Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom Read Free Book Online Page A

playfulness replaced the serious work of therapy. Sometimes Belle insisted on sitting in my lap. She did a lot of hugging and stroking and groping. I tried to fend her off, I tried to maintain a serious work ethic, but, let's face it, it was no longer therapy.
    "I called a halt and solemnly suggested we had two options: either we try to go back to serious work, which meant returning to a non-physical and more traditional relationship, or we drop the pretense that we're doing therapy and try to establish a purely social relationship. And 'social' didn't mean sexual: I didn't want to compound the problem. I told you before, I helped write the guidelines condemning therapists and patients having post-therapy sexual relationships. I also made it clear to her that, since we were no longer doing therapy, I would accept no more money from her.
    "Neither of those options were acceptable to Belle. A return to formality in therapy seemed a farce. Isn't the therapy relationship the one place where you don't play games? As for not paying, that was impossible. Her husband had set up an office at home and spent most of his time around the house. How could she explain to him where she was going for two regular hours a week if she were not regularly writing checks for therapy?
    "Belle chided me for my narrow definition of therapy. 'Our meetings together—intimate, playful, touching, sometimes making good love, real love, on your couch—that is therapy. And good therapy, too. Why can't you see that, Seymour?' she asked. Isn't effective therapy good therapy? Have you forgotten your pronouncements about the 'one important question in therapy'? Does it workf And isn't my therapy working? Aren't I continuing to do well? I've stayed clean. No symptoms. Finishing grad school. I'm starting a new life. You've changed me, Seymour, and all you have to do to maintain the change is continue to spend two hours a week being close to me.'
    "Belle was a smart cookie, all right. And growing smarter. I could marshal no counterargument that such an arrangement was not good therapy.
    "Yet I knew it couldn't be. I enjoyed it too much. Gradually, much too gradually, it dawned on me that I was in big trouble. Anyone looking at the two of us together would conclude that I was exploit-

    ing the transference and using this patient for my own pleasure. Or that I was a high-priced geriatric gigolo!
    "I didn't know what to do. Obviously I couldn't consult with anyone—I knew what they would advise and I wasn't ready to bite the bullet. Nor could I refer her to another therapist—she wouldn't go. But to be honest, I didn't push that option hard. I worry about that. Did I do right by her? I lost a few nights' sleep thinking about her telling another therapist all about me. You know how therapists gossip among themselves about the antics of previous therapists—and they'd just love some juicy Seymour Trotter gossip. Yet I couldn't ask her to protect me—keeping that kind of secret would sabotage her next therapy.
    "So my small-craft warnings were up but, even so, I was absolutely unprepared for the fury of the storm when it finally broke. One evening I returned home to find the house dark, my wife gone, and four pictures of me and Belle tacked to the front door: one showed us checking in at the registration desk of the Fairmont Hotel, another of us, suitcases in hand, entering our room together, the third was a close-up of the hotel registration form—Belle had paid cash and registered us as Dr. and Mrs. Seymour. The fourth showed us locked in an embrace at the Golden Gate Bridge scenic overlook,
    "Inside, on the kitchen table, I found two letters: one from Belle's husband to my wife, stating that she might be interested in the four enclosed pictures portraying the type of treatment her husband was offering his wife. He said he had sent a similar letter to the state board of medical ethics and ended with a nasty threat suggesting that if I ever saw Belle again, a