Transcript

#28 Dr. Muller · Heavyweight

0:05
Speaker 1: Hello.
0:06
Speaker 2: How come your French is so much better than mine?
0:09
Speaker 3: I think everybody's friends?
0:11
Speaker 2: Why is that?
0:12
Speaker 3: Because we listen? We don't listen?
0:14
Speaker 2: I mean I was in French immersion with all you guys.
0:17
Speaker 4: What you're either daydreams or you're talking.
0:20
Speaker 2: Do you know what it sounds like? You're on all
0:22
Speaker 2: those French immersion teachers sides that I had throughout the years,
0:25
Speaker 2: That's what they used to say, lune, which means your
0:29
Speaker 2: head in the class the avoir.
0:39
Speaker 5: Jackie, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna you know, you know,
0:41
Speaker 5: I'm getting close to the hangoup eh.
0:42
Speaker 2: You could feel like coming.
0:45
Speaker 5: When you start getting on my nerves right about now,
0:47
Speaker 5: right right now.
0:58
Speaker 2: From Gimlet Media, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
1:03
Speaker 2: today's episode Doctor Mueller. Growing up, a single question dominated
1:20
Speaker 2: my thoughts. What was the use? What was the use
1:24
Speaker 2: of getting out of bed, of combing your hair, of
1:28
Speaker 2: breathing all that breathing? What was the use of anything
1:33
Speaker 2: when all of life inevitably came grinding to an end.
1:36
Speaker 2: By seventeen, I was waking up in the middle of
1:39
Speaker 2: the night, seized by the meaninglessness of it all. By
1:42
Speaker 2: eighteen I started to lose my hair. At nineteen I
1:47
Speaker 2: dropped out of college, and at twenty I knew I
1:50
Speaker 2: had to do something, so I began seeing a therapist. Initially,
1:55
Speaker 2: the idea felt romantic, like something out of JD. Salinger
1:59
Speaker 2: or Hitchcock. At our first appointment, I might have even
2:02
Speaker 2: worn a blazer. My new therapist extended a hand and
2:07
Speaker 2: introduced herself as doctor Mueller, and for the next six years,
2:11
Speaker 2: that was the only name by which she was known
2:14
Speaker 2: to me. Doctor Mueller never referred to me by my
2:18
Speaker 2: first name either. Instead, she called me mister Goldstein, which,
2:22
Speaker 2: because she spoke with a heavy German accent, she pronounced Goldstein.
2:28
Speaker 2: The first and only time I tried correcting her, she
2:31
Speaker 2: simply said, it is Goldstein. Doctor Mueller was raal Thinn.
2:42
Speaker 2: Appeared to be in her late sixties and wore her
2:45
Speaker 2: hair in a grayish bowl cut. She favored turtlenecks and
2:49
Speaker 2: macrom vests and sat behind an imposing desk, empty except
2:53
Speaker 2: for a telephone and a neat stack of small note papers.
2:57
Speaker 2: At the end of our first appointment, she asked me
2:59
Speaker 2: to write up a one page family history. Instead, I
3:03
Speaker 2: took a deep dive into my childhood. I wanted her
3:06
Speaker 2: to have all the source material she'd need to get
3:09
Speaker 2: to the bottom of my morbid disposition, and so the
3:13
Speaker 2: following week I proudly presented her with a book length memoir.
3:18
Speaker 2: Doctor Mueller skimmed through it and then silently stuck my
3:23
Speaker 2: tone in a drawer and never brought it back up.
3:26
Speaker 2: So several sessions later, I did, I am not very
3:31
Speaker 2: interested in the past, she said, I'm more interested in
3:35
Speaker 2: the present. What are you going to do now?
3:39
Speaker 6: She asked?
3:40
Speaker 2: What I was going to do now? I hoped was
3:43
Speaker 2: talk about my past, but doctor Mueller could care less.
3:48
Speaker 2: A therapist uninterested in the past ran contrary to everything
3:52
Speaker 2: I thought I knew about therapy. It was like a
3:55
Speaker 2: carpenter who refused to work with wood. More than that,
3:59
Speaker 2: it was like a carpenter who hated wood, and if
4:02
Speaker 2: you brought them wood, they'd throw it in a concrete
4:04
Speaker 2: drawer and never mention it again. Wasn't excavating the past
4:09
Speaker 2: pretty much a therapist's whole job. Where else does one
4:13
Speaker 2: find answers? Doctor Mueller's unwillingness to even acknowledge my past
4:18
Speaker 2: was confounding, but so were a lot of things about
4:21
Speaker 2: her Sometimes she'd inexplicably show up wearing a neck brace.
4:26
Speaker 2: Other times she'd spend frantic minutes buffing out an invisible
4:30
Speaker 2: scuff mark from a waiting room chair. Then there were
4:34
Speaker 2: the long anecdotes about car trouble, a trip. She was planning,
4:38
Speaker 2: stories that went nowhere and were illustrative of nothing I
4:42
Speaker 2: could fathom, And all the while, whole precious expensive minutes
4:47
Speaker 2: elapsed in which I could neither whine nor complain my
4:50
Speaker 2: way to mental health. It felt positively wasteful. Doctor Muller's
5:03
Speaker 2: office was in a large old echoe building downtown. Our
5:07
Speaker 2: appointments happened around dusk, and in my memory it's always
5:11
Speaker 2: the dusk of winter, cold and wet Montreal winter. From
5:15
Speaker 2: behind her desk, lit by a desk lamp, she spoke
5:18
Speaker 2: of giving birth to one's authentic self, a self that
5:22
Speaker 2: wasn't all tangled up and regrets about the past or
5:25
Speaker 2: consumed by anxiety over the future, AKA a self that
5:30
Speaker 2: didn't sound very Jonathan Goldsteiny. In every session, doctor Muller
5:36
Speaker 2: repeated the same refrain, you must give birth to yourself.
5:41
Speaker 2: What could she possibly mean? I asked my girlfriend at
5:44
Speaker 2: the time, Barbara was working on her bachelor's in psychology,
5:49
Speaker 2: and in my darker moments, I felt certain her relationship
5:52
Speaker 2: with me was a part of her field work. It
5:56
Speaker 2: might be a gestalt thing, she said, uncertainly, but I
5:59
Speaker 2: don't know that gestalt therapy is even a thing anymore.
6:03
Speaker 2: Week after week, doctor Muller and I sat in a
6:06
Speaker 2: dark room as I tried in vain to birth myself.
6:10
Speaker 2: On a bad day, she would reprimand me for not
6:13
Speaker 2: doing as she instructed. On a good day, she would
6:17
Speaker 2: say that I was very very close. My authentic self
6:21
Speaker 2: was crowning. Was this just her line, I wondered, something
6:26
Speaker 2: doctor Mueller told all her patients. I grew increasingly frustrated.
6:32
Speaker 2: I was still lost, still waking up at noon, still
6:35
Speaker 2: spending my days watching video rentals and smoking cigarettes in
6:38
Speaker 2: my parents' basement, Still showing up for appointments with doctor
6:42
Speaker 2: Muller for conversations that felt as pointless as life itself. Finally,
6:54
Speaker 2: after being told for the umpteenth time that the miracle
6:57
Speaker 2: of birth was nigh, I grew at It's hard to
7:02
Speaker 2: hear this year after year, I said. I told her
7:05
Speaker 2: that we must be doing something wrong. It is not working,
7:09
Speaker 2: she said, because of you. She spoke the words quietly
7:14
Speaker 2: but firmly. I was taken aback. It had to be
7:19
Speaker 2: something more than just me, if only slightly, maybe a
7:22
Speaker 2: tiny bit, because of her. I mean, she was sitting
7:26
Speaker 2: in the room as much as I was, Even in
7:28
Speaker 2: my insecure state. Her conclusion felt off, and I said,
7:32
Speaker 2: so it is because of you, she repeated. Was a
7:39
Speaker 2: therapist even allowed to say that? How could she refuse
7:43
Speaker 2: to share in this failure? I think maybe this should
7:46
Speaker 2: be our last session, I said. Ending things was something
7:50
Speaker 2: I'd been thinking of doing for a while. But you
7:53
Speaker 2: have yet to find a philosophy, she said, words to
7:56
Speaker 2: live by that will ease self birth. Not everyone needs
8:00
Speaker 2: a philosophy. I responded, that is true, she said, but
8:05
Speaker 2: you do. At the end of the hour, doctor Mueller
8:10
Speaker 2: rose from behind her desk and opened the door for me.
8:13
Speaker 2: She smiled warmly, sincerely, no edge at all. The blame
8:18
Speaker 2: she'd cast, in combination with the simplicity of her goodbye,
8:22
Speaker 2: was chilling. She shook my hand, ending one of the
8:25
Speaker 2: most intense personal relationships I'd had up until that point
8:29
Speaker 2: in my life, And then just like that, I was
8:33
Speaker 2: back in that echoee hallway. Wondering what the hell had
8:37
Speaker 2: just happened. It's a question I still don't have an
8:41
Speaker 2: answer for. When you're young, because the world is small
8:46
Speaker 2: and new, so many experiences confuse you. But as you
8:50
Speaker 2: grow older, the odd things fall into place and you
8:53
Speaker 2: look back with something approaching clarity. But after thirty years,
8:58
Speaker 2: my experience with doctor Mueller somehow feels more mysterious, more
9:02
Speaker 2: difficult to parse than it did when I was twenty.
9:06
Speaker 2: You go to therapy to form a more coherent narrative
9:09
Speaker 2: out of your life, Yet paradoxically, the chapter of my
9:12
Speaker 2: life with doctor Muller remains one that I've never really
9:16
Speaker 2: been able to make sense of, and so I still
9:19
Speaker 2: find myself asking who was this person? And was she
9:23
Speaker 2: a bad therapist or was I a bad patient? Although
9:28
Speaker 2: doctor Muller died in two thousand and three, I recently
9:31
Speaker 2: realized there might still be a way to find out.
9:42
Speaker 2: In recent months, I find myself moving away from traditional
9:45
Speaker 2: psychotherapy and towards a more improvisational mental health regimen. That is,
9:51
Speaker 2: I stay up late while drinking beer and watching old movies.
9:57
Speaker 2: It's while watching at close range a Shan Penn Christopher
10:01
Speaker 2: Walkin film from the nineteen eighties that I realized I'd
10:04
Speaker 2: already seen it in a college class, and with this recollection,
10:09
Speaker 2: I remember the professor who taught the class, and the
10:12
Speaker 2: one time i'd seen him outside of his classroom. It
10:17
Speaker 2: was in doctor Muller's waiting room. I'd seen him exiting
10:21
Speaker 2: her office, or at least I think I had. The
10:24
Speaker 2: moment was long ago and so fleeting, But if true,
10:28
Speaker 2: this memory had the power to tear open a potential wormhole,
10:32
Speaker 2: connecting me to my past as a kid in therapy.
10:36
Speaker 2: For the first time, I had no perspective on doctor Mueller.
10:40
Speaker 2: But here was a full fledged adult patient of hers,
10:43
Speaker 2: a professor, no less, who'd have the experience and insight
10:47
Speaker 2: to cast the decisive vote in the was it me
10:51
Speaker 2: or was it Muller referendum? Was she just weirdly hung
10:55
Speaker 2: up on this notion of self birth? Or was I
10:58
Speaker 2: just too young to get it? With the movie paused
11:01
Speaker 2: in the background, I paced the floor of my living room.
11:05
Speaker 2: A plan begins to take shape. All I have to
11:08
Speaker 2: do is break all the rules of therapy, of polite
11:11
Speaker 2: society and track down a now elderly professor who taught
11:15
Speaker 2: at a school I dropped out of to inquire if
11:18
Speaker 2: it had been him i'd seen exiting my therapist's office
11:22
Speaker 2: thirty years ago. Yes, I agreed, nodding my head to
11:26
Speaker 2: no one in particular, three beers into a six pack
11:29
Speaker 2: of Tall Boys at two in the morning. This was
11:32
Speaker 2: an excellent idea, find the man who can supply context.
11:37
Speaker 2: What was wrong with a little context? The only problem was,
11:49
Speaker 2: after thinking as hard as I could, I could not
11:53
Speaker 2: remember the professor's name. How long has it been. It's
11:58
Speaker 2: been a while, oh man, Yeah, it has been a while.
12:01
Speaker 2: A visit to the school's website tells me nothing about
12:04
Speaker 2: my old professor, but I do discover that the present
12:07
Speaker 2: chair of his department is an old college friend. Dana
12:11
Speaker 2: and I haven't spoken in close to twenty years. How
12:14
Speaker 2: are things with you?
12:15
Speaker 1: They're good. They're good.
12:16
Speaker 6: Yeah, things are?
12:17
Speaker 2: You know what?
12:18
Speaker 1: He?
12:18
Speaker 2: Dana tells me how much he enjoys teaching English, and
12:21
Speaker 2: I tell her that i'd recently been guiltily reading Madame Bovary,
12:25
Speaker 2: a book on the required reading list back when we
12:27
Speaker 2: were in school that I never actually read, and I
12:30
Speaker 2: must have started it because I found some of my
12:33
Speaker 2: marginalia that makes me like hate myself when I was
12:36
Speaker 2: at a I underline this whole paragraph, and in the
12:39
Speaker 2: margin I wrote espanolism.
12:42
Speaker 3: Question mark, and what could that even have possibly meant?
12:48
Speaker 2: Eventually I explained the reason for my call, how I'm
12:51
Speaker 2: in search of a professor from her department, whose name
12:54
Speaker 2: I could not remember, but who may or may not
12:57
Speaker 2: have had a ringside seat to the development of my
13:00
Speaker 2: young psyche. I proceed to describe the professor the best
13:04
Speaker 2: I can. The guy had kind of like black, curlyish hair,
13:09
Speaker 2: maybe kind of balding. His first name might have been Rob,
13:16
Speaker 2: could have been Bob. I offer Dana all the detail
13:19
Speaker 2: I can. He seemed to enjoy chewing gum once during
13:23
Speaker 2: the warmer weather. He might have taught while wearing a
13:25
Speaker 2: panama hat.
13:27
Speaker 3: None of that is ringing a bell with me.
13:32
Speaker 2: After a while, I just give up. Well, thank you.
13:37
Speaker 2: It was nice. It was nice talking to you, no problem.
13:40
Speaker 7: It was nice talking to you too.
13:41
Speaker 1: It's as we're about.
13:42
Speaker 2: To get off the phone, one more small, unhelpful detail
13:46
Speaker 2: pops into my head and immediately out of my mouth.
13:50
Speaker 1: It's a surprise.
13:51
Speaker 2: You know, he had a mustache at some point.
13:56
Speaker 1: Is it possible his name was Maury.
14:00
Speaker 2: Maury, that is the guy.
14:04
Speaker 3: Oh, well, there you go.
14:07
Speaker 2: After the break, Professor Moury.
14:18
Speaker 3: Hello, Jonathan, Hey, Maury, I got through.
14:21
Speaker 1: Yeah hear me. Okay, yeah, I can hear you.
14:23
Speaker 3: Where where I am.
14:26
Speaker 2: Where Moury is is Jamaica, sitting with his neighbors in
14:30
Speaker 2: the communal yard. And after all these years he's still professorial.
14:35
Speaker 3: You know Bob's song and no Woman, no crime. You
14:39
Speaker 3: know Georgie lit a firelight in a tenement yard in
14:42
Speaker 3: French time. You can't really understand what that is, gonna
14:45
Speaker 3: that you've actually been in one of them.
14:49
Speaker 2: Mary spends half the year in Jamaica, and as soon
14:52
Speaker 2: as he got my message asking if we could speak,
14:54
Speaker 2: he phoned right back. Every so often he's interrupted by
14:58
Speaker 2: the neighbor's daughter elect and her toddler's sister TESSI.
15:02
Speaker 3: Alexi, your phone, n take her into the yark.
15:06
Speaker 2: Please, no, no, no, Maury. A Jew has been working
15:10
Speaker 2: on a documentary with Bob Marley's granddaughter a Rosta about
15:14
Speaker 2: the relationship between Jews and Rostas and their cultural overlaps.
15:19
Speaker 2: Like what overlaps?
15:20
Speaker 3: You know, the groups that are quite orthodox, they don't
15:22
Speaker 3: eat pork, while I.
15:25
Speaker 2: Do find the subject of Mary's documentary semi interesting. The
15:29
Speaker 2: questions I'm asking are not in service to that semi interest,
15:33
Speaker 2: but rather to staving off the moment I have to
15:35
Speaker 2: announce the invasive nature of my phone call.
15:38
Speaker 3: Dreadlocks are from the same Biblical injunction that leads to
15:41
Speaker 3: a Pacific Jews wearing beers.
15:43
Speaker 2: The whole point of therapy is to have a sacred
15:46
Speaker 2: space separated from the rest of the world, free from
15:49
Speaker 2: the judgment of others. And here I was phoning up
15:53
Speaker 2: a stranger to ask, mind if I poke around in
15:56
Speaker 2: your sacred space a bit any hot takes on the therapist?
16:00
Speaker 2: Did she un crazy you? Or are you like still not?
16:05
Speaker 2: Maury would have every right to bang down the phone
16:07
Speaker 2: on my face, and so I keep deferring. Is the Rastafarian?
16:14
Speaker 2: Is it connected to the Lost Tribes?
16:16
Speaker 3: Uh? There could be like, it's not really.
16:20
Speaker 2: We go back and forth for almost half an hour,
16:24
Speaker 2: all the while Maury never asks why I'm phoning Testy
16:28
Speaker 2: come on to say hello, Hello, Jonathan, Hi, Tessy. Having
16:38
Speaker 2: exhausted every possible way to put off asking my question,
16:42
Speaker 2: every digression, every subject change, every attempt to keep Maury's
16:46
Speaker 2: two year old neighbor on the phone. I'm left with
16:48
Speaker 2: no recourse but to finally get to the point of
16:50
Speaker 2: my weird, out of nowhere social call. So I just
16:54
Speaker 2: dive in anyway, so so so, yeah, should I'll tell
16:59
Speaker 2: you why I'm phone so I I have a pretty
17:06
Speaker 2: strange question and and I'm I'm just gonna say that
17:11
Speaker 2: right out the gate. Basically, the reason I'm calling you
17:16
Speaker 2: is because there was a moment where our lives crossed
17:20
Speaker 2: and just totally in a very coincidental way, and I
17:22
Speaker 2: was reminded of it. Yeah, just as I'm finally getting
17:30
Speaker 2: to it.
17:31
Speaker 3: Tessie, she grabbed a tiny little plastic wrap bit of weeds,
17:39
Speaker 3: was running out with it. I didn't know what she would.
17:42
Speaker 4: Do with it.
17:42
Speaker 2: You know, She's not gonna smoke it.
17:46
Speaker 3: She'd have to unwrap the plastic and build a split,
17:48
Speaker 3: which I can't do. I have a lot of problems
17:52
Speaker 3: doing it.
17:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. Once the cheech and chong gask shenanigans are behind us,
17:59
Speaker 2: I resu merely mouthing my way through a procession of preambles.
18:04
Speaker 2: You know, don't I don't want to make you uncomfortable
18:06
Speaker 2: or anything. I want you to be you know, comfortable
18:08
Speaker 2: answering this, and if you don't want to, totally fine.
18:11
Speaker 2: I used to see this therapist and I have this memory,
18:16
Speaker 2: and it might be I might be misremembering, even is
18:20
Speaker 2: of being in the waiting room and seeing you leave
18:24
Speaker 2: her office, doctor Mueller. Maury is so unfazed by my question,
18:35
Speaker 2: I'm inclined to wonder whether he's boguarded Little Tessie's joint.
18:40
Speaker 2: Without any ado, he just jumps right in, telling me
18:43
Speaker 2: he began seeing doctor Muller during a creative block and
18:46
Speaker 2: continued to see her for four years.
18:49
Speaker 3: I found her very interesting, and I also found her
18:52
Speaker 3: very rude in some way. I don't I don't remember
18:54
Speaker 3: exactly what age she was, but she was kind of
18:56
Speaker 3: on the older side for deex diving. And then there
18:59
Speaker 3: was a thing of at the horses, which I can't remember.
19:02
Speaker 2: Maury and I swap old memories. It's validating doctor Muller
19:06
Speaker 2: was odd.
19:07
Speaker 3: Why does anybody wear two pired glosses unless they're an
19:10
Speaker 3: alien with six eyes? Is she just off a USO?
19:14
Speaker 3: You know something? I got that feeling that she was
19:16
Speaker 3: some sort of alien.
19:17
Speaker 2: Murray remembers how angry she get if he was even
19:20
Speaker 2: a few minutes late, how harsh she could be in her.
19:22
Speaker 3: Method and the method. To me, the method always seemed
19:26
Speaker 3: like a bit you know, it's not interesting to talk
19:28
Speaker 3: about killing what happened to you when you're six years old?
19:31
Speaker 3: You know, It's like, what are you going to do now?
19:33
Speaker 3: What is your next step?
19:34
Speaker 5: Yeah?
19:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, And even she wasn't even really that interested in feelings.
19:40
Speaker 3: It was really more of a that's the term that
19:43
Speaker 3: she constantly use. What is your concept? What is your
19:47
Speaker 3: concept of how you are going to deal with this?
19:50
Speaker 3: You have to formulate a concept you haven't yet formula.
19:54
Speaker 3: I think she thought that I wasn't formulating enough concepts.
19:58
Speaker 2: I tell Maury about the note that doctor Mueller and
20:00
Speaker 2: I had parted on how she'd been crossed because of
20:03
Speaker 2: my failure to birth myself. When I ask of self
20:06
Speaker 2: birth was something they'd also talked about, he says no.
20:10
Speaker 3: But I had the same feeling with her. This isn't,
20:13
Speaker 3: you know, quite working the way it should. And eventually
20:15
Speaker 3: she just said, I don't think you need me anymore.
20:18
Speaker 1: She didn't say, you.
20:19
Speaker 3: Know, uh, this is useless either. We're not getting anywhere.
20:23
Speaker 3: She actually said, I think we've gone to where we
20:27
Speaker 3: want to get and maybe she was right. I don't know.
20:30
Speaker 2: You know, well, that sounds kind of like a nice
20:33
Speaker 2: way to end therapy as far as those things go. Yeah,
20:38
Speaker 2: sure he wasn't handed a certificate with the word cured
20:41
Speaker 2: stamped on it. But getting to where you want to
20:44
Speaker 2: go is a more dignified end to therapy than I managed.
20:47
Speaker 2: Maybe it wasn't with honors, but at least Morey had
20:50
Speaker 2: graduated rather than dropped out. Just as one of the
21:00
Speaker 2: strangest telephone calls of my life comes to an end,
21:03
Speaker 2: Maury casually mentions that he just so happens to be
21:06
Speaker 2: in touch with another of doctor Muller's former patients, and
21:10
Speaker 2: one who, unlike the both of us, wasn't confused by
21:13
Speaker 2: doctor Mueller at all. Mary encourages me to give him
21:17
Speaker 2: a call.
21:18
Speaker 1: I've seen a couple of therapists over the years, Yeah,
21:22
Speaker 1: and she wasn't my favorite.
21:25
Speaker 2: After a breakup left him devastated, Michael went to doctor
21:29
Speaker 2: Muller for help.
21:30
Speaker 1: She wasn't crazy about listening so much. I mean, in fact,
21:35
Speaker 1: she did a lot of the talking, and it got
21:39
Speaker 1: into a kind of who's talking now competition. She sort
21:44
Speaker 1: of reprimanded me huh, which I thought was kind of strange.
21:49
Speaker 2: Michael's memory spark one of my own. One day, during
21:53
Speaker 2: a fit of coughing, I asked doctor Muller for water.
21:56
Speaker 2: There was a sink in the corner of her room,
21:59
Speaker 2: but no cop I needed a glass of water, and she.
22:02
Speaker 1: She told you to go to the sink and use
22:04
Speaker 1: your hands right, cupped your hands.
22:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you know?
22:08
Speaker 1: Because she told me to do the same thing.
22:11
Speaker 2: Hunching over the sink and cupping my hands together to
22:14
Speaker 2: catch the flow of water from doctor Muller's spout. I
22:17
Speaker 2: felt like someone from the Bible, like a bear. Until
22:21
Speaker 2: now I'd been alone with my b steal memories no more.
22:27
Speaker 2: But when I bring up the business of giving birth
22:29
Speaker 2: to myself, as in how nutty was all that, I'm
22:33
Speaker 2: surprised by his response.
22:35
Speaker 1: I can't remember ever saying anything like that to me.
22:43
Speaker 4: Hey you hi, Jonathan, Hey Judith, it's Judy.
22:46
Speaker 2: Actually, oh Judy, Okay, Judy, I'm sorry. Michael has put
22:50
Speaker 2: me in touch with yet another patient of doctor Muller's,
22:53
Speaker 2: the person who recommended he see her in the first place.
22:56
Speaker 2: Because unlike Michael, Morey and me, which, by the way,
23:00
Speaker 2: sounds like a Jewish folk trio. Judy loved doctor Mueller
23:04
Speaker 2: so much so that she always refers to her as
23:07
Speaker 2: the fantastic Doctor Mueller. Judy's a painter who began seeing
23:11
Speaker 2: doctor Mueller in the mid seventies because Judy's lack of
23:14
Speaker 2: confidence in her own work was threatening to derail her career.
23:18
Speaker 2: Hear me, yes, I could hear you, Nor how's that?
23:22
Speaker 1: Is that better? Is that better?
23:24
Speaker 5: Jonathan?
23:25
Speaker 2: I think it is. I think it's a little better.
23:27
Speaker 2: I think so. Judy says, doctor Muller's approach went beyond talk,
23:31
Speaker 2: beyond even the confines of the office.
23:34
Speaker 4: She went to my gallery to see my work, and
23:37
Speaker 4: the gallery dealer greeted her and showed her my work.
23:41
Speaker 2: Sure, Judy had talked in therapy about her self doubts
23:44
Speaker 2: as an artist, but she never would have anticipated doctor
23:47
Speaker 2: Muller actually going to see her work.
23:49
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, I had gotten a phone call from the gallery
23:52
Speaker 4: dealer saying, who is that to cut people off? I
23:57
Speaker 4: mean it was like really, but law, I mean it was.
24:03
Speaker 4: She had a very severe profile there.
24:07
Speaker 2: But the point is, Judy says that doctor Muller loved
24:10
Speaker 2: what she saw that day, and hearing that at that
24:13
Speaker 2: particular moment in her life from someone has no nonsense,
24:17
Speaker 2: as doctor Muller gave Judy the confidence she was looking for.
24:21
Speaker 4: I just accepted her, I guess idiosyncrasies because she was
24:29
Speaker 4: one hundred percent in my court. She stepped in in
24:33
Speaker 4: moments that were difficult.
24:40
Speaker 2: Judy experienced a different side of doctor Muller, one that
24:43
Speaker 2: I never could have even imagined. And the more we talk,
24:46
Speaker 2: the more I realize how different our experiences had been. Well,
24:50
Speaker 2: my doctor Muller had been largely inscrutable. Judy's doctor Muller
24:54
Speaker 2: loved the Beatles. Judy got to know a doctor Muller
24:57
Speaker 2: who'd always wanted to be an actor, who took vacations
25:00
Speaker 2: alone to go scuba diving, and described swimming alongside a
25:04
Speaker 2: manta ray as one of the most meaningful encounters of
25:07
Speaker 2: her life. Judy's Doctor Muller was the type of person
25:11
Speaker 2: who blushed after making a sly joke, who got a
25:14
Speaker 2: look of satisfaction when she hit on something deep. And
25:18
Speaker 2: this is why on the wall of Judy's art studio,
25:21
Speaker 2: beside pictures of her friends, her family, and her dogs,
25:24
Speaker 2: hangs a photograph of the fantastic doctor Mueller doctor Muller
25:33
Speaker 2: devised a treatment plan uniquely tailored to Judy. Judy had
25:36
Speaker 2: needed confidence and reassurance, and doctor Muller went out and
25:40
Speaker 2: gave it to her. If she'd done that for Judy,
25:43
Speaker 2: perhaps she'd also done the same for other patients. With
25:46
Speaker 2: that in mind, I asked Judy if during the course
25:49
Speaker 2: of her therapy, doctor Muller had ever mentioned giving birth
25:52
Speaker 2: to herself. But Judy has no idea what I'm talking about.
25:57
Speaker 2: After thirty years of obsessing, it on me that doctor
26:01
Speaker 2: Mueller might have tailored this notion of self birth specifically
26:05
Speaker 2: to me.
26:11
Speaker 6: My mother was a violent, bipolar, manic depressive.
26:15
Speaker 2: This is Judy's husband, Neil.
26:17
Speaker 6: Who also was very, very intelligent, brilliant. She's a painter,
26:21
Speaker 6: she was capable of a lot, but she was also
26:27
Speaker 6: very aggressive and unable to be a mother.
26:33
Speaker 2: Neil and Judy were newlyweds when Judy encouraged him to
26:36
Speaker 2: start seeing doctor Mueller. For the most part, things in
26:39
Speaker 2: Neil's life were going great. His career was taking off,
26:42
Speaker 2: and he finally felt settled. But when it came to
26:44
Speaker 2: dealing with his mother, Neil says he had no control.
26:48
Speaker 2: She'd phoned at all hours, sometimes even threatening suicide. One night,
26:53
Speaker 2: she phoned saying she was about to jump off her balcony,
26:56
Speaker 2: and so that very night, Neil rushed to the airport
26:58
Speaker 2: to fly to her. When he arrived at her home,
27:01
Speaker 2: he expected to see her body on the ground outside,
27:05
Speaker 2: but she was inside her apartment. She just wanted to
27:07
Speaker 2: see him. What finally pushed him to the breaking point
27:11
Speaker 2: was the time he called her from his hotel while
27:14
Speaker 2: away on a business trip.
27:16
Speaker 6: And she says, you're having an affair. And she gets
27:19
Speaker 6: into this vile bile about me having an affair and
27:23
Speaker 6: betraying my marriage. I'm going to tell your wife.
27:28
Speaker 2: Neil wasn't worried that his wife would believe his mother.
27:31
Speaker 2: He was worried about the Lanes' mother was willing to
27:33
Speaker 2: go to to assert control.
27:35
Speaker 6: I told my wife, I said, don't worry. I'm taking
27:39
Speaker 6: care of it. You know, she's crazy again. She's leaving
27:42
Speaker 6: these messages, but I'm making it better. I'm taking care
27:45
Speaker 6: of it or whatever. I said that, and my wife
27:48
Speaker 6: began to cry. She said, you'll never take care of it.
27:54
Speaker 6: This will never go away.
27:58
Speaker 2: Neil was a full grown man with no idea how
28:01
Speaker 2: to deal with his mother desperate, he played doctor Muller
28:05
Speaker 2: the threatening voice messages his mother had left.
28:08
Speaker 6: Doctor Muller just she bowed her head and she just
28:11
Speaker 6: looked down and she said, oh wow. She was like
28:15
Speaker 6: really like, oh wow. And she gave me a script.
28:24
Speaker 6: She said, okay, say this.
28:28
Speaker 2: Neil still has the original piece of paper upon which
28:31
Speaker 2: he dictated doctor Muller's words.
28:34
Speaker 6: This is a little kind of yellowye, you know, two
28:36
Speaker 6: by four pieces of paper. It says here, dear mother,
28:46
Speaker 6: what you've done has done damage to my life. From
28:50
Speaker 6: here on. You can sustain a relationship with me if
28:54
Speaker 6: you behave in a positive, constructive way. But at the
29:00
Speaker 6: moment it's better that we don't talk. I think that's
29:10
Speaker 6: kind of world. I mean, there's nothing really more.
29:14
Speaker 2: Neil acknowledges that it wasn't much, really, just a couple
29:17
Speaker 2: of lines, but for him, it was enough. It was
29:20
Speaker 2: the first time he'd ever dared talk to his mother
29:23
Speaker 2: this way.
29:23
Speaker 6: It was hard for me to read this, you know,
29:26
Speaker 6: I was scared.
29:28
Speaker 2: After he read it. Neil says he and his mother
29:30
Speaker 2: didn't speak for ten years.
29:33
Speaker 6: Which sounds insane for people who have normal parents. And
29:36
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, I'm always measuring this, but she
29:39
Speaker 6: knew I was never going to come back until she
29:41
Speaker 6: started to behave better.
29:43
Speaker 2: And so a decade passed and then one day.
29:46
Speaker 6: My mother called me, huh, and she was totally cooled out.
29:50
Speaker 6: She just said, I'm really sorry. Wow, I get it,
29:54
Speaker 6: I understand you were right. I please forgive me, Please
29:57
Speaker 6: forgive me, And her voice had all of that in it.
30:00
Speaker 6: It wasn't she was. She really meant it. And from
30:05
Speaker 6: that day forward, if you can believe it, we had
30:07
Speaker 6: a relationship after that, a loving one.
30:10
Speaker 4: Hm.
30:11
Speaker 6: She never lashed out or was aggressive. It was over
30:19
Speaker 6: and I had that relationship with her up until my
30:21
Speaker 6: mother passed away a couple of years ago. Whatever it
30:25
Speaker 6: was that never would have had those final few years
30:27
Speaker 6: with her. I have it because of the sessions with
30:30
Speaker 6: doctor Mueller. So imagine, excuse me, so imagine how I
30:35
Speaker 6: think about doctor Mueller.
30:45
Speaker 2: Toward the end of Neil's therapy, Doctor Mueller was diagnosed
30:48
Speaker 2: with cancer. It made her weak, and in the last
30:51
Speaker 2: year she would disappear during their sessions for long stretches
30:54
Speaker 2: in the bathroom.
30:55
Speaker 6: The last time I saw her, she she shook my
31:04
Speaker 6: hand goodbye. It was a very brave gracious, dignified thing.
31:13
Speaker 6: The way she did it, she said good luck. I
31:16
Speaker 6: mean she meant that. She was like saying good luck
31:18
Speaker 6: with all of you, all of you, Neil, like just
31:22
Speaker 6: good luck. And she looked at me in the eye
31:24
Speaker 6: and anyway, so she shook my hand, and that forever
31:32
Speaker 6: is like burnt into my brain.
31:36
Speaker 2: About a year after Neil stopped singing her, at the
31:38
Speaker 2: age of seventy seven, doctor Mueller died of cancer. As
31:47
Speaker 2: with me, doctor Muller wasn't very interested in learning about
31:51
Speaker 2: Neil's past, but unlike me, from time to time Neil
31:54
Speaker 2: did learn something about hers, particularly towards the end as
31:59
Speaker 2: the bigger issue and his therapy receded and a sort
32:02
Speaker 2: of friendship emerged. They just talked sometimes about a family
32:06
Speaker 2: life back in Germany.
32:08
Speaker 6: I think they were fairly wealthy. I think a very
32:11
Speaker 6: professional wealthy family. I think her father was a doctor.
32:14
Speaker 6: They had a beautiful home, many stories, and then the
32:20
Speaker 6: Nazis came and they absconded their home and used it
32:26
Speaker 6: for the headquarters. And her bitterness about the war is
32:35
Speaker 6: that as a German she was regarded as the enemy.
32:40
Speaker 6: So I think that kind of smarted. She constantly talked
32:46
Speaker 6: about Jews were not the only victims, and it was
32:50
Speaker 6: confusing for her to work with Jews. I think she
32:54
Speaker 6: never said that, but I think that, you know, she
32:58
Speaker 6: saw a lot of Jewish people in Montreal, and you know,
33:02
Speaker 6: in the attitude towards sermons. So I think that had
33:04
Speaker 6: to play back on her own wounds, because she exposed
33:08
Speaker 6: her wounds. And I think I always thought that her
33:13
Speaker 6: we were also we were a part of her therapy.
33:25
Speaker 2: Was her Jewish clientele merely a coincidence? Or were we,
33:29
Speaker 2: as Neil believed, a part of doctor Muller's own therapy.
33:33
Speaker 2: And if we were, what was she trying to heal?
33:36
Speaker 2: Was there some part of her past that she couldn't
33:38
Speaker 2: simply stick in a desk drawer and never bring up again?
33:43
Speaker 2: Will Doctor Muller had never been very interested in my past,
33:46
Speaker 2: I was now quite interested in hers. Doctor Muller's obituary
34:06
Speaker 2: mentions the son Bruno. He's a retired computer systems consultant.
34:11
Speaker 2: He agreed to talk but didn't want to be recorded.
34:15
Speaker 2: When I ask about his mother's life during the war,
34:17
Speaker 2: he tells me all he has are snippets the past.
34:20
Speaker 2: Bruno tells me didn't come up much as dinner conversation.
34:24
Speaker 2: Given his mother's feelings about the past, it makes sense
34:28
Speaker 2: what he does know is this. She was born Enna
34:31
Speaker 2: Corolla Kumpe, and she was an athlete. She played tennis
34:36
Speaker 2: competitively and was a strong enough swimmer to attempt an
34:39
Speaker 2: escape during the Allied invasion by swimming across the Rhine.
34:44
Speaker 2: As she swam, Bruno says, snipers from the other side
34:47
Speaker 2: fired at her. Bruno tells me his grandfather was a
34:51
Speaker 2: doctor who was eventually captured by the Russians and sent
34:54
Speaker 2: to a Soviet prison camp. These camps were notoriously brutal,
34:59
Speaker 2: with hundreds of thans thousands of German captives dying from violence, malnutrition,
35:04
Speaker 2: or forced labor. For years, doctor Mueller didn't know whether
35:08
Speaker 2: her father was alive or dead. On the day of
35:11
Speaker 2: an Allied bombing campaign that would devastate her hometown, doctor
35:15
Speaker 2: Muller's family didn't have time to make it to the
35:17
Speaker 2: local bomb shelter, which was fortunate because it was destroyed. Instead,
35:23
Speaker 2: the family hid in their garden shed, which turned out
35:26
Speaker 2: to be the only part of the house that survived
35:28
Speaker 2: the devastation.
35:31
Speaker 7: The bombing wasn't supposed to hit Efheren that hard.
35:34
Speaker 2: Annika is a journalist who lives near Ephren, where doctor
35:37
Speaker 2: Mueller grew up.
35:39
Speaker 7: They were actually aiming at the harbor and Cologne, but
35:42
Speaker 7: they had the order not to return with all the weapons,
35:47
Speaker 7: like get rid of all your bombs before you get
35:49
Speaker 7: back home. Don't go around flying with all the bombs,
35:52
Speaker 7: but just drop them somewhere, and so unfortunately they were
35:56
Speaker 7: dropped on Efevn.
35:58
Speaker 2: I'd commissioned Danika to find out anything she could about
36:01
Speaker 2: the Muellers, so she'd wandered the streets of Ephrin looking
36:04
Speaker 2: for traces of the family, but most of the people
36:07
Speaker 2: who lived in Ephin during the war are now gone.
36:11
Speaker 2: I asked if she was able to find out anything
36:13
Speaker 2: about doctor Muller's father, anything that might elaborate on his
36:17
Speaker 2: capture by the Russians.
36:19
Speaker 7: What I did come across, and that kind of struck me,
36:22
Speaker 7: was that he was a Nazi doctors' union at the time.
36:28
Speaker 7: So the doctors in this union, their job was it
36:31
Speaker 7: to tell people from a medical perspective why one race
36:37
Speaker 7: would be superior to another.
36:38
Speaker 2: Race, eugenics exactly. The mission of the National Social Asterbund,
36:45
Speaker 2: as the union was called, was to make sure doctors
36:48
Speaker 2: were aligned with the Nazi spirit. We can't know for
36:51
Speaker 2: certain that doctor Muller's father wasn't forced to join, but
36:54
Speaker 2: we do know that by the end of the war,
36:56
Speaker 2: half of the ninety thousand doctors in Germany were not
36:59
Speaker 2: members of the Asterbunt. In other words, you didn't have
37:03
Speaker 2: to be in the union to practice medicine.
37:06
Speaker 7: On top of that, there's this he wasn't just a member,
37:10
Speaker 7: but he is listed as like the kreismslitter, which, okay,
37:17
Speaker 7: how do I translate this?
37:20
Speaker 2: The rough translation is that doctor Muller's father was an
37:23
Speaker 2: upper level manager in the Nazi Physicians League. He oversaw
37:27
Speaker 2: a district of two million people. While it's impossible to
37:31
Speaker 2: know his private intentions and beliefs, given the prestige of
37:34
Speaker 2: his position, it's unlikely he was a secret hero of
37:37
Speaker 2: the resistance. A leader of his rank, let alone a
37:43
Speaker 2: medical leader, would at the very least have been aware
37:46
Speaker 2: of the systematic sterilization and execution of those deemed undesirable,
37:51
Speaker 2: among them the so called mentally ill. No wonder, doctor
37:56
Speaker 2: Mueller might have felt compelled to leave the past where
37:58
Speaker 2: it was. What are your recollections of Herbert and his wife.
38:10
Speaker 8: Oh good people. I'm proud to know how I'm glad
38:16
Speaker 8: to be their friend.
38:18
Speaker 2: Once again, I find myself speaking to a German psychiatrist
38:21
Speaker 2: in Montreal. His name is doctor Gert Morgenstern, and he
38:25
Speaker 2: was close to doctor Mueller and her husband Herbert, both
38:28
Speaker 2: his friends and colleagues. They would gather at doctor Morgenstern's
38:32
Speaker 2: home in a quiet neighborhood in Montreal, where doctor Muller's husband, Herbert,
38:36
Speaker 2: and he played music together, Herbert on the flute, doctor
38:39
Speaker 2: Morgenstern on the piano. Doctor Mueller would wander in and
38:43
Speaker 2: out listening to them play. She spent many hours in
38:47
Speaker 2: doctor Morgenstern's home. Doctor Morgenstern's son Mark explained at the
38:52
Speaker 2: beginning of the conversation that his father might not have
38:55
Speaker 2: much to offer. In recent years, his memory has begun
38:58
Speaker 2: to falter and much of Morgenstern's past has become lost
39:02
Speaker 2: to him. But since this might be the only chance
39:05
Speaker 2: I get to talk to someone who actually knew doctor Mueller,
39:08
Speaker 2: who can speak to her as a friend, we decide
39:10
Speaker 2: to give it a try. I asked doctor Morgenstern if
39:14
Speaker 2: he remembers spending time with the Muellers.
39:16
Speaker 8: Yes, I think so. It was pleasant and he looked
39:20
Speaker 8: forward to it.
39:23
Speaker 2: Mark says, as his father's memory fails, he's held on
39:26
Speaker 2: to the happy memories and allowed a lot of the
39:28
Speaker 2: painful ones to go. Like the Muellers, Doctor Morgenstern was
39:32
Speaker 2: a German who immigrated to Canada, but unlike the Muellers,
39:36
Speaker 2: he was a Jew. He fled Germany in nineteen thirty seven,
39:40
Speaker 2: a year before Christelnacht. You both immigrated from Germany. Was
39:44
Speaker 2: that a subject that came up?
39:47
Speaker 8: I don't remember it.
39:48
Speaker 2: Life during the war, No, I don't remember any of that.
39:53
Speaker 2: So she never talked with you about what she went
39:55
Speaker 2: through during the war.
39:57
Speaker 8: Not that I remember. What we talked about was what
40:00
Speaker 8: we were doing and what we were planning to do.
40:06
Speaker 2: Doctor Morgenstern says they never talked about the past, that
40:09
Speaker 2: they didn't talk about their religions, didn't even talk about psychology,
40:13
Speaker 2: and they never discussed Germany. Mark says that after fleeing,
40:17
Speaker 2: his father never spoke a word of German again. So
40:20
Speaker 2: if they didn't talk about the past, what did they
40:23
Speaker 2: do together?
40:24
Speaker 8: Make music and talk? What did you like to talk
40:28
Speaker 8: about the music we were playing.
40:33
Speaker 2: Because he was a fellow therapist as well as her friend,
40:36
Speaker 2: I asked him what he knows about doctor Muller's practice,
40:39
Speaker 2: her approach. Throughout our conversation. Doctor Morgenstern's answers are brief,
40:45
Speaker 2: a few words at most, But when I asked him
40:48
Speaker 2: about doctor Muller's insistence on self birth and whether it
40:51
Speaker 2: was an idea that she tailored to my situation or
40:54
Speaker 2: some obscure therapeutic method, doctor Morgenstern grows animated.
40:58
Speaker 8: Oh, she wasn't doing a method. She invented what she said.
41:08
Speaker 8: It's a continual process, an attitude toward life. In other words,
41:14
Speaker 8: you're actively producing your future in your presence. You have
41:23
Speaker 8: decisions to make, you have memories to select, and you're
41:30
Speaker 8: building your future that way. You never actually finished giving
41:36
Speaker 8: birth to yourself. It never is a completed act.
41:45
Speaker 2: While I'd taken my inability to give birth to myself
41:48
Speaker 2: as a failing of either myself or of doctor Mueller,
41:51
Speaker 2: it wasn't really. Maybe doctor Mueller telling me over and
41:55
Speaker 2: over that birth was imminent was her way of saying,
41:58
Speaker 2: there is no end point. It's just living, and that's
42:03
Speaker 2: the point. Ana Corolla Kumpel, the daughter of a doctor
42:15
Speaker 2: who served a regime that treated the mentally ill as
42:18
Speaker 2: a blight upon humanity, left Germany to become Ana Corolla Mueller,
42:22
Speaker 2: who became not only a doctor but a psychiatrist, and
42:26
Speaker 2: one who tended to Jews or anyone else who needed
42:29
Speaker 2: her help. You are not your past. You are not
42:33
Speaker 2: your father or your family, or at least you do
42:36
Speaker 2: not have to be. You are the thing that you make,
42:39
Speaker 2: which is a lesson Doctor Muller must have had to
42:41
Speaker 2: learn for herself before she could pass it on to others,
42:45
Speaker 2: before she could pass it on to me. Even though
42:52
Speaker 2: I still don't have what doctor Muller might call a philosophy,
42:56
Speaker 2: I eventually came to see that what's the use was
42:59
Speaker 2: never the right way question. The most important things in
43:03
Speaker 2: life have no use. And maybe this is the closest
43:06
Speaker 2: I've come to words to live by.
43:43
Speaker 5: Now that the furnitures returning to its goodwill home, now
43:52
Speaker 5: that the last month's rent is skating with the damage
43:57
Speaker 5: to pros, take this moment. Thank you, I too.
44:13
Speaker 6: Acid.
44:19
Speaker 2: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me Jonathan Goldstein
44:22
Speaker 2: along with Stevie Lane b a Parker and Khalila Holt.
44:26
Speaker 2: The show is edited by Jorge just Special thanks to
44:28
Speaker 2: Emily Condon, Tim Howard, Annako Vitzel, Sir Richard Evans, doctor
44:33
Speaker 2: Robert Proctor, Alex Bloomberg, Luisa Beck, Emmanuel Barry, David Berman,
44:38
Speaker 2: and Jackie Cohen. Bobby Lord mixed the episode with original
44:42
Speaker 2: music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions,
44:45
Speaker 2: and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on
44:48
Speaker 2: our website, gimletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song
44:53
Speaker 2: is by the Weaker Bands courtesy of Epitaph Records, and
44:55
Speaker 2: our ad music is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on
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Speaker 2: Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight at gimlipmedia
45:02
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