Ирвин Дэвид Ялом (Irvin D. Yalom)To the future—Lily, Alana, Lenore, Jason. May your lives be filled with wonder.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many have helped me in the precarious crossing from psychiatry to fiction: John Beletsis, Martel Bryant, Casey Feutsch, Peggy Gifford, Ruthellen Josselson, Julius Kaplan, Stina Katchadourian, Elizabeth Tallent, Josiah Thompson, Alan Rinzler, David Spiegel, Saul Spiro, Randy Wein-garten, the guys of my poker game, Benjamin Yalom, and Marilyn Yalom (without whom this book could have been written with far greater comfort). To all, my deepest gratitude.
PROLOGUE
Ernest loved being a psychotherapist. Day after day his patients invited him into the most intimate chambers of their lives. Day after day he comforted them, cared for them, eased their despair. And in return, he was admired and cherished. And paid as well, though, Ernest often thought, if he didn't need the money, he would do psychotherapy for nothing.
Lucky is he who loves his work. Ernest felt lucky, all right. More than lucky. Blessed. He was a man who had found his calling—a man who could say, I am precisely where I belong, at the vortex of my talents, my interests, my passions.
Ernest was not a religious man. But when he opened his appointment book every morning and saw the names of the eight or nine dear people with whom he would spend his day, he was overcome with a feeling that he could only describe as religious. At these times he had the deepest desire to give thanks—to someone, to something—for having led him to his calling.
There were mornings when he looked up, through the skyHght of his Sacramento Street Victorian, through the morning fog, and imagined his psychotherapy ancestors suspended in the dawn.
"Thank you, thank you," he would chant. He thanked them all— all the healers who had ministered to despair. First, the ur ancestors, their empyreal outlines barely visible: Jesus, Buddha, Socrates. Below them, somewhat more distinct—the great progenitors: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, Jung. Nearer yet, the grandparent therapists: Adler, Horney, Sullivan, Fromm, and the sweet smiling face of Sandor Ferenczi.