She became todays most famous couples therapist by ignoring all the rules of the trade.
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In 1964, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, Icek Perel hosted two parties.
Their union was unlikely she was born to aristocrats, he was functionally illiterate.
Their daughter, Esther, began working in the store as soon as she could speak.
Esther was their bridge and their best reader.
She is an expert in dealing with couples who are vexed by contradiction.
They are, in other words, stuck.
In Perels treatment of relational conflicts, there are no solutions, only paradoxes to manage.
Her observations are studded with the seductive certainty of mantras.
Anyone who has gone to therapy will recognize the trappings of the profession in her speech.
She is prone to repetition, and her advice is so crystallized as to sometimes seem premeditated.
Perels greatest trick, perhaps, is that she still feels present.
Her most well-trodden sound bites are uttered conspiratorially, like shes letting you in on a secret.
Even in a ramshackle plastic-covered outdoordining bungalow, she can turn a passing encounter into a scene.
Ive already dismissed him as a jerk and resolved to avoid eye contact.
I need my mask, he says.
Of course, she responds, laughing.
Perel, for her part, gave no thought to the psychology of romantic love.
Her program combined French linguistics and literature, but she simultaneously developed an interest in psychotherapy and theater.
Perel wondered if performance could make sense of the conflicting narratives produced by migration.
What is the difference between departing from ones home willingly and fleeing without choice?
And how do those differences influence the way people act as immigrants in the countries that host them?
Therapy is an art for me, not just a science or a method.
For that, it’s crucial that you be able to use many different tools.
Perel was fascinated by the relationships forged between minority groups.
How had the marginalization of one set the stage for the marginalization of the other?
She began conducting group-therapy sessions with couples, who together explored similar themes.
Eventually, a few of those couples asked to see her alone.
Because she wasnt yet licensed, she would need to be supervised.
She began studying under Salvador Minuchin, the founder of structural family therapy.
Perel was still unlicensed and had no degree beyond her masters but nevertheless began teaching and supervising psychiatric residents.
In 1998, Perel was approached to write a book.
But the excitement that had once animated her career was depleted.
She was raising two young sons, and her clinical work was starting to feel rote.
I had lost my curiosity, she says.
I knew what people were going to say, sometimes before they spoke, or so I thought.
Marriage rates were plummeting, but sex was all over the news.
The Clinton scandal was that years best blockbuster, and Perel was a diligent spectator.
She wondered how a country so promiscuous could be so quick to clutch its pearls.
In its final form,Mating in Captivityis a treatise on the paradoxical compulsions that condition long-term relationships.
Our work lives are governed by efficiency, but desire squander[s] time and resources.
And although democratic ideals like compromise make for a healthy marital union, they simultaneously make for lackluster sex.
The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours, she wrote.
In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable.
As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility.
When I readMating in Captivityearlier this year, it struck me as a particularly compelling articulation of common sense.
But at the time of its publication, Perel says, it was the shaking of the sacred cows.
Fellow clinicians accused Perel of dismissing marriage.
(An affair, Perel writes, is a radiant parenthesis.)
The New YorkTimesbook critic Parul Sehgal described Perel as a tonic, and sometimes a tough one to swallow.
Writing forThe New Yorker,Zoe Heller described her analysis as punishing and arduous.
Perel admits the writing process was difficult.
I was, for a while, struggling with the notion that I could hear how people were reading.
There are some moments that arent for me.
Perel praises the wife for her ingenuity; I fantasized about the husbands revenge.
Even now, Perel seems surprised by her audacity.
The companys original idea was for couples to come on the show and each present their case.
Perel was adamant it wouldnt work.
I dont change lanes, Perel tells me.
If shes successful, Perel will pull the whole thing together.
During our interview, Perel refers to them as the couple from hell.
(Honestly, I do.)
She lodges white-hot accusations against him; he responds in the detached tone of a third party.
They are actors from different plays competing for the same spotlight.
Toward the end of the session, Perel admits that perhaps they arent destined for a grand finale.
When I ask if she knows where the couple is now, she says they have almost certainly separated.
In the end, youre interested in change, she tells me.
Youre interested in people not being stuck in the stories that no longer serve them in their lives.
For every ten mantras, she makes a misstep, which she readily admits.
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