Introducing Creatures of a Day: Irvin Yalom's Final Book

Perhaps it is one of history’s ironies that the roar of Hitler’s German cannons so terrified the Jew Benjamin Yalom [1] that he tore himself away from his homeland near the Russian-Polish border and, before turning to ash in the skies of Auschwitz, brought his wife and his life to the land of opportunity (=America); so that years later, his son would make the spiritual father of the Führer the central character of one of the most famous and best-selling novels of the twentieth century. [2]

A—The Path Traveled and the Conduct [3]

Irvin Yalom [4] (1931), the son of an immigrant grocer in the Jewish neighborhood of Washington, D.C., who “for fear of the house’s large cockroaches” [5] dared not turn on the light at night, took refuge from the bitterness of his surroundings in the shelves of the Washington Central Library. It was there that he became so enamored of literature that, years after studying medicine at George Washington University, he found literature to be the best way to teach the art of therapy to young therapists.

Yalom wrote his first book, “Group Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice [6],” in 1970, a book about the effectiveness of group psychotherapy, which was translated into more than seventeen languages and, over many years, was updated with new research across five different editions.

In 1974, when one of his clients had trouble paying the consultation fee, Yalom devised a creative plan: he proposed to the client, a writer suffering from writer’s block who could no longer write, that in lieu of paying the treatment fee, he write a report of each therapy session, just as Yalom himself did. In this way, the treatment process was narrated from two different angles; the result of this collaboration was a joint book titled “Every Day Gets a Little Closer [7].”

After immersing himself in philosophy and being influenced by Rollo May’s [9] book “Existence [8],” Yalom found his own distinctive language and framework. Like Harry Stack Sullivan [10], he believed that “psychotherapy is a relationship between two human beings, one of whom is more anxious than the other,” and he held that “if we contemplate our being alive and our existence in the world, and dig down to the bedrock from which anxiety springs, we arrive at four ultimate concerns: death, meaninglessness, isolation, and freedom.” [5] This notion is the focal point of existential psychotherapy—the theory that today, more than anyone else, is identified with the name Irvin Yalom.

Yalom’s classic work, the textbook “Existential Psychotherapy [11],” was published in 1980. The book took ten years to write and holds a special place for Yalom:

“I consider Existential Psychotherapy to be the reference book for everything I have written since. All my stories and novels are ways of explaining and expanding upon the various facets of existential psychotherapy” [5].

Thus, the book “Existential Psychotherapy,” like many of his subsequent works, became a book that “is both a guide for therapists and a form of existential therapy in itself. Anyone who reads it is deeply affected and becomes wiser, as if they have spent several hours in conversation with someone who has eagerly resolved to traverse the deepest and most troubling problems” [5].

The publication of “Love’s Executioner [12]” in 1989 marked the first glimmers of sharing the therapeutic experience of Yalom’s clients with a general audience. The book, containing ten stories, drew the reader into the relationships he had established with each of his patients. It was a collection of teaching stories that Yalom had written for use in psychotherapy training programs, yet it was enthusiastically received by the reading public and sold well. Literature had shown Yalom its favorable side, and now it was time for a great gamble.

What if, indeed, the renowned German philosopher “Nietzsche [13]” had sought counsel from the great therapist of his own time, “Josef Breuer [14],” who was “Freud [15]’s” guide toward psychoanalysis? This was a question for developing an idea about “obsessive love” that Yalom had previously raised in Love’s Executioner. The publication of the novel When Nietzsche Wept [16] in 1992 cemented Yalom’s standing as a novelist. His book was translated into many languages and brought him numerous awards. Literature now recognized him, and critics compared him to Freud. Yalom, in a Socratic manner, had brought philosophy and psychology down from the heaven of authoritative sources and standard medical protocols to the earth of human relationships.

The passion for literature and storytelling led Yalom to write the book Lying on the Couch [17] in 1996, a novel that stands as the sole example of Yalom’s foray into pure storytelling. “This book has the most complex plot and the least overt didactic aspects among Yalom’s works; yet it is still replete with intellectual challenges about the therapeutic process, clarifying the boundaries between therapist and patient, and the complexities and hazards inherent in their relationship.” [5]

Three years later, in 1999, Yalom published Momma and the Meaning of Life [18], a collection of six short stories about various therapeutic processes. The stories in this book were a blend of the storytelling style of Lying on the Couch and the therapeutic memoirs of Love’s Executioner.

Past the age of seventy, observing what was happening in medical training programs, Yalom grew concerned about psychotherapy. He believed that psychiatry had turned into a science of prescription-writing, and that the cognitive and rational-emotive behavioral therapies offered by figures like Glasser [19], Beck [20], and Ellis [21] were fast-food treatments more suited to insurance companies than to clients with deep-rooted anxieties. In service to future generations, Yalom wrote an accessible guide for therapists, so they might know what psychotherapy was like in the past, when there was time for deeper treatments. The result of this effort was eighty-five one-to-two-page lessons, published under the title The Gift of Therapy [22] in 2002.

In 2005, it was the turn of the pessimistic German philosopher. Yalom asked himself what “Schopenhauer [23]” would say about his approach to psychotherapy if he were alive today, and he sought the answer in the novel The Schopenhauer Cure [24]. In this novel, Philip, a replica of Schopenhauer, tries to use philosophy to approach a kind of existential psychotherapy; and Julius, an allegory of Yalom himself, prompts him to participate in group therapy.

Approaching eighty meant the loss of many friends and acquaintances, the occasional messages of death. Yalom was at the threshold of eighty, and before writing his new book, he abandoned several different projects halfway. He initially decided to write a series of interconnected stories: “I had six stories in mind, and my plan was to begin them all with the same nightmare about death. In all the stories, the dreamer awakens with the dread of death, leaves their home, and seeks someone to help them confront death anxiety.” [5]

He intended to write these six stories across different periods of time, from "Epicurus [25]" to the present day. But the research background for the first story (the time of Epicurus) became so extensive that it dissuaded him from writing. He then adopted a new plan. It occurred to him that, given several decades had passed since writing the book "Existential Psychotherapy," it would be good to update it, much like the book "The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy." But ultimately, "the library resources related to empirical research in the field of ultimate concerns, which had accumulated over roughly 25 years since the book's first edition"[5] overwhelmed him. Therefore, he "wrote a book about what he had learned from the existential approach in the years after writing the textbook 'Existential Psychotherapy'." Then "his agent suggested that since seventy-five percent of the book was devoted to death anxiety, he should write a more concise book and focus solely on death anxiety." Subsequently, with "his publisher's suggestion, he steered the book more toward a general audience," and the result was the book "Staring at the Sun [26]," published in 2008. A book in which Yalom no longer told stories nor wrote a textbook, but by directly addressing his readers, sought to help them overcome the fear of death using the thoughts of philosophers.

Yalom's interest in writing a novel about "Spinoza [27]" intensified when he observed that "Einstein [28]," one of his childhood heroes, whenever he spoke of God, spoke of Spinoza's God. But since the private parts of Spinoza's life had been removed from his letters according to his will, not much information about the details of his life was available. So Yalom decided to delve into his inner life; and thus the novel "The Spinoza Problem [29]" was published in 2012. A novel in which the story of "Alfred Rosenberg [30]," one of the important figures of the Nazi Party, from his school days until the end of World War II in 1945, is narrated in parallel with the course of Spinoza's inner developments, from a few months before his excommunication decree to a few years after it; and in this way, "the book 'The Spinoza Problem,' for its part, possesses great power in extinguishing the fire of bigotry and dogmatism that... have turned our world into a hell." [31]

And last year, Yalom published his new book, "Creatures of a Day [32]." A book consisting of ten short stories about his clients, which is structurally very similar to the book "Love's Executioner."

B- Creatures of a Day

"Creatures of a Day" is Irvin Yalom's latest work, published in 2015. To date (late July 2016), this book has been translated into Persian three times: in 2015 under the title "Creatures of a Day" translated by Peyman Rahiminejad and published by Psychology and Art Publications; in the same year under the name "Creatures of a Day" by Mohammad Reza Fayyazi Bordbar and Zahra Hosseinian, published by Taraneh Publications; and also translated by Niloufar Rahmanian and Marjan Motamed Hosseini, published by Avaye Maktoob Publications.

The book begins with sentences from the "Meditations [33]" of "Marcus Aurelius [34]," the Stoic philosopher:

"All of us are creatures of a day... Soon you will forget the world, and soon the world will forget you too...". This section is dedicated to the tenth story of the book, which also gives the entire book its title. "Creatures of a Day" is a collection of ten short narrative pieces, each dedicated to one of Yalom's clients. Clients who, unusually, have requested a small number of sessions: "Yes. And I had requested a single consultation session. Just that. I have a fixed income and cannot afford more than this" [35]

Yalom considered each of these therapeutic relationships as a unique case and created a separate therapy for each one, therapies that sometimes occurred in unpredictable ways: "In each story, I devised a unique method for each client, or stumbled upon them by chance, methods that cannot be found in any instruction manual" [36]

In the first story (=The Crooked Cure), a patient comes to Yalom to show him a collection of his correspondence with a prominent figure and to convince Yalom of how, throughout his life, he was not only friends with such a prominent person, but also how much influence he had on him. Now he has a witness who knows that a great person once considered him important: “One of my patients chose me as a witness to the fact that someone noteworthy had deemed him important” [37]

In the second story (=On Being Real), a middle-aged patient, despite a multitude of academic and professional successes, is devastated inside. The suicide of one of his closest friends has left him stunned and bewildered, convincing him that the notion of a duet in human relationships is nothing more than an illusion: “What can one believe? All that time he was supporting me and lovingly advising me, he must have simultaneously been thinking of killing himself! ... Those intimate moments we shared, I now know they didn’t exist back then... He wasn’t happy and blissful; he was thinking of killing himself. I no longer know what is real. I have fabricated my reality.” [38]

In the third story (=Arabesque [39]), an aging patient is trapped in an image of the past and a romantic relationship from his youth; and ultimately “realized that real life is living in the present moment” [40]

The fourth story (=Thank You, Molly!), which is the longest story in the book, is an example of how sometimes therapy happens in ways one could never imagine: “Another patient’s life changed when I introduced her to a home-care aide.” [41]

The fifth story (=Don’t Fence Me In) is a narrative of how, for many people, the illusion of being an exception is an antidote to death. In this story, an elderly man who voluntarily moved to a nursing home after his wife’s death finds it to be a prison that seeks to confine him within the framework of daily routines, and by denying his fantasy of “I am the exception,” brings the reality of “so you are mortal like everyone else” before his eyes.

In the sixth story (=Show Your Children Some of Your Prowess!), human loneliness and inevitable death are displayed in the form of the suppressed anger of a nurse on the verge of death. A nurse who, although herself in a crisis of meaning, creates meaning for a woman on the verge of death: “Despite all your self-recriminations, the better part of you found the right words to say. In the end, actions truly matter, not thoughts.” [42]

In the seventh story (=Give Up the Hope for a Better Past), a significant part of a sixty-year-old patient’s being is bound to an event from when she was thirteen; and ultimately, it is the acceptance and redefinition of this past that, after many years, provides the possibility for her to flourish, and thus “a silenced writer” within her “finds her voice”: “You made an unexpected change in it with your creativity. You didn’t give up hope for a better past, but rather you wrote a new past for yourself” [43]

The eighth story (=With Respect to Ellie: Get This Damn Fatal Disease Yourself!), is a tribute to a lonely patient afflicted with cancer, who came to Yalom in the last days of her life, but he, who was writing the novel “The Spinoza Problem,” did not, contrary to his habit, engage himself much in the therapeutic relationship, so: “I decided to collect Ellie’s wisest and most powerful statements and write this story in her memory” [44]

In the ninth story (=The Triple Cry), ten years after the book “The Gift of Therapy,” Yalom once again shows how “traditional diagnoses listed in standard manuals may distort or render incomplete a physician’s understanding of the illness.”

The tenth story (=Creatures of a Day) is a renewed emphasis on how the complexities of the human mind make it impossible to compile and present manuals for treating patients: “Once again I felt that the infinite complexity of the human mind had defeated me, and I despaired at the meaninglessness of the efforts made in my field to simplify, compile, and present manuals for treating patients with some pre-designed group methods” [45] and this becomes clear when Yalom decides to use Marcus Aurelius’s *Meditations* to treat two of his clients: “I decided to employ an unconventional approach that I had rarely used in the course of therapy” [46]

P-Selected Excerpts from the Book Creatures of a Day

“For me, the darkest issue concerning death is that when I die, my entire world, that is, the world of my memories, the precious world of my loved ones and acquaintances and all those I have ever known... will vanish along with me. Poof! Just like that.” [47]

“There is a quote from Schopenhauer in which the passion of love is compared to the dazzling light of the sun. When this passion fades in later years, we suddenly become aware of the wondrous starry sky that the sun had obscured or hidden. Thus, for me, the fading of youthful passion—which is sometimes cruel—makes me more appreciative of the starry sky and all the wonders of being alive, wonders I had previously overlooked.” [48]

“It seems paradoxical, but most of the time we mourn more easily for the loss of those with whom we had satisfying relationships than for those with whom our relationships were not so satisfying, those with whom we have much unfinished business.” [49]

“When parents die, we always feel vulnerable because we are faced not only with their loss, but also with our own death.” [50]

“I consider sexual intercourse the antithesis of death; is not the peak of sexual pleasure the initial spark of life? I know of many instances where sexual feelings were aroused to neutralize the terror of death.” [51]

“I have observed time and again that the extent of our experience of death terror is closely related to the amount of life we have left unlived.” [52]

“One day, I noticed my glasses weren’t giving me as good a vision as they should, so I went to my ophthalmologist, who was much older than me. After examining my eyes, he asked how old I was. I replied, ‘Forty.’ He said, ‘Forty, huh?’ and took off his own glasses, cleaned them carefully, and said, ‘Well, young man! You’re progressing right on schedule. Your problem is presbyopia.’ I remember getting very angry and wanting to tell him, ‘What schedule? Who’s progressing on schedule? You and your other patients might be progressing on schedule, but not me! I’m different from the rest.’” [53]

“Transforming ‘filth’ into ‘beauty’ is an artistic achievement, and were it not for perverse love, death, despair, and loss, a major part of art would never have been born.” [54]

“When you feel you have not lived fully, thinking about death always becomes more painful.” [55]

“Only our own perceptions harm us. Change your perceptions, and the harm disappears.” [56]

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Endnotes:

[1]=Benjamin Yalom

[2]= Refers to Friedrich Nietzsche and the claim that his idea of the “Übermensch” had a great influence on Hitler’s thoughts.

[3]= Taken from the title of an article by Ebrahim Golestan

[4]= Irvin D. Yalom

[5]= Irvin Yalom: The Storytelling Psychotherapist, Ruthellen Josselson, translated by Sepideh Habib, Danjeh Publishing, First Edition, 2011

[6]= The Theory and Practice of Psychotherapy

[7]= Every Day Gets a Little Closer

[8]=Existence

[9]= Rollo May

[10]= Harry Stack Sullivan

[11]=Existential Psychotherapy

[12]= Love's Executioner

[13]= Nietzsche

[14]= Josef Breuer

[15]= Sigmund Freud

[16]= When Nietzsche Wept

[17]=Lying On the Couch

[18]= Momma and the Meaning of Life

[19]= William Glasser

[20]= Aaron T. Beck

[21]= Albert Ellis

[22]= The Gift of Therapy

[23]= Arthur Schopenhauer

[24]= The Schopenhauer Cure

[25]= Epicurus

[26]=Staring At the Sun

[27]»= Spinoza

[28]»= Albert Einstein

[29]= The Spinoza Problem

[30]=Alfred Rosenberg

[31]= Long Live Philosophy Telegram Channel, Notes by Masoud Zanjani

[32]= Creatures of a Day

[33]=Meditations

[34]=Marcus Aurelius

[35]= Creatures of a Day, Irvin Yalom, translated by Mohammad Reza Fayyazi Bordbar and Zahra Hosseinian, Taraneh Publications, First Edition, 2015, p. 13, The Crooked Cure story

[36]= Creatures of a Day, Irvin Yalom, translated by Mohammad Reza Fayyazi Bordbar and Zahra Hosseinian, Taraneh Publications, First Edition, 2015, p. 236

[37]= Ibid., p. 235

[38]= Ibid., p. 32

[39]= Arabesque = a position in ballet where one stands on one leg

[40]= Creatures of a Day, Irvin Yalom, translated by Mohammad Reza Fayyazi Bordbar and Zahra Hosseinian, Taraneh Publications, First Edition, 2015, p. 235

[41]= Ibid., p. 235

[42]= Ibid., p. 153

[43]= Ibid., p. 170

[44]= Ibid., p. 187

[45]= Ibid., p. 234

[46]= Ibid., p. 213

[47]= Ibid., Arabesque story, p. 58

[48]= Ibid., Arabesque story, p. 61

[49]= Ibid., Thank You, Molly story, p. 81

[50]= Ibid., Thank You, Molly story, p. 84

[51]= Ibid., Thank You, Molly story, p. 84

[52]= Ibid., Thank You, Molly story, p. 90

[53]= Ibid., Don't Fence Me In story, p. 107

[54]= Ibid., Give Up on a Better Past story, p. 167

[55]= Ibid., The Triple Weep story, p. 203

[56]= Ibid., Creatures of a Day story, p. 224

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Introducing the Book Creatures of a Day by Irvin Yalom

Book Introduction: Hadi Madadi Qollehzu

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