Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom Read Free Book Online Page B

dislodge it. I made an impassioned plea.
    “You are you, you have your own existence, you continue to be the person you are from moment to moment, from day to day. Basically your existence is impervious to the fleeting thoughts, to the electromagnetic ripples occurring in some unknown mind. Try to see that. All this power that Matthew has—you’ve given it to him—every bit of it!”
    “I get sick in my stomach at the thought of his despising me.”
    “What goes on in another person’s mind, someone you never even see, who probably isn’t even aware of your existence, who is caught up in his own life struggles, doesn’t change the person you are.”
    “Oh, he’s aware of my existence, all right. I leave a lot of messages on his telephone-answering tape. In fact, I left a message last week to let him know I was seeing you. I think he ought to know that I’m talking about him to you. Over the years I’ve always called him whenever I’ve changed therapists.”
    “But I thought you did not discuss him with all these therapists.”
    “I didn’t. I promised him that, even though he never asked it, and I kept that promise—until now. Even though I didn’t talk about him all those years, I still thought he should know which therapist I was seeing. Many of them were from his school. They might have even been his friends.”
    Because of my vindictive feelings toward Matthew, I was not displeased with Thelma’s words. On the contrary, I was amused when I imagined his discomfiture over the years when listening to Thelma’s ostensibly solicitous messages on his tape. I began to relinquish my ideas of striking back at Matthew. This lady knew how to punish him and needed no help from me in that task.
    “But, Thelma, go back to what I was saying earlier. Can’t you see that you’re doing this to yourself? His thoughts really can’t change the kind of person you are. You let him influence you. He’s just a person like you or me. If you think poorly of a person with whom you never have any contact, will your thoughts—those mental images circulating in your brain and known only to you—affect that person? The only way that can happen is through voodoo influence. Why do you surrender your power to Matthew? He’s a person like anyone else, he struggles to live, he’ll age, he’ll fart, he’ll die.”
    No response from Thelma. I upped the ante.
    “You said before that one could hardly have deliberately designed behavior more likely to hurt you. You’ve thought that maybe he was trying to drive you to suicide. He is not interested in your welfare. So what sense does it make to elevate him so? To believe that nothing in life is more important than that he think well of you?”
    “I don’t really believe he’s trying to drive me to suicide. It’s just a thought I have sometimes. I flip back and forth quickly in my feelings about Matthew. Most of the time what’s important is that he would wish me well.”
    “But why is his wish so all-important? You’ve elevated him to a superhuman position. Yet he seems to be a particularly screwed-up person. You yourself mention his significant sexual problems. Look at the whole issue of integrity—at his code of ethics. He’s violated the basic code of any helping profession. Look at the distress he’s caused you. We both know it is simply wrong for a professional therapist, who is sworn to act in the best interests of his patient, to hurt anyone the way he has hurt you.”
    But I might as well have been talking to the wind.
    “It was only when he started acting professionally, when he went back into a formal role, that he hurt me. When we were simply two human beings in love he gave me the most precious gift in the world.”
    It was deeply frustrating. Obviously, Thelma was responsible for her own life predicament. Obviously, it was a fiction that Matthew had any real power over her. Obviously, she gave him that power in an effort to deny her own freedom and her