These hit home. Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don`t
leave any unlived life behind. Julius often likened Nietzsche`s words to a Rorschach
exam; they offered so many opposing viewpoints that the readers` state of mind
determined what they took from them. Now he read with a vastly different state of mind.
The presence of death prompted a different and more enlightened reading: in page after
page, he saw evidence of a pantheistic connectedness not previously appreciated.
However much Zarathustra extolled, even glorified solitude, however much he required
isolation in order to give birth to great thoughts, he was nonetheless committed to loving
and lifting others, to helping others perfect and transcend themselves, to sharing his
ripeness.Sharing his ripeness —that hit home.
ReturningZarathustra to its resting place, Julius sat in the dark staring at the lights
of cars crossing the Golden Gate Bridge and thinking about Nietzsche`s words. After a
few minutes Julius «came to»: he knew exactly what to do and how to spend his final
year.He would live just the way he had lived the previous year—and the year before that
and before that. He loved being a therapist; he loved connecting to others and helping to
bring something to life in them. Maybe his work was sublimation for his lost connection
to his wife; maybe he needed the applause, the affirmation and gratitude of those he
helped. Even so, even if dark motives played their role, he was grateful for his work. God
bless it!
Strolling over to his wall of file cabinets, Julius opened a drawer filled with charts and
audiotaped sessions of patients seen long ago. He stared at the names—each chart a
monument to a poignant human drama that had once played itself out in this very room.
As he surfed through the charts, most of the faces immediately sprang to mind. Others
had faded, but a few paragraphs of notes evoked their faces, too. A few were the truly
forgotten, their faces and stories lost forever.
Like most therapists, Julius found it difficult to seal himself off from the
unremitting attacks on the field of therapy. Assault came from many directions: from
pharmaceutical companies and managed care, which sponsored superficial research
orchestrated to validate the effectiveness of drugs and briefer therapies; from the media,
which never tired of ridiculing therapists; from behaviorists; from motivational speakers;
from the hordes of new age healers and cults all competing for the hearts and minds of
the troubled. And, of course, there were doubts from within: the extraordinary molecular
neurobiological discoveries reported with ever–increasing frequency caused even the
most experienced therapists to wonder about the relevance of their work.
Julius was not immune to these attacks and often entertained doubts about the
effectiveness of his therapy and just as often soothed and reassured himself.Of course he
was an effective healer.Of course he offered something valuable to most, perhaps even
all, of his patients.
Yet the imp of doubt continued to made its presence known:Were you really, truly,
helpful to your patients? Maybe you`ve just learned to pick patients who were going to
improve on their own anyway.
No. Wrong! Wasn`t I the one who always took on great challenges?
Huh, you`ve got your limits! When was the last time you really stretched yourself—
took a flagrant borderline into therapy? Or a seriously impaired schizophrenic or a
bipolar patient?
Continuing to thumb through old charts, Julius was surprised to see how much
posttherapy information he had—from occasional follow–up or «tune–up» visits, from
chance encounters with the patient, or from messages delivered by new patients they had
referred to him. But, still, had he made an enduring difference to them? Maybe his results
were evanescent. Maybe many of his successful patients had relapsed and shielded that
information from him out of sheer charity.
He noted his failures, too—folks, he had always told himself, who were not ready
for his advanced brand of deliverance. Wait, he told himself, give yourself a break,
Julius. How do you know they werereally failures?permanent failures? You never saw
them again. We all know there are plenty of late bloomers out there.
His eye fell upon Philip Slate`s thick chart. You want failure? he said to
himself.There was failure. Old–time major–league failure. Philip Slate. More than twenty
years had passed, but his image of Philip Slate was crisp. His light brown hair combed
straight back, his thin graceful nose, those high cheekbones that suggested nobility, and
those crisp green eyes that reminded him of Caribbean waters. He remembered how
much he disliked everything about his sessions with Philip. Except for one thing: the
pleasure of looking at that face.
Philip Slate was so alienated from himself that he never thought to look within,
preferring to skate on the surface of life and devote all his vital energy to fornication.
Thanks to his pretty face, he had no end of volunteers. Julius shook his head as he rifled
through Philip`s chart—three years of sessions, all that relating and support and caring,
all those interpretations without a whisper of progress. Amazing! Perhaps he wasn`t the
therapist he thought he was.
Whoa, don`t jump to conclusions, he told himself. Why would Philip continue for
three years if he had gotten nothing? Why would he continue to spend all that money for
nothing? And God knows Philip hated to spend money. Maybe those sessions had
changed Philip. Maybe hewas a late bloomer—one of those patients who needed time to
digest the nourishment given by the therapist, one of those who stored up some of the
therapist`s good stuff, took it home, like a bone, to gnaw on later, in private. Julius had
known patients so competitive that they hid their improvement just because they didn`t
want to give the therapist the satisfaction (and the power) of having helped them.
Now that Philip Slate entered his mind, Julius could not get him out. He had
burrowed in and taken root. Just like the melanoma. His failure with Philip became a
symbol embodyingall his failures in therapy. There was something peculiar about the
case of Philip Slate. From where had it drawn all that power? Julius opened his chart and
read his first note written twenty–five years before.
PHILIP SLATE—Dec. 11, 1980
26 yr old single white male chemist working for DuPont—develops new pesticides—
strikingly handsome, carelessly dressed but has a regal air, formal, sits stiffly with little
movement, no expression of feelings, serious, absence of any humor, not a smile or grin,
strictly business, no social skills whatsoever. Referred by his internist, Dr. Wood.
CHIEF COMPLAINT: «I am driven against my will by sexual impulses.»
Why now? «Last straw» episode a week ago which he described as though by rote.
I arrived by plane in Chicago for a professional meeting, got off the plane, and
charged to the nearest phone and went down my list of women in Chicago looking for
a sexual liaison that evening. No luck! They were all busy. Of course they were busy:
it was a Friday evening. I knew I was coming to Chicago; I could have phoned them
days, even weeks earlier. Then, after calling the last number in my book, I hung up
the phone and said to myself, «Thank God, now I can read and get a good night`s
sleep, which is what I really wanted to do all along.»
Patient says that phrase, that paradox—«which is what I really wanted to do
all along»—haunted him all week and is the specific impetus for seeking therapy.
