Preface:
The major books by psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists, books by people like Robert Lindner (The Fifty-Minute Hour) and Irvin Yalom (Love's Executioner) tell of their patients' actual travails. The characters are anonymized versions of real people and their real therapeutic treatments.
That's natural, of course. So many in this field become writers by default, in order to relate what it's like to have a close-up of peoples' inner processes.
This book is very different.
I'm not a psychotherapist relating real stories but a writer who, in midlife, happened to become a psychotherapist.
I feel it's important to point this out because several of my colleagues, when I told them that the patients in these stories were completely fictional, winked at me as if that were impossible.
Sufficient to say that of the eight primary patients and their lives in these stories, I have identified two paragraphs that were anonymized from real life. I once had a very dear patient who would text me on the way to her sessions (as Jen does in "The Sadism of Red and White") "I'm going to be a lot today. I hope you're ready," and I would text her back, "I'm ready. Don't worry."
Beyond that, Jack, Kara, Jen, David, (Danielle in France), Jeremy, Katherine, James, and Paul are all invented. And as such, readers are privy to their private lives and thoughts that a therapist in real life wouldn't have access to....
Finally, as make-believe, the stories all have dramatic, rather than therapeutic, arcs.
From "The Forgiving."
"Katherine and James hoped to be together for the rest of their lives. But when that became difficult for them to imagine, they were referred to Robert. They were a handsome couple in their mid-thirties.
"She wanted to come alone," James said by way of introduction, as he sat down in the chair.
"I did," Katherine said, taking a seat on the sofa, "but he asked to join for the first session."
"Let me ask you a question," James began. "If we come to couple's therapy, will it help us stay together or will it break us up?"
"It can result in either," Robert said.
"Because I'm not doing this if it will end the relationship. We don't want to break up," James said and Katherine nodded in agreement.
"Couple's therapy gets at the truth of what's going on," Robert said. "Do couples ever break up? Yes, but if the relationship were to end, it would end more gracefully. With less acrimony."
"That's not good enough. Let's go," James said and he stood.
"No," Katherine said. "I'm staying."
She met James's eyes and shook her head, and James walked out.
"Well, now it's just me," Katherine said. "But if I want to bring James back for couples therapy, will that be possible?"
"Yes," Robert said.
"Good. So I'll start," Katherine said and she took a deep breath. "I'm here to figure out if I can forgive James. If I can't, I'll have to leave him."
She paused and added, "It's awkward to come in and talk to a stranger, a man, about sex."
Robert waited a moment.
Then Katherine launched into her story.
"James and I have been together for two and a half years and, um, we were bored in bed," she began. "Then James had a new idea for us: swinging. Sex with strangers. But you know, men are weird enough to me on the street, so I didn't think I'd want a one-off at a party. But he kept after me and finally, I agreed.
"He made the arrangements for this event in Chelsea..
