Irving Yalom's Fat Lady

In the story, “Fat Lady”, by Irving Yalom, the psychiatrist reveals his story of how he dealt with Betty, his obese patient as well as, how in the processed it helped her lose nearly 100 pounds. The story includes a very strong prejudice and countertransference. Throughout all the distaste he had in the story, surprisingly, he managed to successfully treat Betty.

Transference and Countertransference

In Yalom’s Fat Lady story, he mentions two words transference and countertransference, which I considered a significance throughout the story. Transference was appeared to be the feelings that the patients erroneously transfers to the therapist that perhaps originated out of earlier relationships. On the other hand, countertransference is the opposite.

Although there my personal opinions, I should have a little sympathy. I am somewhat like Yalom myself. I don’t like teen mothers. I’ve always thought that teen mothers are disgusting. I thought these things because it wasn’t right and I feel like there were ways to prevent these situations. When I see teen moms in public, I get angry. It just makes me mad, but then I encountered a friend of mine that was pregnant. She wasn’t a teenager, she was twenty years old when she confided in me that she was pregnant. However, that’s still young enough. I didn’t know how to react when she told me. She expressed how she was stressed and couldn’t tell her mom because her mother would make her get an abortion and wouldn’t be supportive. She didn’t tell her boyfriend either because she wasn’t sure how he would treat her after finding out that she was pregnant. As I come to a conclusion about what I’ve experience between my friend and me, this shows my countertransference because I was always disgusted with teen moms. It also shows that she was expressing transference because of her feelings that she shared with

The aspect was when Yalom said “Would you give yourself a score from one to ten on how much revealing about yourself you’ve done during our hour together today… let’s say, with strangers in a line at the movies (Yalom, 116)”. I don’t think that was important. I feel that he should of just acknowledge the fact that his client felt comfortable opening up to him after expressing some very hard situations with him. I don’t see how this question would have helped her. It doesn’t matter, I feel like she needed to vent and laugh instead of having her be depressed the entire time.

Conclusion

To conclude, Yalom’s story is a great reflection of how we treat and think of others without noticing. Or maybe we do notice, but don’t care about our action. This should be a story that we learn from to better the way we carry our attitudes to others. We should practice controlling our countertransference that we show to others. If any, we don’t always have to express them. We should be considerate to know that others have feelings and the way we look at them or communicate with them won’t always be positive to them. Everything we do or say should be done with