Free Lying on the Couch by Irvin D. Yalom

woman: Was he merely exchanging one for another? Would his new relationship resemble, in a few years, his old one? Still, things had been so frozen with Carol. Perhaps, once pried away from her, Justin might be open, even briefly, for therapeutic work.
    "I really need some advice now."
    Ernest, like all therapists, hated to give direct advice—it was a no-

    Lying on the Couch ^ 4 3
    win situation: if it worked, you infantilized the patient; if it failed, you looked like a jerk. But in this instance he had no choice.
    "Justin, I don't think it's wise just yet to meet with her. Let some time pass. Let her collect herself. Or perhaps try seeing her with a therapist in the room. I'll make myself available or, better yet, give you the name of a marital therapist. I don't mean the ones you've seen already—I know they didn't work out. Someone new."
    Ernest knew that his advice would not be taken: Carol had always sabotaged marital couples therapy. But content —the precise advice he gave—was not the issue. What was important at this point was process: the relationship behind the words, his offering Justin support, his atoning for weaseling, his making the hour wholesome again.
    "And if you feel pressed and need to talk before our next session, call me," Ernest added.
    Good technique. Justin appeared soothed. Ernest regained his poise. He had salvaged the hour. He knew his supervisor would approve of his technique. But he himself did not approve. He felt soiled. Contaminated. He had not been truthful with Justin. They had not been real with each other. And that was what he valued about Seymour Trotter. Say what you will about him—and Lord knows a lot had been said—but Seymour knew how to be real. He still remembered Seymour's response to his question about technique: "My technique is to abandon technique. My technique is to tell the truth."'
    As the hour ended, something unusual transpired. Ernest had always made a point of physically touching each of his patients at every session. He and Justin customarily parted with a handshake. But not this day: Ernest opened the door and somberly bowed his head to Justin as he left.

    TWO
    /y/t was midnight, and Justin Astrid was less than four jr^"^ hours out of her house, when Carol Astrid began cutting ^__^ him out of the rest of her life. She began on the closet floor with Justin's shoelaces and a pair of pinking shears and ended four hours later in the attic cutting the big red R out of Justin's tennis sweater from Roosevelt High School. In between she went from room to room methodically destroying his clothes, his flannel sheets, his fur-lined slippers, his glass-covered beetle collection, his high school and college diplomas, his porno video library. Photos of his summer camp where he and his co-counselor posed with their group of eight-year-old campers, his high school tennis team, the senior prom with his horse-faced date—all were slashed to pieces. Then she turned to their wedding album. With the help of a razor- blade knife that her son used for model plane construction, she soon left no trace of Justin's presence at St. Marks, the favorite site of fashionable Episcopal weddings in Chicago.

    While she was at it, she carved out the faces of her in-laws from the wedding photos. If it hadn't been for them and their promises, empty promises, of big, big money, she'd probably never have married Justin. A snowy day in hell before they would see their grandchildren again. And her brother Jeb, too. What was his picture still doing there? She slashed it. She had no use for him. And all the pictures of Justin's relatives, table after table of the cretins: fat, grinning, raising glasses to make idiotic toasts, pointing their lumpish children toward the camera, shambling over to the dance floor. To hell with them all! Soon every trace of Justin and his family smoldered in the fireplace. Now her wedding, as well as her marriage, had turned to ashes.
    All that remained in the album