Love's Executioner

by Irvin D. Yalom

How I long at such junctures for the certainty that orthodoxy offers. Psychoanalysis, to take the most catholic of the psychotherapy ideological schools, always posits such strong convictions about the necessary technical procedures—indeed, analysts seem more certain of everything than I am of anything. How comforting it would be to feel, just once, that I know exactly what I’m doing in my psychotherapeutic work—for example, that I am dutifully traversing, in proper sequence, the precise stages of the therapeutic process. But, of course, it is all illusion. If they are helpful to patients at all, ideological schools with their complex metaphysical edifices succeed because they assuage the therapist’s, not the patient’s, anxiety (and thus permit the therapist to face the anxiety of the therapeutic process). The more the therapist is able to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing, the less need is there for the therapist to embrace orthodoxy. The creative members of an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, ultimately outgrow their disciplines. Though there is something reassuring about an omniscient therapist who is always in control of every situation, there can be something powerfully engaging about a fumbling therapist, a therapist willing to flounder with the patient until they, together, stumble upon an enabling discovery.