The Incredible Lightness of Revelation ...

Good Morning from a Cool and Sunny NJ,

Busy days here in NJ ... at least for Moi. Sorry about the “missing blog” yesterday (for those of you keeping up on a daily basis). I’ve been moving myself from a Ridgewood location to a Princeton location and yesterday was a moving day. Had a bit of help from two of the boys ... Louis and Joshua ... THANKS AGAIN GUYS! ... and we humped it all day long. The new place has a good set of stairs getting in and carry some of the stuff up them was interesting. I do not envy the movers who will be doing the main work for us ... Whew! ... will they be earning their money on this one! So here we are another day closer to becoming “Princetonites” ... should be interesting.

Anyway back to the “real” work ...

A bit of a tangent for you all today ... not away from topic, but tangential nonetheless. I want to offer you a kind of book review. The book is Irvin Yalom’s “Love’s Executioner: and Other Tales of Psychotherapy. I’d never read Yalom, having never studied psychology or psychotherapy in any school I didn’t even know that this guy was one of the guru’s of therapy. He’s a Professor in Standford’s graduate psychology program (very chic) and a M.D./Psychiatrist who’s very into “talk therapy.” He’s of the humanist school, ala Carl Rodgers and a big group therapy aficionado and wise man, having written “the book” on Group Therapy many years ago now. So that’s a little background for you.

I got this book when someone who I hold in both a great deal of admiration and respect said to me,”Of course you’ve read Yalom’s “Love’s Executioner” in a conversation we were having about client work one day. I said “No” and was taken back a bit by the absoluteness of the comment that I must have read this book and this author. Coming from this person it was both a rebuke and a recommendation of sorts. Both unintentional, as they absolutely assumed I’d read it and were simply referencing this fact from their point of view. It was interesting for me as I am a voracious consumer of information ... so off I go to http://www.amazon.com to buy my book ... which turns into books ... about five by this Yalom guy ... “Love’s Executioner” (which I’m through) ... “The Gift of Therapy” (which I’ve begun and won’t finish) ... “The Schopenhauer Cure” and “When Nietzsche Wept” (both of which are novels that I haven’t begun and intend to soon – I’m a sucker for cheap philosophy lessons). So here I am with my box of Yalom that arrives from Amazon.com and I get to work ... I’ll only share my opinions and critique of “Love’s Executioner” here.

For those of you with little time I’ll get right to it – Yalom’s a great writer, probably a good researcher and a lousy therapist – all by my sole opinion and the evidence of one a a third books of reading by the guy, and his bibliography. The book is engaging, there are moments of brilliance that emerge in his work with patients (trust me these are patient folks ...) and even some interesting aspect of reading Yalom’s revelations which account for the greatest part of the book. Simply put this is as another reviewer on Amazon’s website put it, “an intellectual masturbatory confessional.” This guy (Yalom) is on with himself. He is one of the most self-important characters I’ve ever come across in my reading. He has the typical “Graves Six” penchant for revelation, hedonism and the projection of caring about and in this case even for others. The reality is more like he’s all about making sure he’s okay with what’s going on at every moment in his story. His patient’s therapy is his chance to get paid for doing his own personal development. Two pieces of evidence for me, One his long diatribe on how “countertransference” is for the psychotherapist what “balance’ is for the ballet dancer. His take on countertransference is the psychotherapist’s inability to get out their own way in the therapy and their need to work on this – in Yalom’s case at least at the expense (literally) of the patient. Two is his constant internal revelations about how he’s experiencing the patient’s therapy, about his sense of pleasure or ease or satisfaction in doing therapy with this particular patient or another. This guy is off with himself!!! What a hedonistic fool ... in the classical sense of fool.

However, there is a redeeming quality to this book and a reason to read it in my opinion. It is an excellent example of why more “traditional” forms of psychotherapy (the “fifty minute” hour type spread over twenty of so years ...) has fallen off and it's not the "fault" of HMOs and PPOs despite what these professionals want to claim and their endless lament that the world's not fair (to them or to their patients - of course without their patients how would they entertain themselves and know they are okay in the world?) especially in the face of competition from “newer” human development technology. It is also, again in my opinion, an excellent primer in some of what NOT TO DO in helping others. What’s described is how Yalom so often takes months of his patient’s time getting to meaningful work with them, often taking months just to build a suitable level of rapport to do the work the patient requires and desires ... what they are paying him for specifically. He so often describes taking this time because he doesn’t want to hurt the patient’s feelings or have them think badly of him ... WHAT A CLOSSAL S—T!!! This guy’s supposed to be a professional therapist, not only that but one of the best of the best ... and his concern is that he’s too incompetent to get his result without hurting his patient’s feelings or that they might not think well of him. What’s worse is that this guy teaches and supervises other student therapists. The most egregious display of incompetence you can learn from here is how easy it could be for those so inclined to make this work of helping others into a form of working on themselves ... and endlessly so. I am of the opinion that although the healer is also human, and that this humanness is a powerful force in being of help to others, that the work done with others is NOT THE PLACE for doing one’s own work ... whatever that might be. Finally, after making sure he’s okay, having fun and his patient’s think well of him he begins the actual work with them often only getting to the “remedy” in the last few weeks of months of preparatory therapy. What I know from both professional experience and education is that this kind of transformational work can be accomplished often in the first session with a client. However, I must also say again that I am not a psychotherapist, not trained in psychotherapy ... and maybe this is ultimately what I learned most from Yalom is that I don’t need to be one nor do I want to be one if this is the result I could expect ... kind of like the purple cow of professions.

In the end there are other examples of "doing therapy" in literature that are much better examples of what can be accomplished by a highly trained individual who less concerned about what he's thinking and what his "patients" think of him than in moving their patients/clients lives forward. Just do a search under brief therapy or solution-oriented therapy and you'll get a list of suggestions there to begin. If your penchant is for "deep" therapy, which you believe requires months or years to get to there are also those therapists doing that kind of work without the need to hold the patient/client in place as a kind of manikin for themselves and their own work. I'd recommend "The Case of Nora" by Moshe Feldenkris as a great piece of therapy literature as an example of the kind of work that is possible with a client in the hands and mind of a master therapist.

In regard to “our” conversation about social ontology this is a good dive into the social ontology of one of the helping professionals putting himself out there in his work. This has value to those of you following this thread, not necessarily as a primer on therapy of any kind, but more about how an individual mind experiences phenomenologically what has no counterpart in Reality ... thus generating their own reality in the presence of other. You’ll also be entertained or perhaps frightened by Yalom’s revelations about how his own social development has shaped and clouds his perceptions of the world. This is macabre stuff at times. His revelations for instance about his mother are classical Freudian feasts. In any case ... I both recommend this book and simultaneously heartily suggest you put off reading it to the very last minute ... then you’ll have accumulated enough wisdom not to believe any of it.

From NJ ...

Joseph