Defending Yalom for his “fat lady” story.

In “Love’s Executioner” one of Yalom’s short stories (Fat Lady) unpacks his struggles trying to provide therapy to a woman who he feels strong aversion towards due to her obesity.

Anytime Yalom gets brought up here it’s typically about 80% admiration and 20% criticism about that story and how it reflects a judgemental, misogynistic therapist.

I’m personally pretty creeped out by Yalom for other reasons, but it doesn’t seem fair to kick him over this.

In the story he quite clearly isn’t defending his reaction, but rather trying to deal with entirely involuntary counter transference (related to his own mother). Realistically we all to do this occasionally with certain clients whom, for whatever reason, we have aversions towards. It seems either naive or sanctimonious to deny this frequent but rarely acknowledged aspect of therapy - in fact Yalom, in this story and others, has probably provided more guidance than another author.