"You know, you've never once taken responsibility for what you did." "You never once said:" ""I'm sorry, I made a mistake."" "He's not willing to forgive me because he hasn't made up his mind about this woman yet." "Another thing we haven't talked about:" "the kind of mother you've been." "Can we talk about it?" "You should really be quiet right now." "You're sort of embarrassing yourself." "You said that I might have pushed" "Kate into her affair because of my feelings for Laura." " Maybe it's the other way around." " You're both going through something." "She's struggling with the dynamic that existing before you met." "And you're looking for that younger woman who looks up to you the way Kate used to." "That's great." "That's just really great." "How are you?" "So obviously, Kate isn't coming today?" "Yes, she left me a message." "She really didn't go into why, though." "She said that she was tired of going back and forth, and just tired to try to find out who has started what and who's guilty of what and who's reacting to what..." "She wants to decide on her own, basically." "I have to respect that." "Transcript:" "Anyone, Coffee, Tagne." "Sync by:" "Anyone, Coffee, Tagne." "Week 8" " Episode 40." "How do you think our sessions with Kate went?" "I'd say they were chaotic." "I was a little annoyed with you over that but I suppose" "I'm partly at fault too." "And I also think that she felt sandwiched between two therapists." "I do have to say though that you did manage to make connections that resonated with both of us, especially with Kate." "Whether anything is gonna come off that I don't..." "I don't really know." "You know who I envy?" "Writers." "They create these characters that they want to spend time with and then they decide if they're gonna let them live or die, or let them be happy or unhappy, let them be failures or successes." "You wanna write everybody's story for them?" "I really think I'd be a shitty writer." "I'd want to give everybody a happy ending." "I'm very sorry about your patient." "Yeah..." "Thanks." "Not the ending I would have written for him." "The funeral, Jesus Christ." "I'd forgotten how awful funerals are." "That dreadful sense that..." "That in the end, there's only silence..." "You think as therapists, we'd have better tools to walk through it." "Well, I don't." "I feel the same sense of... futility and hopelessness as the next guy." "You know what's also interesting is seeing the relatives of patients you've treated." "Their participance in the stories that you've heard a dozen of times, the father, the son, the brother, whoever." "We think we know them." "But we don't really know them at all." "We know reactions of them, the versions of them idealized or vilified...." "I was really struggling to reconcile this image that I had of Alex's wife with the woman that I saw there." "He always described her as a demanding, exacting a constant source of pressure in his life." "But I looked over and I just saw this... broken woman." "She seems so soft and gentle." "'Cause I'll never really know her now." " Does that bother you?" " It does bother me." "I ask myself all the time if I actually know what I think I know about my patients' lives." "That couple, for example." "The one who were trying to have the baby." "Amy." "I don't think she can ever really be known." "I mean, there are certain patterns that identified themselves from her past." "But I cannot... shrink her." "She's too complicated." "And then I say to myself:" ""Do I really know any of these people?" ""Or are they all just one big fiction" ""that I've constructed in my head," you know?" "Sometimes I dream about the family members of patients that I'm treating." " People I've never met." " Yeah, it's curious." "Apart from your.... intense connection with your patients, you're also now talking about" "I don't know, longing for your patients' family and friends." "What do you mean by that, "a longing"?" "Maybe that's not the right word." "Do you mean curiosity about the lives of other people?" "Isn't that an aspect of what we do?" "It's just..." "It's curiosity." "We're supposed to be fascinated by how people behave." "At least..." "At least I think so." "Alex's death left me with this very strong feeling that I was like... a repository, really." "A trustee." "The things that he never told anybody else, his private thoughts." "They've stayed with me, they're inside me." "A big part of his life is is in vault I have inside me." "No." "A part of his life, maybe, but not necessarily a big part." " You were his therapist." " Only his therapist." "I know you've always been of two minds in relation to this that therapy is more than a discipline, that it's actually a religion, but you also say we're therapists, so we can't really... run our patients lives for them." "As soon as they walk out the door, they're on their own, yeah?" "How would you describe Alex's state of mind when you last saw him?" "I'd say he was pretty fragile, if I remember well, yeah." "The ironic thing is that we'd really made some good progress, and he just... seemed to regress." "It was like..." "He felt that he was so close to a breakthrough that it scared him." "It was too much, and he just..." "He turned away from it really." "Are you feeling in any way responsible for his death?" "You know, I'm friendly with a psychiatrist that consults for the Navy, Alfonso Casilles." " You remember him?" " Yeah." "Well, I asked him if he could find out anything." "He said vertigo." "It means that there's nothing wrong with the equipment." "They were doing some kind of combat exercise." "The plane he was chasing descended," "Alex went into what they call vertigo and lost control." "That's their... official conclusion." " I think he killed himself." " How can you be sure of that?" "Look, his life was a tragedy from the second he was born." "His childhood, his relationship with his father, up to when he pushed the button and killed a room full of kids." "How do you live with that?" "Even with the gadgets that they have now, they reduce people to dots on a video screen." "All the spin from the Navy, none of it made any difference to him." "It didn't work on him." "He felt every single one of those deaths, I know he did." "So many expectations..." "The best and the brightest." "He was. so strong physically, handsome, intelligent." "Under all that... kind of posturing and male posing that he did, he was really..." "He was a good guy." "Charming." "He was endearing, you know." "He looked and he sounded like what they call a winner." "Suddenly, he becomes a murderer." "How do you reconcile that?" " I think that's what really killed him." " "Endearing"?" "I have never heard you talk about him like that." "Quite the opposite." "Actually, he was kind of a funny guy." "He was..." "I don't know." "Am I already beginning to... idealizing?" "Yeah, maybe." "Well, it's not uncommon, after such a shock." "He gave me the chance to stop him from flying." "Literally?" "Did he really offer that or are you projecting?" "He asked me directly, "Should I fly?"" "What did you say?" "I told him I was very concerned about his..." " About his state of mind." " You said that clearly?" "But he wanted me to say it unequivocally. "Do not fly"." "It's not your place, Paul." "A patient can't ask you to take his life into your hands." "It's not your place to say; "Don't fly"." "Anymore than it's your place to say to that couple, "Have an abortion"." "Or to Laura, "Marry or don't marry your fiancé"." "I should have sent the Navy an evaluation." ""Guilt-ridden." "Wants to punish himself." "Shouldn't fly."" "Alex's dad came into the office to..." "To talk." "So I had this poor guy yelling at me, saying that his son's repression was what had kept him alive all the time and that therapy, the stuff that he was doing with me, was..." " The therapy was what had killed him." " Oh God, Paul." "Up in the air at Mach 5, he's not supposed to have emotions." "He's not supposed to think." "That's actually why he crashed." "He was very different from what I imagined also." "He was riddled, you know, with his own guilt." "Actually, he did make a couple of good points." "He said things were in the unconscious for a reason because the mind can not live or breathe or take a single step if everything that lies dormant in it were... out there in daylight, fully lay out." "That a fully conscious human being would be paralyzed, would be like a cripple." "Alex didn't need to be conscious, but just merely efficient." "Do you really accept that?" "That life is better lived unexamined." "And when... anxiety and fear and pain bubble up from below, how can that be dealt with, except by looking at it?" "Except by analyzing it?" "We don't run the show, Paul." "I sometimes think that therapists can start to imagine they're like writers, you know, that they can control the outcome." "We don't live their lives for them, we don't even live them with them." "I know that you want to believe that we really do have an influence that's always positive." " We help people to understand." " Understand what they're feeling and after that, if they make a wrong turn, then it's not our fault, it's human error." "But..." "Anyway." " Who're you really angry at?" " Myself, obviously." "You." "Every therapist from Freud to Mitchell." "Why?" "Because we force patients to look at themselves and pat ourselves on the back for it." "Then we say to them, "Here's what's wrong with you," ""now off you go."" "Did you feel this way before Alex died?" "More or less, yeah." "Has it been on your mind recently in any other context?" "Like what?" "I'm asking." "Have... other patients, other than Alex made you think like this?" " You're insinuating." " No, I'm just trying to get a sense, a history... of these feelings about psychotherapy." "You mean, if I've been wondering for a while if our... profession is actually helpful to people?" "Yes, I have." "I think about it every day." "So you feel you're not able to help your patients?" "The gymnast, for example, Sophie?" "Honestly, I feel like she made a lot of progress." "We connected, there was a bound between us." "But I think it was the personal relationship that helped her, not the therapeutic process." "You know, maybe Yallom is right." "Maybe it is the relationship that actually heals." "But that other couple, Jake and Amy, I can not tell you, honestly, if they're better off together or apart." "I don't know if I helped them at all." "Anyway." "Are you okay, Paul?" "I think I'm tired, Gina." "Put your feet up." "You know Alex said..." "He was talking about... vertigo and he said that when it happens, they're supposed to trust their instruments and not their senses." "That's right." " How do you know that?" " I once had a boyfriend who was a commercial pilot." "This is before David." "He taught me that." "Among other things." "Yes, Paul." "I have been more than a sleepy spider." "So it seems." "Anyway, I think it's the opposite for a psychologist." "I think we'd be far more effective if we relied less on instruments and theories and books and more on our own instincts." "So all your training, all your knowledge can lead you astray?" "I think so." "Do you feel this generally or about certain patients in particular?" "What do you mean?" "What is it, Gina?" "What?" "You've got that look of yours." " What look is that?" " You have the look that says" ""I have a theory"." " Regarding what?" " Come on, Gina, cut the crap." "Just tell me what you think." "I'm just sitting here, listening to you." "I'm listening to your newfound theories about the uselessness of psychotherapy." ""Certain patients in particular"?" "Come on." "We're back to Laura, again." "Are we?" "You think everything is a reaction to Laura." " What's a reaction?" " Me criticizing psychology, dismissing theories." "You think I'm making an excuse." "Even Alex getting killed, that's an excuse, right?" "Psychology is collapsing so" "I might as well sleep with Laura." "I think that's kind of the way you're..." " Is that what I'm thinking?" " Am I wrong?" "When you guess what I'm thinking it's always about Laura." "Like I assume that everything you say" " is connected to her." " Don't you?" "You're the one who brought her up." "I'm not talking about Laura." "I'm talking about the fact that..." "I am having trouble lately believing in this..." " religion of yours." " Of mine?" "I don't think traditional psychology answers anything anymore." "You have two extremes, right?" "You have pop psychology, you've got these celebrity therapists writing best-sellers, getting on talk shows, making some miserable couple wipe on television." "It's kind of a pornography." "And then, on the other hand, you've got the experts." "Psychologists like you, orthodox." "Authority figures." "Everything under control and supervised, examined under a bright light, examined to death." "Completely and utterly divorced from real life." "Am I divorced from real life?" "Gina, you've never lived outside this room!" "The Institute, the graduate program," "David's world and after David... died, you locked yourself up in here." "I mean, it's a beautiful room." "Look at it." "Beautifully appointed, everything is in its place." "But you sit in here, and what do you do?" "You write fiction!" "About how life could have been, should have been." "Is that what I'm writing?" "Just ask yourself, as a therapist, can you really help anybody, if you live in a bubble?" "So now, I'm a sleepy spider in a bubble?" "Look, I don't want to upset you Gina, I..." "You won't." "I forgot, of course..." "You don't get upset." "You never lose it." "I've lost it here with you, several times in the past few weeks." " Why are you trying to provoke me?" " I am not trying to provoke you." "I just don't want to end up like this." "Is this it?" "Is this how therapists live out their lives?" "You are perverse." "You know, something real and powerful came into your life, and you never gave it a chance." "Not for Charlie's sake or for yours." "I know you said it was because he was a patient." "But you know what I think?" "I think it was bullshit." " Paul, be careful." " You were terrified." "Charlie told me that you were the biggest loss in his life." "That his whole life could have been different." "You have no idea what you're talking about." "And after all these years, Paul, you don't know me." "You wanna know what I struggle with?" "It's not that I'm too reserved, too detached," "it's that I'm too emotional." "I'm impulsive and emotional." "And I give myself over right away." "And passionately." "I pour myself out." "Can't you see that I'm protecting myself?" "Because I'm afraid I get carried away, I won't be able to think," "I won't be able to analyze, I won't be able to work." "You've created this cold version of me that's limiting and castrating." "Because, when you're arguing with me, you want to see yourself as battling the forces of repression." "And if the truth is that I am an emotional person who has to rein herself in, it doesn't fit with what you need now, does it?" "Of course, I wanted Charlie." "He was the most alive person I ever met." "I wanted to sleep with him, I wanted to eat him up." "But I didn't." "And not because of ethics." "I may have told him that it was because he was a patient." "But the real reason was David." "Even though David cheated on me for..." "however many years." "I knew that all along." "He was really shitty at hiding it." "I didn't sleep with Charlie because... that's not who I wanted to be." "I loved David, and I loved the life we had." "And who I was with him." "I loved myself with David." "David's Gina." "And you know what?" "When I was standing over... his grave at funeral," "I felt... if I was magically reborn," "I would choose him all over again." "For all his faults, he allowed me to be who I wanted to be." "I'm surprised you didn't see it." "How crazy I was about him." "He was everything." " I never heard you say it." " Oh shit!" "Everything has to be said?" "Then now, I have to sit here and listen to your crappy, nearsighted, self-involved theories about my life." "Oh, God." "Listen to us." "You know, I slap you, and you punch me." "Sometimes I tell myself it's constructive but, you know, I'm not so sure anymore, maybe we should stop." "You've been fighting me for two months." "Saying Laura, Laura, Laura." "And you've been waiting for this imaginary Gina of yours to jump in and stop you?" "I'm not what's stopping you." "You're fighting yourself." "It's up to you, it's like Alex." "You carefully looked at his life, you opened doors for him." "You gave him insight." "But his life was his." "And he decided to fly." "Now, you decide." "Perhaps, you're right." "Maybe love can bloom in a therapist office." "Ethics and rules, love is bigger than any rules." "And what do I know?" "Maybe she's your David." "Maybe you can only be the Paul you want to be... with her." "So, go to her." "Find out." "But please, stop comparing your life to mine." "Stop using Charlie against me." "I'm sorry he was hurt by what happened." "But I never loved him." "Not for a day." "I loved David." "So, never talk to me about Charlie again, am I clear?" "Please go now, Paul."