Remorse

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 Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  The 2015 photo on the next page shows us with our children and grandchildren. It was posted only for a few days before Facebook removed it for indecency. (If you look hard, you’ll note my daughter-in-law discreetly nursing my youngest grandson.) Our family life includes a lot of games. I played tennis for years with each of my three sons at a neighborhood tennis court—those are some of my fondest memories. I taught Reid and Victor chess at an early age and they both became strong players. I enjoyed taking them to tournaments from which they always emerged with a gleaming trophy. Reid’s son, Desmond, and Victor’s son, Jason, are also strong players, and we rarely have a family get-together without one or two chess games in progress. E NTIRE FAMILY IN H ANALEI , H AWAII , 2015. Other games are much in evidence at family gatherings. There is Scrabble with my daughter, Eve, who is always the reigning champion. But most of all, I’ve enjoyed our medium-stake poker games and my regular pinochle games with Reid and Ben, using the same rules and stakes I played with my father and Uncle Abe. At times Victor entertains us with magic tricks. In high school he was well-known as a prankster, and during his adolescence he was a professional magician performing at both adult and children’s functions. Anyone who attended his Gunn High School graduation ceremony will remember the sight of Victor solemnly marching down the aisle to receive his diploma when suddenly the mortarboard on his head burst into flame. The ceremony was interrupted with “oohs” and “aahs” and a huge burst of applause. I was as stunned as anyone else and begged him to tell me how he did it. As a dedicated magician, he had steadfastly refused to reveal any of his professional secrets, even to his pleading father, but on this one occasion he took pity on me and told me the secret of the burning mortarboard: a hidden aluminum foil basin in the brim of the hat, a reservoir of lighter fluid, a tiny match, and voilà! A flaming mortarboard. (Do not try this at home.) I was so absorbed in teaching and writing and financially supporting my family that now, looking back, I feel I missed a great deal. I regret not spending more individual time with each child. At my friend Larry Zaroff’s memorial ceremony, one of his three children described a treasured family tradition in which their father spent much of each Saturday with one of his three children in turn. They had lunch together, one-on-one talks, and a visit to the bookstore where each chose a book. What a lovely tradition! As I listened, I found myself wishing I had entered more deeply into each of my children’s lives. If I had another go-round, I’d do it differently. Marilyn was the primary parent on a daily level and put off most of her writing until the children were grown.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Plato is cited more, not counting many implicit citations.19.On the difference between the two teachings: Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, I, VII, 60, 2. On their continuity: ibid., I, X, 95, 1, and especially I, XI, 96, 3 (“It was through the intervention of Moses that the Logos was Educator”) and 97, 1.20.Diocles, Du régime, in Oribase, Collection médicale. Livres incertains, ed. Daremberg, vol. III, p. 144.21.This list is found in Hippocrates, Epidemics, VI, VI, 2. There also exist other types of presentation.22.F. Quatember, Die christliche Lebenshaltungdes Klemens von Alexandrien nach dem Pädagogus, Vienna, 1946.23.Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, II, X, 83.3–88.3.24.Ibid., II, X, 89.1–97.3.25.On the theme that the Logos presides over the order of the world and over that of bodies and the soul, cf. ibid., I, II, 6, 5–6.26.“Zêtoumen de ei gamêteon,” Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II, XXIII, 137, 3.27.“[…] sunodos andros kai gunaikos hê prôtê kata nomon epi gnêsiôn teknôn spora,” ibid., II, XXIII, 137.28.Ibid., II, XXIII, 143, 1.29.Ibid.30.Ibid., II, XXIII, 143, 2.31.Ibid., II, XXIII, 144, 1.32.Ibid., II, XXIII, 145, 1–3.33.Ibid., II, XXIII, 146, 1–4.34.“Sunousias de ton kairon,” Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, II, X, 83, 1; “[…] Hopênika ho kairos dekhetai ton sporon,” ibid., II, X, 102, 1.35.“[…] Epitêrôn men tên eukairian,” ibid., I, XII, 100, 1.36.[Empty note.]37.Musonius Rufus, Reliquiae, XII (p. 64): the aphrodisia are justified only within marriage and when they have the birth of children as their goal.38.Ocellus Lucanus: We don’t have relations for pleasure, but to have children (De Universi natura, IV, 2).39.In the Nicomachean Ethics, I, 8, 16, Aristotle says that the happy existence is characterized by three things: “good birth,” “beauty,” and the “euteknia”: which is balanced between descendants and the future on the one hand, and the good family, good birth, that is, origin, on the other. Euripides, in Ion, uses the word in this sense: “Intercede […] so that through a limpid oracle, the ancient house of Erectheus finally receives a rich posterity” (verses 468–470).40.In this sense, Clement is only taking up, strictly speaking, the Stoic assertion that the fact of having children [constitutes] “the completion,” “the accomplishment” (teleiôtês) for an individual.41.Clement is not unmindful of these advantages. He mentions them in the Stromata.42.The expression is not heneka tou theou, but dia ton theon.43.[Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, I, X, 83.1.]44.Ibid., I, III, 7, 1. God made man with his hands: ekheirourgêsen. This difference between creation of the animals by fiat and the manual fabrication of man is a common theme in that period, cf. Tertullian.45.“God is rich in mercy for us who do not compare with him in the least way, têi ousia, ê phusei, ê dunamei,” Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, II, XVI, 75, 2.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  I should have said more about how I treasured my time with him, and told him how often I thought of him when I interviewed patients. I should have tried to express the terror he must have been feeling. Or I should have touched him, or held his hand, or kissed his cheek, but I desisted—I had known him too long as a formal, distant man, and besides, he was so helpless that he might have experienced my tender gestures as an assault. Some twenty years later, in a casual lunch conversation, David Hamburg, the chairman of psychiatry who brought me to Stanford after I left the army, told me he was doing some housecleaning and found a letter of support for my appointment from John Whitehorn. He showed me the letter and I was stunned by its final sentence: “I believe that Dr. Yalom will become a leader of American Psychiatry.” Now, as I reconsider my relationship with John Whitehorn, I think I understand why I was summoned to his deathbed. He must have viewed me as someone who would carry on his work. I’ve just now turned to look at his picture hanging over my desk and try to catch his gaze. I hope he was comforted by the thought that, partly through me, he would continue to ripple into the future.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  But this metanoia is not organized as a developed and regulated penitential practice—it is not a set of acts obliging the subject to take precise stock of the sins he may have committed—exploring the roots of evil deep in his soul, its hidden forms, his forgotten transgressions—to undertake, in order to cure himself of these things, a long labor combining constant vigilance and gradual renunciation, and to impose punitive rigors upon himself proportional to the gravity of the offenses in the hope that God’s wrath will be appeased. The penitence that is required in baptism—at least the kind described in the era of the Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists—is not characterized by a long discipline, an exercise of oneself upon oneself, nor an apprehension of oneself by oneself. A passage from Hermas on this point is significant. The angel of repentance is speaking: “To all who repent, I give understanding. Do you not think that this very act of repentance is understanding? […] For the sinner understands that he has done evil before the Lord, and the deed he has done enters into his heart, and he repents, and does no more evil; on the contrary, he puts all his zeal into doing good, humbling his own soul and putting it to the test because it has sinned. You see then that repentance is an act of great understanding.”14 Penitence is clearly linked to an act of understanding, sunesis, but this is not knowledge in the sense of something learned or of a discovered truth; what is involved is a comprehension, a realization that enables one to reach an “epiphany.”15 This realization comprises three aspects: one must, in allowing formerly committed acts to rise to the surface of the heart, convince oneself that they were bad—bad “vis-à-vis” God,16 which is to say at once in relation to him, against him, and under his gaze; one must understand the need now to turn away from evil and adhere to the opposite, to the good; and finally, one must authenticate the change, “humble” the soul that has sinned, “put it to the test” now that it has been renewed—that is, give to oneself and to God the signs that testify to this change.17 Around this turning point and this renunciation-promise that the candidate must make at the moment of baptism, around this metanoia, Hermas’s Shepherd does make room for acts of truth. They are in the category of recognition rather than knowledge: by allowing it to surface in the heart, recognizing the evil one has done and giving signs showing that one is no longer the person one was, that one has indeed changed one’s life—that one is cleansed, marked by the seal, regenerated, filled with light.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  My mother told me that story so many times that I stopped listening—I was tired of her ranting. But now I feel differently. Obviously my mother felt wholly unappreciated by her only son. I often ask myself: Why didn’t I sympathize with her? Why couldn’t I have said, “How unfair! You do all that work and baking and travel to see your mother and all she does is praise Simon for his 7-Up. How grating that must have felt! ” Really, how hard would it have been for me to say that? Oh, how I wish I could have been kind enough to utter those words. That simple act of appreciation would have meant so much to her. And perhaps, if I had said this, she wouldn’t still be haunting my dreams. And, of course, the dream staggers me with the idea that as I move toward my death, that dark house of horrors, I am still looking for validation. But not from my wife, my children, my friends, colleagues, students, or patients, but from my mother! That mother whom I disliked so thoroughly and felt so ashamed of. Yes, in my dream, I turn to her. It was to her that I posed my final question, “How’d I do?” What better proof for the lasting power of early life attachments? Such regret played a role in the therapy of a young woman I’m currently seeing. She had asked for a few consultation sessions on Skype, and in our second meeting I asked about her relationship with her parents. “My mother is a saint, and I’ve always had a warm, wonderful relationship with her. But my father… well, that’s a different story.” “Tell me about your relationship with him.” “The best description I can give is that it is very much like your relationship to your mother in Momma and the Meaning of Life . My father worked hard and supported the family but he was a tyrant. I’ve never heard a complimentary or pleasant word from him to anyone in the family, nor to the people who work in his company. Then, about eight years ago, his older brother and business partner committed suicide; the business went under, and my father went bankrupt. He lost everything. Now he’s angry and depressed and does nothing but look out the window all day. I’ve been supporting him financially since the bankruptcy, but not one word of thanks. Yesterday at breakfast we got into a big fight and he threw his plate on the floor and walked out.” My patient and I have only had three meetings, but since my patient had read my story, I decided to share with her my regrets for never having empathized with my mother.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Alcohol, according to Wade, is how students signal to one another that the sex they’re having is meaningless. For her own research, she asked eighty-four freshmen to submit weekly journal entries over the course of a semester about sex and dating on campus. “They talked about having sex while sober in these reverent tones,” she said, “like it was an amazing unicorn: it was ‘meaningful’ in a way that drunk sex is not.” Drunkenness had replaced mutual attraction as the fuel for sexual interactions in college: “In a morning-after recap,” Wade continued, “it is a reason in itself to have had sex.” As with intercourse, the proportion of young people who drink has actually dropped over the past decade, but the amount that girls in particular (and white girls specifically) drink on each occasion has not. A 2013 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one out of four college women and one out of five high school girls had binged within the previous thirty days; they typically binged three times a month, downing an average of six drinks on each occasion. Other surveys have found that nearly two-thirds of college women and over 80 percent of men had episodes of binge drinking, and linked the practice with disordered eating—sometimes called “drunkorexia”—among girls who try to restrict food intake to reserve their calories for alcohol. Eighty-nine percent of college students get drunk before a random hookup, averaging four or more drinks each time. Three-quarters get drunk before hooking up with an acquaintance. They’re most likely to be the most drunk when the encounter includes some form of penetration: oral, vaginal, or anal; they’re also most likely to express regret after such experiences.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The answer has to be nuanced. It depends on the meaning we should give to the term metanoia, which the Latin authors translate as paenitentia, and which is used regularly in connection with baptism. “Those,” says Justin, “who believe that what we teach and say is true, undertake to live accordingly. We teach them to pray and to entreat God, in the fast, for the remission of their sins, and we ourselves pray and fast with them”; then, when the moment of baptism comes, “over he who chooses to be born again and has repented of his sins, we pronounce in the water the name of God the father”—and this is done so that they don’t remain children of ignorance and necessity, but rather of choice and science.13 The text is clear: he who receives baptism, who becomes a child of choice and science, and whose sins are pardoned, is one who has not only received the teaching and desires rebirth, but also repents. Metanoia and paenitentia are central in baptism.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Now, as we know, martyrdom is a conveyor of truth: evidence of the belief for which one dies, a manifestation that life here below is nothing but a death, but that death gives access to true life, a testimony by which this truth enables one to face suffering without collapsing. The martyr, without even having to speak, and by his very conduct, makes a truth shine forth that, in destroying life, makes one live beyond death. In the complex economy of the martyr’s conduct, truth is affirmed in a belief, is shown to everyone’s eyes as a force, and inverts the values of life and death. It constitutes a “test” [épreuve] in the triple sense that it expresses the sincerity of a man’s belief, it confirms the all-powerful force of that which one believes, and it dispels the deceptive appearances of this world to reveal the reality of the beyond. If exomologesis is so important in penance, if it is synonymous with it in public and ostentatious rites, this is because the penitent must testify like the martyr: express his repentance, show the strength his faith gives him, and make it clear that this body that he humiliates is only dust and death, and that true life is elsewhere. By reproducing the martyrdom that he hasn’t had the courage (or the opportunity) to endure, the penitent places himself at the threshold of a death that hides beneath the deceptive appearances of life, of a genuine life that is promised by death. This threshold is that of metanoia, or conversion, when the soul does a complete turnaround, inverts all its values, and changes in every respect. Exomologesis as a manifestation by the penitent himself of that death which his life has been, and of the life he will access through death, constitutes the evidential and exemplary expression—the proof—of his metanoia.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Now, Seneca gives two examples that do suggest the actions for which one should reproach oneself: having tried to instruct people who were incapable of understanding, and having hurt someone he’d intended to correct—hence not having attained the goal that he had set. According to a characteristic principle of Stoicism, an action is to be evaluated and declared good or bad according to its ends or goals.17 And it’s for having disregarded certain rational principles of actions—it is useless to teach those who’ve never been able to learn anything; or again, it’s necessary when one speaks to consider the interlocutor’s ability to receive the truth—that Seneca committed “errors” relative to the objectives he was aiming for. These are consequently seen as so many “mistakes.”18 And the role of the examination is to allow one to correct them for the future, by naming the rules of conduct that were not acknowledged. It’s not a matter of reproaching oneself for what was done, but of constituting patterns of rational behavior for future circumstances, and of establishing one’s autonomy so that it coincides with the order of the world, by applying the principles of universal reason. One can say that in De ira the examination—retrospective and centered on past faults as it may be—has a “programming” function: to recognize, through the “errors” and the missed objectives, the rules that will make it possible to control the actions that one undertakes, and hence to control oneself. These practices were not immediately incorporated into Christianity. One doesn’t really see the obligation and rules of spiritual examination defined,19 or the techniques for directing souls developed, before the fourth century. The themes of ancient philosophy spread through Christian thought long before the procedures connected with that philosophical life.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Let us keep in mind only that the obligation of a metanoia, a repentance-penance, is endlessly repeated to Christians in the texts of the apostolic period. To be sure, it is said in the Epistle to the Hebrews that it is “impossible, for those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and became partakers of the Holy Spirit and tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and nonetheless fell, to renew them a second time unto repentance.”3 But the text is referring to the uniqueness of baptism as an act of total “renewal” of the individual. It excludes neither the hatred of sins nor the supplication of forgiveness on the part of those who have received baptism: “For whatsoever we have done wrong, and for whatsoever we have done at the instigation of the Enemy’s henchmen, let us beg forgiveness.”4 A supplication that takes ritual and collective forms: “In the assembly, you shall confess your offenses, and shall not come forward to your prayer with an impure conscience”;5 just as when one meets on the dominical day, one breaks bread, one gives thanks “after first having confessed the sins, so that the sacrifice may be pure.”6 The whole community is called to take part in this repentance that everyone must experience and manifest. It may take the form of a mutual correction: “the admonition which we give to one another is good and most beneficial, for it unites us to the will of God.”7 It may take the form of intercessions for one another, addressed to the one who forgives.8 Or the form of fasts and supplications that should be done with those who have sinned.9 And it’s the role of the presbyters to show themselves to be “compassionate, merciful to all” and to “guide back the wanderers.”10

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  If penance in its entirety can be called exomologesis, this is because the public and ostentatious expressions of repentance, which are required in a particularly solemn manner and with a very marked intensity in the moments preceding reconciliation, also form part of the penitential action during the time the latter unfolds. Penance—and this is one of its essential aspects—must constitute a kind of demonstration, of renewed “confession,” attesting that one has committed a sin, that one knows one is a sinner, and that one repents. Such is the meaning that Tertullian, in chapters 9 and 10 of De paenitentia, gives to exomologesis as a permanent dimension of penance. Repentance must not be accomplished “solely within one’s conscience but it must be shown forth in some external act.” It is to this act—which is not so much an episode of penance but its external side, its visible and manifest face—that the word exomologesis should be applied. And thereby a “discipline,” a way of being and of living, a regimen that involves habitus atque victus, is designated: “It bids you to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover your body with filthy rags, to plunge your soul into sorrow, to exchange sin for suffering. Moreover, it demands that you know only such food as is plain; this means it is taken for the sake of your soul, not your belly. It requires that you habitually nourish prayer by fasting, that you sigh and weep and groan day and night to the Lord your God, that you prostrate yourself at the feet of the priests and kneel before the beloved of God, making all the brethren commissioned ambassadors of your prayer for pardon. Exomologesis does all this to render penitence acceptable.”61 The obligation to do penance and the status in which it takes form imply, throughout its unfolding, these acts of exomologesis that manifest and attest it. Texts more recent than Tertullian’s De paenitentia or De pudicitia show this. And they emphasize the demonstrative value of these practices. Through them it’s a matter not only of exhibiting penitence, but of proving it. A cleric of the Church of Rome wrote to Saint Cyprian, apropos of the apostates: “It is time that they should do penance for the sin, that they should prove sorrow for their lapse, that they should show reserve.”62 Saint Cyprian himself, calling the lapsed to penance, exhorts them to these manifestations in which the groanings of those who have sinned should be mixed with the tears of the faithful.63 And at the end of the fourth century, it is still by these acts for the purpose of testing and proving that the practice of the penitent life is being characterized: groanings and tears, says Saint Ambrose at the beginning of De paenitentia;64 groanings, lamentations, and tears, he adds a little further on, stressing that these are a freely consented-to expression, a sort of voluntary confession—but in the sense of a profession of faith—by which the apostates try to gain pardon for the involuntary disavowal, which they may have declared under torture.65 And Pacian, in his Paraenesis, notes that the true life of penance—the life that is led not just in a nominal way—finds its instruments in the sackcloth, ashes, fasting, and affliction and the participation of many people in prayers asking for forgiveness of the sinner.66

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  One can say that, in the practice of ancient penance, the part played by the “confession” is both vague and essential. Vague because it’s not a matter of a specific rite localized within the whole procedure, even if at certain moments the verbal declaration of the sin is no doubt required (as when one asks the bishop for the status of penitent). Essential because it is part of a constant dimension of the penitential exercise. This exercise, in the course of its proceedings, must manifest the truth. Later, in medieval penance, the confession will take the form of a “truth-telling” that will be the enumeration of sins committed: here it’s the entire penance that must constitute a “truth-telling”—or rather, since in it the role of verbal utterance is peculiarly limited in favor of gestures, behaviors, and ways of living, this will be a “truth-doing”: truly doing metanoia—repentance, mortification, resurrection to the true life. But this “truth-doing” essential to penance doesn’t have the role of reconstructing the sins committed by reliving them in memory. It doesn’t seek to establish the subjects’ identity or responsibility, it doesn’t constitute a mode of knowledge of oneself and one’s past, but rather the manifestation of a rupture: a temporal break, a renunciation of the world, and an inversion of life and death. The penitent, says Saint Ambrose, must be that young man who comes back home, and the girl he had loved presents herself and says: Here I am, ego sum. To which he replies: Sed ego non sum ego. A day will come, in the history of penitential practice, when the sinner will have to present himself to the priest and verbally itemize his sins: ego sum. But in its early form, penance, at the same time an exercise and a manifestation, a mortification and a veridiction, is a way of affirming ego non sum ego. The rites of exomologesis ensure that this rupture of identity is produced. Skip Notes * Manuscript: “from life to death.” 4The Art of ArtsSpiritual direction, self-examination, careful control by the subject of his acts and his thoughts, confiding what he has done to another, asking a guide for advice, and accepting the rules of conduct he suggests: all this is a very ancient tradition. The Christian authors didn’t conceal this antecedence or deny the kinship between these older practices and the exercises they themselves prescribed. Saint John Chrysostom recommends soul-searching by referring to the example of the pagan philosophers and by citing Pythagoras.1 Apparently, Epictetus’s Manual was copied by Saint Nilus as if it were a Christian text offering a code of existence capable of properly shaping the souls of the faithful and leading them to salvation. There is a certain continuity from the teachers of conduct in antiquity to the guides of ascetic life—referred to, moreover, as the philosophical life. The differences, however, must not be overlooked.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  He speaks of Theodore, who owed his knowledge of the Text not so much to a “studious reading”—he understood just a few words of Greek—as “to purity of heart alone.”45 But this purity of heart is connected to knowledge according to a very different orientation: reflexively, involving the soul itself, its folds and its depths. In relation to this knowledge, purity is not simply a condition, it is at the same time an effect. No purity of heart if the soul doesn’t watch attentively over itself, on the lookout for the impulses produced within it and blotting out everything that might divert it from its contemplation. But conversely, it’s very much owing to purity that the interior gaze can penetrate into the heart’s secrets, shining the light there and dispelling its obscurity: “Thus penetrating with pure eyes of the mind to the foul darkness of vices, we may be able to disclose them and drag them forth to light; and may succeed in explaining their occasions and natures.”46 Now, what needs to be noted in Cassian’s analysis here is that the light brought into the heart doesn’t illuminate it all at once, ridding it of all the impurities it may contain. Rather, it penetrates the darkness, revealing what may be hidden there. But what hides is impurity, and it is this impurity that one must gradually free oneself from through an attentive examination, a vigilance that never relents, a constant remorse and one’s admission of that state. So that, through a circularity that is at the center of this asceticism of self-knowledge, the purer one is, the more light one has for knowing oneself better; the better one knows oneself, the more one recognizes how impure one is; the more one recognizes oneself as sullied, the more important it is to shine the light on one’s deepest recesses and dispel the darkness of the soul. Evoking the great spiritual masters, those who never get entangled in “hollow debates” but have the experience and practice of virtue, Cassian says that purity “has taught them this above all: to recognize more and more that they are burdened with sin (for their compunction for their faults increases day by day in proportion as their purity of soul advances), and to sigh continually from the bottom of their heart because they see that they cannot possibly avoid the spots and blemishes of those faults which are ingrained in them through the countless triflings of the thoughts.”47

• From Real Life (2020)

  La routine. Ce mec, 1,50 mètre à tout péter, il se penche sur moi, et il cueille ma clope dans la bouche. » Miller sourit à ce souvenir, comme si le goût parfait, brut de sa rage lui revenait. Il respire profondément. « Et il fait : Vous allez vraiment me manquer, les gars . Il dit qu’on va lui manquer en fumant ma cigarette. Quel culot, je me suis dit. Il pousse le bouchon trop loin, ce petit salaud. Je vais prendre ma revanche. » Wallace a un peu le vertige. Il se demande s’il s’est blessé à la tête. Miller, complètement pris par son récit, a l’air satisfait. Il s’humecte les dents, puis les lèvres. Un vague rictus passe sur son visage, comme s’il y prenait plaisir, ou comme s’il incarnait la version de lui qui a pris plaisir à blesser quelqu’un. La revanche. On dirait que c’est le cri de ralliement des faibles qui n’ont pas d’autres moyens de négocier avec le monde. Qu’est-ce que ça signifie ? se demande Wallace. Personne dans cette histoire n’avait infligé de blessure à Miller. Quelle revanche cherchait-il à prendre ? Miller se tourne vers lui et son expression se transforme. Ses yeux s’écarquillent un peu. Wallace éprouve un bref coup de panique, comme s’il avait été surpris, comme si Miller lisait dans ses pensées, savait ce que Wallace pense de lui. Non, se corrige Wallace. Miller a peur. C’est de ça qu’il s’agit. Il a peur d’être mauvais et que personne ne veuille plus de lui. « Tu voulais prendre ta revanche, répète Wallace. — Je voulais seulement qu’il éprouve la même chose que moi. Qu’est-ce que je pouvais faire d’autre ? » Sur ces mots, sa voix se brise. Ce n’est pas un vieux souvenir qui lui revient à peine, malgré lui. Cette image est restée là, juste sous la surface, depuis toujours. Qu’est-ce que tu pouvais faire d’autre ? Tout sauf ça , a envie de dire Wallace. Rien ne t’obligeait à blesser ce garçon. Mais Miller ne lui demande pas de le justifier. Pas vraiment. Ce qu’il veut, c’est que quelqu’un soit de son côté. « C’était impossible, dit Wallace. Tu étais dans une position impossible. » Quelle horreur, ce récit. Miller se tourne vers lui, complètement. Il attire Wallace contre lui et enfouit son visage dans son cou. « Je ne voulais pas, dit-il. Je ne voulais pas faire ça. J’essaie d’être un mec bien. J’essaie d’être un mec bien. J’essaie d’être un mec bien. — Tu es un mec bien », réplique Wallace, légèrement affolé par ses propres mots. Miller rit doucement. « Je sais pas, Wallace.

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  When Terry Gross interviewed me on Fresh Air , a popular PBS radio program, she questioned me, perhaps “excoriated” is the more accurate term, about this story. Finally, in self-defense, I exclaimed, “Didn’t you read the end of the story? Did you not understand that the story was about my journey in therapy with someone toward whom I had negative prejudices and that by the end I had changed and had matured as a therapist? I am the main character in this story, not the patient.” I was never invited back to her program. Though she may not have been able to tell me so, I imagine the story did cause Betty pain. I had put blinders on. I was too ambitious, too reckless, too caught up in liberating my writerly impulses. I regret it to this day. Writing that story now, I would try to transform obesity into some entirely different condition and more radically fictionalize the events of therapy. I ended my afterword to a new edition of Love’s Executioner with an observation my younger self would have found surprising: namely, that the view from eighty is better than expected. Yes, I can’t deny that life in the later years is just one damn loss after another; but, even so, I’ve found far greater tranquility and happiness in my seventh, and eighth, and ninth decades than I had ever thought possible. And there’s one additional bonus: reading your own work can be more exciting! Memory loss has some unexpected advantages. As I turned the pages of “Three Unopened Letters,” “The Wrong One Died,” and the title story, “Love’s Executioner,” I felt myself burning with curiosity. I had forgotten how the stories ended!

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  The last thing any father would want was for his son to be in the center of some interracial street fight. And yet I often look back upon his rescue with regret. I wish I had fought the guy and showed him my pathetic uppercut. I had never stood up to aggressors before, and here, surrounded by friends who would protect me, was the perfect opportunity. The boy was about my size, though a bit older, and I would have felt so much better about myself if I had traded punches with him. What’s the worst that could have happened? A bloody nose, a black eye—a small price to pay for once taking a stand and holding my ground. I know that adult patterns of behavior are complex and never initiated by a single event, and yet, I persist in believing that my unease in dealing with open anger, my avoidance of confrontation, even heated debates, my reluctance to accept administrative positions entailing confrontation and dispute, all would have been different had my father and William not yanked me out of that fight one night so long ago. But I also understand that I grew up in an environment of fear: iron bars on the windows of the store, danger everywhere, and hovering over us all the story of the Jews of Europe hunted down and killed. Flight was the only strategy my father taught me. A s I describe this incident, another scene seeps into consciousness: My mother and I were going to the movies, and we entered the Sylvan just as the film was about to begin. She very rarely went to the movies with me, especially in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, but she adored Fred Astaire and often went to his films. I wasn’t happy about going with her because she had no manners, was often discourteous, and I never knew what was going to happen. I was embarrassed when any of my friends met her. In the cinema she spotted two seats in a center row and plunked herself down. A boy sitting next to one of the vacant seats said, “Hey, lady, I’m saving this seat.” “Oy, the big shot. He’s saving a seat,” she answered in a loud voice to all those sitting nearby, whilst I tried to hide by pulling my shirt over my head and covering my face. Just then the boy’s companion arrived and the two of them, scowling and muttering, moved over to a side row. Shortly after the film started I snuck a look at them and the boy caught my eye, shook his fist at me, and mouthed, “I’ll get you later.” And that was the boy who smashed my mother’s ice-cream cone into my face. Since he couldn’t get back at my mother, he must have remembered and lay in wait for a long time until he could catch me alone.

• From Real Life (2020)

  Ce que je viens de te raconter me fait vraiment passer pour un mec affreux. — Il n’y a pas de personnes mauvaises, répond Wallace avec un haussement d’épaules. Les gens font des saloperies. Mais au bout d’un moment, ils redeviennent simplement des gens. — Donc j’imagine que ça veut dire que tu pardonnes à tes parents ? », dit Miller, et un bref éclat douloureux brille dans les yeux de Wallace. « Je me disais, aussi. » Il marque une pause. « Il y en a, des méchants. Quand tu m’as raconté ce qui t’était arrivé, j’ai pas arrêté de penser au visage de ce mec. J’ai senti ses os en train de se casser. Et mes os en train de se casser. Et j’ai continué. Parce que j’étais hors de moi. C’est pas cinglé ? — Tu essayais d’échapper à ta vie. — En faisant un trou dans celle de quelqu’un d’autre. » Wallace laisse couler. Il ne sait pas ce que Miller veut de lui, mais ce n’est pas ça. Miller lui prend la main. « Viens, on va se coucher. » Wallace hoche la tête et le suit en haut. Il y a tant de problèmes dans le monde. Partout, à tout moment, il y a des gens qui souffrent. Qui est jamais heureux, vraiment heureux ? Qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire de tout ça ? Si ce n’est tenter de prendre la tangente, de sortir de sa vie pour se glisser dans la première zone grise qui nous attend ? La chambre de Miller est telle qu’ils l’ont laissée. Il ferme la porte, et Wallace remonte sur le lit. Miller se couche près de lui, et ils se glissent sous la couette. Bientôt, ce sera l’automne, il fera trop froid pour une simple couette, mais d’ici là, Wallace sera peut-être à des centaines de kilomètres d’ici. Il sera peut-être dans une région chaude. Il pourrait être n’importe où. Miller, lui, sera encore là, dans cette pièce, en train de changer ses habits et ses couvertures pour l’hiver. Le contraste met Wallace mal à l’aise – il se sent tellement déraciné, ici, ce lieu n’a qu’une prise si ténue sur lui. Miller l’enveloppe dans ses bras et, pour un instant, au moins, Wallace se sent ancré, tenu. « J’espère que tu ne me détestes pas, dit Miller. C’est pas débile ? De te dire qui je suis puis, s’il te plaît ne me déteste pas ? — Je ne te déteste pas. — OK. Tant mieux. » Wallace se tourne vers lui et ils s’embrassent de nouveau, plus profondément cette fois. Lorsque Miller remue en lui, Wallace ferme les yeux pour ne pas être obligé de le voir le regarder. Il ne se fait pas confiance, avec cette sensation incertaine qui monte en lui. Miller lui demande de rouler sur le ventre, et Wallace s’exécute, soulagé de n’être plus forcé de fermer les yeux aussi fort. Miller embrasse ses épaules, son dos.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  This does not explain, however, why intercourse with one's father's wife is a sin for which there is no atonement. It is not a characteristic sin of Gentiles, as I Cor. 5.1 makes clear. This seems to be the only one in the list which is not tantamount to rejection of Israel and following the way of the Gentiles. It may be that the sheer heinousness of the crime makes it one which results in the transgressor's being 'rooted out of Israel'. At any rate, it is a funda- mental commandment, along with the commandments to circumcise, keep the Sabbath and the like. Those who observe these commandments are true Israelites, while those who transgress are apostates; they are 'cut off' and 'rooted out of the land'. It should be noted that all the commandments which, if transgressed, lead to expulsion from Israel are biblical commandments. This is true even of the prohibition of intermarriage, where the biblical view is not quite so clear. It appears from 20.4 that the author understood Deut. 7 .3 to forbid all intermarriage with Gentiles (not just with the seven nations mentioned), 16 and his reading of Lev. 18.21 supported the same view.1 7 We conclude, then, that the soteriology of the book of Jubilees is that which we have found to be so widespread in Palestinian Judaism: salvation 16 Deut 7.3 is not quoted in Jub. 20.4, but it seems to be alluded to. Cf. the Rabbinic discussions of the meaning of the verse in Abodah Zarah 36b and Kiddushin 68b. 17 See Charles's note and the reference to the Targum to Lev. 18.21. 3] Jubilees 371 is given graciously by God in his establishing the covenant with the fathers, a covenant which he will not forsake (1.18); individuals may, however, be excluded from Israel if they sin in such a way as to spurn the covenant itself. Those who are faithful and do not sin in such a way and (as we shall see) who confess and repent for their transgressions constitute a kind of 'true Israel', although the term is not employed. To be sure, Jubilees differs from other depictions of Judaism in important ways: Jacob, rather than Abraham, is the primary patriarch; some transgressions cannot be atoned for; some of the individual halakot are otherwise unknown. The basic pattern, however, is thus far the same. We should now consider two scholarly views which are opposed to this conclusion. We may first note that Becker has argued that, in order to understand the soteriology of Jubilees, one must start with the heavenly tablets. These contain God's law, not as a gift oflife, but simply as information about what one should do. On them are also recorded the deeds of men.

• From Every Woman's Battle: Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment (2003)

  Do you want to be able to say no to worldly passions? to live a self-controlled, upright, and godly life? to be purified as God’s very own? to be eager to do what is good? You can’t do these things “by mine elf!” as Erin used to say. But God can give you what you need when you humble yourself before Him and say, “I surrender my pride. I need help if I am to experience Your plan for my sexual and emotional fulfillment, and I’m willing to be held accountable for my actions.” Then keep your eyes open for that accountability partner. Perhaps it will be a friend or a sister, a teacher, a counselor, or a mentor. While you may be tempted to look for someone who can sympathize with you, you may have more long-term success with someone who isn’t struggling herself or who has already overcome such a struggle. Hitching two weak oxen together to plow a field is not nearly as effective as hitching a weak ox with a strong one. When you have a mentor who can show you how to thrive on a diet of humility, you may discover a healing change in your appetite. Remember, we can not sin and win. If there is sexual or emotional sin in your life, you must starve it to death. You can’t just “trim it down” or it will just grow right back, even larger than before. Sin must be cut out completely. But perhaps you are wondering if you even want to cut some habits out altogether. Maybe you really like doing what you are doing or thinking what you are thinking. One of the most honest prayers I’ve ever heard is, “Lord, forgive me for the sins that I enjoy!” Sin often feels good (at least initially), or else it wouldn’t be tempting. But recognizing how your pet sins ultimately impact your life may inspire you to surrender them. When we humbly submit to the Gardener’s shears and allow Him to cut out pride so we can grow, our attitude will begin to move in the opposite direction: • While pride says, “I deserve whatever I desire,” humility says, “My fleshly desires will not dictate my actions.” • While pride says, “My needs should be met at any cost,” humility says, “Meeting my needs is secondary to loving others.” • While pride says, “Life is all about me and my pleasure,” humility says, “Life is all about God and His pleasure.” • While pride says, “The rules apply to everyone else but me,” humility says, “I will submit to the rules for righteousness’ sake.” • While pride says, “I’m above the consequences,” humility says, “I win only when I resist sin.” In addition to letting go of emotional pain and learning to exchange pride for humility, we must surrender our fears of the future if we want to protect ourselves from sexual and emotional compromise. FEAR OF THE FUTURE

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  Here the repentant return is obviously a 'status-preserving' repentance, not one which earns God's favour. This is the attitude which was eventually accepted in Christianity, as may be seen in the general confession from the liturgy: We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done .... But thou, 0 Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders .... Restore them that are penitent .... 150 So also Petuchowski, 'The Concept of"Teshuvah" ',pp. 178f 1 57 P. Berakoth 7d (4.2). Attributed to R. Hiyya b. Aba (Hiyyah bar Wa), who flourished at the end of the third century. But according to the subsequent comment, it was a traditional prayer. Cited from Schechter, A.<pects, p. 279. 158 On man's initiative and God's grace, see Schechter, Aspects, p. 278ff. 159 Deut. Rab. 2.24. There is a similar passage, also attributed to R. Meir, in A. Jellinek's collection Bet ha-Midra.<ch I, pp. 21f. 7] Salvation by membership in the covenant and atonement 179 Here it is assumed that one has sinned, but the penitent knows that God will forgive and restore the original relationship established by grace. Repentance is not a work which earns God's favour, but the means of restoring a re- lationship strained by transgression. The initial saving grace of God is assumed. This is also the Rabbinic attitude, and those who sin and repent are still righteous 'by the law'. Putting the imperative 'repent' before the indicative 'and God will be merciful' in such passages, whether Christian or Jewish, is not to be construed as proving the existence of a religion of'works- righteousness'. One can make it so only by overlooking the still earlier statements of God's saving grace and by ignoring the role of repentance in restoring the relationship established by grace. Before leaving the theme of repentance, we should consider one last point: the distinction which the Rabbis made between sins committed against God and sins committed against man; in Rabbinic terms, transgressions of com- mandments between man and God and those between man and his neigh- bour.160 It was a fundamental Rabbinic view that sins against God were more easily forgiven than sins against one's fellow-man, since the latter require restitution. 161 God 'lifts up his face' if the sin is between man and God, but if the sin is between man and man, 'he does not lift up his face' . 162 It agrees with this that sins which the Bible indicates were to be punished by 'cutting otr, karet, were more easily atoned for than sins which were pun- ishable by death at the hands of a human court.