MAGNOLIAS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

When I was a young psychiatrist I had a patient who wouldn't talk to me. I read up on "The Silent Patient" and it said to be patient.

So I sat and sat and session after session she would hardly tell me anything for fifty whole minutes. But she kept coming three times a week and paying her nominal bill to the State of Michigan, which was my employer. The psychotherapy articles on "The Silent Patient" recommended that I learn to read and comment on non-verbal behavior, and so I would make some what I thought were insightful comments, but she pooh-poohed them, insisting that we were wasting both time and money and getting nowhere.

One supervisor told me to forget it, she was not a candidate for psychotherapy because she didn't talk, and this was supposed to be 'the talking cure.' At my wits end I did not know what else to do, so I let her go. Her nonverbal behavior indicated that she was shocked, and she stormed out of the room, red-faced and slamming the door. A week later I received a five page long hand written letter saying that she was hopeless and could not see any reason to go on living.

I had no idea she felt that bad. There was more in that letter than she had revealed for six months of three times a week! I realized that my senior supervisor was wrong and that the authors of the articles I was reading made more sense. I told her that under the circumstances we would resume our schedule of sessions, and that I hoped that from now on, she would be more forthcoming.

She was not. The sessions went back as before, with her being silent for most of the session. When I asked what was on her mind, she would say, "nothing." I would ask, "how could that be?" but she said that's the way it was, nothing, and besides, nothing mattered. Whatever she would say would not matter. I told her of course it would matter, but she bit her lip and shook her head. Nonverbal communication! She would continue to say, it was no use.

One day, in the dark of winter, when everything was bleak, she seemed more hopeless than ever. I looked out the window, hoping for inspiration, and I found it with the bare branches scraping my window.

"See those bare branches?" I said.

"So?" she said.

They look pretty bare now, but I bet that in the spring, they will be full of beautiful blooms. I knew it was a magnolia tree.

"Right," she said.

The months went by and sure enough, winter melted into spring and the branches were full of ripe buds. I glanced at them session after session but didn't say anything.

Finally they were in abundant bloom, pink and purple and her dark mood did indeed seem to lift. Perhaps it was doing something, deep and invisible, that I would not give up on her. I told myself I would never give up.

Fast forward, and to make a long story short(er) she gradually revealed more of her history and feelings and felt better. In time she actually went out on dates and found a guy who fell in love with her and proposed marriage. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, she was taking voice lessons and auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera! I did not know she could sing!

She kept in touch with me through the years and came back time and time again for more therapy. In time she became a writer herself and even advocated writing one's life story, and gave talks before large audiences with the title--- "Write your life story!" She thought it was therapeutic to write your life story. I suggested she do it herself and she did, and wrote about her wonderful therapist who predicted the bare branches would break forth in magnificent magnolia blooms.

Every year in springtime we send each other magnolia cards. She gave me a bush years ago that I planted in my yard and now it is quite a substantial tree. I take pictures of it and mail them to her and she writes of her operatic singing.

We are both getting old now and commiserate about arthritis and dental work, but every May, wherever we may be, magnolias are never far from our vision and have a special meaning.