Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Lori relates the story of the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, who wrote about logotherapy (“intersection of psychology and philosophy” (568)). As opposed to Freud’s pleasure principle (we seek pleasure and avoid pain), he believed the primary human drive was “toward finding meaning” (568) in life, and his principle included “Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen” (569)—our initial reactions are reflexive but we can choose our responses, and in the choosing lies our freedom.

In therapy, Lori discusses her father who is in poor health, and how they shared a moving moment when he told her how proud of her he was, in case he had not said it or shown it enough before. Lori knows from the internet that Wendell’s father died suddenly at dinner, and she wonders whether Wendell had enough time to communicate with him everything he wanted. When she verbalizes this, Wendell tells her he misses his father every day. Lori admits finally that she googled Wendell, and he surprises her by reacting with equanimity. 

Rita’s life has started to change for the better: After Myron’s advance, she has finally met the happy family from across the hall and started giving the two girls art lessons, while their dad helped her open an online store for her works. However, she does not allow herself to feel any pleasure from it. Lori introduces Psychologist Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development (“personality development in a social context” (586)), each of which implies a crisis that needs to resolve itself to move forward.

The stages are: Infant, Toddler, Preschooler, School-age child, Adolescent, Young Adult, Middle-aged Adult and Older Adult, and the crises: trust/mistrust, autonomy/shame, initiative/guilt, industry/inferiority, identity/role confusion, intimacy/isolation, generativity/stagnation, and integrity/despair. Rita is in the process of choosing between integrity and despair, based on what she feels she has made of her life. She seems to be suffering from cherophobia (fear of joy), because she feels accustomed to punishing herself, primarily for her children’s unhappiness, which she contributed to by ignoring them and their father’s abusive behavior, but also by envying them the childhood she never had.

Parents often feel unconscious envy of the opportunities their children have, because they compare themselves at that age. Therefore, they sometimes ruin their children’s opportunities. Lori knows Rita’s children will probably never forgive their mother, but that does not exclude their feeling compassion for her, but only if she stops self-punishing. 

Lori has lunch with Caroline and admits that she is the one seeing Wendell, which Caroline finds funny, as she knows both well. Next week in therapy, Lori mentions the meeting to Wendell, struggling to find what has been bothering about it, when he asks her if she has a question for him. She realizes that she wants to ask him if he genuinely likes her. She cites humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers who introduced unconditional positive regard to therapy, which implies that the therapist “genuinely believes in the client’s ability to grow” (607). She poses her question and Wendell answers that he likes her neshama (a Hebrew word for spirit or soul). Lori immediately understands what he means because this is what she feels for her patients. 

Julie talks about meaningless and sometimes hurtful things people say when they learn of her sickness, things that make themselves feel better and not Julie. She also mentions things that feel right, like simply saying “I’m sorry” or “I love you”—“the best responses I’ve gotten have been from people who were genuine and didn’t edit themselves” (616). Lori has helped Julie work on her obituary, as she reviewed things that mattered the most to her. Finally, she decided she just wanted the obituary to say that she was loved every day of her life, because that is how she feels. 

Lori has finally forced herself to finish the book on happiness, and she works hard to get it done. During a break, while talking to her friend Jen, she checks her mail and finds a meaningless, innocuous email from Boyfriend after eight months of silence, about a person they both disliked joining his firm. The pointlessness of the email helps her gain significant clarity: She does not want to finish her book, because it is essentially equally meaningless. She accepts this need to change and sends her publisher a note about canceling her contract.

As Lori arrives for her session with Wendell after a two-week break, she is stunned to find a completely renovated, modern waiting room, instead of the old, chintzy one: “For a moment, I panic, as if in a dream: Where am I?” (628). She has been feeling happy, but now she wonders if she is experiencing a flight to health (when patients persuade themselves they do not need therapy anymore because of the underlying anxiety the process is bringing up).

When Wendell appears, she has another shock, as he has grown a beard and dressed fashionably. She suddenly finds him attractive and questions her transference. His office is also different, same in layout but chic and attractive. Just like Wendell. Lori reflects how she is behaving similarly to John (who calls Lori his mistress, and often makes inappropriate remarks). She relates how last time Wendell told her he trained as a ballet dancer and asked her if she wanted to dance, which she refused, although she knows dance therapy can be useful. Wendell gently insists that she register what she might be feeling towards him, as feeling less does not mean feeling better. Because she has registered Wendell as a man means that her therapy is working and that she can feel attraction again.