Therapy for a Therapist

One colleague, Dr. A., was treating “Benzy” some time ago for recurrent bouts of depression. When Benzy became depressed, he also became at times anxious, paranoid, and even suicidal. The work with Benzy was quite challenging, to say the least. In spite of the heavy doses of psychotropic medication he was taking, his desperate phone calls between sessions became more and more frequent, and he eventually required hospitalization. Throughout all of this, Dr. A. maintained regular contact with Benzy’s psychiatrist and extended himself in numerous ways in order to relieve Benzy’s suffering as much as was possible.

When Benzy abruptly terminated his therapy without any warning, Dr. A. was disappointed to end working with someone in whom he had invested so much time and effort. After all of the frantic late-night and Erev Shabbos phone calls Dr. A. had taken, at not insignificant self-sacrifice, he felt considerably unappreciated.

Benzy had ended with an unpaid balance. Dr. A. sent him a statement for the outstanding charges before closing the case. The response he received was most unsettling and unexpected. A member of Benzy’s family called Dr. A. and threatened him not to make any further attempts to collect the debt. L’man hashalom, Dr. A. chose to take the loss, but could not help feeling he had been subjected to a blatant act of kefias tovah.

Now consider the case of “Mindy,” who first walked into the office of Dr. B., another colleague, and slumped down as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. While she struggled to present herself as the high-functioning, capable mother and housewife that she had been, she could not hide the unmistakable signs of the creeping depression that was swallowing her up and dragging her down.