"What ails?" is a question Dr. Irvin Yalom repeatedly asks his patients. According to Dr. Yalom's Love's Executioner, therapist and patient can only answer this question and thereby come to a successful place in psychotherapy through personal interaction and mutual respect. The therapist's ability to lay down internal defenses, confront his own prejudices, all the while tolerating uncertainty, is critical.
Whereas the layman may assume that the therapist guides the patient through systematic and pre-determined stages of therapy toward a set, predetermined goal, in reality, rarely is this the actual case. Often, the therapist is armed with a map of training and past experience that proves to be of dubious merit. Yet, Dr. Yalom believes that the fumbling that ensues along the route to improvement is to be expected.
As the therapist searches for terra firma, he may even arrive at a successful as much by relative luck as by design. In fact, complete reliance in a particular therapeutic system may lead to unsatisfactory results. The temptation to pigeon-hole clients is overwhelming, while the therapist can be closed-off to observations and understanding that do not fall within his obscured view.
"Even the most liberal system of psychiatric
nomenclature does violence to the being of another.
If we relate to people believing that we can
categorize them, we will neither identify nor
nurture the parts, the vital parts, of the other
that transcend category. The enabling relationship
always assumes that the other is never fully
In the end, it is the interaction between two equal, mutually respectful persons - filled with all the grappling and fumbling of nearly any social encounter (Yalom, 1989, p. 13). In this atmosphere of mutual respect, Yalom asserts that therapy is for fundamentally well-integrated, resourceful people who are responsive to persuasive rhetoric (141).
Every i...