Word: therapist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Herpes is a puzzle, an enigma," says Dr. John Grossman, a Washington, D.C., gynecologist. "The medical community doesn't do very well with viruses anyway, and with this one, our bodies aren't able to give us any assistance in killing it." All by itself, says New York Group Therapist Dominick Riccio, herpes has changed the uneasy balance between sex for pleasure and sex for commitment. "People are beginning to realize that romance is what relationships are all about," Riccio says. "They're disillusioned with free sex and terrified of getting herpes and having it forever...
Unsympathetic friends and relatives can be an additional burden. New York Therapist Michele Krieg, a divorcee, 33, after gathering the courage to tell her mother, heard in response: "But, dear, no one will ever marry you again, will they?" Then a pregnant friend coldly told her to stop visiting until after the baby was born. In one Manhattan office, co-workers of a woman who had herpes refused to use the same phone and got up a petition to ban her from the office, lest she somehow harm an employee undergoing chemotherapy. Some law firms have been making discreet inquiries...
This balming of the sore by the psyche may be the best palliative. Once anger and aggression are dealt with, says Therapist Riccio, a herpes sufferer can develop the kind of psychological calm that makes recurrences milder and rarer. Most manage that within six months, according to Fordham Professor Oscar Gillespie, a co-founder of the New York Help chapter. "Given the appropriate information," Gillespie says, "90% of herpes sufferers will adjust after the initial crisis...
...Fran Simon the clouds parted the day that her therapist asked whether herpes was one of the crucial facts about her life. "I realized then that it wasn't. It wasn't one of the ten most important things about me." One Atlanta man came out of his depression when the outbreaks began to ease. "I looked at it this way: 95% of the time I didn't have herpes. I worked it out and came to terms with it." For others, progress depends on a change of attitude, from victim to manager. Says Marilyn Anderson of Cleveland Heights...
...they frequently speak of pencil envy. The diagnosis hardly applies to Edel, a man with many distinguished books to his credit. If anything, he is a professional who knows how to cover his bets. He can argue the obvious: that literature is not a patient and he is no therapist. He can then go on to examine writers and their work along orthodox lines laid down by Viennese mind-science nearly a century ago. He is wary enough to disarm those who would argue that literary psychology diminishes its subject. The fact remains that Edel is incapable of being reductive...