Challenge With Dr. Jerry - the First

  Episode 5:        The Case of Theodore Ted was thirty when he came to see me, and a hermit. For the preceding seven years he had lived in a small cabin deep in the woods. He had few friends and no one close. For three  years he had not dated. Occasionally he performed minor carpentry jobs, but mostly he filled his days by fishing, reading, and spending endless time making unimportant decisions,  such as what he would cook for dinner and how he might cook it or whether he could or could not afford to purchase an inexpensive tool.  Actually, by virtue of an inheritance he was  quite wealthy. He was also intellectually brilliant. And, as he said that first session, paralyzed. "I know I should be doing  something more constructive and creative with my life," he complained, "but I can't even make the most minor decisions, much less big ones. I ought to have a career. I ought to go to  graduate school and learn some kind of occupation, but I can't get enthusiastic

  Episode 1:        World Views and Religion As human beings grow in discipline and love and life experience, their understanding of the world and their place in it naturally grows apace. Conversely, as people fail to grow in  discipline, love and life experience, so does their understanding fail to grow. Consequently, among the members of the  human race there exists an extraordinary variability in the breadth and sophistication of our understanding of what life is all about. This understanding is our religion. Since everyone has some understanding-some world view, no matter how limited or primitive or inaccurate-everyone has a religion. This fact, not widely recognized, is of the utmost importance: everyone has a religion. We suffer, I believe, from a tendency to define religion too narrowly. We tend to think that religion must include a belief in God or some ritualistic practice or membership in a worshiping group. We are likely to say of someone who does not  atte

  Episode 13:      The Risk of Confrontation The final and possibly the greatest risk of love is the risk of exercising power with humility. The most common example of this is the act of loving confrontation. Whenever we confront someone we are in essence saying to that person, "You are wrong; I am right." When a parent confronts a child, saying, "You are being sneaky," the parent is saying in effect, "Your sneakiness is wrong. I have the right to criticize it because I am not sneaky myself and I am right." When a husband confronts a wife with her frigidity, he is saying, "You are frigid, because it is wrong for you not to respond to me sexually with greater fervor, since I am sexually adequate and in other ways all right. You have a sexual problem; I do not." When a wife confronts a husband with her opinion that he does not spend enough time with her and the children, she is saying, "Your investment in your work is excessive and w

  Episode 7:         "Self-Sacrifice" The motives behind injudicious giving and destructive nurturing are many, but such cases invariably have a basic feature in common: the "giver," under the guise of love, is responding  to and meeting his or her own needs without regard to the spiritual needs of the receiver. A Minister reluctantly came to see me because his wife was suffering from a chronic depression and both his sons had dropped out of college and were living at home and receiving psychiatric attention. Despite the fact that his whole family was "ill," he was initially completely unable to comprehend that he might be playing a role  in their illnesses. "I do everything in my power to take care of them and their problems," he reported. "I don't have a waking moment when I am not concerned about them." Analysis of the situation revealed that this man was indeed working himself to the bone to meet the demands of his wife