Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 2: How come your French is so much better than mine?
Speaker 3: I think everybody's friends?
Speaker 2: Why is that?
Speaker 3: Because we listen? We don't listen?
Speaker 2: I mean I was in French immersion with all you guys.
Speaker 4: What you're either daydreams or you're talking.
Speaker 2: Do you know what it sounds like? You're on all
Speaker 2: those French immersion teachers sides that I had throughout the years,
Speaker 2: That's what they used to say, lune, which means your
Speaker 2: head in the class the avoir.
Speaker 5: Jackie, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna you know, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm getting close to the hangoup eh.
Speaker 2: You could feel like coming.
Speaker 5: When you start getting on my nerves right about now,
Speaker 5: right right now.
Speaker 2: From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
Speaker 2: today's episode Doctor Mueller. Growing up, a single question dominated
Speaker 2: my thoughts. What was the use? What was the use
Speaker 2: of getting out of bed, of combing your hair, of
Speaker 2: breathing all that breathing? What was the use of anything
Speaker 2: when all of life inevitably came grinding to an end.
Speaker 2: By seventeen, I was waking up in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night, seized by the meaninglessness of it all. By
Speaker 2: eighteen I started to lose my hair. At nineteen I
Speaker 2: dropped out of college, and at twenty I knew I
Speaker 2: had to do something, so I began seeing a therapist. Initially,
Speaker 2: the idea felt romantic, like something out of JD. Salinger
Speaker 2: or Hitchcock. At our first appointment, I might have even
Speaker 2: worn a blazer. My new therapist extended a hand and
Speaker 2: introduced herself as doctor Mueller, and for the next six years,
Speaker 2: that was the only name by which she was known
Speaker 2: to me. Doctor Mueller never referred to me by my
Speaker 2: first name either. Instead, she called me mister Goldstein, which,
Speaker 2: because she spoke with a heavy German accent, she pronounced Goldstein.
Speaker 2: The first and only time I tried correcting her, she
Speaker 2: simply said, it is Goldstein. Doctor Mueller was raal Thinn.
Speaker 2: Appeared to be in her late sixties and wore her
Speaker 2: hair in a grayish bowl cut. She favored turtlenecks and
Speaker 2: macrom vests and sat behind an imposing desk, empty except
Speaker 2: for a telephone and a neat stack of small note papers.
Speaker 2: At the end of our first appointment, she asked me
Speaker 2: to write up a one page family history. Instead, I
Speaker 2: took a deep dive into my childhood. I wanted her
Speaker 2: to have all the source material she'd need to get
Speaker 2: to the bottom of my morbid disposition, and so the
Speaker 2: following week I proudly presented her with a book length memoir.
Speaker 2: Doctor Mueller skimmed through it and then silently stuck my
Speaker 2: tone in a drawer and never brought it back up.
Speaker 2: So several sessions later, I did, I am not very
Speaker 2: interested in the past, she said, I'm more interested in
Speaker 2: the present. What are you going to do now?
Speaker 6: She asked?
Speaker 2: What I was going to do now? I hoped was
Speaker 2: talk about my past, but doctor Mueller could care less.
Speaker 2: A therapist uninterested in the past ran contrary to everything
Speaker 2: I thought I knew about therapy. It was like a
Speaker 2: carpenter who refused to work with wood. More than that,
Speaker 2: it was like a carpenter who hated wood, and if
Speaker 2: you brought them wood, they'd throw it in a concrete
Speaker 2: drawer and never mention it again. Wasn't excavating the past
Speaker 2: pretty much a therapist's whole job. Where else does one
Speaker 2: find answers? Doctor Mueller's unwillingness to even acknowledge my past
Speaker 2: was confounding, but so were a lot of things about
Speaker 2: her Sometimes she'd inexplicably show up wearing a neck brace.
Speaker 2: Other times she'd spend frantic minutes buffing out an invisible
Speaker 2: scuff mark from a waiting room chair. Then there were
Speaker 2: the long anecdotes about car trouble, a trip. She was planning,
Speaker 2: stories that went nowhere and were illustrative of nothing I
Speaker 2: could fathom, And all the while, whole precious expensive minutes
Speaker 2: elapsed in which I could neither whine nor complain my
Speaker 2: way to mental health. It felt positively wasteful. Doctor Muller's
Speaker 2: office was in a large old echoe building downtown. Our
Speaker 2: appointments happened around dusk, and in my memory it's always
Speaker 2: the dusk of winter, cold and wet Montreal winter. From
Speaker 2: behind her desk, lit by a desk lamp, she spoke
Speaker 2: of giving birth to one's authentic self, a self that
Speaker 2: wasn't all tangled up and regrets about the past or
Speaker 2: consumed by anxiety over the future, AKA a self that
Speaker 2: didn't sound very Jonathan Goldsteiny. In every session, doctor Muller
Speaker 2: repeated the same refrain, you must give birth to yourself.
Speaker 2: What could she possibly mean? I asked my girlfriend at
Speaker 2: the time, Barbara was working on her bachelor's in psychology,
Speaker 2: and in my darker moments, I felt certain her relationship
Speaker 2: with me was a part of her field work. It
Speaker 2: might be a gestalt thing, she said, uncertainly, but I
Speaker 2: don't know that gestalt therapy is even a thing anymore.
Speaker 2: Week after week, doctor Muller and I sat in a
Speaker 2: dark room as I tried in vain to birth myself.
Speaker 2: On a bad day, she would reprimand me for not
Speaker 2: doing as she instructed. On a good day, she would
Speaker 2: say that I was very very close. My authentic self
Speaker 2: was crowning. Was this just her line, I wondered, something
Speaker 2: doctor Mueller told all her patients. I grew increasingly frustrated.
Speaker 2: I was still lost, still waking up at noon, still
Speaker 2: spending my days watching video rentals and smoking cigarettes in
Speaker 2: my parents' basement, Still showing up for appointments with doctor
Speaker 2: Muller for conversations that felt as pointless as life itself. Finally,
Speaker 2: after being told for the umpteenth time that the miracle
Speaker 2: of birth was nigh, I grew at It's hard to
Speaker 2: hear this year after year, I said. I told her
Speaker 2: that we must be doing something wrong. It is not working,
Speaker 2: she said, because of you. She spoke the words quietly
Speaker 2: but firmly. I was taken aback. It had to be
Speaker 2: something more than just me, if only slightly, maybe a
Speaker 2: tiny bit, because of her. I mean, she was sitting
Speaker 2: in the room as much as I was, Even in
Speaker 2: my insecure state. Her conclusion felt off, and I said,
Speaker 2: so it is because of you, she repeated. Was a
Speaker 2: therapist even allowed to say that? How could she refuse
Speaker 2: to share in this failure? I think maybe this should
Speaker 2: be our last session, I said. Ending things was something
Speaker 2: I'd been thinking of doing for a while. But you
Speaker 2: have yet to find a philosophy, she said, words to
Speaker 2: live by that will ease self birth. Not everyone needs
Speaker 2: a philosophy. I responded, that is true, she said, but
Speaker 2: you do. At the end of the hour, doctor Mueller
Speaker 2: rose from behind her desk and opened the door for me.
Speaker 2: She smiled warmly, sincerely, no edge at all. The blame
Speaker 2: she'd cast, in combination with the simplicity of her goodbye,
Speaker 2: was chilling. She shook my hand, ending one of the
Speaker 2: most intense personal relationships I'd had up until that point
Speaker 2: in my life, And then just like that, I was
Speaker 2: back in that echoee hallway. Wondering what the hell had
Speaker 2: just happened. It's a question I still don't have an
Speaker 2: answer for. When you're young, because the world is small
Speaker 2: and new, so many experiences confuse you. But as you
Speaker 2: grow older, the odd things fall into place and you
Speaker 2: look back with something approaching clarity. But after thirty years,
Speaker 2: my experience with doctor Mueller somehow feels more mysterious, more
Speaker 2: difficult to parse than it did when I was twenty.
Speaker 2: You go to therapy to form a more coherent narrative
Speaker 2: out of your life, Yet paradoxically, the chapter of my
Speaker 2: life with doctor Muller remains one that I've never really
Speaker 2: been able to make sense of, and so I still
Speaker 2: find myself asking who was this person? And was she
Speaker 2: a bad therapist or was I a bad patient? Although
Speaker 2: doctor Muller died in two thousand and three, I recently
Speaker 2: realized there might still be a way to find out.
Speaker 2: In recent months, I find myself moving away from traditional
Speaker 2: psychotherapy and towards a more improvisational mental health regimen. That is,
Speaker 2: I stay up late while drinking beer and watching old movies.
Speaker 2: It's while watching at close range a Shan Penn Christopher
Speaker 2: Walkin film from the nineteen eighties that I realized I'd
Speaker 2: already seen it in a college class, and with this recollection,
Speaker 2: I remember the professor who taught the class, and the
Speaker 2: one time i'd seen him outside of his classroom. It
Speaker 2: was in doctor Muller's waiting room. I'd seen him exiting
Speaker 2: her office, or at least I think I had. The
Speaker 2: moment was long ago and so fleeting, But if true,
Speaker 2: this memory had the power to tear open a potential wormhole,
Speaker 2: connecting me to my past as a kid in therapy.
Speaker 2: For the first time, I had no perspective on doctor Mueller.
Speaker 2: But here was a full fledged adult patient of hers,
Speaker 2: a professor, no less, who'd have the experience and insight
Speaker 2: to cast the decisive vote in the was it me
Speaker 2: or was it Muller referendum? Was she just weirdly hung
Speaker 2: up on this notion of self birth? Or was I
Speaker 2: just too young to get it? With the movie paused
Speaker 2: in the background, I paced the floor of my living room.
Speaker 2: A plan begins to take shape. All I have to
Speaker 2: do is break all the rules of therapy, of polite
Speaker 2: society and track down a now elderly professor who taught
Speaker 2: at a school I dropped out of to inquire if
Speaker 2: it had been him i'd seen exiting my therapist's office
Speaker 2: thirty years ago. Yes, I agreed, nodding my head to
Speaker 2: no one in particular, three beers into a six pack
Speaker 2: of Tall Boys at two in the morning. This was
Speaker 2: an excellent idea, find the man who can supply context.
Speaker 2: What was wrong with a little context? The only problem was,
Speaker 2: after thinking as hard as I could, I could not
Speaker 2: remember the professor's name. How long has it been. It's
Speaker 2: been a while, oh man, Yeah, it has been a while.
Speaker 2: A visit to the school's website tells me nothing about
Speaker 2: my old professor, but I do discover that the present
Speaker 2: chair of his department is an old college friend. Dana
Speaker 2: and I haven't spoken in close to twenty years. How
Speaker 2: are things with you?
Speaker 1: They're good. They're good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, things are?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 1: He?
Speaker 2: Dana tells me how much he enjoys teaching English, and
Speaker 2: I tell her that i'd recently been guiltily reading Madame Bovary,
Speaker 2: a book on the required reading list back when we
Speaker 2: were in school that I never actually read, and I
Speaker 2: must have started it because I found some of my
Speaker 2: marginalia that makes me like hate myself when I was
Speaker 2: at a I underline this whole paragraph, and in the
Speaker 2: margin I wrote espanolism.
Speaker 3: Question mark, and what could that even have possibly meant?
Speaker 2: Eventually I explained the reason for my call, how I'm
Speaker 2: in search of a professor from her department, whose name
Speaker 2: I could not remember, but who may or may not
Speaker 2: have had a ringside seat to the development of my
Speaker 2: young psyche. I proceed to describe the professor the best
Speaker 2: I can. The guy had kind of like black, curlyish hair,
Speaker 2: maybe kind of balding. His first name might have been Rob,
Speaker 2: could have been Bob. I offer Dana all the detail
Speaker 2: I can. He seemed to enjoy chewing gum once during
Speaker 2: the warmer weather. He might have taught while wearing a
Speaker 2: panama hat.
Speaker 3: None of that is ringing a bell with me.
Speaker 2: After a while, I just give up. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2: It was nice. It was nice talking to you, no problem.
Speaker 7: It was nice talking to you too.
Speaker 1: It's as we're about.
Speaker 2: To get off the phone, one more small, unhelpful detail
Speaker 2: pops into my head and immediately out of my mouth.
Speaker 1: It's a surprise.
Speaker 2: You know, he had a mustache at some point.
Speaker 1: Is it possible his name was Maury.
Speaker 2: Maury, that is the guy.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, there you go.
Speaker 2: After the break, Professor Moury.
Speaker 3: Hello, Jonathan, Hey, Maury, I got through.
Speaker 1: Yeah hear me. Okay, yeah, I can hear you.
Speaker 3: Where where I am.
Speaker 2: Where Moury is is Jamaica, sitting with his neighbors in
Speaker 2: the communal yard. And after all these years he's still professorial.
Speaker 3: You know Bob's song and no Woman, no crime. You
Speaker 3: know Georgie lit a firelight in a tenement yard in
Speaker 3: French time. You can't really understand what that is, gonna
Speaker 3: that you've actually been in one of them.
Speaker 2: Mary spends half the year in Jamaica, and as soon
Speaker 2: as he got my message asking if we could speak,
Speaker 2: he phoned right back. Every so often he's interrupted by
Speaker 2: the neighbor's daughter elect and her toddler's sister TESSI.
Speaker 3: Alexi, your phone, n take her into the yark.
Speaker 2: Please, no, no, no, Maury. A Jew has been working
Speaker 2: on a documentary with Bob Marley's granddaughter a Rosta about
Speaker 2: the relationship between Jews and Rostas and their cultural overlaps.
Speaker 2: Like what overlaps?
Speaker 3: You know, the groups that are quite orthodox, they don't
Speaker 3: eat pork, while I.
Speaker 2: Do find the subject of Mary's documentary semi interesting. The
Speaker 2: questions I'm asking are not in service to that semi interest,
Speaker 2: but rather to staving off the moment I have to
Speaker 2: announce the invasive nature of my phone call.
Speaker 3: Dreadlocks are from the same Biblical injunction that leads to
Speaker 3: a Pacific Jews wearing beers.
Speaker 2: The whole point of therapy is to have a sacred
Speaker 2: space separated from the rest of the world, free from
Speaker 2: the judgment of others. And here I was phoning up
Speaker 2: a stranger to ask, mind if I poke around in
Speaker 2: your sacred space a bit any hot takes on the therapist?
Speaker 2: Did she un crazy you? Or are you like still not?
Speaker 2: Maury would have every right to bang down the phone
Speaker 2: on my face, and so I keep deferring. Is the Rastafarian?
Speaker 2: Is it connected to the Lost Tribes?
Speaker 3: Uh? There could be like, it's not really.
Speaker 2: We go back and forth for almost half an hour,
Speaker 2: all the while Maury never asks why I'm phoning Testy
Speaker 2: come on to say hello, Hello, Jonathan, Hi, Tessy. Having
Speaker 2: exhausted every possible way to put off asking my question,
Speaker 2: every digression, every subject change, every attempt to keep Maury's
Speaker 2: two year old neighbor on the phone. I'm left with
Speaker 2: no recourse but to finally get to the point of
Speaker 2: my weird, out of nowhere social call. So I just
Speaker 2: dive in anyway, so so so, yeah, should I'll tell
Speaker 2: you why I'm phone so I I have a pretty
Speaker 2: strange question and and I'm I'm just gonna say that
Speaker 2: right out the gate. Basically, the reason I'm calling you
Speaker 2: is because there was a moment where our lives crossed
Speaker 2: and just totally in a very coincidental way, and I
Speaker 2: was reminded of it. Yeah, just as I'm finally getting
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 3: Tessie, she grabbed a tiny little plastic wrap bit of weeds,
Speaker 3: was running out with it. I didn't know what she would.
Speaker 4: Do with it.
Speaker 2: You know, She's not gonna smoke it.
Speaker 3: She'd have to unwrap the plastic and build a split,
Speaker 3: which I can't do. I have a lot of problems
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Once the cheech and chong gask shenanigans are behind us,
Speaker 2: I resu merely mouthing my way through a procession of preambles.
Speaker 2: You know, don't I don't want to make you uncomfortable
Speaker 2: or anything. I want you to be you know, comfortable
Speaker 2: answering this, and if you don't want to, totally fine.
Speaker 2: I used to see this therapist and I have this memory,
Speaker 2: and it might be I might be misremembering, even is
Speaker 2: of being in the waiting room and seeing you leave
Speaker 2: her office, doctor Mueller. Maury is so unfazed by my question,
Speaker 2: I'm inclined to wonder whether he's boguarded Little Tessie's joint.
Speaker 2: Without any ado, he just jumps right in, telling me
Speaker 2: he began seeing doctor Muller during a creative block and
Speaker 2: continued to see her for four years.
Speaker 3: I found her very interesting, and I also found her
Speaker 3: very rude in some way. I don't I don't remember
Speaker 3: exactly what age she was, but she was kind of
Speaker 3: on the older side for deex diving. And then there
Speaker 3: was a thing of at the horses, which I can't remember.
Speaker 2: Maury and I swap old memories. It's validating doctor Muller
Speaker 2: was odd.
Speaker 3: Why does anybody wear two pired glosses unless they're an
Speaker 3: alien with six eyes? Is she just off a USO?
Speaker 3: You know something? I got that feeling that she was
Speaker 3: some sort of alien.
Speaker 2: Murray remembers how angry she get if he was even
Speaker 2: a few minutes late, how harsh she could be in her.
Speaker 3: Method and the method. To me, the method always seemed
Speaker 3: like a bit you know, it's not interesting to talk
Speaker 3: about killing what happened to you when you're six years old?
Speaker 3: You know, It's like, what are you going to do now?
Speaker 3: What is your next step?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And even she wasn't even really that interested in feelings.
Speaker 3: It was really more of a that's the term that
Speaker 3: she constantly use. What is your concept? What is your
Speaker 3: concept of how you are going to deal with this?
Speaker 3: You have to formulate a concept you haven't yet formula.
Speaker 3: I think she thought that I wasn't formulating enough concepts.
Speaker 2: I tell Maury about the note that doctor Mueller and
Speaker 2: I had parted on how she'd been crossed because of
Speaker 2: my failure to birth myself. When I ask of self
Speaker 2: birth was something they'd also talked about, he says no.
Speaker 3: But I had the same feeling with her. This isn't,
Speaker 3: you know, quite working the way it should. And eventually
Speaker 3: she just said, I don't think you need me anymore.
Speaker 1: She didn't say, you.
Speaker 3: Know, uh, this is useless either. We're not getting anywhere.
Speaker 3: She actually said, I think we've gone to where we
Speaker 3: want to get and maybe she was right. I don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, well, that sounds kind of like a nice
Speaker 2: way to end therapy as far as those things go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: sure he wasn't handed a certificate with the word cured
Speaker 2: stamped on it. But getting to where you want to
Speaker 2: go is a more dignified end to therapy than I managed.
Speaker 2: Maybe it wasn't with honors, but at least Morey had
Speaker 2: graduated rather than dropped out. Just as one of the
Speaker 2: strangest telephone calls of my life comes to an end,
Speaker 2: Maury casually mentions that he just so happens to be
Speaker 2: in touch with another of doctor Muller's former patients, and
Speaker 2: one who, unlike the both of us, wasn't confused by
Speaker 2: doctor Mueller at all. Mary encourages me to give him
Speaker 2: a call.
Speaker 1: I've seen a couple of therapists over the years, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't my favorite.
Speaker 2: After a breakup left him devastated, Michael went to doctor
Speaker 2: Muller for help.
Speaker 1: She wasn't crazy about listening so much. I mean, in fact,
Speaker 1: she did a lot of the talking, and it got
Speaker 1: into a kind of who's talking now competition. She sort
Speaker 1: of reprimanded me huh, which I thought was kind of strange.
Speaker 2: Michael's memory spark one of my own. One day, during
Speaker 2: a fit of coughing, I asked doctor Muller for water.
Speaker 2: There was a sink in the corner of her room,
Speaker 2: but no cop I needed a glass of water, and she.
Speaker 1: She told you to go to the sink and use
Speaker 1: your hands right, cupped your hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you know?
Speaker 1: Because she told me to do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Hunching over the sink and cupping my hands together to
Speaker 2: catch the flow of water from doctor Muller's spout. I
Speaker 2: felt like someone from the Bible, like a bear. Until
Speaker 2: now I'd been alone with my b steal memories no more.
Speaker 2: But when I bring up the business of giving birth
Speaker 2: to myself, as in how nutty was all that, I'm
Speaker 2: surprised by his response.
Speaker 1: I can't remember ever saying anything like that to me.
Speaker 4: Hey you hi, Jonathan, Hey Judith, it's Judy.
Speaker 2: Actually, oh Judy, Okay, Judy, I'm sorry. Michael has put
Speaker 2: me in touch with yet another patient of doctor Muller's,
Speaker 2: the person who recommended he see her in the first place.
Speaker 2: Because unlike Michael, Morey and me, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: sounds like a Jewish folk trio. Judy loved doctor Mueller
Speaker 2: so much so that she always refers to her as
Speaker 2: the fantastic Doctor Mueller. Judy's a painter who began seeing
Speaker 2: doctor Mueller in the mid seventies because Judy's lack of
Speaker 2: confidence in her own work was threatening to derail her career.
Speaker 2: Hear me, yes, I could hear you, Nor how's that?
Speaker 1: Is that better? Is that better?
Speaker 5: Jonathan?
Speaker 2: I think it is. I think it's a little better.
Speaker 2: I think so. Judy says, doctor Muller's approach went beyond talk,
Speaker 2: beyond even the confines of the office.
Speaker 4: She went to my gallery to see my work, and
Speaker 4: the gallery dealer greeted her and showed her my work.
Speaker 2: Sure, Judy had talked in therapy about her self doubts
Speaker 2: as an artist, but she never would have anticipated doctor
Speaker 2: Muller actually going to see her work.
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, I had gotten a phone call from the gallery
Speaker 4: dealer saying, who is that to cut people off? I
Speaker 4: mean it was like really, but law, I mean it was.
Speaker 4: She had a very severe profile there.
Speaker 2: But the point is, Judy says that doctor Muller loved
Speaker 2: what she saw that day, and hearing that at that
Speaker 2: particular moment in her life from someone has no nonsense,
Speaker 2: as doctor Muller gave Judy the confidence she was looking for.
Speaker 4: I just accepted her, I guess idiosyncrasies because she was
Speaker 4: one hundred percent in my court. She stepped in in
Speaker 4: moments that were difficult.
Speaker 2: Judy experienced a different side of doctor Muller, one that
Speaker 2: I never could have even imagined. And the more we talk,
Speaker 2: the more I realize how different our experiences had been. Well,
Speaker 2: my doctor Muller had been largely inscrutable. Judy's doctor Muller
Speaker 2: loved the Beatles. Judy got to know a doctor Muller
Speaker 2: who'd always wanted to be an actor, who took vacations
Speaker 2: alone to go scuba diving, and described swimming alongside a
Speaker 2: manta ray as one of the most meaningful encounters of
Speaker 2: her life. Judy's Doctor Muller was the type of person
Speaker 2: who blushed after making a sly joke, who got a
Speaker 2: look of satisfaction when she hit on something deep. And
Speaker 2: this is why on the wall of Judy's art studio,
Speaker 2: beside pictures of her friends, her family, and her dogs,
Speaker 2: hangs a photograph of the fantastic doctor Mueller doctor Muller
Speaker 2: devised a treatment plan uniquely tailored to Judy. Judy had
Speaker 2: needed confidence and reassurance, and doctor Muller went out and
Speaker 2: gave it to her. If she'd done that for Judy,
Speaker 2: perhaps she'd also done the same for other patients. With
Speaker 2: that in mind, I asked Judy if during the course
Speaker 2: of her therapy, doctor Muller had ever mentioned giving birth
Speaker 2: to herself. But Judy has no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: After thirty years of obsessing, it on me that doctor
Speaker 2: Mueller might have tailored this notion of self birth specifically
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 6: My mother was a violent, bipolar, manic depressive.
Speaker 2: This is Judy's husband, Neil.
Speaker 6: Who also was very, very intelligent, brilliant. She's a painter,
Speaker 6: she was capable of a lot, but she was also
Speaker 6: very aggressive and unable to be a mother.
Speaker 2: Neil and Judy were newlyweds when Judy encouraged him to
Speaker 2: start seeing doctor Mueller. For the most part, things in
Speaker 2: Neil's life were going great. His career was taking off,
Speaker 2: and he finally felt settled. But when it came to
Speaker 2: dealing with his mother, Neil says he had no control.
Speaker 2: She'd phoned at all hours, sometimes even threatening suicide. One night,
Speaker 2: she phoned saying she was about to jump off her balcony,
Speaker 2: and so that very night, Neil rushed to the airport
Speaker 2: to fly to her. When he arrived at her home,
Speaker 2: he expected to see her body on the ground outside,
Speaker 2: but she was inside her apartment. She just wanted to
Speaker 2: see him. What finally pushed him to the breaking point
Speaker 2: was the time he called her from his hotel while
Speaker 2: away on a business trip.
Speaker 6: And she says, you're having an affair. And she gets
Speaker 6: into this vile bile about me having an affair and
Speaker 6: betraying my marriage. I'm going to tell your wife.
Speaker 2: Neil wasn't worried that his wife would believe his mother.
Speaker 2: He was worried about the Lanes' mother was willing to
Speaker 2: go to to assert control.
Speaker 6: I told my wife, I said, don't worry. I'm taking
Speaker 6: care of it. You know, she's crazy again. She's leaving
Speaker 6: these messages, but I'm making it better. I'm taking care
Speaker 6: of it or whatever. I said that, and my wife
Speaker 6: began to cry. She said, you'll never take care of it.
Speaker 6: This will never go away.
Speaker 2: Neil was a full grown man with no idea how
Speaker 2: to deal with his mother desperate, he played doctor Muller
Speaker 2: the threatening voice messages his mother had left.
Speaker 6: Doctor Muller just she bowed her head and she just
Speaker 6: looked down and she said, oh wow. She was like
Speaker 6: really like, oh wow. And she gave me a script.
Speaker 6: She said, okay, say this.
Speaker 2: Neil still has the original piece of paper upon which
Speaker 2: he dictated doctor Muller's words.
Speaker 6: This is a little kind of yellowye, you know, two
Speaker 6: by four pieces of paper. It says here, dear mother,
Speaker 6: what you've done has done damage to my life. From
Speaker 6: here on. You can sustain a relationship with me if
Speaker 6: you behave in a positive, constructive way. But at the
Speaker 6: moment it's better that we don't talk. I think that's
Speaker 6: kind of world. I mean, there's nothing really more.
Speaker 2: Neil acknowledges that it wasn't much, really, just a couple
Speaker 2: of lines, but for him, it was enough. It was
Speaker 2: the first time he'd ever dared talk to his mother
Speaker 2: this way.
Speaker 6: It was hard for me to read this, you know,
Speaker 6: I was scared.
Speaker 2: After he read it. Neil says he and his mother
Speaker 2: didn't speak for ten years.
Speaker 6: Which sounds insane for people who have normal parents. And
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, I'm always measuring this, but she
Speaker 6: knew I was never going to come back until she
Speaker 6: started to behave better.
Speaker 2: And so a decade passed and then one day.
Speaker 6: My mother called me, huh, and she was totally cooled out.
Speaker 6: She just said, I'm really sorry. Wow, I get it,
Speaker 6: I understand you were right. I please forgive me, Please
Speaker 6: forgive me, And her voice had all of that in it.
Speaker 6: It wasn't she was. She really meant it. And from
Speaker 6: that day forward, if you can believe it, we had
Speaker 6: a relationship after that, a loving one.
Speaker 4: Hm.
Speaker 6: She never lashed out or was aggressive. It was over
Speaker 6: and I had that relationship with her up until my
Speaker 6: mother passed away a couple of years ago. Whatever it
Speaker 6: was that never would have had those final few years
Speaker 6: with her. I have it because of the sessions with
Speaker 6: doctor Mueller. So imagine, excuse me, so imagine how I
Speaker 6: think about doctor Mueller.
Speaker 2: Toward the end of Neil's therapy, Doctor Mueller was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with cancer. It made her weak, and in the last
Speaker 2: year she would disappear during their sessions for long stretches
Speaker 2: in the bathroom.
Speaker 6: The last time I saw her, she she shook my
Speaker 6: hand goodbye. It was a very brave gracious, dignified thing.
Speaker 6: The way she did it, she said good luck. I
Speaker 6: mean she meant that. She was like saying good luck
Speaker 6: with all of you, all of you, Neil, like just
Speaker 6: good luck. And she looked at me in the eye
Speaker 6: and anyway, so she shook my hand, and that forever
Speaker 6: is like burnt into my brain.
Speaker 2: About a year after Neil stopped singing her, at the
Speaker 2: age of seventy seven, doctor Mueller died of cancer. As
Speaker 2: with me, doctor Muller wasn't very interested in learning about
Speaker 2: Neil's past, but unlike me, from time to time Neil
Speaker 2: did learn something about hers, particularly towards the end as
Speaker 2: the bigger issue and his therapy receded and a sort
Speaker 2: of friendship emerged. They just talked sometimes about a family
Speaker 2: life back in Germany.
Speaker 6: I think they were fairly wealthy. I think a very
Speaker 6: professional wealthy family. I think her father was a doctor.
Speaker 6: They had a beautiful home, many stories, and then the
Speaker 6: Nazis came and they absconded their home and used it
Speaker 6: for the headquarters. And her bitterness about the war is
Speaker 6: that as a German she was regarded as the enemy.
Speaker 6: So I think that kind of smarted. She constantly talked
Speaker 6: about Jews were not the only victims, and it was
Speaker 6: confusing for her to work with Jews. I think she
Speaker 6: never said that, but I think that, you know, she
Speaker 6: saw a lot of Jewish people in Montreal, and you know,
Speaker 6: in the attitude towards sermons. So I think that had
Speaker 6: to play back on her own wounds, because she exposed
Speaker 6: her wounds. And I think I always thought that her
Speaker 6: we were also we were a part of her therapy.
Speaker 2: Was her Jewish clientele merely a coincidence? Or were we,
Speaker 2: as Neil believed, a part of doctor Muller's own therapy.
Speaker 2: And if we were, what was she trying to heal?
Speaker 2: Was there some part of her past that she couldn't
Speaker 2: simply stick in a desk drawer and never bring up again?
Speaker 2: Will Doctor Muller had never been very interested in my past,
Speaker 2: I was now quite interested in hers. Doctor Muller's obituary
Speaker 2: mentions the son Bruno. He's a retired computer systems consultant.
Speaker 2: He agreed to talk but didn't want to be recorded.
Speaker 2: When I ask about his mother's life during the war,
Speaker 2: he tells me all he has are snippets the past.
Speaker 2: Bruno tells me didn't come up much as dinner conversation.
Speaker 2: Given his mother's feelings about the past, it makes sense
Speaker 2: what he does know is this. She was born Enna
Speaker 2: Corolla Kumpe, and she was an athlete. She played tennis
Speaker 2: competitively and was a strong enough swimmer to attempt an
Speaker 2: escape during the Allied invasion by swimming across the Rhine.
Speaker 2: As she swam, Bruno says, snipers from the other side
Speaker 2: fired at her. Bruno tells me his grandfather was a
Speaker 2: doctor who was eventually captured by the Russians and sent
Speaker 2: to a Soviet prison camp. These camps were notoriously brutal,
Speaker 2: with hundreds of thans thousands of German captives dying from violence, malnutrition,
Speaker 2: or forced labor. For years, doctor Mueller didn't know whether
Speaker 2: her father was alive or dead. On the day of
Speaker 2: an Allied bombing campaign that would devastate her hometown, doctor
Speaker 2: Muller's family didn't have time to make it to the
Speaker 2: local bomb shelter, which was fortunate because it was destroyed. Instead,
Speaker 2: the family hid in their garden shed, which turned out
Speaker 2: to be the only part of the house that survived
Speaker 2: the devastation.
Speaker 7: The bombing wasn't supposed to hit Efheren that hard.
Speaker 2: Annika is a journalist who lives near Ephren, where doctor
Speaker 2: Mueller grew up.
Speaker 7: They were actually aiming at the harbor and Cologne, but
Speaker 7: they had the order not to return with all the weapons,
Speaker 7: like get rid of all your bombs before you get
Speaker 7: back home. Don't go around flying with all the bombs,
Speaker 7: but just drop them somewhere, and so unfortunately they were
Speaker 7: dropped on Efevn.
Speaker 2: I'd commissioned Danika to find out anything she could about
Speaker 2: the Muellers, so she'd wandered the streets of Ephrin looking
Speaker 2: for traces of the family, but most of the people
Speaker 2: who lived in Ephin during the war are now gone.
Speaker 2: I asked if she was able to find out anything
Speaker 2: about doctor Muller's father, anything that might elaborate on his
Speaker 2: capture by the Russians.
Speaker 7: What I did come across, and that kind of struck me,
Speaker 7: was that he was a Nazi doctors' union at the time.
Speaker 7: So the doctors in this union, their job was it
Speaker 7: to tell people from a medical perspective why one race
Speaker 7: would be superior to another.
Speaker 2: Race, eugenics exactly. The mission of the National Social Asterbund,
Speaker 2: as the union was called, was to make sure doctors
Speaker 2: were aligned with the Nazi spirit. We can't know for
Speaker 2: certain that doctor Muller's father wasn't forced to join, but
Speaker 2: we do know that by the end of the war,
Speaker 2: half of the ninety thousand doctors in Germany were not
Speaker 2: members of the Asterbunt. In other words, you didn't have
Speaker 2: to be in the union to practice medicine.
Speaker 7: On top of that, there's this he wasn't just a member,
Speaker 7: but he is listed as like the kreismslitter, which, okay,
Speaker 7: how do I translate this?
Speaker 2: The rough translation is that doctor Muller's father was an
Speaker 2: upper level manager in the Nazi Physicians League. He oversaw
Speaker 2: a district of two million people. While it's impossible to
Speaker 2: know his private intentions and beliefs, given the prestige of
Speaker 2: his position, it's unlikely he was a secret hero of
Speaker 2: the resistance. A leader of his rank, let alone a
Speaker 2: medical leader, would at the very least have been aware
Speaker 2: of the systematic sterilization and execution of those deemed undesirable,
Speaker 2: among them the so called mentally ill. No wonder, doctor
Speaker 2: Mueller might have felt compelled to leave the past where
Speaker 2: it was. What are your recollections of Herbert and his wife.
Speaker 8: Oh good people. I'm proud to know how I'm glad
Speaker 8: to be their friend.
Speaker 2: Once again, I find myself speaking to a German psychiatrist
Speaker 2: in Montreal. His name is doctor Gert Morgenstern, and he
Speaker 2: was close to doctor Mueller and her husband Herbert, both
Speaker 2: his friends and colleagues. They would gather at doctor Morgenstern's
Speaker 2: home in a quiet neighborhood in Montreal, where doctor Muller's husband, Herbert,
Speaker 2: and he played music together, Herbert on the flute, doctor
Speaker 2: Morgenstern on the piano. Doctor Mueller would wander in and
Speaker 2: out listening to them play. She spent many hours in
Speaker 2: doctor Morgenstern's home. Doctor Morgenstern's son Mark explained at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the conversation that his father might not have
Speaker 2: much to offer. In recent years, his memory has begun
Speaker 2: to falter and much of Morgenstern's past has become lost
Speaker 2: to him. But since this might be the only chance
Speaker 2: I get to talk to someone who actually knew doctor Mueller,
Speaker 2: who can speak to her as a friend, we decide
Speaker 2: to give it a try. I asked doctor Morgenstern if
Speaker 2: he remembers spending time with the Muellers.
Speaker 8: Yes, I think so. It was pleasant and he looked
Speaker 8: forward to it.
Speaker 2: Mark says, as his father's memory fails, he's held on
Speaker 2: to the happy memories and allowed a lot of the
Speaker 2: painful ones to go. Like the Muellers, Doctor Morgenstern was
Speaker 2: a German who immigrated to Canada, but unlike the Muellers,
Speaker 2: he was a Jew. He fled Germany in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 2: a year before Christelnacht. You both immigrated from Germany. Was
Speaker 2: that a subject that came up?
Speaker 8: I don't remember it.
Speaker 2: Life during the war, No, I don't remember any of that.
Speaker 2: So she never talked with you about what she went
Speaker 2: through during the war.
Speaker 8: Not that I remember. What we talked about was what
Speaker 8: we were doing and what we were planning to do.
Speaker 2: Doctor Morgenstern says they never talked about the past, that
Speaker 2: they didn't talk about their religions, didn't even talk about psychology,
Speaker 2: and they never discussed Germany. Mark says that after fleeing,
Speaker 2: his father never spoke a word of German again. So
Speaker 2: if they didn't talk about the past, what did they
Speaker 2: do together?
Speaker 8: Make music and talk? What did you like to talk
Speaker 8: about the music we were playing.
Speaker 2: Because he was a fellow therapist as well as her friend,
Speaker 2: I asked him what he knows about doctor Muller's practice,
Speaker 2: her approach. Throughout our conversation. Doctor Morgenstern's answers are brief,
Speaker 2: a few words at most, But when I asked him
Speaker 2: about doctor Muller's insistence on self birth and whether it
Speaker 2: was an idea that she tailored to my situation or
Speaker 2: some obscure therapeutic method, doctor Morgenstern grows animated.
Speaker 8: Oh, she wasn't doing a method. She invented what she said.
Speaker 8: It's a continual process, an attitude toward life. In other words,
Speaker 8: you're actively producing your future in your presence. You have
Speaker 8: decisions to make, you have memories to select, and you're
Speaker 8: building your future that way. You never actually finished giving
Speaker 8: birth to yourself. It never is a completed act.
Speaker 2: While I'd taken my inability to give birth to myself
Speaker 2: as a failing of either myself or of doctor Mueller,
Speaker 2: it wasn't really. Maybe doctor Mueller telling me over and
Speaker 2: over that birth was imminent was her way of saying,
Speaker 2: there is no end point. It's just living, and that's
Speaker 2: the point. Ana Corolla Kumpel, the daughter of a doctor
Speaker 2: who served a regime that treated the mentally ill as
Speaker 2: a blight upon humanity, left Germany to become Ana Corolla Mueller,
Speaker 2: who became not only a doctor but a psychiatrist, and
Speaker 2: one who tended to Jews or anyone else who needed
Speaker 2: her help. You are not your past. You are not
Speaker 2: your father or your family, or at least you do
Speaker 2: not have to be. You are the thing that you make,
Speaker 2: which is a lesson Doctor Muller must have had to
Speaker 2: learn for herself before she could pass it on to others,
Speaker 2: before she could pass it on to me. Even though
Speaker 2: I still don't have what doctor Muller might call a philosophy,
Speaker 2: I eventually came to see that what's the use was
Speaker 2: never the right way question. The most important things in
Speaker 2: life have no use. And maybe this is the closest
Speaker 2: I've come to words to live by.
Speaker 5: Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
Speaker 5: that the last month's rent is skating with the damage
Speaker 5: to pros, take this moment. Thank you, I too.
Speaker 6: Acid.
Speaker 2: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me Jonathan Goldstein
Speaker 2: along with Stevie Lane b a Parker and Khalila Holt.
Speaker 2: The show is edited by Jorge just Special thanks to
Speaker 2: Emily Condon, Tim Howard, Annako Vitzel, Sir Richard Evans, doctor
Speaker 2: Robert Proctor, Alex Bloomberg, Luisa Beck, Emmanuel Barry, David Berman,
Speaker 2: and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original
Speaker 2: music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 2: and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on
Speaker 2: our website, gimletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song
Speaker 2: is by the Weaker Bands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and
Speaker 2: our ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on
Speaker 2: Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimlipmedia
Speaker 2: dot com. You can listen for free on Spotify or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts.