While in Austin this weekend, Kim and I decided to visit BookPeople, a very awesome, independent bookstore. A particular book caught my eye: The Gift of Therapy by Irvin D Yalom. It’s essentially a look at the practice of psychotherapy from the therapist’s point of view. The book contains a lot of useful insight into the world of a therapist’s practice.

One section of the book was particularly interesting to me. It’s basically a chapter discussing what it’s like to be “Love’s Executioner”, which refers to one of his previous books, Love’s Executioner.

From The Gift of Therapy (which is actually the opening lines from Love’s Executioner):

“I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy- I too crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection. I hate to be love’s executioner.”

Yalom is addressing something that has always worried me about studying psychology. My goals for becoming a psychiatrist are numerous, but I can’t deny that one of them is to understand how my own mind works. This is, of course, not a major goal. If it were, it would be silly, since the only way to truly understand your own mind is through a neutral third party, such as, gee.. a therapist? :)

But at the end of the chapter, Yalom reveals a question that he often asks those dealing with such infatuations- “What would you be thinking about if you were not obsessed with …?”

This question really made me think. I should be clear: it broke me out of the context of the book, which is from a therapist’s perspective, and placed me in the patient’s perspective.

I’m often obsessed with one thing (or person). The question made me wonder to myself: what would I be focused on if I wasn’t focused on X? It’s really a useful self-evaluation tool, even if it does seem extremely obvious.

The question alludes to two possible scenarios for patients:

1. The patient is ignoring his or her own life and its problems by obsessing on something (or in this case someone). The answer to the question might reveal potential issues the patient should be dealing with. If the rest of the patient’s life were in better order and attended to, then maybe the infatuation wouldn’t be as deep or maybe even non-existent?
2. The patient isn’t ignoring existing issues but could counteract the obsession by finding new things to focus on.

Perhaps you’re like me, always obsessing on something. Maybe you’re burying your head in the sand, or maybe you could just benefit from a focus shift. Either way, maybe some enlightenment is in order.