Guilt

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 Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  No one was going to believe that all the clinic physicians were conspiring against her. There was no possibility of either reprimand or revocation of license. She lapsed into thought, weighing my advice. I believe she felt my caring for her, and I hoped she would not know that I was being false. Finally she nodded. “You’ve given me good, sound counsel, Irv. It’s just what I needed.” I felt painfully the irony that it was only now, when I had acted in bad faith, that she considered me helpful and trustworthy. Despite her sensitivity to the sun, Paula insisted on walking with me to my car. She put on her sun hat, wrapped herself in her veil and linens, and, as I started the ignition, leaned into the car window to give me a last hug. As I drove away I looked back through the rearview mirror. Silhouetted against the sun, her hat and linen wrapping gleaming with light, Paula was incandescent. A breeze came up. Her clothes fluttered. She seemed a leaf, trembling, twisting on its stem, readying itself for the fall. In the ten years before this visit, I had dedicated myself to my writing. I turned out book after book—a productivity due to a simple strategy: I put the writing first and let nothing and no one interfere with it. Guarding my time as fiercely as a mother bear guards her cubs, I eliminated all but absolutely essential activities. Even Paula fell into the nonessential category, and I did not take the time to call her again. Several months later my mother died, and while I was flying to her funeral, Paula slipped into my mind. I thought of her farewell letter to her dead brother—the letter containing all the things she had never said to him. And I thought of what I had never said to my mother. Almost everything! My mother and I, though loving one another, had never spoken directly, heart to heart, as two people reaching out with clean hands and clear minds. We had always “treated” each other, spoken past each other, each of us fearing, controlling, deceiving the other. I’m certain that’s why I had always wanted to speak honestly and directly to Paula. And why I hated being forced to “treat” her falsely. The night after the funeral, I had a powerful dream. My mother and many of her friends and relatives, all dead, are seated very quietly on a flight of stairs. I hear my mother’s voice calling—shrieking— my name. I am particularly aware of Aunt Minny, sitting on the top stair, who is very still. Then she begins to move, slowly at first, then more and more quickly until she is vibrating faster than a bumblebee. At that point everyone on the stairs, all the big people of my childhood, all dead, begin to vibrate.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Though she had been a great force there, I had come to realize that she had been almost too powerful and too inspiring: her leaving had made it possible for several other patients to grow and to learn to inspire themselves. “What’s most important to me is that you trust me and care for me.” “After the workshop, Irv, I cried for twenty-four hours. I called you. You did not call back that day. Later, when you did, you offered me no comfort. I went to church to pray and had a three-hour talk with Father Elson. He listened to me. He always listens to me. I think he saved me.” Damn that priest! I strained to recollect that day three months ago. I vaguely remembered speaking to her on the phone but not her asking for help. I had been certain she was phoning to gripe some more about the workshop, which I’d already discussed with her several times. Too many times. Why couldn’t she get it? How often did I have to tell her that the whole damn thing was meaningless, that I wasn’t Dr. Lee, that I hadn’t tossed the chalk, that I had defended her against him later, that I was going to continue the group in the same way, that nothing would change except that the group members would be asked to fill out a few questionnaires every three months? Yes, Paula had called me that day, but not then, not ever, had she asked me for help. “Paula, if you had told me you wanted help for yourself, do you think I’d have refused you?” “I cried for twenty-four hours.” “But I’m not a mind reader. You told me you wanted to talk about the research and your minority report.” “I cried for twenty-four hours.” And so it went, the two of us speaking past each other. I did my best to reach her. I told her I needed her—for myself, not for the group. Indeed, I did need her. There were issues in my life troubling me at the time, and I yearned for her inspiration and her soothing presence. Once, several months before, I had called Paula one evening, ostensibly to discuss our plans for the group but in reality because my wife was out of town and I was feeling lonely and anxious. After our phone conversation, which went on for over an hour, I felt much better—though slightly guilty for having gotten therapy on the sly. I thought now about that long, healing phone conversation with Paula. Why hadn’t I been more honest? Why hadn’t I simply said, “Look here, Paula, can I talk to you tonight? Can you help me—I’m feeling anxious, lonely, driven? I’m having trouble sleeping.” No, no, out of the question! I preferred to take my nourishment secretly.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Ernest took another look at Myrna. A longer one. He pondered his options. Duty to his patient, that came first. Today, finally, Myrna seemed willing to engage him. For months he had been urging, exhorting, begging her to stay in the here-and-now. So encourage her efforts, he told himself. And remain honest. Honesty above all. A devout skeptic in all other matters, Ernest believed with fundamentalist fervor in the healing power of honesty. His catechism called for honesty—but tempered, selective honesty. And responsible, caring honesty: honesty in the service of caring. He would never, for example, reveal to her the harsh, negative—but honest—feelings toward her he had expressed two days earlier when presenting Myrna’s case at his countertransference seminar. That seminar had started a year ago as a biweekly study group of ten therapists who met to deepen their understanding of their personal reactions to their patients. At each meeting one member would discuss a patient by focusing almost entirely on the feelings that patient had evoked in him or her during their therapy hours. Whatever their feelings toward particular patients—irrational, primitive, loving, hateful, sexual, aggressive—the members committed themselves to expressing them candidly and exploring their meaning and roots. Among the many purposes the seminar served, none was more important than the sense of community it provided. Isolation is the leading occupational hazard of the psychotherapist in private practice, and therapists combat it by membership in organizations: study groups such as this countertransference seminar, advanced training institutes, hospital staff associations, and a variety of local and national professional organizations. The countertransference seminar loomed large in Ernest’s life, and he looked forward to the meetings every other week—not only to the camaraderie but also to the consultation. He had, the previous year, terminated a long supervisory experience with an orthodox psychoanalyst, Marshal Strider, and the seminar was now the only place where he discussed cases with colleagues. Though the group’s official focus was upon the inner life of the therapist rather than upon the therapy, the discussion invariably influenced the course of therapy. Merely knowing that you would be presenting a patient inevitably influenced the way you conducted therapy with that patient. And during his session with Myrna today, Ernest imagined the seminar members silently observing him as he pondered her question about why he had been disrespectful to her. He took care to say nothing that he would feel reluctant to report back to the group. “I’m not sure of all the reasons, Myrna, but I know I was impatient with you last session when I said it. You seemed obstinate. I had a sense of knocking and knocking at your door and your refusing to open it.” “I was doing my best.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  As a child she’d been an inveterate snooper. One day, while her father was making house calls, she had rummaged through the upper compartments and drawers of his walnut rolltop desk and found, under a stack of patients’ charts, a packet of yellowed love letters, some from her mother and some from a woman named Christine. Buried under the letters, she was surprised to find some of her poems written on paper that felt strangely damp. She took them back and, on impulse, stole the letters from Christine as well. A few days later, on an overcast autumn afternoon, she poked them, along with all the rest of the poems she’d written, into the center of a mound of dried sycamore leaves and put a match to it. All that afternoon she sat watching the wind have its will with the ashes of her poetry. From then on a veil of silence fell between her and her father. It was impenetrable. He never acknowledged his violation of her privacy. She never confessed her violation of his. He never mentioned the missing letters, nor did she speak of her missing poems. Though she never wrote another poem, she had wondered ever since why he had kept these pages of her poems and why they were damp. In her daydreams she sometimes imagined him reading them and weeping over their beauty. A few years ago her mother had phoned to tell her that her father had suffered a massive stroke. Though she had rushed to the airport and caught the next plane home, she arrived at the hospital only to find his room empty, the bare mattress covered with a clear plastic sheet. Minutes earlier the orderlies had removed his body. The first time she met Dr. Lash, she was startled by the antique rolltop desk in his office. It was like her father’s, and often during her long silences she caught herself gazing at it. She never told Dr. Lash about the desk and its secrets, or about her poems, or about the long silence between herself and her father. Ernest also slept poorly that night. Again and again he reviewed his presentation of Myrna to the countertransference study group, which had met a couple of days earlier in a member’s group therapy room on Couch Row, as upper Sacramento Street was often called. Though the seminar had started out leaderless, the discussions had grown so intense and so personally threatening that a few months ago they had hired a consultant, Dr. Fritz Werner, an elderly psychoanalyst who had contributed many astute papers to the psychoanalytic literature on countertransference. Ernest’s account of Myrna had provoked a particularly animated discussion. Though praising him for his willingness to expose himself so candidly to the group, Dr. Werner had also been sharply critical of the therapy, especially the T-shirt comment.

• From Story of O (1954)

  With O, however, it was quite another matter. A polite fiction made it possible to pretend that Jacqueline was simply moving in with a girl friend, with whom she was going to share all costs. O would be serving a dual purpose, both playing the role of the lover who supports, or helps to support, the girl he loves, and also the theoretically opposite role of providing a moral guarantee. René’s presence was not official enough, really, to compromise the fiction. But who can say whether, behind Jacqueline’s decision, that very presence might not have been the real motivation for her acceptance? The fact remained that it was left up to O, and to O alone, to present the matter to Jacqueline’s mother. Never had O been more keenly aware of playing the role of traitor, of spy, never had she felt so keenly she was the envoy of some criminal organization as when she found herself in the presence of that woman, who thanked her for befriending her daughter. And at the same time, deep in her heart O was repudiating her mission and the reasons which had brought her there. Yes, Jacqueline would move in with her, but never, never would O acquiesce so completely to Sir Stephen as to deliver her into his hands. And yet! … For no sooner had she moved into O’s apartment, where she was assigned, at René’s request, the bedroom he sometimes pretended to occupy (pretended, given that he always slept in O’s big bed), than O, contrary to all expectations, was amazed to find herself obsessed with the burning desire to have Jacqueline at any price, even if attaining her goal meant handing her over to Sir Stephen. After all, she rationalized to herself, Jacqueline’s beauty is quite sufficient protection for her, and besides, why should I get involved in it anyway? And what if she were to be reduced to what I have been reduced to, is that really so terrible?—scarcely admitting, and yet overwhelmed to imagine, how sweet it would be to see Jacqueline naked and defenseless beside her, and like her. The week Jacqueline moved in, her mother having given her full consent, René proved to be exceedingly zealous, inviting them every other day to dinner and taking them to the movies which, curiously enough, he chose from among the detective pictures playing, tales of drug traffic and white slavery. He would sit down between them, gently hold hands with them both, and not utter a word. But whenever there was a scene of violence, O would see him studying Jacqueline’s face for the slightest trace of emotion. All you could see on it was a hint of disgust, revealed by the slight downward pout at the corners of her mouth.

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

  Will he continue to negotiate monogamy privately, without Zoë’s knowledge, as is typical in affairs; or might he opt for a more open discussion of the sexual boundaries around their marriage? Must he disclose the affair in order to reconnect with his wife? What can he do with his guilt? The answers change every day. Last week, it seemed as if he would never be able to look her in the eye unless he came clean. Today, it seems that the most loving thing he can do is to keep his mess to himself. “Do I break her heart just to ease my conscience? Sometimes I think she’s known all along, and the only reason she hasn’t left me is because I’ve kept my mouth shut. At least this way she gets to hold on to her dignity.” Most American couples therapists believe that affairs must be disclosed if intimacy is to be rebuilt. This idea goes hand in hand with our model of intimate love, which celebrates transparency—having no secrets, telling no lies, sharing everything. In fact, some people condemn the deception even more than the transgression: “It’s not that you cheated, it’s that you lied to me!” To the American way of thinking, respect is bound up with honesty, and honesty is essential to personal responsibility. Hiding, dissimulation, and other forms of deception amount to disrespect. You lie only to those beneath you—children, constituents, employees. In other cultures, respect is more likely to be expressed with gentle untruths that aim at preserving the partner’s honor. A protective opacity is preferable to telling truths that might result in humiliation. Hence concealment not only maintains marital harmony but also is a mark of respect. Informed by my own cultural influences, I defer to Doug’s decision to remain silent, and at the same time I encourage him to pursue other ways to reconnect with his wife. His marriage has been on “pause” for a long time; now he needs to push the “play” button. Doug reinvests in his relationship with Zoë. With more time on his hands, and being generally more available, he begins to redirect his abundant resources toward his wife. She feigns surprise at the sudden return of her Odysseus, but beneath her wisecracking “Howdy Stranger” attitude, Doug knows that she is relieved. I encourage him to pump up his involvement with the kids, the house, and the social calendar, hoping that relieving Zoë of some domestic burdens may open her to the erotic. In his attempts to be more forthcoming, Doug even asks Zoë if she ever finds herself attracted to other men. Her answer is elusive, “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. What’s it to you?” This leaves him slightly rattled. “When someone is as wrapped up in secrecy as you’ve been,” I remark, “it’s easy to imagine that you’re the mysterious one, the rebel, and she’s Penelope sitting at her loom, waiting for you to come home.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Switching cassettes, Myrna listened to the countertransference dictation again. Certain phrases struck home: “She will not relate to me, and she will not acknowledge that she doesn’t—and insists it’s not relevant anyway. . . . How many goddamn times do I have to explain why it’s important to look at our relationship? . . . Does everything possible to eliminate any shred of closeness between us. Nothing I do is good enough for her. . . . No tenderness . . . too self-focused . . . ungiving.” Perhaps Dr. Lash is right, she thought. I really never have thought about him, his life, his experience. But I can change that. Today. Right now as I drive home. But she couldn’t stay focused for more than a minute or two. To still her mind, she turned to a useful mind-quieting technique she had learned a few years before at a Big Sur meditation weekend (which in most other ways had been a rip-off). Keeping one part of her mind on the highway, with the rest she imagined a broom sweeping out every stray thought that popped in. That done, she concentrated only on her breathing, on the inhalation of cool air and on the exhalation of the air slightly heated in the nest of her lungs. Good. Her mind quieter now, she allowed Dr. Lash’s face to appear, first smiling and attentive, then frowning and turning away. Over the past several weeks, ever since she had overheard his dictation, her feelings toward him had gyrated wildly. One thing I’ve got to say for him, she thought; he’s persistent. I’ve had the poor guy on the ropes for weeks now. Making him sweat. Belting him again and again with his own words. Yet he’s taking his licks. Hanging in there. Doesn’t throw in the towel. And no weasel in him: no slinking, no crooked twists and turns, no trying to lie his way out as I’d have done. Oh, maybe a little fibbing, like denying he said “whining.” But maybe he was just trying to spare me pain. Myrna came out of her reverie just in time to take the Highway 380 turnoff and then effortlessly slipped back into fantasy. Wonder what Dr. Lash’s doing now? Dictating? Making notes of our session? Storing them in one of the desk compartments? Or maybe he’s just sitting at his desk thinking of me this very minute. That desk. Daddy’s desk. Is Daddy thinking of me now? Maybe he’s still somewhere, maybe watching me now. No, Daddy is dust. Bare shiny skull. Heap of dust. And all his thoughts about me—dust too. And his memories, his loves, his hates, his discouragement—all dust. No, less than dust —they are just electromagnetic blips long vanished without a trace. I know Daddy must have loved me—told everyone else he did—told Aunt Eileen, Aunt Maria, Uncle Joe—but he couldn’t say it to me.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Ever see me nap?” “What I mean is you should have your own purpose in life—not this ,” I say, poking her shopping bag. “Not my books! And I should have my own purpose.” “But I just explained,” she replies, moving her shopping bag to her other hand, away from me. “These aren’t only your books. These are my books too!” Her arm, which I’m still clutching, is suddenly cold, and I release it. “What do you mean,” she goes on, “I should have my purpose? These books are my purpose. I worked for you—and for them. All my life I worked for those books— my books.” She reaches into her shopping bag and pulls out two more. I cringe, afraid she is going to hold them up and show them to the small crowd of bystanders who have now gathered around us. “But you don’t get it, Momma. We’ve got to be separate—not fettered by one another. That’s what it is to become a person. That’s exactly what I write about in those books. That’s how I want my children—all children—to be. Unfettered.” “ Vos meinen —unfeathered?” “No, no, unfettered —a word that means free or liberated. I’m not getting through to you, Momma. Let me put it this way: every single person in the world is fundamentally alone. It’s hard, but that’s the way it is, and we have to face it. So I want to have my own thoughts and my own dreams. You should have yours too. Momma, I want you out of my dreams.” Her face tightens sternly, and she steps back away from me. I rush to add, “ Not because I don’t like you but because I want what’s good for all of us—for me and for you too. You should have your own dreams in life. Surely you can understand that.” “Oyvin, still you think I understand nothing and that you understand everything. But I look, too, into life. And death. I understand about death—more than you. Believe me. And I understand about being alone—more than you. ” “But Momma, you don’t face being alone. You stay with me. You don’t leave me. You wander about in my thoughts. In my dreams.” “No, Sonny.” “Sonny”: I haven’t heard that name for fifty years, had forgotten that that’s what she and my father often called me. “It’s not the way you think it is, Sonny,” she continues. “There’s some things you don’t understand, some things you’ve got turned upside down. You know that dream, the one with me standing there in the crowd, watching you in the cart waving to me, calling to me, asking me how you did in life?” “Yes, of course I remember my dream, Momma. That’s where this all started.” “ Your dream? That’s what I want to say to you. That’s the mistake, Oyvin—your thinking I was in your dream. That dream was not your dream, Sonny. It was my dream. Mothers get to have dreams too.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Irene immediately identified the plaid stuffed sacrificial animal: “It’s Jack. That’s the color of his pajamas the night he died.” So strong was the dream that it lingered in her mind for weeks, and she gradually grew to understand that though she had first displaced her anxiety about death onto her daughter, she was really death’s prey. “It’s me the creature is watching so fiercely, and that means there is only one way to read this dream.” She hesitated. “The dream is saying that I’ve unconsciously viewed Jack’s death as a sacrifice so that I might continue living.” She was shocked at her own thought and even more by the realization that death was out there waiting, not for others, not for her daughter, but for her. Using this new frame of reference, we gradually reexamined some of Irene’s most persistent and painful feelings. We began with guilt, which tormented her, as it does most bereaved spouses. I once treated a widow who had rarely left the bedside of her husband for weeks as he lay unconscious in a hospital. One day, in the few minutes it took her to slip down to the hospital gift shop to purchase a newspaper, her husband died. Guilt for having deserted him plagued her for months. Irene, similarly, had been inexhaustible in her attentiveness to Jack: she had nursed him with extraordinary devotion and rejected all of my urgings to take time off, to give herself some respite by hospitalizing him or engaging a nursing service. Instead, she rented a hospital bed, placed it next to her bed and slept by him until the moment he died. Still, she could not shake the idea that she should have done more: “I should never have left his side. I should have been gentler, more affectionate, more intimate.” “Perhaps guilt is a way of denying death,” I urged. “Perhaps the subtext of your ‘I should have done more’ is that if you had done things differently, you could have prevented his death.” Perhaps, too, death denial was the subtext of many of her other irrational beliefs: she was the single cause of the deaths of all those who had loved her; she was jinxed; a black, toxic, deadly aura emanated from her; she was evil, cursed; her love was lethal; she was being punished by someone, by something, for some unforgivable offense. Perhaps all these beliefs served to obscure the brutal facts of life.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Migraines are also common somatic expressions of unresolved stress. The knots in the gut may mutate to common conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, severe PMS or other gastrointestinal problems such as spastic colon. These conditions deplete the energy resources of the sufferer and may take the form of chronic fatigue syndrome. These sufferers are most often the patients with cascading symptoms who visit doctor after doctor in search of relief, and generally find little help for what ails them. Trauma is the great masquerader and participant in many maladies and “dis-eases” that afflict sufferers. It can perhaps be conjectured that unresolved trauma is responsible for a majority of the illnesses of modern mankind. Renegotiation The concept of renegotiation is completely different from cathartic “traumatic reliving,” or flooding, a common form of trauma therapy still used after “critical events” like rapes, natural disasters and horror, like the World Trade Center attack that Sharon experienced on 9-11. Recent studies suggest that these therapies often do little to help and can actually be retraumatizing. 102 One of the pitfalls of various trauma therapies has been their focus on the reliving of traumatic memories along with the intense abreaction of emotions. In these exposure-based treatments, patients are prodded into the dredging up of painful traumatic memories and abreacting emotions associated with these memories, specifically those of fear, terror, anger and grief. These cathartic approaches fall short as they often reinforce sensations of collapse and feelings of helplessness. Adam: Holocaust Survivor Adam was a financially successful businessman in his mid-sixties when I worked with him. He had a wife and family and was the owner of a multinational electronics company. As a quiet, kindly person, he was well liked by his employees and his acquaintances; yet Adam had no truly intimate friendships. Recently, his first grandchild was born. By all outward appearances, life has been good. It was the suicide of his son at the age of twenty-seven years that has broken this man of fierce, though subdued, determination. It has reduced him to obsessive self- blame and self-hatred. “There was always something different about Paulo,” Adam stated matter-of-factly. “He was a sensitive child who was easily frightened. When he was around the age of four years old, for reasons unknown, he would awaken in the middle of the night screaming and crying.” By late adolescence Paulo talked frequently of suicide. “Life is too hard,” he had repeated numerous times. Adam made sure that his son was never left alone during his darkest times. He had been fatigued by this decade-long ordeal, but he persisted in his committed vigil. Despite Adam’s exhaustive efforts to save his son, Paulo—no longer able to bear his pain—hanged himself in the bathroom. It was there that Adam found his limp, lifeless body.

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

  away for about a week, but came back on unfriendly terms after three days. My mother told me that Champion had run off across the fields after the first shot, and that it took Dwight most of the afternoon to find him. They kept him in the car the next day but he pissed and crapped all over the seats. That was when they decided to come home. “He cleaned it up,” she added, “Every bit of it. I wouldn’t go near it.” I hadn’t asked. I guess she just thought I’d like to know. CHAMPION DIDN’T ALWAYS growl when I came in. Usually he ignored me, and in time I would let down my guard, and then he would do it again and scare the hell out of me. One night he gave me such a fright that I grabbed a sponge mop and hit him over the head. Champion snarled and I hit him again and kept hitting him, screaming myself hysterical while he tried to get away, his paws scrabbling on the wooden floor. Finally he stuck his head behind the water heater and kept it there as I worked the rest of him over. At some point I got tired, and saw what I was doing, and stopped. I was alone in the house. I tried to pace off the jangling I felt, and the guilt. I could forgive myself for most things, but not cruelty. I went back to the utility room. Champion was lying on his blanket again. I prodded his bones and examined him for cuts. He seemed okay. The sponge had taken the force of the blows. While I checked him over, Champion whined and licked my hands. I spoke gently to him. This was a mistake. It gave him the idea that I liked him, that we were pals. From that night on he wanted to be with me all the time. Whenever I passed through the utility room he groveled and abased himself, hoping to keep me there, then barked and hurled himself against the door as I went outside. This caused me some trouble. For almost a year now, ever since I started high school, I’d been sneaking out of the house after midnight to take the car for joy rides. Dwight wouldn’t teach me to drive—he claimed to believe that I would kill us both—so I had taken the teaching function upon myself. After Champion attached himself to me, I had to bring him along or he would raise the household with his cries. With Champion beside me on the front seat, gazing out the window like a real passenger or snapping his chops at the wind, I cruised the empty streets of the

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And yet my disquiet persisted. I turned to the question of why my judgment had been so poor. I had broken a fundamental rule of psychotherapy: do not strip away a patient’s defenses if you have nothing better to offer in their stead. And the force behind my actions? Why had Magnolia assumed such importance to me? The answer to this question lay, I suspected, in my response to my mother’s death. I reviewed again the course of the meeting. When had things started to affect me so personally? It was that first sight of Magnolia: that smile, those cushiony forearms. My mother’s arms. How they drew me! How I wished to be encircled and comforted by those soft, doughy arms. And that song, that Judy Collins song—how did it go? I searched for the words. But instead of the song lyrics, the events of a long-forgotten afternoon drifted into mind. On Saturday afternoons when I was about eight or nine and living in Washington, D.C., my friend Roger and I often bicycled to picnic in a park called the Old Soldiers’ Home. One day, instead of roasting hot dogs, we conspired to steal a live chicken from a house bordering the park and cook it over a campfire we built in a sunny clearing in the park forest. But first, the killing—my initiation into the rites of death. Roger took the initiative and bashed the sacrificial chicken with an enormous rock. Though bloodied and crushed, it continued to fight for life. I was horrified. I turned away, unable to bear watching the wretched creature. Things had gone too far. I wanted to undo them. Then and there I lost interest in my project of appearing grown-up. I wanted my mother; I wanted to cycle home so she could hold me. I wanted to reverse time, erase everything, start the day over. But there was no turning back and nothing to do but watch Roger grab the chicken by its battered head and whirl it around like a bolo until, finally, it was still. We must have plucked it, cleaned it, put it on a spit. We must have roasted it over the fire and eaten it. Perhaps with gusto. But, though I remember with an eerie clarity trying to wish away the whole catastrophe, of all we actually did I recall nothing. Still, the memory of that afternoon gripped me until I freed myself by asking why it had emerged now after so many decades in deep storage. What linked the wheelchair-filled hospital group room with the events played out so long ago around the campfire in a copse of the Old Soldiers’ Home? Perhaps the idea of going too far—as I had gone too far with Magnolia. Perhaps some visceral apprehension of the irreversibility of time.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  But Magnolia didn’t acknowledge my gift. The group began to disperse. The doors opened. Nurses entered to help the patients out. I watched Magnolia scratching away at herself as she was wheeled out. In the discussion following the group meeting, I enjoyed the harvest of my labors. The residents were full of praise. Above all, they were properly impressed by the spectacle of something emerging from what looked like nothing. Despite scant material and little patient motivation, the group had generated considerable interaction: by the meeting’s end, members who for the most part had been oblivious of the existence of other patients on the ward were engaged and concerned with one another. The residents were also impressed by the power of my closing interpretation to Magnolia: that if she were to request help explicitly, she would render obsolete her symptoms, which were symbolic, oblique cries for help. How did you do it? they marveled. At the beginning of the meeting Magnolia seemed so impenetrable. It wasn’t difficult, I told them. Find the right key and it’s possible to open a door to anyone’s suffering. For Magnolia that key had been the appeal to one of her deepest values—her wish to be of service to others. By persuading her that she could help others by allowing them to be helpful to her, I had quickly undermined her resistance. As we spoke, Sarah, the head nurse, poked her head in the door to thank me for coming. “You’ve worked your magic again, Irv. Wanna get your heart warmed? Before you leave, take a peek at the patients having lunch, at all those heads closer together. And what did you do to Dorothy? Can you believe she and Martin and Rosa are talking together?” Sarah’s words rang in my ears as I biked back to my office. I knew I had every reason to be satisfied with my morning’s work. The residents were right: it had been a good meeting—a fantastic one—because it not only encouraged members to improve relationships in their lives but, as Sarah’s report suggested, also engaged them more fully in all aspects of the ward’s therapy program. Most of all, I had shown them that there is no such thing as a boring or empty patient—or group. Within every patient, and within every clinical situation, lies the chrysalis of a rich human drama. The art of psychotherapy lies in activating that drama. But why did my good work give me so little personal satisfaction? I felt guilty—as though I had done something fraudulent. The praise I so often pursued didn’t sit well with me that day. The students (covertly egged on by me) had imbued me with great wisdom. In their eyes I offered “powerful” interpretations, worked my “magic,” led the group in a prescient, sure-handed manner.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  She briefly glances at me. I continue, “Now, of course that’s not true … but that’s how everybody feels … and that’s because they all love her so much.” She turns now and looks at me. There is a sense of self-recognition in her demeanor. With her eyes now glued on me, I continue, “Sometimes, the more we love someone, the more we think it was our fault.” Two tears spill from the outside corners of each eye before she slowly turns her head away from me. “And sometimes if we’re really angry at someone, then when something bad happens to them, then we also think that it happened because we wanted it to happen.” Anna looks me straight in the eye. I continue, “And you know, when a bad thing happens to someone we love or hate, it doesn’t happen because of our feelings. Sometimes bad things just happen … and feelings, no matter how big they are, are only feelings.” Anna’s gaze is penetrating and grateful. I feel myself welling with tears. I ask her if she wants to go back to her class now. She nods, looks once more at the three of us, and then walks out the door, her arms swinging freely—in rhythm with her stride . Alex, like several of the children who witnessed the tragedy from the beach, was having trouble sleeping and eating. His father brought him to us because the youngster had barely eaten in the last two days. As we sit together, I ask him if he can feel the inside of his tummy. He places the hand gently on his belly and, with a sniffle, says, “Yes.” “What does it feel like in there?” “It’s all tight like a knot.” “Is there anything inside that knot?” “Yeah. It’s black … and red … I don’t like it.” “It hurts, huh?” “Yeah.” “You know, Alex, it’s supposed to hurt because you love her … but it won’t hurt forever.” Tears cascade down the boy’s cheeks, and color returns to his face and fingers. That evening, Alex eats a full meal. At Mary’s funeral Alex weeps openly, smiles warmly and hugs his friends . Sammy: Child’s Play You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. —Plato Just as neither Vince nor his medical practitioners were able to associate his persistent frozen shoulder with a horrific event, often, children’s symptoms or changes in their behavior can present puzzling questions that baffle parents and pediatric professionals alike. This is especially true when the child has “good enough” parents that provide a stable and nurturing home environment. Sometimes the child’s new actions, although anything but subtle, are a mystery.

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

  He hates those books. He’ll say, ‘It’s not my thing. Let’s just make some time to be together. The more sex you have, the more sex you have, right?’ That’s his stock answer.” “I’ve recommended books to you before, but in this instance it sounds like you’re using them to hide behind. Why is it so hard for you to talk about yourself? To be your own advocate? What would happen if you said, ‘Nico, I want to tell you about myself—what I think and feel about sex, about myself sexually?’” “The whole subject is so emotionally overwhelming it makes me sleepy.” Maria was taught that nothing is free; everything must be earned. Privilege is for those who’ve never had to work hard, and it’s morally suspect. The credo was: you sacrifice for the good of the family. Her reluctance to put herself forward is particularly strong in the sexual realm. “It seems OK to ask for what you really need,” I explain, “but to ask for something just because you want it or like it is selfish. Pleasure itself, unless you’ve earned it, is dubious. It also raises the question of how much you feel you deserve and are worthy of receiving—just because you’re you. But eroticism is precisely that: it’s pleasure for pleasure’s sake, offered to you gratuitously by Nico.” Together, Maria and I work on cultivating a healthy sense of deserving that spans sitting down in the morning when she drinks her coffee, reading the paper while the kitchen is still dirty, and going out with her friends even if it means Nico has to spend two nights in a row taking care of the baby. She is to take a break from the idea that pleasure must be paid for, in advance, by the performance of duty. We chisel away at this complex system of fairness and merit, where everything has to be perfectly equitable in order to neutralize selfishness. Maria has taken hold of this idea. “I think my ‘low desire’ is, more than anything else, related to my lack of ownership around sex and my conflict with pleasure, especially pleasure with my husband. I can’t explain why I’m so uncomfortable opening myself up to Nico erotically. What I do know is that family is never where I’ve gone to get anything extra.” “Right. For you, family is about self-sacrifice, not enjoyment. But a healthy sense of entitlement is a prerequisite for erotic intimacy.” Only when Maria starts to look at what she brings to the erotic stalemate does Nico’s contribution become apparent.

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

  Older children play hide-and-seek, secure in the knowledge that someone will eventually come looking. The thrill of hiding is followed by the relief of being found. Erotic intimacy is an adult version of hide-and-seek. As when we were children, the stronger the connection the braver we are about stretching it. We know our beloved will be waiting for our return, will not punish our selfish pursuits, and in fact may even applaud them. In his book Arousal, Michael Bader links the idea of selfishness to the concept of sexual ruthlessness, which he defines as “the quality of desire that enables a person to surrender to the full force of his or her own rhythms of pleasure and excitement without guilt, worry, or shame of any kind.” Bader’s explanation emphasizes the importance of differentiation—the capacity to hold on to oneself in the presence of another. Without that ability, we become like James, who can’t get out of Stella’s head long enough to experience his own fervor. The rawness of our desire can feel mean, bestial, even unloving. Eros can feel predatory, a voracious grab. Whatever guilt we feel about taking— whatever shame we feel about our wantonness, our passion, our indecency—is intensified in the primitive vulnerability of sex. We bring to our intimate erotic encounters a lifetime of injunctions against selfishness in the context of love, the specifics of which are detailed in our erotic blueprint. In addition to the family legacy, we also carry a cultural legacy. We are socialized to control ourselves, to restrain our impulses, to tame the animal within. So as dutiful citizens and spouses we edit ourselves and mask our ravenous appetites and conceal our fleeting need to objectify the one we love. For many people, the prohibitions against ruthlessness within the context of a loving relationship are just too great to allow for erotic abandon. The self-absorption inherent in sexual excitement obliterates the other in a way that collides with the ideal of intimacy. Such people find they can be safely lustful and intemperate only with people they don’t know as well, or care about as much. Recreational sex, pornography, and cybersex all share an element of distance, even anonymity, that avoids the burden of intimacy and makes sexual excitement possible. Clearly, these emotionally disengaged situations are more often found outside the home, where the need for differentiation is less intense. Being with an unavailable partner provides a protective limit—if you can’t get too close to a person, you need not fear entrapment or loss of self. To my thinking, cultivating a sense of ruthlessness in our intimate relationships is an intriguing solution to the problems of desire. While it may appear at first glance to be detached and even uncaring, it is in fact rooted in the love and security of our connection. It is a rare experience of trust to be able to let go completely without guilt or fretfulness, knowing that our relationship is vast enough to withstand the whole of us.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Once he chided Ernest for his softheadedness. “Aren’t you overromanticizing this one-night stand? This is her mode of life. I’m not the first man she’s accosted, and probably not the last. I assure you, Doctor, this lady can take care of herself.” Ernest wondered whether Halston had dug in his heels out of sheer spite. Perhaps he had sensed his therapist’s overinvolvement with Artemis and was retaliating by rejecting, automatically, all of Ernest’s advice. But in any event, Ernest gradually realized both that Halston would never make amends to Artemis and that he, Ernest, would have to assume that burden. Curiously, despite his heavy schedule, he did not mind accepting the task. It seemed like a moral imperative, and he began to view it not as a millstone but as his ministry. Curiously too, Ernest, generally self-analytic to a fault, subjecting every whim, every decision, to a searching and tedious scrutiny, never once questioned his motives. He did realize, however, that he was undertaking an unorthodox and illegitimate mission—what other therapist had ever taken it upon himself to make personal amends for his patient’s misdeeds? Despite his realization that secrecy and delicacy were required, Ernest’s first steps were clumsy and transparent: “Halston, one last time. Let’s go over your meeting with Artemis and the type of connection you made with her.” “Not again? As I’ve said, I was in a café when—” “No, try to paint the scene vividly and precisely. Describe the café. The time? Its location?” “It was in Mill Valley, about eight A.M., in one of those quaint California innovations—combination bookstore and café.” “Its name?” Ernest urged when Halston paused. “Describe everything about your meeting.” “Doctor, I don’t understand. Why these questions?” “Humor me on this, Halston. Painting the scene as vividly as possible will help you to recall all the feelings you experienced.” In response to Halston’s protests that he had no interest in recalling the feelings, Ernest reminded him that the development of empathy was a first step in improving his relationships with women. Hence, recalling his experiences and what Artemis may have experienced would be a valuable exercise. A lame rationale, Ernest knew, but plausible. As Halston dutifully recounted all the details of that eventful day, Ernest listened hard but learned only a few new particulars. The café was the Book Depot, and Artemis was a lover of literature—that, Ernest felt, might be useful information. She had told Halston that she was in the midst of rereading the great German novelists—Mann, Kleist, Böll—and that very day had purchased a copy of the new translation of Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Because of Halston’s increasing suspiciousness, Ernest eased off—lest at any moment his patient might say, “Look, you want her address and phone number?” Which, of course, was precisely what Ernest did want.

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

  Philip feels guilty because he can’t be more erotically involved with his wife. When I ask him for a sexual image that includes her, he conjures up a picture of the two of them kissing romantically in the sunset. He adds that he has difficulty, now, imagining Jackie in a passionate, erotic way. He tells her openly, “I just can’t see you in my mind as a sexual woman, and I feel bad about it, but it’s the truth.” Philip yearns for ardor with Jackie, but he believes that the tug-of-war within himself won’t allow it. He dreads the rough edge of his desire within the bonds of holy matrimony, and is embarrassed by his need for objectified sex. To his thinking, love is no place for these wanton inclinations. “You Don’t Do That with Your Wife” Many of my patients are afraid to express their intense sexual excitement with the one they love and respect. Philip is not alone in hiding his lack of desire behind the decency alibi. You may recognize some of these comments: “I can’t imagine him saying what I want to hear. He’d wonder what happened to his wife.” “I don’t even want to think about, let alone talk about, what I was into before we met.” “I can’t do that with my wife.” Domestic eroticism is wrapped in a veil of appropriateness. When Philip tells me that Jackie would never go for this stuff, I ask him, “And the stuff is what exactly?” I am prepared for a long list of hard-core kink, and I am surprised when he reveals the basic menu of his sexual imagination. “I’m not one for subtleties. I like the blatant stuff. I like toys, lingerie, porn, a lot of graphic talk. Straightforward, honest fucking.” “All of which you and Jackie enjoyed before the ring?” I ask. “Yeah.” He shrugs. “And now Jackie won’t go for it? Or you won’t go for it with her? I don’t get a sense that she’s changed all that much. But I wonder to what extent you feel that this is not stuff you do with your wife. You seem to believe that it’s wrong to objectify someone you love.” “Are you saying it’s not?” he asks. “I’m saying it doesn’t have to be. You know, a lot of couples play with objectification as a way to superimpose otherness on a partner who’s become too familiar. It is often dismissed as lacking intimacy, but I think that when both of you are into it, it’s another kind of closeness. You have to trust people a lot to let yourself forget them.”

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

  Older children play hide-and-seek, secure in the knowledge that someone will eventually come looking. The thrill of hiding is followed by the relief of being found. Erotic intimacy is an adult version of hide-and-seek. As when we were children, the stronger the connection the braver we are about stretching it. We know our beloved will be waiting for our return, will not punish our selfish pursuits, and in fact may even applaud them. In his book Arousal , Michael Bader links the idea of selfishness to the concept of sexual ruthlessness, which he defines as “the quality of desire that enables a person to surrender to the full force of his or her own rhythms of pleasure and excitement without guilt, worry, or shame of any kind.” Bader’s explanation emphasizes the importance of differentiation—the capacity to hold on to oneself in the presence of another. Without that ability, we become like James, who can’t get out of Stella’s head long enough to experience his own fervor. The rawness of our desire can feel mean, bestial, even unloving. Eros can feel predatory, a voracious grab. Whatever guilt we feel about taking—whatever shame we feel about our wantonness, our passion, our indecency—is intensified in the primitive vulnerability of sex. We bring to our intimate erotic encounters a lifetime of injunctions against selfishness in the context of love, the specifics of which are detailed in our erotic blueprint. In addition to the family legacy, we also carry a cultural legacy. We are socialized to control ourselves, to restrain our impulses, to tame the animal within. So as dutiful citizens and spouses we edit ourselves and mask our ravenous appetites and conceal our fleeting need to objectify the one we love. For many people, the prohibitions against ruthlessness within the context of a loving relationship are just too great to allow for erotic abandon. The self-absorption inherent in sexual excitement obliterates the other in a way that collides with the ideal of intimacy. Such people find they can be safely lustful and intemperate only with people they don’t know as well, or care about as much. Recreational sex, pornography, and cybersex all share an element of distance, even anonymity, that avoids the burden of intimacy and makes sexual excitement possible. Clearly, these emotionally disengaged situations are more often found outside the home, where the need for differentiation is less intense. Being with an unavailable partner provides a protective limit—if you can’t get too close to a person, you need not fear entrapment or loss of self. To my thinking, cultivating a sense of ruthlessness in our intimate relationships is an intriguing solution to the problems of desire. While it may appear at first glance to be detached and even uncaring, it is in fact rooted in the love and security of our connection. It is a rare experience of trust to be able to let go completely without guilt or fretfulness, knowing that our relationship is vast enough to withstand the whole of us.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  What are you doing? This whole project is deeply suspect even without any sexual adventures. You’re already treading on thin ice—milking Halston for data about how to find Artemis, turning yourself into an uninvited traveling therapist paying a house call on an attractive female stranger. You’re being grandiose, he cautioned himself, and unethical and unprofessional. Careful, careful, careful! “Your honor,” he imagined his supervisor’s voice booming from the witness stand, “Dr. Lash is a fine and ethical clinician except when he occasionally lapses into thinking with his small head.” No, no, no! Ernest protested. I’m doing nothing unethical. I intend an act of integrity, an act of charity. Halston, my patient, wantonly inflicted a grievous wound on another person, and it is inconceivable that he will ever be willing to make reparation. I, and only I, can redress the injury and do it quickly and efficiently. Artemis’s Hansel-and-Gretel house—small, high-gabled, dripping with gingerbread lacework and surrounded by a dense row of topped junipers—would have better suited Germany’s Black Forest than Marin County. Greeting him at the door with a glass of fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, Artemis apologized for not having alcohol in the house—”Drug-free zone here,” she said, then added, “except for ganja, the holy herb.” As soon as he sat down on the sofa, a faux-Louis XVI canapé covered with petit point and supported by dainty gray-white legs, Ernest returned to the subject of abandonment. But although he used all his practiced skills to draw her out, he soon had to recognize that he had overestimated Artemis’s distress. Yes, she acknowledged, she had been through the same kind of experience as Ernest, and it had not been easy. But it was less painful than she had suggested: she was, she confessed, only being polite. It was only to help Ernest to talk about his difficulties that she had mentioned she’d recently been deserted by a man. Though he had bailed out with no explanation to her, she had not been much troubled by the event. The relationship hadn’t been meaningful, and she was certain that it was far more his problem than hers. Ernest looked at her in amazement: this woman was more centered than he could ever hope to be. Relaxing, he officially went off duty as a therapist and turned to enjoying the rest of the evening. Halston’s enthusiastic account had prepared Ernest for the events to come. But it soon became clear that Halston had understated, and probably underappreciated, everything. The conversation with Artemis was delightful, the chanterelle ragout a small miracle, and the rest of the evening a much larger miracle. Suspecting that Halston’s experience might have been drug induced, Ernest refused the after-dinner marijuana that Artemis offered. But even without it, something unusual, almost surreal, seemed to be working in him.