speaking tongue of the Jews. He Himself indeed completed the work, leaving them to try it. BEDE. (ubi sup.) This He did in order that the priest might understand that the leper was not healed by the Law, but by the grace of God above the Law. There follows: And offer for thy cleansing what. Moses, &c. THEOPHYLACT. He ordered him to offer the gift which they who were healed were accustomed to offer, as if for a testimony, that He was not against the Law, but rather confirmed the Law, inasmuch as He Himself worked out the precepts of the Law. BEDE. (ubi sup.) If any one wonders, how the Lord seems to approve of the Jewish sacrifice, which the Church rejects, let him remember, that He had not yet offered His own holocaust in His passion. And it was not right that significative sacrifices should be taken away, before that which they signified was confirmed by the witness of the Apostles in their preaching, and by the faith of the believing people. THEOPHYLACT. But the leper, although the Lord forbade him, disclosed the benefit, wherefore it goes on: But he having gone out, began to publish and to blaze abroad the tale; for the person benefited ought to be grateful, and to return thanks, even though his benefactor requires it not.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I obeyed it, the order he had spoken not to me but to the air, I forced myself upon him with a violence greater than his own, wanting to please him, I suppose, but that isn’t true; I wanted to satisfy myself more than him, or rather to assuage that force or compulsion that drew me to him, that force that can make me such a stranger to myself, it is a failing to be so prone to it but I am prone to it. He let me do this for a while, setting my own pace, and then there came the shift in his balance that meant he was reaching to the table beside him again, choosing some new object. He struck me with it a moment later, not very hard but hard enough that I jerked, interrupting the rhythm I had set, and he placed his hand on my head again, taking hold of me as if I might bolt. It was another prop of the sort I had always laughed at before, a cat-o’-nine-tails, a kind of short whip with several strips of leather hanging down; the one time it had been used on me before, the man had been timid and I had felt nothing at all, except to despise him a little because he used it only for show. This was something else, and though I had jerked more from shock than from pain there was pain too, less in the actual blow than in the moment after, a sharp heat spreading along my back. He said a word I didn’t understand then, which from his tone I took as something like steady, the kind of mixed reassurance and admonishment one might give a startled horse, and his grip on my head softened, he flexed his fingers again in that gesture that was almost a caress. I was surprised at what I felt then, which was outsized and overwhelming, gratitude at what seemed like kindness from this man who had been so stern; it was something I hadn’t felt before, or not for a very long time. I began moving again, having frozen at the shock of the first blow, brought back by his caress or perhaps there had been a very slight pressure from his hand, I’m not sure.

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

  There’s no way to overstate the contribution of my patients. I’m honored by your trust in me. Thank you for letting me into your souls, and for allowing me to take your stories to enrich the life of others. Friends, too, please join the list. I can’t name everyone who sat at my dinner table parsing out the complexities of desire, but you know who you are, and I can’t thank you enough. Jack Saul, we have been together nearly a quarter of a century. I know you appreciate my choice of topic! I wouldn’t have been able to complete this project without your enduring support and enthusiasm. You stepped in whenever I stepped out. Adam, my older son, you are my computer whiz. It’s meant so much to me that you’ve taken such an interest in my work even when my work has taken me elsewhere. Noam, my younger son, I promise you that when you come of age I’ll be delighted to have you read my book. About the AuthorEsther Perel is a couples and family therapist with a private practice in New York City. She is on the faculty of the International Trauma Studies program at Columbia University, is a member of the American Family Therapy Academy, and has appeared on many television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Day New York, CBS This Morning, and HBO’s Women Aloud. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children. Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com CreditsCover image © Jerzyworks/Masterfile Books by Esther Perel The State of Affairs Mating in Captivity Copyright“Wild Things in Captivity,” from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence by D. H. Lawrence, edited by V. de Sola Pinto & F. W. Roberts, copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weekley, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All names and identifying details of the individuals in this book have been changed to protect their privacy. MATING IN CAPTIVITY. Copyright © 2006 by Esther Perel. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. EPub Edition © AUGUST 2006 ISBN: 9780061835223 Epub Version 2 Version 06052017 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perel, Esther Mating in captivity: reconciling the erotic and the domestic / Esther Perel.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-10: 0-06-075363-3 ISBN-13: 987-0-06-075363-4 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the PublisherAustralia HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd. Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada www.harpercollins.ca New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive Rosedale 0632 Auckland, New Zealand www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF, UK www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 195 Broadway New York, NY 10007 www.harpercollins.com

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Ever since she’s been taking care of me—indeed, the whole lupus community.” “I’m sorry to hear about your illness. But Paula? Lupus? I hadn’t heard.” What hypocrisy, I thought. How could I have heard? Had I even once called her? “She says it was caused by the medicine she was given for cancer.” “Is she very sick?” “You never know with Paula. Certainly not too sick to start a lupus support group, to invite all the new lupus patients to lunch, to visit us when we’re too ill to leave the house, to arrange a series of medical speakers to keep us apprised of new research in lupus. Also not too sick to launch a medical-ethics-board investigation of her cancer doctors.” Organizing, educating, nursing, agitating, starting up lupus self-help groups, castigating her doctors—sounded like Paula, all right. I thanked the young woman and later that day dialed Paula’s number, which I still knew by heart, even though it had been a decade since I had last called. As I waited for her to answer, I thought of some recent geriatric research that showed a positive correlation between personality style and longevity: cantankerous patients who are paranoid, vigilant, and assertive tend to live longer. Better a feisty, irritating, living Paula, I thought, than a placid dead one! She seemed pleased by my call and invited me to lunch at her home; the lupus had, she said, made her too sun sensitive to venture out to restaurants in the daytime. I accepted gladly. The day of our lunch I found Paula in her front garden. Wrapped in linen from head to toe and wearing an enormous broad-brimmed beach hat, she was weeding a beautiful patch of tall, fragrant Spanish lavender. “This disease is probably going to kill me, but I’m not going to let it keep me out of my garden,” Paula said, clasping my arm and escorting me inside. She led me to a dark purple velvet sofa and, sitting down next to me, immediately began on a serious note. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, Irv, but I think of you often. You’re much in my prayers. ” “I like your thinking of me, Paula. But as for your prayers, you know my shortcomings there.” “Yes, yes, I realize that in this one area you have yet to open your mind. It reminds me,” she said, smiling, “that my job with you isn’t yet complete. Do you remember the last time we talked about God? It’s years ago, but I remember your telling me that my feeling of the holy was not much different from gas pains in the night!” “Out of context that sounds harsh, even to me. But I didn’t mean to be insulting.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In putting this book together I am indebted to the creative challenge and tremendous editorial help from Laura Regalbuto, Maggie Kline and Phoebe Hoss; also thanks to Justin Snavely for his awesome technical help. And, once again, I appreciate the cooperative endeavor of a continuing partnership with North Atlantic Books; with Emily Boyd, project manager, and Paul McCurdy, the line editor. To my parents, Morris and Helen, I give thanks for the gift of life, the vehicle for the expression of my work, and for their unequivocal support from the “other side” of the physical plane. To Pouncer, the Dingo dog who had been my guide into the animal world as well a constant companion, I have fond body-memories of play and goodness. At the age of seventeen (arguably, over a hundred human years), he continued to show me the vital joy of corporeal life. Finally, I stand in awe of the many “coincidences,” “chance” meetings, synchronicities and fateful detours that have impelled and guided me on my life’s journey. To have been blessed by a life of creative exploration and the privilege to contribute to the alleviation of suffering has been a precious gift, a pearl beyond price. Thanks for all my teachers, students, organizations and friends throughout the world who are carrying out the legacy of this work. PETER A. LEVINE Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Acknowledgments Foreword PART I — Roots: A Foundation to Dance On CHAPTER 1 The Power of an Unspoken Voice CHAPTER 2 Touched by Discovery CHAPTER 3 The Changing Face of Trauma CHAPTER 4 Immobilized by Fear: Lessons Learned from Animals CHAPTER 5 From Paralysis to Transformation: Basic Building Blocks CHAPTER 6 A Map for Therapy CHAPTER 7 Mapping the Body, Mending the Mind: SIBAM PART II — The Body as Storyteller: Below Your Mind CHAPTER 8 In the Consulting Room: Case Examples CHAPTER 9 Annotation of Peter’s Accident PART III — Instinct in the Age of Reason CHAPTER 10 We’re Just a Bunch of Animals CHAPTER 11 Bottoms-Up: Three Brains, One Mind PART IV — Body, Emotion and Spirituality: Restoring Goodness CHAPTER 12 The Embodied Self CHAPTER 13 Emotion, the Body and Change CHAPTER 14 Trauma and Spirituality Epilogue Notes About the Author I Foreword N AN UNSPOKEN VOICE IS PETER LEVINE’S MAGNUM OPUS, the summation of his lifelong investigation into the nature of stress and trauma and of his pioneering therapeutic work. It is also the most intimate and poetic among his books, most revealing of his own experience both as a person and as a healer. It is also his most scientifically grounded and erudite.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  To my parents, Morris and Helen, I give thanks for the gift of life, the vehicle for the expression of my work, and for their unequivocal support from the “other side” of the physical plane. To Pouncer, the Dingo dog who had been my guide into the animal world as well a constant companion, I have fond body-memories of play and goodness. At the age of seventeen (arguably, over a hundred human years), he continued to show me the vital joy of corporeal life. Finally, I stand in awe of the many “coincidences,” “chance” meetings, synchronicities and fateful detours that have impelled and guided me on my life’s journey. To have been blessed by a life of creative exploration and the privilege to contribute to the alleviation of suffering has been a precious gift, a pearl beyond price. Thanks for all my teachers, students, organizations and friends throughout the world who are carrying out the legacy of this work. PETER A. LEVINE ContentsCover Title Page Copyright Epigraph Acknowledgments Foreword PART I — Roots: A Foundation to Dance On CHAPTER 1 The Power of an Unspoken Voice CHAPTER 2 Touched by Discovery CHAPTER 3 The Changing Face of Trauma CHAPTER 4 Immobilized by Fear: Lessons Learned from Animals CHAPTER 5 From Paralysis to Transformation: Basic Building Blocks CHAPTER 6 A Map for Therapy CHAPTER 7 Mapping the Body, Mending the Mind: SIBAM PART II — The Body as Storyteller: Below Your Mind CHAPTER 8 In the Consulting Room: Case Examples CHAPTER 9 Annotation of Peter’s Accident PART III — Instinct in the Age of Reason CHAPTER 10 We’re Just a Bunch of Animals CHAPTER 11 Bottoms-Up: Three Brains, One Mind PART IV — Body, Emotion and Spirituality: Restoring Goodness CHAPTER 12 The Embodied Self CHAPTER 13 Emotion, the Body and Change CHAPTER 14 Trauma and Spirituality Epilogue Notes About the Author ForewordIN AN UNSPOKEN VOICE IS PETER LEVINE’S MAGNUM OPUS, the summation of his lifelong investigation into the nature of stress and trauma and of his pioneering therapeutic work. It is also the most intimate and poetic among his books, most revealing of his own experience both as a person and as a healer. It is also his most scientifically grounded and erudite. An early heading in the beginning chapter reveals the essence of Peter’s teaching: “the power of kindness.” Injured in a motor vehicle accident, Peter finds his own healing potential unlocked by his willingness to attend fully to his physical/emotional experience, allowing it to unfold as it needs to. His process is facilitated by a compassionate human presence. The power of goodness—in this case, the organism’s innate capacity to restore itself to health and balance—is encouraged by a bystander, an empathetic witness who helps to prevent trauma by embodying kindness and acceptance.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You blessed me. Even though you didn’t imagine I would hear, you wished me to go in good health. And I am moved by your blessing. Very moved. I know what I’ve put you through. I know how much you want to liberate this woman—not only for her sake but also for yours. And yet even after your tremendous effort, and after your not knowing whether you were successful in redressing the wrong, even then you still had the grace and the loving-kindness to wish for my good health. That may be the most generous gift I have ever received. Good-bye, my friend.” “Good-bye, Merges,” said Ernest, watching Merges stroll away, more perky now and with a graceful cat gait. Is it my imagination, he thought, or has Merges grown appreciably smaller? “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” said Merges, without breaking stride. “I’m considering settling in California.” “You have my word, Merges,” Ernest called after him. “You’ll eat well here. Roast crab—and cilantro—every night.” Darkness again. The next thing Ernest saw was the roseate glow of dawn. Now I know the meaning of a “hard day’s night,” he thought as he sat up in bed, stretched, and contemplated the sleeping Artemis. He felt certain that Merges would now depart from the dream dimension. But what about the rest of the cat curse? None of that had been discussed. For a few minutes Ernest considered the prospect of being involved with a woman who might, every so often, be sexually ferocious and voracious. Quietly he slipped out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs. Artemis, hearing his footsteps, called out, “Ernest, no! Something’s changed. I’m free. I know it. I feel it. Don’t go, please. You don’t need to go.” “Be right back with breakfast. Ten minutes,” he called from the front door. “I have an urgent need for an extra-seedy bagel and cream cheese. Yesterday I spotted a deli down the street.” He was just opening his car door when he heard the bedroom window go up and Artemis’s voice. “Ernest, Ernest, remember I’m a vegan. No cream cheese. Can you get—” “I know—avocado. It’s on my list.” Afterword to the Perennial Edition Are these six psychotherapy tales true? Or fictional? The first story (“Momma and the Meaning of Life”) is a true autobiographical fantasy—that is, the dream and the events in the story are true, the precise conversation is a fantasy. The next three (“Southern Comfort,” “Seven Advanced Lessons,” and “Travels with Paula”) are pure nonfiction flecked only with fiction to conceal the patients’ identities. And the final two (“Double Exposure” and “The Hungarian Cat Curse”) contain a nonfictional nucleus around which I constructed a fictional tale. But a confusion inheres in any fiction-nonfiction codification. Not only does fiction have its own truth, but every story, no matter how “true,” is a lie because it omits so much. In each narrative I have eliminated the quotidian details of the therapy encounter.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I nod. “Faint memories, Momma.” I must have been four or five . . . a sour-smelling tenement building in the Bronx . . . throwing scraps of bread and balls of tinfoil down five stories to the chickens in the courtyard . . . my grandfather, all in black, tall black yarmulke, white wild beard stained with gravy, his arms and forehead wrapped in black cords, mumbling prayers. We couldn’t converse—he spoke only Yiddish—but he pinched my cheek hard. Everyone else—Bubba, Momma, Aunt Lena—working, running up and down the stairs all day to the store, unpacking and packing, cooking, cleaning feathers from chickens, scales from fish, dusting. But Zeyda didn’t lift a finger. Just sat and read. Like a king. “Every month,” Momma keeps on, “I took the train to New York and brought them food and money. And later, when Bubba was in the nursing home, I paid for the home and visited her every two weeks—you remember, sometimes I took you on the train. Who else in the family helped? Nobody! Your Uncle Simon would come every few months and bring her a bottle of 7 Up, and my next visit all I would hear about was your Uncle Simon’s wonderful 7 Up. Even when she was blind, she’d lie there just holding the empty 7 Up bottle. And not only Bubba I helped, but everyone else in the family—my brothers, Simon and Hymie, my sister, Lena, Tante Hannah, your Uncle Abe, the greenhorn, who I brought from Russia—everybody, the whole family, was supported by that schmutzig, dirty, little grocery store. Nobody helped me—ever! And no one ever thanked me.” Taking a deep, deep breath, I utter the words: “I thank you, Momma. I thank you.” That isn’t too hard. Why has it taken me fifty years? I take her arm, maybe for the first time. The fleshy part just above the elbow. It feels soft and warm, something like her warm kichel dough just before baking. “I remember your telling Jean and me about Uncle Simon’s 7 Up. That must have been hard.” “Hard? You’re telling me. Sometimes she’d drink his 7 Up with a piece of my kichel —you know what a job making kichel is—and all she’d talk about was the 7 Up.” “It’s good to talk, Momma. It’s the first time. Maybe I’ve always wanted it, and that’s why you stay in my mind and my dreams. Maybe now it will be different.” “Different how?” “Well, I’ll be able to be more myself—to live for the purposes and causes that I choose to cherish.” “You want to get rid of me?” “No—well, not in that way, not in a bad way. I want the same for you too. I want you to be able to rest. ” “Rest? Did you ever see me rest? Daddy napped every day.

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

  You made me pick up my strewn thoughts and kept me jargon-free. Mary Wylie, when you edited the original article from which this book is drawn, “In Search of Erotic Intelligence: Reconciling Sensuality and Domesticity,” did you know how far we would go? You often understood what I wanted to say before I did. Miriam Horn, you were the first person who gave some shape to the original article. Rich Simon, you set this whole thing in motion. A simple question in the spring of 2002, “What have you been thinking about lately?” prompted me to send you some loose ideas which, eleven versions later, ended in the pages of an on-the-cusp magazine, The Psychotherapy Networker. Things could have ended there, with an interesting article. But Tracy Brown, you were rummaging through the newsstands as only an enterprising agent knows how to do. You spotted the cover of the Utne Reader, which had reproduced my article from the Networker article. We instantly bonded, and began this amazing journey. I’m recommending you right and left. Ilana Berger, you introduced me to the world of sex therapy. You’ve been a mentor and a friend. Peter Fraenkel, since before day one you believed in this project. Michael Shernoff, by offering a gay perspective, you kept me from falling into heterosexual clichés. Patti Cohen and David Bornstein, I’m honored that you’ve welcomed me into your circle of writers. Deborah Gieringer, Sandy Petrey, and Katherine Frank, thank you for being such discerning readers and thinkers. Phillis Levin, you are my poetic muse. Shelly Kellner, you bring a wealth of organization to my chaos. Your research support was impeccable. Anya Strzemien, you spent hours listening to me on tape and then transcribing. Can we work together again? Miriam Baker, thank you for the wonderful metaphor of captivity. There’s no way to overstate the contribution of my patients. I’m honored by your trust in me. Thank you for letting me into your souls, and for allowing me to take your stories to enrich the life of others. Friends, too, please join the list. I can’t name everyone who sat at my dinner table parsing out the complexities of desire, but you know who you are, and I can’t thank you enough. Jack Saul, we have been together nearly a quarter of a century. I know you appreciate my choice of topic! I wouldn’t have been able to complete this project without your enduring support and enthusiasm. You stepped in whenever I stepped out. Adam, my older son, you are my computer whiz. It’s meant so much to me that you’ve taken such an interest in my work even when my work has taken me elsewhere. Noam, my younger son, I promise you that when you come of age I’ll be delighted to have you read my book. About the Author Esther Perel is a couples and family therapist with a private practice in New York City.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  My thanks to all who have read, made suggestions, or contributed in some instrumental way to the final form of this manuscript: Sara Lippincott; David Spiegel; David Vann; Jo Ann Miller; Murray Bilmes; Ann Arvin; Ben Yalom; Bob Berger; Richard Fumosa; and my sister, Jean Rose. I am, as always, lovingly indebted to my wife, Marilyn Yalom, in more ways than I can say. And indebted as well to my editor, Phoebe Hoss, who in this work, as in so many other books, has mercilessly prodded me to write to the best of my ability. I [image file=image_154.jpg] Momma and the Meaning of Life Dusk. Perhaps I am dying. Sinister shapes surround my bed: cardiac monitors, oxygen canisters, dripping intravenous bottles, coils of plastic tubing—the entrails of death. Closing my lids, I glide into darkness. But then, springing from my bed, I dart out of the hospital room smack into the bright, sunlit Glen Echo Amusement Park, where, in decades past, I spent many summer Sundays. I hear carousel music. I breathe in the moist, caramelized fragrance of sticky popcorn and apples. And I walk straight ahead—not hesitating at the Polar Bear Frozen Custard stand or the double-dip roller coaster or the Ferris wheel—to take my place in the ticket line for the House of Horrors. My fare paid, I wait as the next cart swivels around the corner and clanks to a halt in front of me. After stepping in and pulling down the guard rail to lock myself snugly into place, I take one last look about me—and there, in the midst of a small group of onlookers, I see her. I wave with both arms and call, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Momma! Momma!” Just then the cart lurches forward and strikes the double doors, which swing open to reveal a black gaping maw. I lean back as far as I can and, before being swallowed by the darkness, call again, “Momma! How’d I do, Momma? How’d I do?” Even as I lift my head from the pillow and try to shake off the dream, the words clot in my throat: “How’d I do, Momma? Momma, how’d I do?” But Momma is six feet under. Stone-cold dead for ten years now in a plain pine casket in an Anacostia cemetery outside Washington, D.C. What is left of her? Only bones, I guess. No doubt the microbes have polished off every scrap of flesh. Maybe some strands of thin gray hair remain—maybe some glistening streaks of cartilage cling to the ends of larger bones, the femur and the tibia. And oh yes, the ring. Nestled somewhere in bone dust must be the thin silver filigree wedding ring my father bought on Hester Street shortly after they arrived in New York, steerage class, from the Russian shtetl half a world away. Yes, long gone. Ten years. Croaked and decayed. Nothing but hair, cartilage, bones, a silver filigree wedding ring. And her image lurking in my memories and dreams.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Justified by Faith Before we get to our main purpose in looking at this passage—to understand what Paul is saying about the death of Jesus—we must look briefly at the result of this display of divine covenant faithfulness. All who believe, Paul declares, are “justified.” The double context we have noted all along (as in “God’s covenant justice”) provides the closely intertwined double meaning of this famous though difficult notion. On the one hand, all who believe are declared to be members of Abraham’s family, just as, for instance, in Galatians 3:29. “Justification” is the covenant declaration, establishing in a single family all who share the messianic pistis. Equally, on the other hand, justification means that this believing family is declared to be in the right. The first of these answers particularly to Romans 2:17–29, which ends with the quizzical note about God redefining his people. The second answers to the larger issue of 2:1–16: the final judgment is coming, and people will be either “condemned” or “justified.” The latter meaning, in fact, is bound to be near the surface of alert readers’ minds because of the blatant and repeated law-court imagery of 3:19–20: every mouth will be stopped, and the whole world held accountable before God; the Torah itself will be unable to rescue anyone and can only point out sin. The point we must grasp is that these two contexts of meaning are not to be played off against one another. They dovetail together. God chose Abraham to reverse the sin of Adam; God gave Israel the task of bringing light to the world. The covenant promise and the covenant purpose were always intended to deal with sin. God would not deal with sin any other way; that is part of the point of 3:1–5. And God would not be faithful to the covenant if he did not deal with sin; the whole narrative of Genesis rebels against the idea. That is why, as he is expounding Genesis 15 in Romans 4, Paul highlights the note of forgiveness (4:6–8). As usual, we must not separate what Paul (following scripture!) has held firmly together. This “justification” takes place in the present time, as Paul says up front (“but now,” 3:21) and then spells out (in v. 26). The verdict of the future, as in 2:1–16 and 8:31–39, has already been announced in the present. This provides the particular dynamic of Paul’s famous justification theology and is the direct result of what has happened in the Messiah.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  In the story the Bible is telling, humans were created for a purpose, and Israel was called for a purpose, and the purpose was not simply “to keep the rules,” “to be with God,” or “to go to heaven,” as you might suppose from innumerable books, sermons, hymns, and prayers. Humans were made to be “image-bearers,” to reflect the praises of creation back to the Creator and to reflect the Creator’s wise and loving stewardship into the world. Israel was called to be the royal priesthood, to worship God and reflect his rescuing wisdom into the world. In the Bible, “sin”—for which there are various words in Hebrew—is the outworking of a prior disease, a prior disobedience: a failure of worship. Humans are made to worship the God who created them in his own image and so to be sustained and renewed in that image-bearing capacity. Like many scholars today, I understand the idea of the “image,” as in Genesis 1:26–28, to mean that humans are designed to function like angled mirrors. We are created in order to reflect the worship of all creation back to the Creator and by that same means to reflect the wise sovereignty of the Creator into the world. Human beings, worshipping their Creator, were thus the intended key to the proper flourishing of the world. “Worship” was and is a matter of gazing with delight, gratitude, and love at the creator God and expressing his praise in wise, articulate speech. Those who do this are formed by this activity to become the generous, humble stewards through whom God’s creative and sustaining love is let loose into the world. That was how things were meant to be. The purpose of the cross is to take us back, from where we presently are, to that intended goal. Because, of course, we have all failed in this vocation. When humans turn from worshipping the one God to worshipping anything else instead, anything within the created order, the problem is not just that they “do wrong things,” distorting their human minds, bodies, hearts, and everything else, though of course that is true as well. In addition—and this is vital for grasping the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion—they give to whatever idol they are worshipping the power and authority that they, the humans, were supposed to be exercising in the first place. Worshipping things other than the one true God and distorting our human behavior in consequence is the very essence of “sin”: the Greek word for “sin” in the New Testament means, as we saw, not just “doing wrong things,” but “missing the target.” The target is a wise, full human life of worship and stewardship.