A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

ACT III: Love Control

Chapters XII to XV

eter Young had achieved small-town political success. He didnt make waves and was what people described as charming. He was a big man in a small town who probably would not have made it on the national stage. Yet the national stage was exactly where circumstances out of his control had thrust him. In the end, Peter Young was considered guilty of being a self-centered fool, perhaps more pitiable than had he lost the case, because he was, whatever else the poor man may have been, not guilty of malpractice, but also not guilty of thinking for himself. It was four months since the end of the trial, and the summer was almost over. Ruth and Arthur had both left, Ruth to the field, and Arthur to college. Although Peter put on a face of good spirits and insisted they carry on with their own plans without regard to him, in truth he felt completely beaten down by what he perceived as universal distrust and social rejection. He veered toward committing an act he had always held to be the very epitome of mental aberration, but, just as he was about to pull the trigger, or, in his case, consume the pills, something caught his eye that yanked him from the very brink of self-destruction. The American Psychologist, journal of the American Psychological Association, was lying on his desk, open to the obituary of a colleague who had been a friend years earlier. The man had died at age 78. Peter gazed at the picture. Most of the mans important writings, the ones that had guaranteed him a lengthy article and photograph in the prestigious publication, were published during the last two decades of his life. Peter was not yet fifty, still a young man by contemporary standards and still, so far as he knew, physically healthy. He likely had a quarter-century more of living available to him. Whatever mistakes he may have committed in his life, it was a life that need not be over. You only get one chance, he said out loud to himself. The trial had certainly attracted attention. The late-night shows had lured everyone even remotely relevant. Talk show guests embellished their stories for public consumption. But it wasnt accidental or spontaneous; it was blown up by medical insurance interests who had made under-the-table payment to both journalists and shady broadcasters. The message went out that psychotherapy was too questionable in its procedures and too uncertain in its effects to be considered a medical treatment and, therefore, should not be reimbursable under a health plan. It blew up costs and everyone suffered. Until the tabloids played it up, representatives of the American Psychological Association had paid little attention to the trial. But as media attention mounted, they felt obliged to contribute to the public discussion. The psychotherapy establishment had traditionally maintained that psychotherapy works, and, at the trial, they cited studies in support of that contention. Behind the scenes, it was an old controversy; the only thing new was the public exposure. As claims and counterclaims raged in the press and on the air, Ruth watched from the sidelines. Doing her best to help, she had presented Peter with gourmet evening meals in the Martha Stewart manner. She had been surprised by former psychotherapy patients who claimed to have been damaged and who willingly presented their tales of woe before the cameras. Her impression had been that patients were reluctant to go public. It appeared that live television had created a culture of people eager to expose themselves in ways unimaginable in a previous, more dignified age.

Chapter XII Peters Epiphany

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

And it wasnt one-sided. It seemed that for every dozen on the anti side of the fence, there was another dozen who claimed that therapy had saved their lives. Over champagne, Ruth and Peter talked of anything but. It was messy, but, as the count mounted, opposition to psychotherapy as medical treatment emerged as winner. In his series of articles for the magazine Ragtag, journalist Dick Price wrote that it all might have gone differently had the argument embraced a form of counseling that was not psychodynamic psychotherapy. The distinction was a major source of confusion throughout, although APA representatives attempted to defend both. Price had privately interviewed several former patients who claimed to have been aided by something they called psychotherapy, but which was a procedure in which the counselor shared needed advice and information about particular decisions, something that orthodox psychodynamic practitioners never did, or, at least, were not supposed to do. The public was mainly impressed by the argument that the costs involved in protracted talk therapies would affect their pockets by increasing the cost of health insurance coverage. At the trial, Nancys lawyer, Ed Pervis, emphasized that counseling was different from psychotherapy, a point also made by some of the pro-psychotherapy reimbursement witnesses to strengthen their claim that that psychotherapy was a treatment for a medical condition, a mental illness. But in one of his articles, Price, who had landed on the anti-psychotherapy-as-medical-treatment position, wrote, A psychiatric label does not an illness make any more than a Ph.D. makes one a real doctor. Price stressed the issue raised repeatedly by various witnesses, that whatever good might come from therapy sessions, only harm could come by labeling normal people as mentally ill, or a point less often made it does not do justice to the truly mentally ill to have them confused with those whose problems are less severe. Peter recalled that Pamela Cushing, author of Patient, Beware!, had been emphatic. She said:
Countless reputations have been harmed, if not ruined, by psychiatric diagnoses that were applied for no other reason than to enable the patient to receive health insurance reimbursement. On the other hand, and I cant stress this enough, mental illness is an undeniable reality that requires treatment, and should be covered by insurance companies. The issue is not coverage for mental illness, and even psychotherapy should be covered in cases in which there is no other treatment available. Medication may be needed and counseling may be needed.

On the stand, Peter was aware that he had appeared insensitive to some of the points made by witnesses. He had been confused. Some observers actually believed that he had consciously colluded with the authorities of his profession by defending and providing a treatment that he knew was of dubious value. This was not the case at all, of course. Peter believed fervently in what he had been trained to do. Throughout the trial he had believed that he did it well, and that his patients had benefited. Nevertheless, the press attacked even his personality, and his profession gave him no support. The point that had the greatest influence on Ruths attitude toward her husbands line of work was treated at surprising length in Prices article. That was the basically unscientific nature of psychotherapy procedures, something Peter had never taken seriously. Psychotherapy was part art; it was therefore, at least partly, above and beyond scientific measurement. Before he was twenty, Peter had turned down that other path, away from science. Nor had he ever fully grasped the difference between science and unfettered speculation. Now, as he reviewed the events of the trial and its aftermath, and as he read some of the literature that had been mentioned by witnesses, particularly Cushings book, he developed a new understanding of why it was misleading for psychology to try to project to the public that there was objective evidence that the procedures in which he had been trained were effective in specific ways. He saw now that he had been basically an old-fashioned Freudian analyst.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

Public reaction had been a ripple at first. The local paper, loyal to one of their own, gave a sober report. But the tabloid headline Shrink Versus Love in the Courtroom ignited a firestorm. Peter was a boon to the tabloid publishers, who glommed onto his misery as a way to sell papers. Ruth and Carol agreed that, had it been about sex, it would hardly have caused a stir. Or had Peters ill-advised declaration of love been seen as the result of an irresistible compulsion, it might have remained an individual matter, without widespread effects on an entire industry. The practices of all psychotherapists would not have demanded scrutiny if the problem was restricted to an individuals misbehavior. But although Love Two had been cited as a reason for Peters action, it was not a defense. The controversies stimulated by his trial were complex and hard to deal with. They impacted on the entire profession, and were kept alive by vested interests. What few others had realized, and what Price did not emphasize in his articles, was that, although he held unsupportable views, Peter was so amiable a person that it was hard for those close to him not to feel sorry for him and his plight, even when he was unable to acknowledge it for what it really was. It was something he had never closely analyzed, but taken for granted. He was to learn that it was something about him that was not quite definable, something even invisible to himself, that would, ultimately, after all the ugliness had simmered down, change the course of his life. Both publicly and privately, Peters wife and son had supported him, but, in the end, he believed that what they gave was more sympathy than respect, because they saw the weakness of the position he had tried to maintain. They pitied him for holding on to something that did not have the value he had thought it had. Even his parents and siblings, who never did understand him or approve of his profession, and with whom, aside from his monthly phone calls, he and Ruth had had minimal contact over the years, tried in their way to give support. Over Peters objections, his father attended the trial, although, like the general public, he had little understanding of the issues. His mother sent home-baked pies. While growing up, Peters only child had always thought that his fathers work was more important than his mothers anthropology. Perhaps, in this, Arthur reflected a residual sexism that the Womens Movement had not entirely erased. Anyway, the trial spun Arthur around, and, when he landed, his estimation and respect for his parents had reversed polarity. He saw that, when things got tough, it was Ruth who saw the realities. Even before the trial began, it was his mother to whom Arthur began to turn for wisdom and guidance. Then, with the trial, Peter became a person who appeared less than astute in just the areas in which his profession claimed he must be. Peter knew that, to his son, he had become an object of pity. He knew that Arthur loved him, and that the boy would do whatever he could to ease his pain, but Peter also knew that he had lost the full measure of respect he had once received from his only offspring.

or weeks following the trial, the debate had raged within the hallowed halls of the APA, and reactions were all over the map. One indignant old-timer wanted to countersue, but he was argued down by some of the younger council members who recognized the potential for further damage to the profession that a public rehash would incite. Condemnation had gone far enough. In the end, the mass mailing to the membership took a moderate stance. Although it called the proceedings of the Peter Young trial unwarranted and unfair, it gave assurance that the profession was strong enough and of sufficient unqualified value to its clients that it would weather this storm as it had others before this. Mostly, psychologists wanted to avoid being besmirched by association with the Peter Young affair. In point of fact, Peters misadventure was something that resembled situations that many psychotherapy practitioners had experienced privately in one form or another. Love Two, if not quite universal and seldom seen for what it was, was, in fact, ubiquitous among practitioners and their clients. No one wanted to dwell further on the matter.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

The sorriest victims of the debacle were the truly mentally ill, the ones who really did need and benefit from something that happened in psychotherapy, even if it had not been scientifically demonstrated exactly what that was, and even if it was not, strictly speaking, medical. A few months after the trial, Pervis restored his own reputation when he gave a talk to a meeting of NAMI, the National Association for the Mentally Ill. In a highly publicized address that was rebroadcast several times on C-SPAN, Nancy Mackintoshs former lawyer proclaimed that while aspects of psychodynamic psychotherapy had been rightly criticized it was because the worried well, as the non-mentally ill seekers of psychotherapy had been called, swelled health insurance costs at the expense of everyone. In fact, Pervis stressed, before a crowd that came to condemn but remained to cheer, there were occasions in which forms of counseling were legitimate adjuncts to medical treatment, and that those forms of counseling should and must be reimbursable.

t first, Peter made a courageous attempt to return to his previous life, but few of his former patients returned and new ones were not forthcoming. Only Ruth understood that her husbands reactions did not stem solely from the condemnatory statements by former colleagues, that they had also to do with the continuing pain of Nancys rejection. Throughout the ordeal and long after, his Love Two had held, as Ruth had known it would. Although it was true that Peter acted after deliberation, the poor timing and impulsive manner of his declaration of love to his patient was the result of his failure to acknowledge the reality of his condition. Peter had demonstrated inability to control his actions, which was reprehensive in a man with his responsibility for others. The judge had accepted that his being in the state of Love Two was involuntary; it was something that happened to him, but it was humiliating that Peter was judged guilty of failing to transcend his training. It was true that Love Two had not been accepted by the psychotherapy establishment, and that many practitioners still clung to ideas of transference and countertransference. Yet the information was there in Brownes book and in other writings. When Peter found himself experiencing what had been so vividly described in that literature, he should not have needed a peerreviewed journal article to attest to its reality and to the fact that his thoughts and feelings were distorted by his condition. He was, therefore, not so much guilty of gullibility, as of a kind of conscientious incompetent innocence. The very meaning of the term professional was at issue, and Judge Blackmore had contented that professionals, by definition of the term, were expected to keep up with relevant literature, and to think for themselves. What Peter had believed turned out to be in error, and he was facing the fact that he should have realized it. Why he had not fallen into the state of Love Two earlier in life was a puzzle without answer. But why he did not recognize what had happened to him was a fault that he came to lay at his own door. Peter now had to face that his failing to accept that he had become afflicted with what he had always labeled as psychological dysfunction when he encountered it in others meant either that he himself was afflicted with a mental disorder or that Ruth had been right all along; Love Two was not mental illness. Like an illness, it was a psychological condition beyond control. But unlike a mental illness, it happened to normal people, and one conviction that never left him was that he was not mentally ill. Love Two, he now conceded, was an evolutionary adaptation, an instinct. Maybe it caused disruption in the modern world, but it had had a positive function human biological history. Such thinking was new to Peter; but since he refused to consider himself pathological, it was the more reasonable alternative. It meant that he had been wrong when he believed that he was in control of his thoughts and feelings. Acting within the rules and constraints of his former beliefs, he had, under the spell of Love Two, assumed that his interpretation of what he perceived as Nancys subtle actions was the exercise of his clinical intuition and that the declaration of his feelings toward her was therapeutically correct. He had thought it over; he had even sought the advice of another professional. But he had been wrong, and now he knew it. Until he arrived at this new understanding, Peter had felt trapped. It had been inconceivable that a practitioner as well trained and as experienced as he knew himself to be could make so gross an error. He

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

was a person of caution and integrity; he had done what he had considered best for his patient in admitting his feelings to her. But that, of course, was not the point. The point was that he had clung pig-headedly to his disbelief in what he finally had to admit. It was what his wife had always known: Love Two was normal. It happened to normal people; it was a madness that was not pathological in the psychiatric sense. The traditions of his beloved profession, beginning with Freud himself, were mistaken. The judge had found Peter not guilty of that of which Nancy had accused him. It was worse. He had been guilty of obdurate failure to accept what he was finally forced to admit was incontrovertible fact. He should not have had to experience it in order to believe in it. The evidence was everywhere. He had done disservice to Nancy Mackintosh, to other patients, as well as, in the end, to himself. Peter recalled with remorse that he and his wife had been so separated philosophically. By mutual consent they avoided the problematic subjects of transference, countertransference, romantic love, and the biological bases of human instincts. Peter had perceived Ruth as part of a wave of anti-Freud sentiments. He had accused her of scientism. As witnesses during the trail had repeatedly pointed out, the latter half of the twentieth century had seen increasing disdain for Freud and for psychoanalysis with its penchant for trafficking in mystical mental entities, as one critic called them. By the turn into the new millennium, Freudian theories and speculations had come to be considered useless and, for some types of cases, even destructive to the therapeutic process. Peter knew what they were saying, but he had disagreed. In his articles and in his practice, he had always found Freud more right than wrong. He had related to his patients unconscious feelings and motives and had seen into the depths of their personalities what they could not see for themselves, and he accepted their gratitude as they accepted his interpretations. To them, he had been a source of wisdom. Was it really all false? But his patients conditions of what he now knew was Love Two had looked terrible from where he sat, on the other side of it, as its object. It had looked crazy to psychiatry, and to him. But now it was Peter who looked foolish before the world. He remembered his patient Mildred Thomas. She had been typical of a long line of what had appeared to him to be transference madnesses with which he had been obliged to deal. He knew all along what Ruth would have said, but he told myself that Ruth had not had his clinical training and experience. Now he wondered what had happened to Mildred after the family moved to another state and she had terminated treatment. He wondered if she had heard of the trial. Surely she had. Everyone had heard of it. Peter hoped she had found someone who did not consider her to be pathological, someone who understood, as Peter did only belatedly, that she was only a victim of Love Two. It was crazy; she was not. Peter reread what he had written in his journal, which now, in the aftermath of all that had happened and was happening to him, he saw as folly visited upon him by his involuntary condition. Why did he have to feel it in order to believe in it? He had written:

At first, I felt nothing unusual. It was a sunny morning, the first sunshine after a week of rain, and I had not closed the blinds against it. My new patient, Nancy Mackintosh, showered in sunlight, entered my consultation chamber. I will never forget that moment, that ordinary moment, a kind of moment so easily forgotten in the normal course of things. Nancy isnt beautiful; shes better than beautiful. Beautiful can be boring. Ive known beautiful people. Dozens of people with textbook perfect looks have passed through my office. But those standards are not mine.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

Now it amazed him that he could have written that and yet not understood that he had become a victim of what he had always denied could happen except as an extension of a pathological personality. In a later entry, he wrote, Nancys minor flaws of appearance are not really flaws but expressions of her individuality. They only enhance the pleasing effect. Even now, he did not see his feelings as a purely sexual attraction. It was a desire for closeness and mutual commitment. The ecstasy it promised in his fantasies included, but did not depend on, physical union. He recalled with shame how he had tried to convince Nancy that what had happened in her five previous relationships was that each of those men were indeed inferior to her and therefore were jealous, that, displeased with themselves, they wanted to own her and thereby incorporate her qualities. His clinical interpretation was that it was their self-loathing that repelled her. That was how he had seen things. How wrong he had been! It was not what he saw now, now that he felt for her what they must have felt. Remarkably, through all this new understanding, Peter was still in the state of Love Two. He was finding, as Xavier and Ruth had found, that the condition had a tenacity undeterred by comprehension. Even now, his mind was pulled inexorably to visions of accidentally meeting Nancy in a restaurant or on a plane, and hearing her say that she had thought often of him, that she missed him, and that she would do anything to erase any harm her actions had caused him. But he no longer fought against Ruths view that human nature was the result of evolutionary development, and that the way he felt about Nancy Mackintosh was because his ancestors who fell into Love Two had produced more viable offspring than did those who lacked the trait. Now, in his late forties, the curtain of ignorance had lifted and he was thrust into an involuntary condition he had always denied. Why did he come to it so late, he wondered. When would thoughts of her stop their intrusions into his consciousness? Even during the trial, as witnesses tore apart his former faith in the rightness of his profession, his spirits were elevated by being able to see her across the room from him. There were times when his attention to what Nancy was wearing was more salient than what witnesses were saying on the stand. He envied her lawyer, Ed Pervis, who sat beside her and to whom she often whispered. As his practice fell off, the income from his remaining patients was no longer enough to pay for office assistance, and he was obliged to do the menial office chores himself. Lily Moore remained completely loyal; but, to Peter, now that he understood that he was the object of her Love Two condition and probably had been for years, her support gave little comfort. She said, Oh, Doctor Young, I just want you to know that I felt for you throughout that awful trial. Those terrible people treated you horribly. You didnt deserve it. Peter knew that she thought she was being kindly, but that, in fact, she was staking a claim on him. No wonder he came to what almost amounted to a breaking point. Lilys behavior and his reaction to it graphically demonstrated that being the object of Love Two, when it was not mutual, was distinctly unpleasant. He knew now, indeed for the first time, why Nancy had consulted him. He had completely misunderstood. The object of Love Two did not feel loved so much as tread upon. When, years ago, Peter read Brownes book, it had made no sense to him. He found it overstated and repetitive. In his view, people were trying to put a better face on their own failings or else they were exaggerating something ordinary into romantic drama. He had assumed that to be cured of their lovesickness, they had to understand the real basis for their feelings, which Peters training told him was to be found in pathological patterns formed during treatment received during infancy. Ruth had done some fine ethological work on the relationships between infants and caretakers, for which Peter had lavished genuine praise and admiration. But, where she was impressed by cross-cultural similarities in modes of infant rearing, Peters interest lay in psychopathology brought into being by caretaker behavior. As Peter thought about the various witnesses who had torn down the edifice hed so carefully constructed during his years of training and practice, he finally had to admit that psychodynamic psychotherapy was indeed flawed. When he helped his patients it was despite, not because of, his belief in, and attempt to utilize, remnants of the Freudian legacy. He also began to acknowledge that his family life before the trial had not been, in contrast to what he had always so proudly maintained, truly satisfactory.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

There had always been a subtle, unspoken, distance behind the faade of stability and mutual affection. When the trial began, his defenses against the truth had been intact; but, by the time it ended, he found himself stripped of his confidence toward, not only his profession, but other aspects of his life, as well. Deciding to begin afresh, he determined to examine all aspects of his life, and he would begin by dealing with Love Two both his own condition and how Brownes theory applied to clinical practice. It was just as well that Ruth was away. He wanted to think it through for himself, by himself. As he re-read Brownes book, he now found himself on every page. Love Two was not an exaggeration. As Browne said, it was an experience so unlike other human experiences that it was not surprising that it had been denied. It was also humiliating to have ones thoughts and desires so out of control. He now understood why his small action was not really small. At the time, he had insisted to himself that confessing his love was the right thing to do. He might have done it better, he didnt really plan to do it at that session, and he should have done it earlier in the session to leave time for explanation instead of having it come out as she was leaving. He thought he had read her body language as favorable to his case, and immediate reaction had burst forth. But now he saw it as the straightforward result of his condition and his denial. It was the way of Love Two to misperceive the actions of the other. Maybe open expression occurs in the best of therapeutic relationships. Maybe the patient should be told of the therapists feelings. Psychotherapy is an interpersonal process, as Professor Barkus used to repeat endlessly (bark at us, the students would say). It goes both ways, the professor would shout, waving his arms at the class. Of course it must. Peter had concurred, and thereafter, during his years of psychotherapy practice, he had given of himself to his patients endlessly and selflessly. Sometimes, when he could see that distress was overcoming a patient, he would even treat a patient pro bono, at least for a while. But sometimes, every kindness he bestowed was misinterpreted, and several women over the years had openly tried to involve him romantically. He resisted, of course, but it was never easy to handle. Even prior to his new insights, he sometimes he wondered whether, if they could not get to him as a man, he was really reaching them as a therapist. Fortunately, these lovesick, transference-bound cases were in the minority. With the others, he had formerly felt no reason to doubt the effectiveness of his treatments. But now, in his season of self-doubt he wondered even about those others. For days, tortured by renewed self-doubt, Peter turned things around and around in his mind. He knew, at least he thought he knew at that moment that had so turned his life around, that there was beginning a transference in which Nancy Mackintosh had developed romantic feelings about him. Now he understood that Love Two was an instinct that, when triggered, existed as a condition independent of other variables. It was horrid in its capacity to deceive its victims, but it was not, as he had for so long believed, the result of an otherwise dysfunctional personality. It lived in the skin apart from personality. If pathology was involved, it was in that he had not believed in its existence until it had happened to him. Now that he himself experienced the distorted perception, the uncontrolled thinking, and propensity toward ill-advised action, he knew finally that either Love Two was as Browne contendedimposed on an otherwise intact and healthy personality, a normal madnessor he, the therapist, had himself gone mad. Although he had come to doubt much that he had formerly accepted, he could not doubt his own sanity. Peter recalled half a dozen times that a patient had done something overt that he now saw as an indication of Love Two. At the time he had seen only neurosis. But Peter learned from Browne that Love Two could be concealed. He had thought he had developed sensitivity to small, otherwise unnoticeable, signs, and that Nancys posture, tone of voice, and usage of space had given her away. But hed been wrong. Afflicted himself, he had acted on the misperception that Love Two produces. For most of the people in the courtroom, and to the journalists covering the story, the facts revealed by the testimony led to the conclusion that all his professional life Peter Young had been a party to a dreadful, self-serving stratagem. All those courses, all those lectures, all those papers presented at professional meetings, his book all added up to delusion. Not only was psychotherapy not based on science, but it was also fraught with biases that undermined its being able to provide real help. Alone in the house, sitting in semi-darkness, Peter Young, Ph. D., psychotherapist, became Peter the penitent.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

e did not yet realize it during this period of reassessment. But, while his public behavior had revealed Peters narrowness of conception during the trial, so also had it revealed the genuineness of his love and loyalty to his wife and child, and his patients. His dignified behavior had revealed him to be decent, moral, and conscientious. He was an admirable citizen in every way except in his trust of authority. On the subject of romantic love he had been obtuse, even dishonest, and he had ignored the failings of his profession as its many critics had revealed. But if he had done wrong, it was in innocence. It was only by trying hard to do right. Yes, it had bothered him that researchers had not reported stronger positive effects of psychotherapy. He didnt understand it because the positive results of his therapy with his own patients seemed obvious to him. He was almost always successful sometimes far beyond his own expectation. If he had not been helping people, then what had he been doing? He knew Ruth was suspicious of psychotherapy, but she always veered toward scientific reductionism. Things had to be more concrete and more visible before shed believe in them. Scientific skepticism, it was called. The trouble was that with too much skepticism nothing would get done. It had not really mattered what the verdict was as far as his standing among peers was concerned. It had suffered. Considering the publicity that the trial had received, he had considered trying to redeem himself, as well as make some money, by writing a book explaining how he had taken the most moral position he could take at the time. But, as his understanding deepened, he knew that he would not write a book. His message would not be an effective defense because his position was indefensible. His only defense was his guilt, and the only thing he could write would be a confession. He had humiliated himself and disgraced what had been a beloved profession. Now, his years of clinical experience, his apparent successes with other patients, and his attempts to act in accordance with the ethical code of his profession, had all been swept up in the accuracy of the accusations and the exposure. He recalled how he had tried to catch Nancys eye when the verdict was announced. She was smiling and she and the lawyers seemed to be congratulating each other, which was odd because they had, technically speaking, lost the case. She didnt look at him then, but later, in the hall, they had a moment. He wanted to apologize, but instead she apologized to him. She said that she was no friend of the insurance interests, but that her research had shown psychotherapy to be on pretty shaky ground, and that Peters inability to incorporate Love Two into his arsenal of therapeutic tactics had clinched the matter for her. She hoped he would recover in all ways. Then she turned and left him feeling he had received more of a lesson than an apology. The new millennium, the turning that so many had made so much of, had begun with a presidential election fraught with conflict that appeared never to be resolved. As Peter suffered through his trial, the new president further disturbed him with policies that Peter thought displayed arrogance inappropriate to world conditions. When the trial finally ended and the publicity calmed down, Peters brush with the idea of suicide had been only the beginning. He was further disturbed by the incessant, daily news about Congressman Gary Condits affair with his intern, Shandra Levy. Whatever the truth of the matter, whether Condit was or was not guilty of involvement in the young womans sudden and mysterious disappearance, Peter could not help identifying with a man continually besieged by the media. During this period of anguish, he had not been able to get to sleep without whisky, something to which Peter had never before turned. He had been a moderate, but cautious, social drinker. The alcohol gave only temporary relief. He could not sleep more than three or four hours at a stretch, although, after a period of wakefulness, an enormous feeling of fatigue would force him back to bed. During this second sleep session, it was not liquor, but television, with which he distracted himself from self-absorption. He had determined to fight depression and to fight defeat, but he had yet to figure out what that would mean. Then, an event that shook the world would take him out of himself.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

n the morning of September 11th, Peter had gone back to bed at five a.m. after hours of pacing through the empty house in futile deliberation. Finally, as CNN talked about the downturn in foreign markets, he fell into a fitful doze. In a dream, a woman patient screamed at him, You did it deliberately! Peter awoke. His head was pounding. Blinking, he turned to the TV screen at the foot of his bed. Over the next hours, he, along with the millions, were captured by the grotesque events that looked like, but were not, the special effects of movie makers. The stark reality was that thousands who had gone to their offices that morning were cremated before their coffee had passed through their systems. Peter forgot his own coffee and sat upright in bed, still in pajamas, transfixed. At noon, the telephone rang. Lily was in tears. She was mumbling. Dr. Young, she began, but broke off, unable to continue. She could only repeat his name again and again, then, Please help. I cant stop. It is so terrible. It is so terrible. Its the end of everything, everything, everything! Please help... Call waiting interrupted. Take it easy, Lily, Ill get back to you, Peter said before switching to the other line. It was Arthur. Dad, I dont know what to say. People are walking around crying and trembling. They dont know what to do. Is mother all right? Everything is upside down. Classes were canceled. Whats going to happen? Ive been trying to get through for an hour, but the lines were busy. During the rest of that dreadful day, Peter heard from several people, all of whom were stunned, frightened, and bewildered. He forgot even his own grief and confusion, as he tried to calm and reassure others. Several times, one call interrupted another, and he had to call back, which he did with automatic conscientiousness. Only Ruth, calling from across the world, did not ask for help, but instead offered it. Peter, are you all right? Do you want me to try to get home? No, Ill be okay. Whats happening there? It was only as he spoke to his wife that it dawned on him that he had been sought, not for therapy, but for succor. It was six p.m. Fourteen people had called, including all of his remaining patients; three former patients that hed written off as gone forever; business owners he had known from the social circuit; the reporter, Dick Price, who had published articles about the trial; and, most surprising of all, Ed Pervis. Ive been wanting to call to see how you are, to apologize for anything I might have done during the trial that you felt was unfair, and to express admiration for the way you handled yourself during what must have been a very difficult time. I think now that the world has changed, it will be up to people like you to calm tempers and maintain equilibrium. Ed Pervis sounded unrehearsed and genuine. Peter was taken aback. Something new, or maybe something old that had not been recognized for what it was, was happening to him. The day that brought grief and despair for so many brought a certain curious level of relief from despair to Peter Young. Without a conscious thought, from those moments, he

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

eschewed the term psychotherapy forever. There was new direction to his life, and it pointed away from psychodynamic psychotherapy. The next day, Peter drove east toward New York City. The trip took most of the day. Of course, the turmoil prevented him from actually entering Manhattan, but the next morning he was able to get to Staten Island through New Jersey, where he volunteered his help at a facility that had been set up to aid the many people who had lost family members to the tragedy. There, in sight of the smoke billowing from the wreckage across the bay, he applied what he had begun to recognize the value of his genuine skills of caring and empathy. He was helping, but in ways that had little to do with his professional training. Most of the people who came to the facility were survivors. They had lost, or feared that they had lost, family members or other loved ones. In addition to making sandwiches and serving hot chocolate, Peter listened to stories about the missing ones, what they were like, the jobs they held, and the possibility that they might be found alive. Some were hopeful, and good news came for some, but as the days wore on, hope waned for many. Peter helped gather and relay what information could be obtained, placed telephone calls, and, sometimes, literally provided a shoulder on which the bereaved could weep. As psychiatrist Paula Panzer stated in Psychiatric News about her experiences as a twin towers disaster volunteer, There really is no manual for dealing with what we are experiencing there are few experts in the field of trauma or disaster psychiatry. The new situation presented a core challenge to the fundamental parameters within which psychiatrists traditionally practiced. Sidney Weissman, psychiatrist at Northwestern University, went even further. He said, The challenge to our roles as therapeutic providers is that we are acting on being impacted by the horror of this, rather than as the nice, neat, and tidy psychiatrist. It was one of lifes ironies, Peter thought, how when the World Trade Center was hit he had been groping for a new direction. Now, he found that his fresh humility had revealed aspects of himself he had not previously perceived. He did have value for others, although not in the role he thought he had played. He discovered that he Peter Young, the person not Dr. Young, the psychotherapist possessed sensitivity to what people needed. He had used it in his practice, but had not realized that the successes he seemed to have with his patients did not come from his clinical intuition but from the gift of empathy that was, until overcome by Love Two, the true basis for his successes as clinician. When, after several weeks, he returned to the still empty house, it was with a new purpose. He discarded the self-image and identity of psychotherapist. The very word had become anathema. Instead, he ministered to the many who had been affected by the misfortunes and heartbreak produced by a less certain and more frightening world in which there was no escape from fear. Terror and uncertainty was not limited to the sites of destruction. Anthrax powder letters, plus the growing circle of unemployment and economic despair, spread unease in ever-widening circles throughout the land. Peter recalled the images of poverty in Britain drawn by journalist Nick Davies in his 1998 book, Dark Heart. Now such destitution was endemic and visible in his own country. Many who had known lives of simple satisfactions had become acquainted with anxieties induced by fears of further horror and by the realities of poverty. Many of his former colleagues had taken on the title of grief therapist, but, in his identity revolution, Peter rejected all connotations of professionalism. He was a volunteer, an aide where aid was increasingly needed, even here in his small Midwestern city. The world had changed and, surprisingly, Peter was ready for it. Frugality in the days of affluence left him able now to give where, although he had not recognized it at the time, he had formerly only taken.