Love's Executioner By Irvin D. Yalom Analysis

In the “Love’s Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy” by Irvin D. Yalom, we’re introduced to ten of his patients who had all one thing in common: they were all suffering. They’re all submitted to a research on psychotherapy and its techniques. Ranging from love to grief, Dr. Yalom, gives us an insight on these patients’ progress as they meet once a week for an hour. In the first case, “Love’s Executioner”, we meet Thelma, who has struggled for the past eight years after her twenty-seven-day relationship. Not too far from love comes grief, a feeling impossible to endure. In “The Wrong One Died”, Penny, experiences what a parent should never go through: the death of her child. And lastly, in the “Fat Lady”, Betty, as many women, struggles with her appearance and obesity, causing her distress.
In the “Love’s Executioner”, Thelma, the patient, is seventy years old. She suffers from depression and has been receiving psychiatric treatment for the past twenty years. Eight years prior to visiting Dr. Yalom for the first time, Thelma had a therapist, Matthew. They developed a relationship that was much more than therapist to patient. Thelma describes their consensual relationship
Yalom did the correct thing in meeting with Matthew and Thelma. The curiosity and agony Thelma carried throughout the years was because everything seemed to perfect and it all came crashing down the next day. I feel like she deserved an explanation for why Matthew cut her off the way he did. Although, it may have caused her great pain, I still believe it was crucial for her to be able to move on even if it was a little. Dr. Yalom didn’t establish a good relationship with her because he kept trying to get her to understand about the relationship between Matthew and her. He wanted her to understand that it was a feeling that was not mutual. Had it been something they both felt, then maybe there was hope for a relationship to form once more but it wasn’t the cause for