“Love and Psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. A good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection” (use citation) This is the overall theme that is prevalent throughout the first story of Yalom’s book that is also titled, “Loves Executioner”
In this story Yalom decides to treat a 70-year-old woman named, “Thelma” that had a love affair with her former therapist, Mathew, eight years ago. Although Yalom believed no one was beyond his skills that he could break Thelma’s obsession with her former therapist, he soon realized that he was overcome by excessive hubris and the problem was more intricate and complex than it had appeared to be.
In the beginning of the story, because of a research grant on geriatric therapy he decides to treat Thelma and give her “good therapy”, as compared to the interns she has been used to seeing. Yalom felt she had not been given adequate therapy in the twenty some years she had been seeing inexperienced therapist as Yalom felt could treat any patient and Thelma was no different. I personally thought this was one of Yalom’s first mistakes as to assume that a person can treat virtually treat anyone is not admitting to possible limitations they have not explored in themselves as not ever situation is the same.
Yalom was intrigued with her love obsession and couldn’t understand why her former therapist that was considerably younger would even want to have sexual relations with Thelma which he describes her as, “a shabby old woman.” (citation) All of these aspects of Thelma’s crisis, the love affair with her former therapist, her obsession and the power he gave Matthew, made her the ideal candidate for the geri...
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...ew was making her feel young and alive as she was obsessively attracted to him. I thought that in some ways Yalom lost his patience, but he was on time constraints. I think that if Yalom had more time to work with Thelma instead of having a three-way session so soon and getting her to realize and accept what she already knew the answers to, therapy may have turned out different. All in all I felt the story was defiantly one most confusing and intricate stories I have read in Yalom’s book and that the overall take home message I took from this was that, love and obsessions are hard to intellectualize and understand objectively as much as we would like to. Although what may be logically the best decision, love is not based on logic and that the only loves executioner cannot come from the suggestions of another person or therapist, but more from themselves and within.
In Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love,” Mel McGinnis’ occupation as a cardiologist, a physician that mends broken hearts, stands in stark contradiction to his claim to understanding the workings of the heart as it pertains to loving and being loved. The discord between healing his patient’s heart and his inability to recognize his own heart malady is exaggerated by how he deals with the relationship of Ed and Terri, as well as that of the elderly accident victims and his ex-wife Marjorie. As both the dominant and dominating character in the story, Mel has very strong ideas about love. He believes that “.real love is nothing less than spiritual love” (137), something reinforced by his seminary training. This commitment to proclaiming real love is synonymous with spiritual love, however, is quickly brought into question when the topic of his current wife Terri’s former relationship with her abusive ex-husband Ed is brought up.
Georgiana’s death reveals that a person should never try to put his life in jeopardy. Georgiana and the soldier should not let people coerce them into doing something they love. It is hard to depict what Aylmer's sadness is after his wife dies. Aylmer realizes that he took his wife for granted. The soldier realizes that trying to please another person ends up making life worse.
When an emotion is believed to embody all that brings bliss, serenity, effervescence, and even benevolence, although one may believe its encompassing nature to allow for generalizations and existence virtually everywhere, surprisingly, directly outside the area love covers lies the very antithesis of love: hate, which in all its forms, has the potential to bring pain and destruction. Is it not for this very reason, this confusion, that suicide bombings and other acts of violence and devastation are committed in the name of love? In Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, the reader experiences this tenuity that is the line separating love and hate in many different forms and on many different levelsto the extent that the line between the two begins to blur and become indistinguishable. Seen through Ruth's incestuous love, Milkman and Hagar's relationship, and Guitar's love for African-Americans, if love causes destruction, that emotion is not true love; in essence, such destructive qualities of "love" only transpire when the illusion of love is discovered and reality characterizes the emotion to be a parasite of love, such as obsession or infatuation, something that resembles love but merely inflicts pain on the lover.
Emotionally focused therapy is designed to be short-term in structure. Developed principally by Dr. Susan Johnson, the main target of this type of therapy is couples and is focused on expressing emotions. The primary goal of emotionally focused therapy is to create a safe and long-lasting bond between romantic partners and family members while expanding and restructuring significant emotional responses. Partakers in emotionally focused therapy are emboldened to express their thoughts and emotions in a safe environment without fear of judgment. In this paper, we will discuss a therapy session between Sue Johnson and a couple, Leslie and Scott.
In this book, Dr. Ernest Lash discovers he has a love for psychoanalysis after several years working as a psychopharmacologist. Justin, who has been a patient of Ernest for several years, tells him he left his wife, Carol, for another woman. While Ernest sees this as a good thing since the marriage between Justin and Carol as unhealthy, he is still slightly upset that Justin gives him no credit for his help in the situation. Justin then decided he no longer needs Ernest’s help.
Most people would say that love is a concept which will always be a mystery to man, because it is so changeable, and therefore it will always be able to fool and distort man’s thoughts. Love can both be happy and miserable, and this makes it very powerful and therefore able to control the entire behaviour of a person. Throughout a lifetime people will unavoidably experience things that will have a certain impact on the individual’s personality as well as further development. These experiences will often become memories that will follow them their entire life. This is also the case in “Mule Killers”, where a father tells his son about the memories he has of the year his son was conceived and his relationship to his father.
The beginning of the marriage was peaceful. Then Griselda gave birth to a daughter. It is at this time that Gualtieri begins to “test” Griselda. His tests are actually forms of emotional abuse. He begins by testing Griselda’s obedience by having the child taken away to be raised elsewhere by woman kinfolk. He told Griselda that their daughter was dead, that he had her killed by his subjects. He repeats this same test with the birth of their son a few years later. Griselda, with no words of protest, surrenders both her children to their deaths by their own father, her husband.
Despite the fact that the psychoanalytic approach is the most controversial interpretation of literature, it proves to be utterly intriguing. In stories such as this, the sexual undertones are clearly evident, and thus substantiate the intricacies behind the approach. Perhaps it is a bit untraditional. However, this investigation remains both thought provoking and brilliantly compelling.
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
.... This is where the freedom comes in. If the Therapist were to force something on the client by saying this is what's wrong, and here is how you fix it, they might head in the right direction at first, but not because of their own will. By allowing them to make a conscious effort to help themselves it will mean more and last longer. In reading this book I learned a lot about the way existential therapy works, and how I can go about helping people that come to me for advise. Not only do I understand that people have the freedom to make there own choices, but also now I understand that people have the freedom of responsibility which allows them to change their lives and better themselves.
The Symposium, The Aeneid, and Confessions help demonstrate how the nature of love can be found in several places, whether it is in the mind, the body or the soul. These texts also provide with eye-opening views of love as they adjust our understanding of what love really is. By giving us reformed spectrum of love, one is able to engage in introspective thinking and determine if the things we love are truly worthy of our sentiment.
Edgar Allen Poe, pain caused by love drives the main character to the point of insanity. In
For example, ethos is a recurring technique used throughout the book along with the importance of relationships. Firstly, Thelma says on the first page of the book, “Millie knew that she could have a house with glass windows, and from the cold day she landed in New York, she knew what she had to do. She had to save every hard earned dime she could toward her house, her place, with her name on the title.”. This passage shows the reader that Millie is determined to provide for her family no matter what; literally, she left Jamaica and her family to make a better living for them. This also shows her selfless attitude, her willingness to go without just to see her family prevail. Another example of ethos is on page 12-13. Moreover, there is a conversation between Millie and the church, they want one tenth of Millie’s earnings, but she tells them that money is all she has to live on, and God has spoken to her in a dream. “Millicent, you are a hard working girl. Follow me. Follow the light to your new house”. In other words, this passage is not only persuasion to the reader, but the church as well; this is because God provided proof in the dream. Now, not only does she believe in her ambition, but God reassured her. In conclusion, Thelma definitely leaves an imprint in the reader's mind that Millie is about her business and values her relationship with her family so much that she is willing to do whatever it takes
Love has been expressed since the beginning of time; since Adam and Eve. Each culture expresses its love in its own special way. Though out history, though, it’s aspect has always been the same. Love has been a major characteristic of literature also. One of the most famous works in literary history is, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. This story deals with the love of a man and a woman who’s families have been sworn enemies. There love surpassed the hatred in which the families endured for generations. In the end they both ended up killing their selves, for one could not live without the other. This story is a perfect example of true love.
Love is the ubiquitous force that drives all people in life. If people did not want, give, or receive love, they would never experience life because it is the force that completes a person. People rely on this seemingly absent force although it is ever-present. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is an influential poet who describes the necessity of love in her poems from her book Sonnets from the Portuguese. She writes about love based on her relationship with her husband. Her life is dependent on him, and she expresses this same reliance of love in her poetry. She uses literary devices to strengthen her argument for the necessity of love. The necessity of love is a major theme in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 14,” “Sonnet 43,” and “Sonnet 29.”