The Schopenhauer Cure

A Novel

Irvin D. Yalom

To my community of older buddies who grace me with their friendship, share life`s

inexorable diminishments and losses, and continue to sustain me with their wisdom and

dedication to the life of the mind: Robert Berger, Murray Bilmes, Martel Bryant, Dagfinn

Føllesdahl, Joseph Frank, Van Harvey, Julius Kaplan, Herbert Kotz, Morton Lieberman,

Walter Sokel, Saul Spiro, and Larry Zaroff.

37

_________________________

Everyone who is in

love will

experience

an

extraordin

ary

disillusio

nment

after the

pleasure

is finally

attained;

and he

will be

astonished

that what

was

desired

with such

longing

achieves

nothing

more than

what every

other

sexual

satisfacti

on

achieves,

so that he

does not

see

himself

very much

benefited

by it.

_________________________

Leaving the group room did not clear the muck from

Philip`s mind. He walked down Fillmore Street assailed by

anxiety. What had happened to his arsenal of self–soothing

techniques? Everything that had for so long provided him

structure and serenity was unraveling—his mental

discipline, his cosmic perspective. Struggling for

equanimity, he instructed himself: Don`t struggle, don`t

resist, clear your mind; do nothing but watch the passing

show of your thoughts. Just let thoughts drift into

consciousness and then drift away.

Things drifted in all right, but there was no drifting

out. Instead, images unpacked their bags, hung up their

clothes, and set up housekeeping in his mind. Pam`s face

drifted into view. He focused on her image, which, to his

astonishment, transformed itself by shedding years: her

features grew younger, and soon the Pam he had known so

many years ago stood before him. How strange it was to

descry the young in the old. He usually imagined the

opposite trajectory—seeing the future in the present, the

skull underlying the unblemished skin of youth.

How radiant her face! And such astonishing clarity!

Of all the hordes, the hundreds, of women whose bodies he

had entered and whose faces had long faded, melding into

one archetypal visage, how was it possible that Pam`s face

persisted in such remarkable detail?

Then, to his amazement, sharper memory snippets of

the young Pam slipped into view: her beauty, her giddy

excitement as he tied her wrists with his belt, her cascade of

orgasms. His own sexual excitement remained as a vague

body memory—a wordless, heaving sensation of pelvic

thrusting and exultation. He remembered, too, lingering in

her arms for much too long. It was for that precise reason

he had regarded her as dangerous and had resolved on the

spot not to see her again. She represented a threat to his

freedom. The quarry he sought was quick sexual release—

that was his license to blessed peace and solitude. He never

wanted carnality. He wanted freedom; he wanted to escape

from the bondage of desire in order to enter, however

briefly, the true philosophers` will–free clearing. Only after

sexual release could he think elevated thoughts and join his

friends—the great thinkers whose books were personal

letters to him.

More fantasies came; his passion enveloped him and,

with a great whoosh, sucked him from the philosophers`

distant observing grandstand. He craved; he desired; he

wanted. And more than anything, he wanted to hold Pam`s

face in his hands. Tight orderly connections between

thoughts loosened. He imagined a sea lion surrounded by a

harem of cows, then a yelping mongrel flinging himself

again and again against a steel link fence separating him

from a bitch in heat. He felt himself a brutish, club–wielding caveman, grunting, warning off competitors. He

wanted to possess her, lick her, smell her. He thought of

Tony`s muscular forearms, of Popeye gulping his spinach

and chucking the empty can behind him. He saw Tony

mounting her—her legs splayed, her arms encircling him.

That pussy should be his, his alone. She had no right to

defile it by offering it to Tony. Everything she did with

Tony sullied his memory of her, impoverished his

experience. He felt sick to his stomach. He was a biped.

Philip turned and walked along the marina, then

through Chrissy Field to the bay and along the edge of the

Pacific, where the calm surf and the timeless aroma of

ocean salt soothed him. He shivered and buttoned his

jacket. In the fading light of day, the cold Pacific wind

streamed through the Golden Gate and rushed by him, just

as the hours of his life would forever rush past without

warmth or pleasure. The wind presaged the frost of endless

days to come, arctic days of rising in the morning with no

hope of home, love, touch, joy. His mansion of pure

thought was unheated. How strange that he had never

before noticed. He continued walking but with the

glimmering knowledge that his house, his whole life, had

been built on foundations flimsy and false.