Irvin D. Yalom - Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir

I awake from my dream at 3 a.m., weeping into my pillow. Moving quietly, so as not to disturb Marilyn, I slip out of bed and into the bathroom, dry my eyes, and follow the directions I have given to my patients for fifty years: close your eyes, replay your dream in your mind, and write down what you have seen.

I am about ten, perhaps eleven. I am biking down a long hill only a short distance from home. I see a girl named Alice sitting on her front porch. She seems a bit older than me and is attractive even though her face is covered with red spots. I call out to her as I bike by, Hello, Measles.

Suddenly a man, exceedingly large and frightening, stands in front of my bicycle and brings me to a stop by grabbing my handlebars. Somehow I know that this is Alices father.

He calls out to me: Hey, you, whatever your name is. Think for a minuteif you can thinkand answer this question. Think about what you just said to my daughter and tell me one thing: How did that make Alice feel?

I am too terrified to answer.

Cummon, answer me. Youre Bloomingdales kid [My fathers grocery store was named Bloomingdale Market and many customers thought our name was Bloomingdale] and I bet youre a smart Jew. So go ahead, guess what Alice feels when you say that.

I tremble. I am speechless with fear.

All right, all right. Calm down. Ill make it simple. Just tell me this: Do your words to Alice make her feel good about herself or bad about herself?

All I can do is mumble, I dunno.

Cant think straight, eh? Well, Im gonna help you think. Suppose I looked at you and picked some bad feature about you and comment on it every time I see you? He peers at me very closely. A little snot in your nose, eh? How about snotty? Your left ear is bigger than your right. Supposed I say, Hey, fat ear every time I see you? Or how about Jew Boy? Yeah, how about that? How would you like that?

I realize in the dream that this is not the first time I have biked by this house, that Ive been doing this same thing day after day, riding by and calling out to Alice with the same words, trying to initiate a conversation, trying to make friends. And each time I shouted, Hey, Measles, I was hurting her, insulting her. I am horrifiedat the harm Ive done, all these times, and at the fact that I couldve been so blind to it.

When her father finishes with me, Alice walks down the porch stairs and says in a soft voice, Do you want to come up and play? She glances at her father. He nods.

I feel so awful, I answer. I feel ashamed, so ashamed. I cant, I cant, I cant

Since early adolescence, Ive always read myself to sleep, and for the past two weeks I have been reading a book called Our Better Angels by Steven Pinker. Tonight, before the dream, I had read a chapter on the rise of empathy during the Enlightenment, and how the rise of the novel, particularly British epistolary novels like Clarissa and Pamela, may have played a role in decreasing violence and cruelty by helping us to experience the world from anothers viewpoint. I turned out the lights about midnight, and a few hours later I awoke from my nightmare about Alice.

After calming myself, I return to bed, but lie awake for a long time thinking how remarkable it was that this primeval abscess, this sealed pocket of guilt now seventy-three years old, has suddenly burst. In my waking life, I recall now, I had indeed bicycled past Alices house as a twelve-year-old, calling out Hey, Measles, in some brutish, painfully unempathic effort to get her attention. Her father had never confronted me, but as I lie here in bed at age eighty-five, recovering from this nightmare, I can imagine how it must have felt to her, and the damage I might have done. Forgive me, Alice.