in Stoicism for ten or twenty years? At one point, Marcus seems to be describing the long-term goals of the Stoic therapy process he went through with Rusticus. He says that in the mind of one who has been chastened and thoroughly purified there is no festering sore beneath the surface, and nothing that would not bear examination or would hide from the light. There is no longer anything servile or phony about someone who has achieved this, he adds, and they are neither dependent on others nor alienated from them.25 Those are both therapy goals for Stoics and the goals of life.
