Speaker 1: Today. It's great to have Irvin Yallam on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Y'alm is emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School
Speaker 1: of Medicine and author of many internationally best selling books,
Speaker 1: including Love's Executioner, The Gift of Therapy, Becoming Myself, and
Speaker 1: When Nietzsche Wept. He was the recipient of the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four Edward Strecker Award and the nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: Foundations Fund Prize in Psychiatry. His textbooks in Patient Group
Speaker 1: Psychotherapy and Existential Psychotherapy are classics and have influenced me
Speaker 1: personally deeply. Doctor Yalm lives in Palo Alto, California. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on the Psychology Podcast today. Hi, welcome.
Speaker 1: When I announced on Twitter that you were going to
Speaker 1: be my podcast, everyone was freaking out. You know, this
Speaker 1: is this is such a such a delight. You're you're
Speaker 1: such a legend in the field. And I really want
Speaker 1: to capture today if anyone can capture the essence of
Speaker 1: a person or of a life, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to see how much I can capture that today. And
Speaker 1: and uh, you're really you're really truly special. So do
Speaker 1: you mind if we start a little bit in your childhood,
Speaker 1: because when I was looking into that, I read that
Speaker 1: you grew up in a segregated city in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: In a poor black neighborhood, and that you said that
Speaker 1: life on the streets for you were perilous. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me a little bit about your childhood there and
Speaker 1: how you took refuge in books? Well, I I my
Speaker 1: father had a little grocery and liquor story. He had
Speaker 1: come over from ah that's little Russia named Steltz, and
Speaker 1: I lived there the first fourteen years of my life.
Speaker 1: There were no other white people there except for a
Speaker 1: few store owners. Like the barber of few doors down
Speaker 1: was white. He always he always greeted me, hey you boy,
Speaker 1: every morning. And I had to walk a couple of
Speaker 1: blocks to my school. I was just on the edge
Speaker 1: of the school, so I bite your walk to school.
Speaker 1: I played with some of the black children in the neighborhood,
Speaker 1: but my parents would let me allow a little bit
Speaker 1: and allow me to bring them into the house. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in the library. I went
Speaker 1: there weekly, took home all of us. I was permitted
Speaker 1: maybe six, right, I don't remember. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of reading at that time, and my parents were hard workers.
Speaker 1: They were in the store from eight in the morning
Speaker 1: to eight at night and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.
Speaker 1: So they had a very hard life. And that's that's
Speaker 1: where I grew up. At fourteen, my mother decided that
Speaker 1: she wanted a better home. She went out and bought
Speaker 1: a home. My father never even solid till we got there,
Speaker 1: and we moved into the nicest section of town. Which
Speaker 1: where And that was where I met my wife at
Speaker 1: the age of fourteen. Yeah, so you were in the
Speaker 1: chess club, right, You were a big nerd in school,
Speaker 1: is that right? And you right? The only thing I
Speaker 1: did with my parents that I really enjoyed and loved
Speaker 1: was Sunday mornings playing chess with my father. It was
Speaker 1: a pretty good chess player, and I did that every morning,
Speaker 1: every every Sunday. That was a real treat for me,
Speaker 1: and I got to when I got to high school,
Speaker 1: there was a chess team playing out of the high schools.
Speaker 1: So I was a member of the team for three
Speaker 1: years and played the last year and a half or
Speaker 1: so at first board. Right, and around fourteen fifteen, I
Speaker 1: mean you described yourself as a bit of a shy kid.
Speaker 1: But you said when you met your wife at a party,
Speaker 1: can you kind of tell me about that? You said
Speaker 1: you went right, something came over you, like you were
Speaker 1: extroverted all of a sudden or something. Well. I met
Speaker 1: someone one of the at the Bowling Alley. It's kind
Speaker 1: of one of the bowling alley bombs there, and I
Speaker 1: enjoyed gambling with him and playing in bowling, and he
Speaker 1: said there's a party over Maryland Conning Towns afterwards you
Speaker 1: you'd like to come. I didn't know who that was,
Speaker 1: but I went with him. It was a few blocks
Speaker 1: walk from the bowling Alley and there's a huge mob
Speaker 1: of children trying to get to the front door. He said,
Speaker 1: let's go in through the window. So I opened the
Speaker 1: window and I crawled through and houses right right. But
Speaker 1: I saw Marylin across the I thought she was very beautiful.
Speaker 1: She's tiny, she's under five foot tall, never weighed more
Speaker 1: than a hundred pounds. And went after her and I
Speaker 1: I told her that I just called through your window,
Speaker 1: can't big anything else to say. I got her phone
Speaker 1: number and we had my first date. It was something
Speaker 1: called the Hot Chops in Washington. And two later and
Speaker 1: over hot French Sunday, she told me that she had
Speaker 1: not been to school that day. She skipped school. And
Speaker 1: I said, you skipped school? How could you do that?
Speaker 1: Because what I really liked about her was that she
Speaker 1: was so much in love with books like me. She said,
Speaker 1: she read Going with the Window and kept her up
Speaker 1: all night long. She just stick together to go to
Speaker 1: h to go to school. I think I was. I
Speaker 1: was absolutely implored by this and someone who loved books
Speaker 1: as much as I did. And I never looked over
Speaker 1: after that. You were married more than sixty five years?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yes? For sixty five I married. Let's see,
Speaker 1: I was in I was in medical school, so yeah,
Speaker 1: at least sixty five years. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's rare. I went to medical school at George Washington.
Speaker 1: She went to Wellesley. I had I'd heard. I looked
Speaker 1: into it. There was an open spot and at Boston
Speaker 1: University of Medical School. You usually they're not transfer medical schools,
Speaker 1: but I heard there was an extra spot and uh,
Speaker 1: and they accepted me at Boston University too, so I
Speaker 1: could be here in Maryland. And so that's that's why
Speaker 1: I at one year at GW in three years at
Speaker 1: bu AW. I didn't know those details. Uh so you
Speaker 1: were also, you know, at a very young age. I
Speaker 1: guess death was something that you saw close right to
Speaker 1: both your parents deaths. You were present at both of them,
Speaker 1: Is that right there? Quite unexpected? Yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was president of both my parents. That that's right. My
Speaker 1: I was president. Also. My father's a severe caronary when
Speaker 1: I was a teenager and we we all had to
Speaker 1: wait to the middle of that. I to a position
Speaker 1: hanging by doctor Manchester. Uh. He was. He was very
Speaker 1: nice to me, rubbed my hair, took care of my father,
Speaker 1: released some of his pain, and my father lives for
Speaker 1: a few more years, although he was very limited in
Speaker 1: what he could do. But I think it was at
Speaker 1: that point that I decided to become a physician. Like
Speaker 1: to someone else, what the kind of relief that he
Speaker 1: gave me by appearing in that house and being kind
Speaker 1: to me. Did you have a fear of mortality? Did
Speaker 1: you did these preoccupations concern you as a child, Like
Speaker 1: when did they start really coming to uh to the
Speaker 1: fore in your consciousness? Preoccupations at that not? Not for
Speaker 1: some period of time. No, I wasn't aware of that,
Speaker 1: uh very much at that time, although I you know,
Speaker 1: it was with my with with my father when he died,
Speaker 1: but no, it was later on in life and that
Speaker 1: I had a lot of turns about about that. Mhm. Roughly,
Speaker 1: when in your career did you pivot to you know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to I want to see the origin story
Speaker 1: of the founding of this existential psychotherapy field that you
Speaker 1: have contribute to so much. You know what, what were
Speaker 1: some of the you know why, like why you were?
Speaker 1: Why were you? How did you become interested in those issues? Well,
Speaker 1: personally I was. I was a massive reader and everything
Speaker 1: that I could find at that point when I started, uh,
Speaker 1: when I started my my residency at Johns Hopkins. I
Speaker 1: think that was when I wade into roll a Mazed,
Speaker 1: roll a Maze book on exist existence. I have that
Speaker 1: on my shelf somewhere, uh, and I read that from
Speaker 1: cover to cover, and I was absolutely persuaded. Mhm. If
Speaker 1: I were going to do what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: in this field, I had to learn something about philosophy.
Speaker 1: I had zero courses in college and that nothing but
Speaker 1: pre made so as a as a first year resident,
Speaker 1: I enrolled in a basic philosophy course at g W
Speaker 1: and I went three eatings the week uh to to
Speaker 1: introduce myself to philosophy. So that was that was first
Speaker 1: my real beginning with that. And then coincidentally Roll may
Speaker 1: move to California and you were able to get psychotherapy
Speaker 1: with him. Right. Well, what happened was that I got drafted.
Speaker 1: Every every MD was was you have to signed if
Speaker 1: you want to go to medical school, to sign a
Speaker 1: statement you will go into the service. Afterwards, I went
Speaker 1: for two years. The Army sent me. At first I
Speaker 1: was going to Germany, and then the last moment a
Speaker 1: spot opened up in Hawaii that they needed someone. So
Speaker 1: it was a great blessing for me, so I want
Speaker 1: So I went to Hawaii then and after I planned
Speaker 1: to go back to Washington, and my wife leaned on
Speaker 1: me pretty heavily, and she both of us wanted to
Speaker 1: say in Hawaii it was lovely and San Francisco was
Speaker 1: as close as we could get to Hawaii. So I
Speaker 1: for positions at UCSF and at Stanford, and to Stanford first.
Speaker 1: I liked that so much I did didn't continue. I
Speaker 1: got offered a position there at Stanford, so I took
Speaker 1: that position. I also had a ticket to Illinois. I
Speaker 1: was going to go visit Carl Rogers is another place
Speaker 1: to say as to see, but I never took that
Speaker 1: trip because I got a very good position at Stanford.
Speaker 1: And when I was at Stanford, I had a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of freedom. I could do what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And I began starting being interested very in group therapy.
Speaker 1: And one time I saw a woman there who had
Speaker 1: metastatic breast cancer, and she came to see me and
Speaker 1: asked me if I could leave a group of patients
Speaker 1: like her, and I found her very persuasive and I did,
Speaker 1: and I lived this group for many years. Everyone in
Speaker 1: the group died and new members came into the group died,
Speaker 1: But eventually it stirred up a lot of death anxiety
Speaker 1: for me, for a young young resident to be saying
Speaker 1: this much as much death. And I learned that Rollo
Speaker 1: May had just moved to California, and so I started
Speaker 1: seeing him. It was very helpful to me. I met
Speaker 1: with him in pres about a year and a half.
Speaker 1: I think I was helped by that. Afterwards, I became
Speaker 1: close friends with him, very close friends, and we met often.
Speaker 1: I was with him when he died. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, but he did tell me a few years
Speaker 1: later that although he had helped my death anxiety, I
Speaker 1: had made his a lot worse. He was about twenty
Speaker 1: two years older than I was, or I was facing
Speaker 1: these issues are far bi long before I did. So
Speaker 1: that was my first contact. I started doing other groups
Speaker 1: groups to breed people also during during that time, other groups,
Speaker 1: all sorts of different groups. Then and eventually started textbook
Speaker 1: about groups therapy. Well you did you know the theory
Speaker 1: and practice of group psychotherapy is a classic. Why do
Speaker 1: you think that book did so well? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time a pretty good I
Speaker 1: wrote it six different times. I try to get a
Speaker 1: lot of stories in there and stories there. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was the stories that but the last vision was that
Speaker 1: I did with a co the co therapy is a
Speaker 1: co leader and they Mullen Lesh as the president of
Speaker 1: the Group Therapy Association there now. But it was something
Speaker 1: like eight hundred and fifty pages and a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand references. It's a backbreaking test to do that six times.
Speaker 1: Although he did a lot of the hard work heavy
Speaker 1: lifting this last time, Well you have said, I have
Speaker 1: a quote from me here. He said, I have an
Speaker 1: insatiable thirst for stories, especially those that I can use
Speaker 1: in my teaching and writing. You know, So what led
Speaker 1: up to the writing of Love with Executioners, which was
Speaker 1: an international bestseller and and had really riveting stories about
Speaker 1: your therapy practice? Like why do you decide to write
Speaker 1: that book? I don't remember that. I don't remember how
Speaker 1: I started doing that. I wish I undoubtedly I wrote
Speaker 1: it when I was on sabbatical. I took it for
Speaker 1: advantage of very possible sabbatical. We could went to some
Speaker 1: far off place. Once we went to the Tavistat Krank
Speaker 1: when I was writing the group therapy book. I went
Speaker 1: there because of the group program there. Other times I
Speaker 1: went to desert islands. I liked to do underwater scoo
Speaker 1: diving and spear finishing. So Marilyn, my wife, she she
Speaker 1: was a Frankophile. I got a PhD in French and
Speaker 1: German literature, so she always chose to go to Paris
Speaker 1: her half the year. So we'd split the year half
Speaker 1: in Paris, half on a on a desert island. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about this chestnut. Do you
Speaker 1: remember that one you talking here about four givens of
Speaker 1: human existence, freedom, isolation, meetinglessness, and death. Do you mind
Speaker 1: just wow Copperate in nineteen eighty So I was born
Speaker 1: one year before this came out in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Could you go through the four and I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear it in the legend's own words, the description of
Speaker 1: what they mean to you, each of these four givens. Oh,
Speaker 1: I wrote that book alone. I'm ago. So we certainly
Speaker 1: everybody's dealing with death, everyone's thinking about it, and everyone's
Speaker 1: right now. But I have worked with a lot of
Speaker 1: people with death anxiety, and so that's the one that
Speaker 1: I started with, and I had my own experience with it.
Speaker 1: When you think of my death anxiety and leading all
Speaker 1: these groups and seeing so many patients die, my father, I,
Speaker 1: my mother, I, I was with them at the time.
Speaker 1: So I've been working with a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have a great deal of death anxiety. In fact, over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, been an enormous number of people.
Speaker 1: I'm doing these single profession consultations, and a significant number
Speaker 1: of them have to do with people who are loaded
Speaker 1: up with death anxiety. The formula has evolved for me
Speaker 1: which is that I think there seems to be a
Speaker 1: good relationship, a strong relationship rather between the amount of
Speaker 1: death anxiety that you have in the amount of regrets
Speaker 1: you have about the way you've lived your life and
Speaker 1: the people that I see very often who are way
Speaker 1: down with death anxiety. I have a lot of regrets
Speaker 1: about what they've done and what they've not done with
Speaker 1: their life, and there seems to be a relationship. So
Speaker 1: I often look at that very much and look at
Speaker 1: what's stopping them even now from trying to do what
Speaker 1: they really wanted to do in life. And I think
Speaker 1: that's certainly been very true for me. The time I've
Speaker 1: faced death the most by far was when my wife
Speaker 1: died right in front of me, and I've been in
Speaker 1: grief about her death ever since the last year and
Speaker 1: a half. But I know that one of the things
Speaker 1: that I did after my wife died was light down
Speaker 1: in my bedroom and I sort of looked at all
Speaker 1: the books on my bookshelf, so all the books I've written,
Speaker 1: and began reading them the first time. I read them
Speaker 1: one by one, every single one of them, and it
Speaker 1: was very very good therapy for me. Was I was
Speaker 1: very pleased with those with those books and a lot
Speaker 1: of pride in them. Uh, this is one you you
Speaker 1: were reading, right, Yes, I was certainly one staring at
Speaker 1: the sun. But it's a it's a motifa a lot
Speaker 1: of the books of stories as well. In fact, I
Speaker 1: came across one story, almost to my surprise. I looked
Speaker 1: at a story called Mama and the Medium of Life.
Speaker 1: I started to read that. Into my shock, I came
Speaker 1: across the story maybe second or third story, which was, uh,
Speaker 1: eight Advanced Lessons in the Therapy of Grief. And I
Speaker 1: had absolutely forgotten that I written that story. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I read that with tremendous interest. And it was a
Speaker 1: story about a very angry, damnure professor whose husband had
Speaker 1: died and before that, up too long before that, her
Speaker 1: brother had died too. And we did a lot of arguing,
Speaker 1: and she'd sit there and say, oh, you're sitting there
Speaker 1: and that like this nice pink striped shirt of yours,
Speaker 1: nothing ever happens to you. You know, you don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm feeling. And I'd argue with her and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I got to be depressed. To work with a press patient,
Speaker 1: I schizophrenic. To work with the schizophrenic so we'd be
Speaker 1: almost yelling at each other after a while. But she
Speaker 1: got better. Took her well over a year, but I
Speaker 1: was able to help her. Although now as I read
Speaker 1: that story and go back to our therapy, well I
Speaker 1: think she was right. You know, I didn't know how
Speaker 1: she felt. Now I do after having gone through this
Speaker 1: kind of numbness and loss of the absolute center of
Speaker 1: my vitality. So that was very very helpful to me.
Speaker 1: I'm rambling here. Where were be back when we go
Speaker 1: back to where you were with your question what are
Speaker 1: the forgivens of human existence? But you know you were
Speaker 1: talking about death. That you started with death. You know,
Speaker 1: if you get your villa going about death, you can
Speaker 1: go a long time on that topic. The idea of
Speaker 1: meaning of I've that interesting quite a bit some time
Speaker 1: teaching at Stanford in Vienna and I met Victor Frankel.
Speaker 1: Had a very very long and strong encounter with Victor Frankel,
Speaker 1: and it was very interested in his book about meaning
Speaker 1: the meaning of life. And he was a tortured soul. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a tortured soul. He had gone through just
Speaker 1: what he had gone through was so awful, and he
Speaker 1: he was struggling all the time to recover and to
Speaker 1: make himself well known amount to Stanford. Uh And he
Speaker 1: did some lectures in my department. But he never felt
Speaker 1: very strong about himself. He always felted himself a great
Speaker 1: deal and he was he was tortured to the end. Mhm,
Speaker 1: someone who lived through that horrific thing. Let's see. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm cus, I'm just curious that you know the other
Speaker 1: other humanistic psychology legends. Who else did you cross paths with?
Speaker 1: Did you? Did you ever meet Carl Rodgers? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: I met Carl Rodgers and spent some time with him
Speaker 1: down in southern in southern California. I like Carl Rodgers
Speaker 1: very much. A fine man. Ah maybe a little too
Speaker 1: much wine sometimes, but a very fine man. I admired
Speaker 1: him terribly. Uh And I spent some time I met
Speaker 1: uh well, John John Balby, John Bowlby, and I switched
Speaker 1: offices when I went to have a stock. He came
Speaker 1: to the US and I had some overlap time with him,
Speaker 1: and he was a he was a fine man. And
Speaker 1: Freud's daughter just down the street and uh and Freud
Speaker 1: was just down on the street from the tennis stock.
Speaker 1: So I attended almost weekly her her seven hours and
Speaker 1: got to know her a little bit. She was an amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing lady. Roger. Did you re meet Karen Horney? No? No,
Speaker 1: I I would have liked to have known her me too.
Speaker 1: I like her work very much. I I uh, I
Speaker 1: think the two people I read with the most interest
Speaker 1: during my residency training were, uh, We're called where Karen Horney?
Speaker 1: And oh who else? My memory is taking away? And
Speaker 1: Sarah Harry sax Sullivan. It takes me about Harry sax
Speaker 1: Sullivan was very important to me. He's a terrible writer,
Speaker 1: but what he had to say was important. He so
Speaker 1: he and Kary Horner and I both introduced me to
Speaker 1: the interpersonal model, which is so absolutely crucial when you're
Speaker 1: doing group therapy and you're you're working hard on how
Speaker 1: these eight people this you're relating to one another. The
Speaker 1: group therapy really is an interpersonal kind of approach to therapy.
Speaker 1: So I think these are the There's also a teachers
Speaker 1: who told stories and Hopkins and I loved listening to
Speaker 1: the story. But I don't think I'm going to get
Speaker 1: this one, so the next stands are no problem. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you ever meet Abraham as well? No, no, I
Speaker 1: never did. What do you to do? You would have
Speaker 1: liked to write? Did? Did you like his work? Did
Speaker 1: you you know? Did it influence you at all? I
Speaker 1: didn't bring He was not one of my favorite writers,
Speaker 1: but I did like his work. I read it, but
Speaker 1: I didn't reread it, and don't remember too much of it. Now. Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a clinical psychologist. I don't think he ever
Speaker 1: did clinical work. But you know self, the ideas of
Speaker 1: self actualization obviously we're big in the sixties. I had
Speaker 1: a good chairman at Hopkins when I was a resident
Speaker 1: named John Whitehorn. And another man that influenced me a
Speaker 1: great deea was Jerome Frank Jam Frank was a wonderful person.
Speaker 1: He's certainly introduced me to group therapy. I'd had written
Speaker 1: the book about the group therapy early on, so I
Speaker 1: considered him my mentoring group therapy, and the residents all
Speaker 1: watched his group for the first three or four weeks
Speaker 1: of their residency, but I found it so interesting. I
Speaker 1: watched him for several months, and he invited me to
Speaker 1: come in and co lead the group with them, So
Speaker 1: I considered him my group my group therapy teacher. Yeah, beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the people that field I've known very well. So death, meaninglessness,
Speaker 1: then isolation, isolation. You talk about existential isolation. Can you
Speaker 1: can you just talk a little about how what what
Speaker 1: is existential isolation? Well, you know, I know I've never
Speaker 1: used a term in later years, tell me what I
Speaker 1: wrote about it. It's so long ago. You you made
Speaker 1: a distinction between uh having loneliness, uh, the kind of
Speaker 1: loldliness that you have from a partner, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: or not having a lot of partners around. But existential
Speaker 1: illness is also feeling a strange from yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: like being uh not really in touch with your your existence. Yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I I take that one very seriously too. And Rollo
Speaker 1: ma was was my my favorite discussing about these issues
Speaker 1: and existential is a fine man. Mm hmm. He's I mean,
Speaker 1: he's he's one of my heroes. I put him up
Speaker 1: there with you in terms of my heroes. You were
Speaker 1: there at Rolla means deathbed. I mean that's incredible. What
Speaker 1: was did he say? What were his like last words?
Speaker 1: I mean, like what was he? What was he? You know,
Speaker 1: what kind of state was he was? He? A lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of death anxiety, wasn't speaking when I was.
Speaker 1: When I was there, he was in he was in
Speaker 1: a coma. I was with his wife, Georgia, and he
Speaker 1: had had a looks like he had severe cv A
Speaker 1: and and didn't speak. And uh, I did my best
Speaker 1: to help Georgia get it through this. He's still alive
Speaker 1: and it is in a residential establishment for the elderly
Speaker 1: in Palmata, very near me. I've seen her from time
Speaker 1: to time. Wow, do you remember her? Do you remember
Speaker 1: your last conversation with Roald? Do you remember one of
Speaker 1: your last conversations with him? What you guys talked about? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Long ago? Fair enough. I don't remember what I had
Speaker 1: for breakfast yesterday. So look, it's okay, no worries, uh
Speaker 1: and the other I just think it's Look, you have
Speaker 1: to understand from my perspective, like rolld May is my heir,
Speaker 1: you're my hero. Role May is my hero. To hear
Speaker 1: about YouTube talking to me is a big deal. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, give me, give me gossip all those I
Speaker 1: do know that when I did something with Rollald May,
Speaker 1: that when I when I saw him, I take the sessions. Wow,
Speaker 1: and you still have the tapes. That's another that's another story.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I taped the sessions because I had a
Speaker 1: long drive there. It was an hour drive. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the next week, on my way to there, I listened
Speaker 1: to the type of the previous session. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a wonderful way to use therapy because it really
Speaker 1: made it almost a continuous process. Asked patients to do
Speaker 1: that too. I had all the tapes in a in
Speaker 1: my studio and went away to London or went away
Speaker 1: somewhere for a year sabbatical. It came back and somebody
Speaker 1: was doing some revision work that I asked him to do,
Speaker 1: and the tapes were gone to the role they're lost them.
Speaker 1: I don't know, wow ended up in the dump so
Speaker 1: long ago. Anyway, that that that is really truly incredible.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean I had your your book A
Speaker 1: Matter of Death and Life, and what a profoundly touching book.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you wrote that with your wife.
Speaker 1: You had alternating chapters. Question in my mind that what
Speaker 1: I can talk about that one that's your that's that's
Speaker 1: that's that's your latest. Uh yeah, I know it's it
Speaker 1: is uh profoundly touching. I mean it's hard to read
Speaker 1: that book and not feel what you were feeling, and
Speaker 1: you know, keeping like the tissues by by the side
Speaker 1: of my You know, as I'm reading your book, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine was to like go to go through it. Look,
Speaker 1: you and Marilyn, you had such a special special relationship
Speaker 1: for for so many years. Can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about Marilyn. Can you tell me, you know,
Speaker 1: tell the listeners who haven't read the book, just like
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about you know what? You know?
Speaker 1: Who she who? She was? Well, she was this little
Speaker 1: girl who I called through the window of her house.
Speaker 1: He was very, very bright. She was always as the
Speaker 1: party at every class she was in. She early on
Speaker 1: got interested in We went to the same high school.
Speaker 1: You high she got very interested in French studies. She
Speaker 1: spoke very very good French. And when she ran the
Speaker 1: school newspaper again the All Victoria her high school class too,
Speaker 1: got a scholarship to go to Wellesley in French studies.
Speaker 1: So she majored in French studies, in German studies, got
Speaker 1: her PhD in Comparative literature French and German literature ed Hopkins.
Speaker 1: All this done with the husband, who, as she said
Speaker 1: many times, mispronounced every French word he ever came his way.
Speaker 1: I could not the language. It was very important for
Speaker 1: me during those days. Used to get old a's in
Speaker 1: college so I could get into medical school. There was
Speaker 1: a very strong five percent quota for Jewish for Jewish boys,
Speaker 1: uh get into medical school, so I I had to
Speaker 1: get old as. The only being I ever got in
Speaker 1: college was in German. I remember that I used to
Speaker 1: sing opera in German. I'm back back in college, but
Speaker 1: that is ron. Yeah, yeah. Ma. Marilyn got her doctorate
Speaker 1: at Hopkins while I was getting my residency training there,
Speaker 1: and at that point then we went to the Army.
Speaker 1: I taught. I was as chiaches the Army. He had
Speaker 1: a teaching job at University YI for two years teaching French.
Speaker 1: When I came to Stanford, she was all, they don't
Speaker 1: take back faculty wives. So she got a She got
Speaker 1: a job teaching French to a California State university at
Speaker 1: Hayward and then they opened up a woman center a
Speaker 1: few years later, and they and she came over to
Speaker 1: take over the women's center there. So she was a
Speaker 1: little dissatisfied that she couldn't continue her German and her
Speaker 1: French but but she was very interested in feminist studies
Speaker 1: as well, and she did that till to the end
Speaker 1: of her life and enjoyed a great deal. And she
Speaker 1: eventually she started to write, not not as soon as
Speaker 1: I did, but once I won a fellowship to a blagio.
Speaker 1: It was a Rockefeller fellowship, and what they did was
Speaker 1: a give American scholars scholars from other countries as well,
Speaker 1: and it would give me a place for my family
Speaker 1: apartment and then a separate writing studio. So all those
Speaker 1: writers had this writing studio. I think it was two
Speaker 1: months or so and Maryland was talking to me. She
Speaker 1: was doing a study of women French witnesses of the
Speaker 1: French Revolution and a lot of them had written about this,
Speaker 1: and she was telling me about that, and she was
Speaker 1: very interested in and I said to her, you know,
Speaker 1: you might have a book in that, uh, And she's
Speaker 1: even more excited about that. So we went down to
Speaker 1: the the managed office whether there may be an extra
Speaker 1: writing studio that she could have as well. No writer's
Speaker 1: wife ever had a studio there. And then we were
Speaker 1: informed by that about the secretary there. No writers wives
Speaker 1: don't get don't get the studios. But just then the
Speaker 1: head of the Loggio walked in there. He said, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you know, there is a treehouse just in
Speaker 1: the woods, ten minutes into the woods, and we took
Speaker 1: a walk outside and there's a huge, huge tree with
Speaker 1: a little ladder going up, and had a very nice
Speaker 1: studio there. So she stayed the whole two months, hardly
Speaker 1: came down and got started her first book. And after
Speaker 1: that when she she matched the book for a book
Speaker 1: she was. She and I were always writing books, helping
Speaker 1: her some except with her books, her being much more
Speaker 1: helpful and very very good editor with my with my work.
Speaker 1: This looks like you both supported each other very much.
Speaker 1: Even when she died, she just just finished the book
Speaker 1: that as it came out shortly after that. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: it was like an edited book. Right. There's a book
Speaker 1: about children of World War two, of children around the
Speaker 1: country and with their experiences had been in World Wars
Speaker 1: who went to away in Paris in Italy, you know,
Speaker 1: And so she had long interviews with these children and
Speaker 1: with the world and to them. Oh good, I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that came out. There was it was unclear in
Speaker 1: the book whether or not the person found the latest
Speaker 1: draft of it on the laptop or not. And I
Speaker 1: was wondering about that. Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is how much I care. This is how much I
Speaker 1: was on the edge of my seat about that. You know,
Speaker 1: when you read these kinds of books, you know, you
Speaker 1: you feel like a certain kinship to people you know,
Speaker 1: like you and your wife. You know, you you let
Speaker 1: us into your life, you know. I guess that's the
Speaker 1: beauty of writing the kind of book you did it
Speaker 1: to'll live forever? Right, Yeah, sorry, go on, Well, I
Speaker 1: love I loved writing, and I after a while, I
Speaker 1: never went very long without it, you know. And and
Speaker 1: it's an interesting aspect of my life right now. Can
Speaker 1: I go into that a little bit? Oh, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, about a year after,
Speaker 1: about the time that Roland got sick, I was very
Speaker 1: much aware of a memory of operation, you know, just
Speaker 1: like my having seen you once before. But remember it's
Speaker 1: a little about it. The implicit part of the feelings
Speaker 1: I have for these people are there. So my memory
Speaker 1: was my memory was definitely getting into difficulty, and I
Speaker 1: decided I really didn't want to continue doing ongoing therapy.
Speaker 1: Then I just couldn't trust my memory to remember what
Speaker 1: happened earlier on, I decided to try something else that.
Speaker 1: I decided to do a single session consultation, uh, because
Speaker 1: I felt I could do that well. I've done a
Speaker 1: few of them, and I thought that I didn't have
Speaker 1: a real knack at doing that, so I put it
Speaker 1: to put a notice up on my Facebook page. I
Speaker 1: heard the real on my Facebook page, you use it
Speaker 1: very much. But I put a notice up saying that
Speaker 1: I was offering these consultations single session consultations. Within forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, I had about five hundred letters by email.
Speaker 1: And I have never stopped, you know, every day at
Speaker 1: fifty a day, so I'm still scheduled up every day
Speaker 1: of the week to see one consultation. And I began
Speaker 1: seeing these patients. I love doing that, and every i'd
Speaker 1: say five ten patients that I saw, a story began
Speaker 1: to emerge, a story that I thought would be very
Speaker 1: interesting for beginning therapists to teach them some fundamental aspect
Speaker 1: of therapy. So I've been doing that ever since Marylyn
Speaker 1: died and I'm just right now at book length. But
Speaker 1: I can't bear the idea of stopping, because what am
Speaker 1: I going to do if I'm not writing that's I
Speaker 1: just feel absolutely lost at that. I think, continue for
Speaker 1: a while and see maybe maybe take out some of
Speaker 1: the weaker ones. So that's that's been my life project
Speaker 1: since my wife died. That's that's great. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't wait to read that one as well. So are
Speaker 1: you seeing new You're not seeing new patients? Correct, you've retired. Well,
Speaker 1: I see a patient every day, a new patient every
Speaker 1: day except for one session. But you you write in
Speaker 1: your book that there was a moment where I thought
Speaker 1: you said you decided you were you're going to retire,
Speaker 1: when that that woman came to your house and she
Speaker 1: said that she didn't so you. But so you didn't
Speaker 1: retireing therapy. But I started doing these single sessions. Gotcha? Gotcha? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm glad, Like I want to be consulted.
Speaker 1: I want a consultation by you. That's wonderful. I mean,
Speaker 1: what what advice do you have? You know? Just think,
Speaker 1: just think that you have hundreds of young psychotherapists listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast right now. I mean, what words of
Speaker 1: wisdom can you give everyone? Well, one of the first
Speaker 1: things I will say to them is I've always said
Speaker 1: to my students, one of the most important parts of
Speaker 1: your training is getting into therapy. I'm perfectly maybe getting
Speaker 1: into therapy more than once. I take that very seriously.
Speaker 1: I see a lot of people in these consultations who
Speaker 1: are therapists who have not been in therapy, and I
Speaker 1: will lean on them very heavily to do that find
Speaker 1: to find a therapist for them. Also, I think it's
Speaker 1: very important to be in group therapy. You learn a
Speaker 1: whole different set ideas and skills in group therapy, so
Speaker 1: I urge them to be in in in therapy groups
Speaker 1: as well. And there are a good number of I started.
Speaker 1: I didn't start. A couple of us started a therapy
Speaker 1: group of other therapists, no leader, but that group went
Speaker 1: on for like thirty five years. I stopped it just recently.
Speaker 1: That's not for me. Recently, when my wife died, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to continue. But I was in that group.
Speaker 1: It was quite a wonderful group. It met for our
Speaker 1: and a half I think we made every other week
Speaker 1: for all those years. Tendance was fantastic and it was
Speaker 1: quite supportive. And now there are a number of groups
Speaker 1: for therapists around the country and there's somebody just a
Speaker 1: man named Weinberg just wrote a book about that, and
Speaker 1: I've put him many times because he knows of lots
Speaker 1: of other groups for therapists around around the country. So
Speaker 1: I will try to get patients to therapists who are
Speaker 1: who are patients to try and get into that group.
Speaker 1: You learn a lot of different things about yourself and
Speaker 1: a therapy group that you might not learn. And also
Speaker 1: started a group in China many years ago, and so
Speaker 1: there's been a Yo I'm Chinese therapy institute there and group.
Speaker 1: The man who's president of the American Group Therapy Association,
Speaker 1: his name is Molon Mush, a Canadian characterist. He's been
Speaker 1: going over there China once a year. And a very
Speaker 1: good psychologist named with Ellen Josselton, a very good psychotherapist
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, has been going there too. So that's another
Speaker 1: institute that have had to me to do with cool. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for giving advice to young people in the field.
Speaker 1: What is the best advice you found in your whole
Speaker 1: career on how to overcome the terror of death and
Speaker 1: fight against that despair? I mean, you've tried so many
Speaker 1: different methods. You'veritten about so many different methods. Is do
Speaker 1: you have like a favorite I have to repeat myself
Speaker 1: is trying to live a life without regret. Yeh. Try
Speaker 1: to be kind to everyone. It's very It's part of me.
Speaker 1: It has been for a long time. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: to to try to be helpful behind each person I
Speaker 1: talked to each of these consultations. I get very involved
Speaker 1: with what they're saying. Do whatever I can to be
Speaker 1: helpful to them. Ah. It may be things. If I
Speaker 1: feel like it, I feel they're gonna be a good therapist,
Speaker 1: I certainly will tell them that, uh and say that
Speaker 1: to them. So that's that's important to me. Do you
Speaker 1: have any regrets, any major regrets in your life. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I don't. I don't think so amazing.
Speaker 1: I think that I think I did the best I could.
Speaker 1: I think I always wanted to go to a better school,
Speaker 1: but where I came from. You know, I was lucky
Speaker 1: to get into GW at that point, and I was
Speaker 1: lucky to get into medical school since only five percent
Speaker 1: of the students could get into there, which meant that
Speaker 1: I had to get old a's and I just studied
Speaker 1: my head off, so they had to take me into
Speaker 1: their own own school. And I was in such a
Speaker 1: rush that I never had a fourth year of college.
Speaker 1: I took a third year of college. That's a regret.
Speaker 1: I would have liked to take another fourth year album
Speaker 1: and play a lot of philosophy courses wish I had,
Speaker 1: But I was in such a rush. That was the
Speaker 1: what the rush was about was to capture Maryland before
Speaker 1: she got away. He was going after Wellesley, was going
Speaker 1: out with Harvard kids. And that was that's the reason
Speaker 1: I had to transfer upt to people. I love it well.
Speaker 1: So then then no regrets to then no regrets to
Speaker 1: Oh boy, you have children who are retired themselves now right,
Speaker 1: and you have grandchildren? Do you do you what? What
Speaker 1: sort of advice do you have to your grandchildren about
Speaker 1: how to live their life as regret free as you have? Well?
Speaker 1: I loved I loved my grandchildren's free when they were
Speaker 1: quite younger. And they're they're caught in San Diego. They
Speaker 1: live there. The mother's a surgeon, uh and the father
Speaker 1: uh as my youngest son. The grandchildren up here are
Speaker 1: are just flourishing. They're doing quite well. One of them
Speaker 1: is uh, my daughter who's O B G y N
Speaker 1: has a has a daughter who's an ob G y
Speaker 1: N resident and has another who's in high tech. And
Speaker 1: my my son's son up here has UH. He has
Speaker 1: he has a son who who's also in in high tech.
Speaker 1: And my son has a Japanese UH daughter who's getting
Speaker 1: out of PhD in Simson Research in University of Chicago. Now,
Speaker 1: so the grandchildren are are are often they're really going
Speaker 1: just fine, beautiful, you're you. You've a you have something
Speaker 1: in your heart right, you have a like a metal
Speaker 1: not what do you have? You have a peacemaker? What
Speaker 1: do you have? It's right hand me pay my two fingers.
Speaker 1: I feel it all the time. It always makes me
Speaker 1: aware of mortality. But it's been behaving quite well. Mhm.
Speaker 1: You could you could go another ten years? I mean
Speaker 1: inten you you know, like why not twenty years? No,
Speaker 1: I'm not enjoying life as much as I have in
Speaker 1: the past. I know, not so much because of this
Speaker 1: part of me, but because I have terrible problems with
Speaker 1: my balance. Happened a couple of years ago after some
Speaker 1: surgery I had on my knee and I must have
Speaker 1: had a little bleed in my brain. But I have
Speaker 1: to use a walker to walk with and it's it's
Speaker 1: my balance is quite terrible. So that's that's the part
Speaker 1: of life. I don't enjoy much. Watching tennis at Wimbledon
Speaker 1: stirred up a lot of longing because I used to
Speaker 1: love to play tennis. Well, you've said that in your book.
Speaker 1: You say you're you're you're quite serene about death. You don't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that where you're at right now? You don't. You
Speaker 1: don't fear it like you used to in your youth. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I think I may have written in the
Speaker 1: book this this thing that, Well, for one thing, I
Speaker 1: don't fear it, and the second thing is I'm not
Speaker 1: enjoying life a great deal. So those two things go together.
Speaker 1: But what I what I just say the other minute ago,
Speaker 1: I was going to tell you something about, Oh, I
Speaker 1: was going to tell you something about there are times
Speaker 1: that I was saying to Maryland and Maryland. My wife
Speaker 1: did a book on cemeteries in the United States, unusual cemeteries.
Speaker 1: She had my son, who was a photographer across the country.
Speaker 1: So I said to around a year or two ago,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we should be buried in the same casket.
Speaker 1: I would like that, but we would never be separated,
Speaker 1: and she she's she's traveled around the country going to
Speaker 1: all these cemeteries. She can assure me there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as a casket for two people. But I will
Speaker 1: be buried next to her. But every once in a while,
Speaker 1: when I think of death and I think of Marylin,
Speaker 1: the thought comes to my mind. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: produce it. It just comes to my mind. Oh, I'll
Speaker 1: be joining Marylyn. I'll be joining Maryland. And unbelieving it's
Speaker 1: unbelievable to me, but I suddenly feel a sort of
Speaker 1: a wave of comfort inside. It feels comfortable, and I
Speaker 1: feel warm and kindly at that point, even though even
Speaker 1: though my my brain, my intellc tells me this is
Speaker 1: totally absurd. I'm not gonna be joining Marylyn. Maryland doesn't
Speaker 1: exist any longer, you know, she simply bones at this point,
Speaker 1: and how could I possibly be. But even so, it
Speaker 1: helps me understand so clearly what religions have had to
Speaker 1: offer to mankinds at the beginning of time. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some sense that we won't vanish, that will somehow
Speaker 1: will continue, We'll continue in some sort of after exist.
Speaker 1: And as part of my brain this simplicit part of
Speaker 1: my brain that buys into that. I guess and I
Speaker 1: get comforted when I think of world. Well, you never know,
Speaker 1: You never know in what capacity your consciousness and her
Speaker 1: consciousness will still will you know, don't don't count it
Speaker 1: out as all I'm saying. Oh man, I'll end here.
Speaker 1: I'll end on a quote you said. For many years,
Speaker 1: I've been convinced that there's a positive correlation between death
Speaker 1: anxiety and the sense of unlived life. In other words,
Speaker 1: the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.
Speaker 1: It seems to me like you've really lived a extremely full,
Speaker 1: full and rich life with very few regrets. She want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for making such an incredible
Speaker 1: impact on so many of us in the field and
Speaker 1: for me personally in It was a real honor to
Speaker 1: chat with you today. Thank you for this really lively
Speaker 1: conversation we've had. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind,
Speaker 1: brain behavior, and creativity.