Episode 277: East of Eden Reflective Function Collapse: Psychodynamic Therapy, Steinbeck, and How to Heal the Characters

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Introduction (00:00)

Puder:

All right, welcome back to the podcast. I am joined by a cohort group that went through my psychodynamic psychotherapy training and we are going to be talking about East of Eden. It is a book by John Steinbeck. Tons of spoilers. If you haven't read it, there may be some wisdom you can still gain from this episode. We're going to be putting reflective function (RF) in action [see episodes 206, 213, 244, 249, 260, 267, and 268]. Specifically, I was thinking about this book in terms of reflective function collapses, collapses of the ability to see reality, to see truth in the face of rejection, shame, threat and detachment. We're going to be looking at how this kind of perspective-taking disappears in the midst of shame, fear, rejection, attachment, arousal. A lot of what we see in ourselves and our patients.

We're going to be talking about how good reflective function is improved in different characters through some of the secret heroes of the book. We're going to be talking about this merging together of all good, all bad, contradictory parts of ourselves with a key theme that may be illuminated that personality health is not the disappearance of aggression, dependency, narcissism, withdrawal, guilt, or control. It is the growing ability to recognize conflicting parts of the self using a wider array of defenses, remain in contact with reality, and stay related to people who cannot be made perfect. 

Cathy / Kate: The Monster Born Without Kindness (00:55)

Puder:

So, Littal, would you like to start?

Melnik:

Yes, we're going to go kinda character-by-character and go through these points David mentioned. I get to start with the unequivocal one, the ultimate bad guy in this story. Her name is Cathy. I'm going to use Steinbeck's words as we introduce her. So, he says, 

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs. Some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins. And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul. Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 66)? 

Melnik:

And so, in this book where there's so much choice between good and bad and so much temptation, Steinbeck allows us this one character without even the potential for kindness. She is a monster. So much suffering is going to come at her hands. Some of it calculated and malicious, some of it secondary to people's difficulty in coping with rejection or because of their vulnerabilities. But he tells us that she's a monster right from the start. And with the thinking about monsters, monsters have powers and strengths that come from somewhere. Right? So, like, Frankenstein was very strong. Dracula had psychic pulls over people. He was immortal. But Cathy, Cathy's strength was being very patient and being very beautiful.

Melnik:

Early in the novel, John Steinbeck repeatedly tells us what a beautiful child she is, and what a beautiful adolescent. And it's really there in the story. And she also understands attraction. She understands people's sexual desires, that they want something from her. And that with sexual desire comes a lot of shame, a lot of obsessionality, a lot of guilt, a lot of hope. And she, being the bad guy, is able to use this to manipulate attachments, to exploit relationships, to seduce other people. And so I'm saying this and kind of preparing for this, I was going over the old, female psychopathy episode [see episodes 114 and 116], which I found hard to listen to at the time because I was like, "Oh, man, the female psychopaths underneath are narcissistic, histrionic, or borderline." And I was like, "Okay, I want my female heroes to be just as just and just as powerful, and my female villains to be just as evil as the bad guys." So it was something to reconcile.

Melnik:

And through Cathy, I'm able to reconcile because she really does use seduction as a weapon. And so one of her first real conflicts is with probably the biggest male psychopath of the book. This guy is like three times her age. He runs brothels. He's like a brothel entrepreneur. He basically has franchised them, is kind of what I want to say. He has these groups of women that he rotates from site to site, like, calculating how long before STDs will surface to make sure the women are out of town so the men don't get upset. He's a male psychopath. He can use strength, so he's happy to beat these women to oblivion. He's happy to kick them to the streets. This is a cold, callous man. But when he comes across Cathy as a late adolescent, we hear this line from Steinbeck:

Melnik: 

“He began and fell right into the oldest conviction in the world that the girl you're in love with can't possibly be anything but honest and true” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 83). Like, hear that. Right? The girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but honest and true. So everything goes out the window. She just tells one little lie about, not even a lie, that she's scared and she's running away. She's running away from a double murder. But all he sees is this beautiful damsel in distress, and this hardened man is reduced to a lovestruck adolescent. He gives her anything she wants: an apartment, jewels, money, and she just keeps him off-kilter, just never feeling… making sure he never feels that he is enough. And so we see the power of just letting him fall into his idealized version of her.

Melnik:

And this really goes on for a couple of years, I believe, before he figures her out. And, he beats her and actually tries to kill her. He doesn't succeed. But that's our introduction. Right? She is so powerful and just so incredibly seductive. So how did this happen, right? How did a man so powerful lose all control? And I want to put a little bit of studies in here that I thought were pretty interesting. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Edward Thorndike’s A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings from 1920. Anyone heard of that one? So he had military officers rate enlisted men on categories of character, leadership, intelligence, and physique. And he thought intelligence should impact leadership and maybe some other personality qualities. But he found that also physique, which he thought would be an independent variable, really played into things.

Melnik:

And so, the takeaway is that we kind of just make an impression of who someone is. And if they seem strong, if they seem like they have really good hygiene, if they're really well-put-together, we can just substitute their appearance for the rest of them. Right? Like, heuristics, biases, they're really real. And, this is the earliest study I could find about it. And I found another one from 1972, Dion et al., What is Beautiful is Good. So they had participants look at pictures previously rated of both men and women, rated as “unattractive,” “attractive,” “normal and attractive,” “average and attractive.” And they were asked to judge personality traits, like how trustworthy they were. Would they be a good partner? Are they intelligent? Are they socially skilled? And there was actually a linear effect from unattractive to average to attractive that the biases existed.

Melnik:

So if you were beautiful, all these other things were true about you as well. And so I think that is a big piece of what happened to this male psychopath when he comes across Cathy and what happens to other characters who come across her. 

Puder:

And interestingly, I think that is where Steinbeck's pain comes from his second wife, who he had an affair with from his first wife, and she was described in a biography I read as very beautiful, very attractive.

Melnik:

I believe it. So, as I said, she's beat up, left for dead, and she crawls to the door of our protagonist, Adam, that I think Jeanette will be discussing shortly. But the conversation before the doors open to her is Adam sitting with his brother, Charles. And Charles is sharing how a beautiful school teacher had come into town and the world was upended. Like, men who had not been going to church were now flooding in. Like, people could not get into the door. And this was so disruptive. Women couldn't tolerate it. So they literally chased this school teacher out of town simply for being beautiful. So Steinbeck knows about beauty, and he's priming the readers for her to be introduced to our hero with this little story.

Melnik:

And so she comes, nearly beaten. So kind of all of the desire to rescue comes in. And as we learn more about Adam it will make more sense. So Adam is hit with this beautiful woman who's super vulnerable and needs a lot of help. And he is head over heels in love with her, basically. But I don't think he could ever explain what he loved about her. And when other characters ask him, Sam Hamilton, he can't really consider it. Right? If we are about to get married, we're in serious relationships, our friends are like, "Oh, what's great about this guy?” Or, “What's great about this girl? Like, are they funny? Are they kind? Are they..." He can't do it. Adam doesn't, he can't see her. He doesn't even try, really. So they spend a year together.

Melnik:

The majority of that year is secondary to her pregnancy. And she tells him she's going to leave. And she leaves. He really doesn't want her to go, so much so he tries to lock her in a room and she responds by shooting him in the arm and leaves. And then we have 12 more years of her pursuing evil tasks. She commits another murder. She takes over a brothel. She really uses the worst of people's sexual desires against him in that setting. And then we have Adam returning after 12 years, which is something that we hope for this whole book. Right? We want Adam to be free. And I'm going to let Jeanette go into details about it, but I'm going to share the, if she wants to, the Cathy bits that really stuck out to me. As Adam is realizing that he's no longer bound by his obsessional love, Steinbeck has us go piece by piece through Cathy's body.

Melnik:

Kind of like how her shoulders have tightened up during this period. How there are now creases on her neck. How her ankles are no longer slim. Her belly is protruding. Her hands have aged. And I think it's true. And if we're thinking about Steinbeck as the man, like, really kind of letting go of his wife, that there probably is a piece of it that is being able to do the work and move forward. And I think that's helped by this power of beauty being taken away from Cathy, who's known as Kate at this point in time. And she really does lose a lot of power by this point in the book. The other point that was really interesting in there is Steinbeck revisits his monster. He said, 

"When I said Cathy was a monster, it seemed to me that it was so. I'll have bent close with a glass over the small print of her and reread the footnotes. And I wonder if it was true. The trouble is that since we never, since we cannot know what she wanted, we will never know whether or not she got it. I built the image in my mind of Cathy sitting quietly waiting for her pregnancy to be over, living on a farm she did not like with a man she did not love" (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 285-286).

So Steinbeck is not giving her the potential for good, but he's giving her the potential to be suffering. And if there's something Cathy suffers from, it's from feeling trapped.And the other thing she says right here is, “When I was half-grown I made a man kill himself. He pretended to be good too, and all he wanted was to go to bed with me—a little girl” (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 285-286).

Melnik:

So there's this potential for suffering that existed when she was with Adam, but then we're going back to this potential for suffering that she experienced as a little girl, when people saw her for her beauty and became obsessed with her and wanted sexual relationships with her.

Melnik:

So she's able to see the bad. She's able to see the negative things people want out of her. The one thing she can never see is the good that people tried to give her, and that was what a lot of what Adam's intents were. They were actually pretty good. And so, I'm tying this back to [Nancy] McWilliams and the histrionic personality and the old podcast [see episodes 171 and 273] and how did this happen? How could this all come together? And I'm going to take a piece out of the diagnosis book. McWilliams is discussing a case where a college student seduces her professors, but she really doesn't want to be with them. So what is going on? So she continues to see males as strong and exciting, and females, herself included, as weak and insignificant, because she regards power as inherently a male attribute. She looks up to men, but she also, unconsciously, for the most part, hates and envies them.

Melnik:

She tries to increase her sense of adequacy and self-esteem by attaching to males. Yet she also subtly punishes them for their assumed superiority. She uses her sexuality, the one kind of power she feels her gender affords, along with idealization and feminine wiles, the strategies of the subjectively weak in order to access male strength. Because she uses sex offensively rather than expressively, and because she fears men and their abuses of power, she does not fully enjoy sexual intimacy (McWilliams, 2011).  It's not a one-to-one with Kate, Cathy, by any stretch of the imagination. But we can see someone who is only seeing the negative in the world, someone who is feeling trapped, someone who is kind of born without conscience, and her only route to power is through her sexuality. Her only route to power is that people desire her and this is how we end up with a psychopath with some hysterical tendencies, because we do kind of pull those things together. Right?

Melnik:

Being hysterical with things being sexualized. So that kind of helped me to reconcile that old episode. I think the last thing I want to say is, he does, in the end, give us one hope for connection for Kate, which is something she never wanted the whole book, at the very end. He has her wishing for a friend. And that friend is Alice, from Alice in Wonderland. And Alice is a girl who was in a world where no one said what they meant and everything was some sort of deception. And I think that's how Cathy went through the world. Like, so many people wanted things from her, and she just felt the burden of that, and I could see why she would want a friend in Alice.

What Pushed Kate to Suicide? (17:27)

Puder:

Really good. What do you think? In the end she committed suicide. What do you think pushed her over the edge towards that? What do you think about her personality? What do you think about her? Like the series of events?

Melnik:

I think she was losing power both over others, and she was losing physical power. So we see her in increasing physical pain. And she realizes the medications are only temporary measures and that her disease will spread. It seems like it's some kind of maybe rheumatoid arthritis and she doesn't want to live in the weakness. But before that, she does have this connection, not connection, encounters with her sons. And Caleb actually is the only person who can really read her. And he will say to her, "You don't see that you're missing something." And he's with her, understanding that she can only see the bad and that she doesn't even realize that she's missing the good. And so that was an interesting soul read, I thought, from Caleb to his mother. 

Puder:

What do you think about her response to her other son?

Melnik:

Aron?

Puder:

Aron.

Melnik:

That she idealizes him.

Puder:

There's some idealization. His final awareness of who his mother is precipitates the death soon after. So, yeah, any thoughts on that?

Melnik:

I didn't know that she knew that piece. I do know that she's trying to build a relationship with him. She is going to the church where he is studying to see the sermons. She's fantasizing a life where she can live with him in New York. But that is very narcissistic and based on how people will view her. And so she, in her age, has lost this power of being young and beautiful, but now Aron has it. And so I think she wants to connect with him in part for that reason. 

Ronay:

I was thinking about the suicide. That maybe, when she meets her son, Caleb, that he really, she loses a sense of choice. And, the book talks a lot about timshel, or that we all have a choice in being good or bad. And that she actually doesn't think she has a choice in how she lives. That she actually is all evil and all bad. And now, like Littal is saying, she's lost the power of her beauty and her youth and so she doesn't see that there's also the power to make decisions and choices in how to relate with people. And so the only choice that she has is to end her life.

Melnik:

I think you're right. I think that's how he introduces her. She doesn't have the capacity to see good.

Melnik:

You'll see her with the…. Go ahead, Jeanette. 

Houghtelling:

I was just going to say that she did not see goodness as an asset. She saw goodness as a weakness to be exploited and manipulated.

Melnik:

I don't even think she saw goodness. I think the thought behind everything was a malintent.

Houghtelling:

I think you're right. And it's hard for me to conceive what produces that psyche that cannot see good.

Puder:

I spent some time thinking about this. I went back through genetic studies, heritability studies. I went back through. And it doesn't seem like it's pure nature or nurture [In two independent twin samples, callous-unemotional traits were about half genetic and half unique environment in children 6 to 11, A = 0.51 and E = 0.49, and about 59% genetic with a small shared-environment piece and 34% unique environment at age 7 (Tomlinson et al., 2026).]

There is some linkage between maltreatment and callousness at a young age [In 1,831 youths ages 9 to 18, Todorov et al. (2025) found that both the low-anxiety (primary) and high-anxiety (secondary) high-CU groups scored higher than typically developing youth on all five Childhood Trauma Questionnaire subscales in the CTQ subsample (n = 668; omnibus *p*s < .001), with the largest effects for emotional abuse (η²p = 0.16) and emotional neglect (η²p = 0.11). The two high-CU groups did not differ from each other.], but it's not always there. It's not deterministic [Those two high-CU groups did not differ from each other on abuse, neglect, or parenting, all p > .05, so maltreatment did not sort “born this way” from “made this way” (Todorov et al., 2025). Risk genes for antisocial behavior do not act deterministically, and CU traits are at least somewhat malleable (Frick & Viding, 2009).] 

And I think, actually, the more I read about environment and genes, the more I came to think that there is a choice, to some degree. Right? And I think that there is this kind of…. Unfortunately, she never came to the knowledge of the choice. [on moral dilemmas, adults with psychopathy made the same right/wrong judgments as healthy controls and non-psychopathic offenders—they understood the distinction, but did not care about that knowledge or its consequences (Cima, et al., 2010).]

And her son did. Right? 

Melnik:

And I wonder if she's part allegory, that she needed to be that for the story to make sense. Right? As opposed to a fully formed character.

Houghtelling:

Yes. And the way Steinbeck portrayed her was that she was born a monster without a conscience, like some people are born without arms or legs or physical deformities, that she was born with a moral deformity or an inability to know good. And a very keen ability, even from a young age, to read people well and know how to manipulate them very patiently over a long period of time, to their undoing. And I don't know how Steinbeck portrays that—how much of that is literary license, and how much of that reflects an actual reality? Are there people who are born without a conscience or the ability to form a conscience? I don't know. That takes me into territory I've wrestled with before. Like, what makes the difference between people who choose to invest in making their lives better and the lives of other people better who come from really difficult circumstances sometimes and really difficult backgrounds and didn't get a lot of nurturing or support, and yet they make a choice to do as much good as they can in the world.

Houghtelling:

And then there are other people that seemingly had a pretty good background—family was pretty supportive and nurturing, and yet they have no interest in investing in goodness or growth. I don't understand it. That's an enigma to me.

Melnik:

Yeah. I was bringing things back to our old episode when we did defenses [see episodes 265 and 266]. And I'm like, "What if she had a better way to sublimate?" So we have kind of a male psychopath, I was talking about before. He can run this business and still he had a family. He wasn't good to them, but he had them. And then we have Will Hamilton, who's kind of just a businessman and knows how to exploit people for money. And so part of it is just being, you know, a girl in the late 1800s. Maybe you don't have the sublimation options. Maybe had she been given the option to go into banking, she wouldn't have been a killer. I don't know. But I was wondering about that. 

Dreyfoos:

She'd be a CEO of a company and, you know, make millions. 

Melnik: 

Yeah.

Puder:

So one thing about her personality and the defenses she was highly organized around was that omnipotent control comes back over and over again. Like this kind of desire to control aspects of her environment. And then, I agree with you, Littal, that the erotization, as a way to achieve that goal. You know, even in the schoolyard, she's, I think, giving sexual favors or doing sexual things with different boys. You know, "Oh, where did this watch come from?” Or, “Where did this piece of jewelry come from?” Or, “Where did this thing come from?" And then, so there's this kind of history of utilizing sexuality to have the omnipotent control.

Melnik:

Yes. I agree. And, maybe that was Steinbeck's experience with his wife. He was totally out of sorts with somebody who had kind of a sexual hold on him. I don't know, but maybe.

Puder:

And I think, maybe the feeling was there, but maybe it was “two to tango”, because she wrote a biography of her side of the story. And if you believe her side, then you will not enjoy reading Steinbeck anymore. 

Melnik:

Okay.

Cyrus: The Grandiose Narcissist & Father’s Legacy (25:42)

Puder:

So, okay. So that's Kate, Cathy. Anything else you guys want to sort of bring up before we move on to the next character? And I'm sure Kate will come back into the story as we go through different people.

Dreyfoos:

I'm wondering if you guys picked up her level of organization, because towards the end too, as she was losing her beauty and she was aging. She started to compare herself to Aron, the beauty, and, "Oh, if people were to compare us, could they see that we are… would they say that we're siblings or we're mother and son?" And also, there was a level of paranoia, is what I picked up on. That she was paranoid with different characters in the book, like Joe and, is it Esther? 

Melnick:

I think she's right about Joe. I don't think she's paranoid. 

Dreyfoos:

Well, I think there is. She has to be, right? Given her status, where she is, she's in a brothel. 

Houtelling:

Bethel?

Dreyfoos:

Bethel. Thank you. Bethel. But there is a level of dissociated paranoia or something. 

Puder:

The paranoia I think is most seen when Adam comes in. Like, "Oh, are you trying to trick me? How are you trying to trick me? I'm going to figure out how you're trying to trick me." And Adam's like, "I'm not trying to trick you." So there's some of that paranoia there, I think. Also, her hands and her body start to bear the burden of, I think, a lot of the repressed hostility and anger and resentfulness. You know, so she's carrying pictures of all these men that she's done these sort of lewd, sexual things with. We're not given all the descriptions, but, you know, she could destroy them with one picture. Right? And she's going to release all the pictures, even if she's going to just do it to hurt them. Right?

Puder:

So she's harboring all of this desire to wreak havoc on thousands, you know, on very, very powerful, important people, like the senators and the congressmen, and she's carrying all of that and she starts using the opiate more and more. Right? Morphine, right? Which is what I've seen with a lot of people who come to me maybe for different reasons, maybe they're wanting more Xanax, controlled substances, but they're wanting to exit out of reality more and more consistently. And they don't want to do the deeper work. They don't want to look at their shadow. They don't want to grow in any way. They just want to exit.

Melnik:

Yeah. I think all that is right.  I think she's holding so much anger. Right? She has this self-fulfilling reality where her brothel is kind of one of the cruelest ones, the one where she leaves cut marks, she leaves heel marks. She likes to inflict pain, but she kind of gets into this story that all everybody wants is pain and to give pain. And you're right, it brings her tighter and tighter. One other thing about the appearance—I thought it was so sad at the end where Cal's like, "I understand why my father loves my brother more. And it's because Cal, being the son of Kate and Adam. It's because he looks like her. And my father is still in love with her."

Melnik:

And I thought that was just so heartbreaking. 

Puder:

Oh, yes. And do you know who Cal looks like? 

Melnik:

Like Charles. Carl Adams’ brother.

Puder:

Cal looks like Charles, Adam’s brother, who has sex with Kate on Adam's wedding night. So, yeah. Maybe there's good reason why Adam was struggling with that. Because he took all the bad of Kate and he put it on to other people. It was hard for him to hold that. Right?

Melnik:

Yeah. He couldn't identify it.

Puder:

He had a hard time pointing anything bad at anything but himself. And he kind of got in this spiral of depression. And the one thing I was thinking about was Adam, when he fell in love with her, her face was so bruised and puffy.  Right? So she became beautiful, but that's not really where Adam fell in love with her. He fell in love with this kind of weak sparrow, if you remember the description of her.

Melnik:

Yeah. I was back and forth on this. I was like, “Oh, her face is half beaten and she still has her body.” So I was back and forth on this, but I know what you're saying. And then it's like, over weeks, she's recovering.

Puder:

Yes. Okay. Well, to understand Adam, I think we need to go back to Adam's childhood. To Cyrus. So why don't we talk about Cyrus, who is Adam's father. And who's going to take away Cyrus for us?

Goldin:

I'll take that one. So Cyrus, he's the powerful patriarch of the Trask Family. And he has morally questionable behaviors that really set the precedent for the struggles that his children and the grandchildren through the family encounter. And, Cyrus, just to talk about some of the things that are specific from the book that he has done, is that he constructs this false identity and it's this idealized version of himself to cope with his own feelings of inadequacy. And an example is that he makes himself into a military expert. And it's an exaggerated story of himself, and he had lost a leg, and he said he had lost a leg in combat. But he lost his leg shortly after enlisting in the army, and he only served for a very short time and experienced very little combat.

Goldin:

And he says in the book, "I guess I'm a natural born soldier" (Steinbeck, 2002). That's how he thinks of himself and talks of himself. And it's despite his questionable past. And he also wants to encourage, despite his limited experience, he wants to, you know, he's an expert in the military, and he wants to encourage his son to join the military. And, an example of how he develops his reputation as a military expert, he says, "The war department seemed to know this and sought his advice" (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 21) meaning Cyrus' advice in military matters. And people would respect him as he would, you know, he felt respected as he would embellish his military experiences. Another quote regarding the loss of his leg. He had lost his leg, not in battle, but by a friendly shell.

Goldin:

Something with his leg was an accident. And he thought with the military, you know, with his military experience and how he would talk about it, that he would have more respect. So Cyrus struggled with self-worth and his identity, and he just would seek validation from others and from his sons. And he would try to get control and recognition. And that's what he used to transform his personal insecurity into authority and prestige.

Goldin:

I'm thinking what else about him: Cyrus’ needs. He illustrates how insecurity and fragile sense of self can shape behaviors and relationships because his relationships were fraudulent. He was not telling the truth about his military experience and he had built this external image of himself to hide his internal doubts. And he created this identity to protect himself from shame and failure. So he had this need for validation, craved admiration from others, especially his two sons, and again, depended on his external approval and admiration for a sense of worth, self-worth.

Goldin:

The other parts of Cyrus from when his sons were younger, his favoritism, and he created this rivalry between Adam and Charles, his two sons. So he created this favoritism and expectations of the boys that would shape their lives, even that would go on even past their death. His death, excuse me. So even when he... and I'll give examples of that later on, but even after he's no longer alive, the boys are still affected by his impact and the power imbalance and the favoritism. So, Cyrus favors his son, Adam, which fuels jealousy, resentment, and insecurity and anger in Charles. It's as though that maybe Cyrus is projecting his ideals into Adam and rejects them to Charles.

Goldin:

Charles gives his father an expensive pocket knife. And Adam gives his father a stray puppy. And Charles sees that Cyrus liked, his father liked, Adam's gift better. And he says, "You like Adam's present better." And he immediately recognizes the favoritism. And this emotional sibling conflict and emotional wounds, it contributes to Charles' lifelong feelings of rejection, resentment, and insecurity, because Charles resents that Adam is favored.

Puder:

Almost murderous rage. Right? 

Goldin:

It turns into rage and fighting and anger. And it turns into violence. And Charles nearly beats Adam to death. Another example is Charles works harder than Adam on the farm, hoping to get his father's acknowledgement. And it doesn't work. Adam remains the favorite. So Steinbeck really shows how a parent's actions can create jealousy, insecurity, and lasting psychological conflict. Adam admires Cyrus and follows his life path, and Cyrus becomes Adam's model for manhood, influencing his decisions and worldview. 

Goldin:

Cyrus teaches Adam to trust appearances and myths, making Adam vulnerable to disappointment. Right?

Melnik:

Adam realizes that Cyrus is a liar. Like Adam, from a young age, he's like, "My father's methods of disciplining are based on nothing. And his military stories are nothing.” So it's, you know, Adam has all the insight that his father is a fraud, and Charles sees none of it. So Adam, at a young age, actually can realize when someone is a fraud. It's interesting that he loses it later.

Goldin:

But Adam also idealizes Cathy, too. His father, you know, I think that was learned from the father.

Melnik:

I think his father was pretty terrible at demonstrating relationships. Kind of the way he related to Alice Trask, who is Adam's stepmom and Charles' biological mom. I think the introduction was like (paraphrased), "Well, she's great because she's not attractive, so I don't have to worry about her cheating. But her even better quality is that she's always silent and will kind of go along nodding with whatever a man is saying while cleaning in the background.” Right? So he has no love for this woman. And so the boys grew up in an environment where it's not demonstrated at all, and they have no idea how to relate to women.

Puder:

One thing I was thinking about was just how Cyrus has stolen valor. Right? Which is actually pretty common. I once knew a therapist who told me he was a Navy SEAL. And in front of patients, I would sometimes introduce him as a Navy SEAL. And then years later, I found out he wasn't a Navy SEAL. He had lied to me. And I was like, "You have got to be kidding me." That was my first experience of a professional, someone like a therapist, with stolen valor. This happens and if you treat VA patients, you probably have heard some stories that are not real. They're not real stories. You've heard some. It's hard to discern what's real and what's not real sometimes. You know, people will lie about being Navy SEALs.

Puder:

I have some real Navy SEAL friends, and it's almost like they enjoy, in their community, shining a bright light on the people with the stolen valor. But Cyrus was a convincing liar. He was a convincing liar because he was able to trick people to the point that he ended up as a wealthy man and had these incredible accolades and the vice president, some president or something, came to his funeral. And Adam really didn't care. Adam was like, "Yeah, I don't really care. Yeah. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. I don't know."

Houghtelling:

And it was interesting when he went to see him in Washington, D.C.; and he saw his dad, and he knew, "Yeah, you're a fraud." And he was surprised that other people didn't get it. Like, “Why doesn't this other official see my dad's a fraud? Why doesn't the hotel clerk recognize my dad is a fraud?” Like, he was mystified that other people couldn't see through it.

Melnik:

You know, Adam saw his father's loneliness too, that he was the only one who saw it.

Puder:

Oh.

Goldin:

Yes. And even when he learned that about his father's, you know, military experience was exaggerated, he still was very much so influenced by him. Like joining the army was the noble thing to do, because that's what his father would say.

Puder:

Well, he was kind of forced to join. 

Melnik:

He didn't have a choice.

Houghtelling:

I mean, he had been beaten to a pulp by his brother and his dad marched the enlistor in and signed him up.

Melnik:

Yes. He said, "I don't want to go." He said it several times. And because it reminded you when Cathy goes with Adam to the West, she tells him several times, "I don't want to go." And so, like Cyrus ignores Adam, Adam ignores Cathy.

Puder:

Got him shot.

Goldin:

Yes. And then the mysterious wealth at the end. Cyrus, when he dies, his sons are left this inheritance. And it's not known where the inheritance exactly came from. And it just created this conflict between the brothers. 

Melnik:

Absolutely. 

Goldin: 

Big time tension between them. And that really kind of symbolizes how even, this is where even after someone's passing, the influence continues on the two boys, the sons, and the family, the rest of the family.

Dreyfoos:

Well, and then it's repeated. I think that's the thing is you'll see that later on is that this generational influence is repeated in Aron and Cal. Adam doesn't want it, pushes away Cyrus. Charles is fiending after Cyrus's attention. Doesn't get it. And Adam is still just thrust into this, like becoming a soldier, doesn't want to do it, then re-enlists, and that surprises his own father that he is re-enlisting, and that's his way of avoidance. And it was interesting to me just to feed the repetition. Right? That generational repetition that we see, or generational trauma that can continue. I'll go over that with Aron.

Ronay:

I was just going to say another thing. Well, a theme that seems to go through the book is that we all have our blind spots and how Adam sees the reality of Cyrus, but then later, he fails to see the reality of who his mother is, or his brother. And so I think it's humbling that we all have our blind spots. I mean, even David can be fooled by a Navy SEAL. So we all, we all sometimes just don't….  

Puder:

A younger version of myself. A younger version.

Ronay:

But I think it's important to just constantly kind of check against ourselves, you know? And to stay curious and are we missing something? And new things will come up all the time. Sometimes I have worked with a patient for years, and then something will happen and I think, "Have I been missing something? Is there something there that I haven't seen for years?" And it forces us to really reflect on, “Well, what else could be going on?” And there are things that we just might not see. Even just to go back to Kate, the book starts with, she's a monster, and we all have to assume that. But the whole time when I was reading about Kate, I was thinking, “Well, this girl must have suffered some kind of trauma.”

Ronay:

Because for her to become a monster like that, there has to be more to it that Steinbeck's just not getting into. You know? 

Puder:

And maybe that's a blind spot.

Ronay:

Well, right? That my blind spot is that I'm always assuming that there's something more to it and that I can't just accept that somebody's a monster.

Puder:

Yes. I don't know. But I think that we all have blind spots. And of course, I have blind spots, too. And, yeah, Cyrus had his. And Adam. And, you know, his mom killed herself and I was thinking about how that impacted Adam as well, and his brother, you know? She drowned herself, essentially. And she was kind of masochistically predisposed. Oh, and the one thing about Cyrus, before we move on from Cyrus, he was a successful grandiose narcissist in his personality style. And so he never succumbed to being exposed as a fraud, which would've led him to be a deflated narcissist. Right? So the grandiose, he won, he was able to convince everyone. The only people he wasn't able to convince was, of course, Adam. He wanted Adam to join him. Go to, you know… don't re-enlist.

Puder:

Go to a military school and become an officer and come work with me. He wanted Adam to join his narcissistic quest. And Adam rejects him, basically. Okay. So next, let's do Adam.

Houghtelling:

Yes. So I have some thoughts about Adam. I found Steinbeck's book just fascinating. And I really listened to it on Audible, like, three times. And every time I listened to it was like, there's so much richness in it. And I think what appealed to me about it is that it is so reflective of life. You know, life as we experience it. There are so many different things that shape people and influence people, and then the choices that people make, and how that influences other people's choices. It's just fascinating to me. A little bit of my own experience, I think that really drew me to think a lot about the arc of Adam's story. I've been in association with some psychopaths in my own experience and been deeply damaged by them.

Houghtelling:

And it's been quite a process to understand what made me vulnerable, what created those blind spots to idealize someone that actually was out to harm me. And that really speaks through the tragedy of  Adam's life was that he didn't fall in love with the real Cathy Ames. He didn't fall in love with her as a person. He fell in love with an idealized phantom of his own creation. And yet that extreme vulnerability to delusion was not of his own making. It was something that was meticulously engineered during his childhood. The psychological environment of his childhood was created by his father, Cyrus, who we've just talked about: his brother, Charles, and his stepmother, Alice. And he learned that love was synonymous with fear, that survival required total emotional withdrawal, and that goodness was something to be worshiped from afar rather than experienced.

Houghtelling:

I thought I would go through a little bit of the various dynamics of those three individuals and the effect that they had on Adam. First of all, was Cyrus, his dad. And as we've gone over, he was a domineering, deeply dishonest patriarch who demanded absolute military-grade obedience. And he treated Adam not so much as a son, but as raw material to be broken and reshaped. And in a lot of ways, Adam was a narcissistic extension of Cyrus. He wanted Adam to fulfill the military career that he never actually did, even though he spun it that he did. And he would punish Adam severely, not for actual wrongdoing, but in order to build character. And so, Adam learned that authority figures, and by extension, the universe, are unpredictable, harsh, and impossible to truly please. So there's a sense of helplessness that he learned there.

Houghtelling:

When Cyrus forced Adam into the army against his will, there was a good deal of moral injury that took place there. And he experienced a lot of shame, revulsion, even a sense of betrayal of being forced into violence that he had no interest in. He detested violence, and yet he's forced to participate in it. And in that, he learns to completely detach from his environment. He had to dissociate just to try to get through it. He would find ways to avoid shooting the enemy. He would shoot over their heads or shoot around them. He got really good at missing. And even with that, he still received the Medal of Honor for bravery. And this created a deep-seated fracture in his psyche, like this desperate, unfulfilled longing for pure, unblemished innocence.

Houghtelling:

It also developed in him the need to be a savior. Like, he had to do something to atone for all of this violence and carnage. And he was, the thought of all these bodies just piled up on top of each other, haunted him throughout his life. So he desperately needed a way to compensate for that. And so even in the army, he had this compulsion to go and help with the first aid and the medics and pulling people off the battlefield and trying to treat them and trying to help them. He went way above what the army expected of him, in that. And so then when Cathy arrives on his doorstep, beaten to a pulp by the pimp that she had manipulated, Adam instantly casts himself as her savior.

Houghtelling:

And that looks like a subconscious attempt to rewrite his childhood trauma and finally prove that he's a protector and not a victim or a perpetrator.

Houghtelling:

He also learned a predisposition to idealization because Adam's actual father is a terrifying tyrant. Adam grows up with a psychological void where a loving, protective figure should be. When he later encounters Cathy, his mind desperately seeks a clean slate. And he projects all of his repressed longings for peace, beauty, and absolute purity onto her, entirely blinding himself to her reality because his psyche needs her to be a saving angel. So that's Cyrus. That was one influence. The forced identity that he had to deal with. And then the second influence was his brother. Did anybody want to inject anything before I go on to the influence of Charles on Adam?

Puder:

No, keep going. You're doing great.

Houghtelling:

So Charles is Adam's younger brother, as we've talked about. He wasn't much younger, maybe less than a year younger than Adam, and he had a different mother. Alice was his mother. And his relationship with Adam was defined by a terrifying duality of intense brotherly love and homicidal rage. Steinbeck describes how Charles felt quite protective of Adam. He saw Adam as innocent and weaker and vulnerable. And he almost saw him more as a sister than a brother. And so he wanted to be very protective of him. If bullies at school would beat up on him, Charles would take them to task and defend him. But he also was extremely jealous. If he saw that his dad preferred Adam over him, he would go into this homicidal rage; and there was twice that he… like  the one time Adam threw something. They were playing a game and he threw this thing farther than Charles could throw it, and he would… that didn't happen very often and he was kind of excited about it and he turned and looked at Charles and Charles just had this murderous rage in his eyes and took a stick or a bat and just beat him.

Houghtelling:

And there was never…. The parents didn't explore it or figure out what was going on, or address it. It just happened and things went on. And then over the birthday gift, when dad was more excited about the stray puppy than he was about the expensive knife, then Charles beat him almost to death. And so Adam learned that asserting himself, fighting back, or even expressing his true feelings invites catastrophic violence. And so he adopts a defense mechanism of extreme passivity and emotional numbness. 

Houghtelling:

Living under the constant threat of Charles' volatile temper creates profound psychological exhaustion for Adam. He spends his youth walking on eggshells. I mean, on the one hand, his dad is going to discipline him so that he becomes a good soldier. On the other hand, he never knows when Charles is going to protect him or he's going to flip into homicidal rage. So as an adult, he's willing to overlook massive, glaring red flags in Cathy because his primary psychological driver is the avoidance of conflict. He mistakes Cathy's cold, calculated quietness for the serene domestic peace he was denied as a child. Adam carries a subconscious belief that he is somehow responsible for provoking Charles’ wrath, and this lingering sense of inherent defectiveness makes him incredibly vulnerable to a manipulator. So then we have the third major influence on Adam's character development, which was his stepmother, Alice, Alice Trask, who was Cyrus's second wife.

Houghtelling:

She was this silent phantom of a mother. She was like a ghostly, intensely submissive presence in the household. She is a woman who survives by becoming entirely invisible, hiding her thoughts and emotions behind a mask of quiet domestic duty. Alice never openly expresses affection, warmth, or validation to Adam. So Adam's emotional baseline for a mother-figure or a wife is a woman who is silent, distant, and completely unreadable. The only real connection that Adam forms with Alice is through this silent game. Like he happened upon her sitting by herself one day and she was smiling. And it was like he almost felt like he was seeing her without clothes on. To see her smile was like just this phenomenal experience. And he thought, "It's not right for me to just watch and take that in. I need to give her some gift." And so he started leaving small gifts around for her, like a pretty stone or a piece of ribbon on her sewing table.

Houghtelling:

And she secretly accepts them without ever speaking of it. But then later on, when she's dressing his wounds after Charles almost beat him to death, she attributes those gifts to Charles. So even in that, even in Adam giving her those gifts, he's invisible. She doesn't see him. She attributes them to Charles. And this teaches Adam a toxic lesson about intimacy, that love is a one-sided, silent projection. You give, the other person receives in total silence, and you fill in the blanks with your own imagination.

Houghtelling:

So Cathy Ames, in a lot of ways, is a psychological mirror of Alice Trask, but weaponized. When Cathy arrives on the Trask Farm, she mimics the exact traits Adam associated with his stepmother. She is quiet, guarded, and completely unreadable. Because Adam was conditioned by Alice to believe that a woman's silence hides a gentle suffering soul, he assumes Cathy's silence means the same thing. He doesn't realize that while Alice's silence was a shield to protect her goodness, Cathy's silence is a cloak to hide her malice. And so when Cathy crawls to Adam's doorstep, there's this perfect storm. She finds a man perfectly primed for destruction. Cyrus made him crave an escape into pure innocence. Charles made him too passive to question or confront her. And Alice taught him that a silent, cold woman is someone to be gently protected and secretly loved. Adam does not see Cathy for who she is because he is trapped in the theater of his own childhood trauma, casting her in the role of the savior he so desperately needed.

Houghtelling:

And once Cathy embeds herself into Adam's life, she doesn't just stumble into his vulnerabilities. She actively assesses, tests, and weaponizes them. Her psychopathy makes her a master of reading human weakness. And she quickly realizes that Adam is not looking at her, but a fantasy born from his childhood trauma.

Adam’s Full Psychological Architecture (57:36)

Puder:

Good. Yeah. Wow. Awesome.

Melnik:

Yes, it's fantastic. I think he goes beyond the Alice thing. Like when he's talking to Sam Hamilton, he's talking about how great Cathy is and how supportive she is and how she's so excited about the house. Which she doesn't really do. She just says, "Oh, that's great, that's great, Honey." Right? So he's almost in “Cyrus land” in his ability to make her up, right?

Houghtelling:

Yes. And it's so interesting because Sam Hamilton met her, and within the first meal that they shared together, he was really creeped out by her. Like, “There is something really off.” He couldn't get out of there fast enough because he sensed something was really, really wrong. And then Lee confided in him, kind of intimated the same thing.

Puder:

Do you remember the vision Samuel Hamilton has later about who she reminded him of? I think it was him.

Melnik:

It was this man being hanged.

Puder:

He saw it when he was young. 

Melnik:

Yes.

Puder:

A criminal being hanged.

Houghtelling:

Yes.

Puder:

And there was this deadness in his eyes that was reminiscent. And it kind of sent him back to that person. But then his bias starts to leak in, and he's like, "Ah, I can't really link those people together." You know? 

Houghtelling:

Right. Like, he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. It's not fair to….

Puder:

Yes. Like, maybe, "What am I… what is my brain doing to itself right now?" You know?

Houghtelling:

Yes. 

Melnik:

He said it though, “If I was a better friend. I would've told him now,” but 12 years later, he finally tells him. Right? He's the one who awakens Adam 12 years later.

Puder:

Yes. 12 years later.

Houghtelling:

Yes.

Puder:

Good. 

Melnik:

I think it's a hard story.

Houghtelling:

And, you know, there's so much to be said about the journey that Adam took to come to grips with reality. To become a person with substance and desire and ability and to deal with actual reality. And, I think one thing that really grabbed me was in his conversation with Cal after Cal had been taken to jail. He was swept up with everybody else that was in the bar. And as they're talking, Adam says, "You see, there's responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be" (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 398). And, it feels like that's so rich with meaning for what Adam's experience was. He had to learn when he was a kid, and the way he was shaped, it's almost like he couldn't take up space.

Houghtelling:

He had to be dissociated. He had to live in non-reality. He had to try to fit in with whatever forces were pushing him in different directions. And as he developed, and grew as a person, he found out that there was something more solid to it. And there was a responsibility in it that he really sunk his teeth into and it was his redemption.

Puder:

Partial redemption.

Melnik:

Partial redemption. I agree with that. I feel like it's one of the most painful parts of the book is how he treats Cal. Right? He does favor Aron. 

Houghtelling:

Very much. Yes. And there are moments that are so redemptive with Cal where he actually…and Cal just eats it up, but then he slips back into, “Too bad you can't be like your brother” and make something of his life instead of going out and making so much money. At that moment, I just wanted to shake him. 

Melnik:

Yeah.

Puder:

Yeah. Really painful. Really painful. Yeah. So okay. So we could talk about Lee or we could come back to Lee at the end. What do you guys think?

Houghtelling:

Who else do we have to talk about? 

Puder:

We got Aron. And Cal. We talked about Cal somewhat. The brother….

Melnik:

No, we have Abra.

Houghtelling:

Yes.

Puder:

Okay. So maybe to frame this for the audience, if you're still listening. If you haven't stopped the episode, try to listen to the book, and maybe you've come back to this episode after you read the book. Okay. So Lee and Abra are kind of the highest reflective function people, I think, in this story. And so I think we should end with them.

Houghtelling:

You think Sam Hamilton was too?

Puder:

Sam had his moments. Yeah. Okay. We were talking about how Sam woke up Adam to the reality that Adam needed to name his children. So, okay. So, Natalie, why don't you talk about Aron? So, Adam's son, Aron.

Aron: The Deflated Narcissist & Rigid Idealizer (01:02:25)

Dreyfoos: 

So, Aron was like Adam, in the sense that he was favored by Adam. And it is interesting to see the dynamic that is shaped, just given how Adam felt during his upbringing, and then how that was repeated as he was a father, and then he was unaware of Cal and Cal's need for attention. It was painful to read the section where it was Cal reminiscing on how he would get attention just by caressing Adam's leg. And Adam would kind of pat him on the shoulder. And that's the way that Cal kind of held onto his love, was when he needed some sort of comforting, he knew that if he were to kind of just brush up on him in some way, he would kind of get a pat.

Dreyfoos:

And that was how he got love from Adam. Aron is one of literature's cleanest portraits of what we'd now call, I'd say, a deflated narcissist or vulnerable narcissist. It was not vanity, but more of a fragile self, that Aron can't survive contact with an imperfect world. He was almost obsessed. It was like an extreme idealization and his inability to integrate that good and evil exist in the world and that humans are imperfect. He was unable to do so. Aron is beautiful, adored, and devout, and he's destroyed not by an enemy, but by a single fact that he can't metabolize that a good person can also lie. His inner world is organized around idealized objects and an idealized self, defended by splitting denial and repression with strikingly low reflective function.

Dreyfoos:

He was extremely rigid, extremely set in his ways, suffocating others around him.

Dreyfoos:

And the architecture carries him from, like, a narcissistic vulnerability to this moral injury and collapse in the book that is essentially his death. He enters into the military, after he meets his mother working in a brothel, after Cal had introduced them. And his inability to integrate that into seeing that his mother was who she was, it was mind-boggling. He couldn't do it. And he escaped. He ran away. He was afraid. So Aron had this idealized self. It was something that's brought up in the book. I'm going to read this excerpt from it: “Aron is serene, but the structure he can't tolerate is a single crack. So he set up rules and he required that the world conform. He had a rigid identity, and the world around him was required to conform.”

Dreyfoos:

And he really projects this onto and idealizes Abra. And when he goes away to Stanford, he wants to escape Salinas. He wants to escape Salinas. He no longer wants to live in his hometown and goes to Stanford. And then he's completely alone. He feels just really homesick and writes to Abra and writes these letters that are not even related to her. And she feels that. She feels the sense of idealization that she must be perfect. Lee makes a comment between Abra and Lee that she feels like she can't even smell. Humans can't smell. And then if she did, then Aron would reject her. So others around him in the relationships with him felt that purity, that sense, that need to conform. He engaged in defenses. So I don't think he truly had narcissistic personality disorder.

Dreyfoos:

I think it was more of, and you guys, please help me, but the obsessiveness with the idealization. He could not….

Puder:

I think he had an obsessive personality. Like obsessive compulsive, but more of the obsessive. Right? With the scrupulosity. But I agree, the idealized self. He idealized Abra. And Abra commented that he writes more and more about her in a way that is less and less like her. She feels like he doesn't see her. And it didn't feel vulnerable or connecting to her.

Drefyoos:

Well, and he was afraid of vulnerability, too. I think that was something that came up.

Puder:

He lost interest in sex. He lost interest in getting married. He wanted to be celibate. A lot of this was this kind of extreme religious, you know, zealotry, maybe become a monk. Which was a form of pushing down some of his desires. He had a lack of contact with his desires for things that we all desire. Okay. Keep going. 

Dreyfoos:

So talking about vulnerability, he would also become very angry. So, when he became vulnerable, Aron is exquisitely sensitive, but cannot tolerate vulnerability. When he asks Abra to practice being his mother, I think they're 15, or around that age, he breaks down and cries. And he doesn't stay with the grief. He can't tolerate it. He doesn't understand why he's crying. He can't. I mean, he's 15, but there is no reflection. And he becomes extremely angry and threatens that if she tells anybody that he started crying, he would kill her. And it's interesting because he's so sensitive. He's a very sensitive individual, but he cannot tolerate vulnerability.

Puder:

Well, I think he never had a mother, and so he was accessing the deep sorrow, but then also the deep shame that came with the sorrow. But then he wasn't able to sit in that vulnerability, like you're saying. And so it went to other places.

Drefyoos:

So I want to bring this back to Nancy McWilliams. It was in Nancy McWilliams’ book, in her chapter on narcissism. She frames it as narcissistic people carry deep shame about needing anything. Because to admit a need exposes a deficiency in the self (McWilliams, 2011, Ch.8). And you see this deficiency in self, and even with Kate. People feel it. She may not feel it, but people feel that there's something missing from her. And I think you start to see this with Aron, that he starts to feel like something is amiss. Like, he's not enough. There's something. He's inferior. And this really comes about during or after the experience for Adam.  

Dreyfoos:

His father creates a scheme to refrigerate lettuce and ship it across the states. And this fails publicly. And he loses a ton of money. And this then sets up Cal to try to gain back or buy Adam's love. But the two boys, the twins, they start to get mocked by their peers, by the town; and they're called lettuceheads. The lettucehead boys. And Aron internalizes this as a status wound. Like, “Oh, I just can't be that lettucehead boy.” And he tells Abra something like, "I don't think I'm good enough for you anymore. I'm that lettucehead boy. I'm not good enough." And her father also starts to say, "You should, you need to date somebody else." Right? That he is no good for you anymore. So people around him are also shaping this perfect self that he needs to be.

Dreyfoos:

He enters into the Episcopal ministry. He reads this as goodness, but this is self-serving. It's an obsession with purity that builds a world with no room for imperfection or complexity. In the book it says, "He made a picture of me, and it was like a saint." This is a letter from Aron to Abra. "He made a picture of me, and it was like a saint. He didn't want me. He wanted that” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 463). Letters from Stanford idealize the fantasy of Abra. The real, imperfect Abra threatens his self with cohesion. And she's afraid of that. And he needs this perfect woman, similar to Adam, also doesn't want to see Kate for…

Puder:

Yes. Well, he has this ideal. Right? He's addicted to this idea, which is why, when he does meet his mom, it shatters him in a way that he was not prepared for.

Dreyfoos:

Yes. And he's unable to…. And that's the culmination up to the end, is that he is so unhappy at Stanford. He wants to come back and it's at Thanksgiving dinner. And Cal is preparing to give his father a gift, money that he's gotten through this business venture with Will Hamilton. And Aron wants to tell his father that he no longer wants to go back to Stanford, and that he's going to go to the ranch. 

Puder:

Which is a potential for progress, actually. Which is father rejects, “No, no, no. I know better. I know better.”

Puder:

“You shouldn't go. You need to continue at Stanford. This is how I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for this.”

Dreyfoos:

Which is a repeat of what Adam's father did to him.

Puder:

His brother kind of rejects him too. His brother's like, "No, you're going to be this. I'll be the business guy. You be the really smart person, and we're going to do great things together." That's initially what he is trying to convince his brother to keep going to Stanford. Let's move on. Any other things before we get into Abra? Anything else you want to…?

Dreyfoos:

No, I just think that he was the perfect character to show the rigidity that can happen when we are unable to, or when we stick to one perspective, when we don't, when we can't, see other perspectives. We don't see our blind spots. We can miss so much, and that can lead to our own demise. And that's what happened, literally, for Aron in the book. 

Puder:

I have a lot of compassion for Aron though, because Aron, and we'll get to it, Aron was not given the truth in a way that was progressive and helpful. The truth was hidden from him.

Dreyfoos:

No, it was hidden. He was protected.

Puder:

Yes.

Puder:

And  everyone thought he was too fragile to hear it in a progressive, thoughtful way.

Melnik:

Contrast this between Adam and Aron, like when Charles is setting out to kill Adam, he reveals to Adam that his mother was crazy and she was suicidal and he expected this to really destabilize Adam and Adam doesn't seem to care. And then we have Cal basically doing the same thing to Aron, but Aron cares deeply about who his mother is. So it's interesting to see the contrast.

Puder:

There’s a large portion earlier in the book that Lee is trying to convince Adam, Aron's father, to tell the boys some of the truth. He says, "It's the lie that I'm thinking of. It might infect everything. If they ever found out you lied to them about this, the true things would suffer. They would not believe anything then. Maybe you could tell them a part of the truth, enough so that they wouldn't suffer if they found out." There's a lot in the book about telling the truth, about big things. You know? And maybe we'll get to that a little bit more after we talk about Abra. But let's talk about Abra. 

Abra: The Secret Hero – Integrated & Wise (01:15:33)

Ronay:

Right. So Abra is, initially, Aron's girlfriend. They meet when they're very young. And, I do think that she is an example in the book of somebody who personifies Lee, who is this very dignified, wise character in the book, and really talks a lot about things like seeking truth, like David just said, and timshel, which is our ability to have choice in our lives. So when we meet Abra, she's actually kind of mischievous, she clearly has a bit of a dark side, but she and Aron hit it off. The difference is, though, that she grows and Aron doesn't. And as she grows, you see that she becomes more integrated, in that when she sees complexities, she doesn't just deny those realities. She's interested in the truth and in trying to understand people and the world.

Ronay:

So she, I would say, she grows from sort of a narcissistic vulnerability of a child to a more integrated woman. She talks about how, as a child, that you are the center of the universe. But as you grow up, then, you know, things go out of you and come from other people. She says it's worse, but it's much better too. And I think what she's talking about when she says that things come in from other people is that the complexity of things come into you as you're growing from a child to an adult. And what's good about that is that it forces you to think, and it forces you to grow, if you're willing to grow. So she eventually, as the book goes on, she kind of outgrows Aron eventually.

Ronay:

And eventually she and Aron's brother, Cal, hit it off. And then, at one point, she tells him. So Abra tells Aron about Cal. No, she tells Cal, she says about Aron; and this is a quote on chapter 44, "He's made someone up, and it's like he put my skin on her. I'm not like that. Not like the made up one. Pure, just absolutely pure. I'm not like that.” And Lee says, "Nobody is" (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 463). And how she's arrived to this complexity, is that during the whole book, she's very curious, and she really reflects about relationships. And she has lots of conversations with Lee. Lee is a bit of this, to me, is sort of a sage or a wise therapist. The kind of therapist you'd want to have.

Ronay:

And he asks some very good questions. He sort of sits there, often kind of smiling, nodding, making a quiet humming sound. He sounds like a therapist to me. And he just asks her questions and lets her grapple with those questions. And she actually grows as a result, instead of denying some truths. She's also kind of a contrast to Cathy or Kate, because although she was kind of, at least early on, she's got some dark characteristics and we later learned that Abra's father was stealing. You know, I mean, nobody's perfect. Right? Anyway, she has some, let's say, inherited flaws, but she chooses to be good as she grows up, but she chooses to accept evil sides of herself, of the people in her life, and to not really just define herself by the past, but to just choose who she's going to become.

Ronay:

And she really embodies a theme that David talked about early on in this podcast, which is that, and I'll paraphrase it, but it's that psychological health is not the disappearance of aggression, dependency, narcissism, withdrawal, guilt, or control. It's more the growing ability to recognize conflicting parts of ourselves and to remain in contact with that reality in that struggle and to stay related with people who are imperfect, and that includes ourselves and our own imperfections.

Puder:

Great character. Really.

Puder:

Really appreciate Abra.

Melnik:

And I think that's the one relationship where we kind of get a sense of romantic love, where partners really try to see each other, between Cal and Abra. It's not until the end, but it's the first time we'll see that happen. 

Houghtelling:

It was also really poignant, the relationship between Abra and Lee, and that moment in the kitchen where he said he really wished that she was his daughter. And she wished he was her father. There was just a really raw, but real, seeing of each other and connecting in a really sweet way.

Melnik:

Yes. I feel like Lee was like the only parent to all three of those kids. Right? To Aron, Cal and Abra.

Houghtelling:

Yes. Yes. Which is really amazing considering what his own childhood was like. The story he had and his mother dying as his father clawed him out of her belly, and raised in a labor camp basically by everybody there. It's amazing the qualities that he developed. Which, I don't know. Are you, maybe you're going there next? 

Lee: The Secret Hero & Moral Authority (01:21:35)

Puder:

There's a part of me that wants to read that whole section, but there's also a part of me that realizes it would take a couple minutes. You know? Okay, so I'll talk about Lee now. I think he is born in California. His parents, you know, grew up in China. And you have to realize, Steinbeck wrote this at a time in which the Asian population was a minority. Maybe a lot more critical in the air in the US, right? And so, he is the secret hero. Right? He's kind of like the, it's like, if there's a nice secret message that this book gives, it's like, here's a guy who's a servant to Aron, so he kind of gets under your defenses, "Oh, he's just a servant." But he is the moral authority.

Puder:

He raises Aron and Cal. He is someone who listens and listens and listens, and just at the right moment, gives a truth bomb in just the right way so that someone has the potential for growth and increased ability to make a true choice. Right? So in this peak moment when he's talking about not lying to the kids, he shares the story of his own childhood, and the moment when his father told him this story. And, it's not a fun story to read. And I actually one time read it to a patient. And I read it because a lot of the things in my patient’s stories are also very hard. And it's like, how can anything good come from this awfulness, right? It's like there's so much shame. Let me see.

Puder:

I'll try to…. There's a couple lines I want to read, and specifically….

Puder:

Okay, so his father is describing this journey that he took with his wife. So his father had to pay off a debt, so they came to the U.S. to pay off the debt. And his wife basically pretended to be a man so that she could go with him. And so they're treated as human cattle. And, the whip, the rope, the rifle are the ways of disciplining. So, okay, I'm going to read this: 

“I could see my father’s face when he told me. An old misery comes back raw and full of pain. Telling it, my father had to stop and gain possession of himself. And when he continued, he spoke sternly and used hard, sharp words, almost as though he wanted to cut himself with them” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 316).

“These two managed to stay close together by claiming she was my father’s nephew. The months went by. Unfortunately for them, there was little abdominal swelling, and she worked in pain, and out of it. My father could only help a little, apologizing, ‘My nephew is young and his bones are brittle.’ They had a plan, but they did not know what to do. Then my father figured out the plan. They would run into the high mountains to one of the high meadows, and there, beside a lake, they would make a burrow for the birthing. And when my mother was safe and the baby born, my father would come back and take his punishment. He would sign up for an extra five years to pay for his delinquent nephew. Pitiful as their escape was…” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 316).

“it was all they had, and it seemed a brightness. The plan had two requirements. The timing had to be right, and a supply of food was necessary. Lee said, ‘My parents’—and he stopped, smiling over his use of the word, and it felt so good that he warmed it up—‘My dear parents began to make the preparations. They saved part of their daily rice and hid it under their sleeping mats. My father found a length of string and [fashioned a hook] out of a piece of wire, for there were trout to be caught in the mountain lakes. He stopped smoking to save the matches issued. And my mother collected every tattered scrap of cloth she could find and unraveled edges to make thread and sewed the rag bag together with splinters to make swaddling clothes for me. I wish I had known her.’”

“‘So do I,’ said Adam” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 316).

“‘Do you ever tell this to Sam Hamilton?’”

“‘No, I didn’t. But I wish I had. He loved a celebration of the human soul. Such things were like a personal triumph to him.’”

“‘I hope they got there,’ said Adam.”

“‘I know.’ And when my father would tell me, I would say to him, ‘Get to the lake. Get my mother there. Don’t let it happen again’” (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 291).

“‘Don’t let it happen again. Not this time. Just once, let’s tell how you got to the lake and built the house of fur burrows.’”

“And my father became very Chinese then. He said, ‘There’s more beauty in the truth, even if it’s dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and stupid and weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.’”

“‘Get on with it,’ Adam said irritably.”

“Lee got up and went to the window and finished the story, looking out at the stars that winked and blew in the March wind. A little boulder jumped down the hill and broke my father’s leg. They set the leg and gave him cripples’ work, straightening used nails with a hammer on a rock. And whether with worry or work–it doesn’t matter” (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 292).

“My mother went into early labor, and then the half-mad men knew and they went all mad. One hunger sharpened another hunger, and one crime blotted out the one before it. And the little crimes committed against those starving men flared into one gigantic maniac crime. My father heard the shot. He knew. He tried to run and his leg rebroke under him. And he crawled up the ragged slope to the roadbed where it was happening. When he got there, a kind of sorrow had come over the sky, and the Canton men were creeping away to hide and to forget that men can be like this. My father came to her on the pile of shale. She had not even eyes to see out of, but her mouth still moved and she gave him his instructions. My father clawed me out of the tattered meat of my mother with his fingernails.”

“She died on the shale in the afternoon” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 357).

Adam was breathing hard.

Lee continued with the sing-song cadence: “Before you hate these men, you must know this. My father always told it at the last. No child had ever had so much care as I. The whole camp became my mother. It is a beauty, a dreadful kind of beauty. And now good night. I can’t talk anymore” (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 357).

Puder:

And, I think this is kind of like Dostoevsky, when he wrote The Brothers Karamazov, “The Grand Inquisitor,” in the middle of the book, this story, which gives this ethic that you can hold two things at once. Right? A horrific, horrific act, and also the redemption of these men becoming the mother of himself and the love that he received. And I think it's this story that then allows and gets transmuted to Cal. And in the final sequence, I also wanted to read that because I feel like it's so powerful. It's like, here we have Cal torn apart with guilt. We have Adam on his deathbed having had a stroke, can barely, cannot talk, cannot move, cannot do anything. And Cal understands that there may be nothing going on inside of Adam. Or Lee understands there may be nothing going on inside of Adam.

Puder:

So he starts, “‘There's damage in your brain. And it may be that you are a new thing in the world. Your kindness may be meanness now, your bleak honesty, fretful and conniving. No one knows these things except you. Adam, can you hear me?’ The blue eyes wavered, closed slowly, then opened. Lee said, ‘Thank you, Adam. I know how hard it is. I'm going to ask you to do a much harder thing. Here's your son, Caleb, your only son. Look at him, Adam.’ And the pale eyes looked until they found Cal. Cal's mouth moved dryly and made no sound. Lee's voice cut in. ‘I don't know how long you will live, Adam. Maybe a long time. Maybe an hour. But your son will live. He will marry and his children will be the only remnant left to you.’ Lee wiped his eyes with his fingers” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 590).

“‘He did a thing in anger, Adam. Because he thought you had rejected him. The result of his anger is that his brother and your son is dead.’ Cal said, ‘Lee, you can't.’ ‘I have to,’ said Lee. "If it kills him I have to. I have the choice.’ And he smiled sadly, and quoted, ‘If there's blame, it's my blame.’ Lee's shoulders straightened. He said sharply, ‘Your son is marked with guilt out of himself—out of himself. Almost more than he can bear. Don't crush him with rejection. Don't crush him, Adam.’ Lee's breath whistled in his throat, ‘Adam, give him your blessing. Don't leave him alone with his guilt, Adam. Do you hear me? Give him your blessing.’ A terrible brightness shone in Adam's eyes, and he closed them and kept them closed. A wrinkle formed between his brows. Lee said, ‘Help him, Adam. Help him’” (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 590-591).

“‘Give him his chance. Let him be free. That's all a man has, has over the beasts. Free him. Bless him.’ The whole bed seemed to shake under the concentration. Adam's breath came quickly with his effort, and then slowly his right hand lifted, lifted an inch, and then fell back” (Steinbeck, 2002, p. 591).

“Lee's face was haggard. He moved to the head of the bed and wiped the sick man's damp face with the edge of the sheet. He looked down and closed his eyes. Lee whispered, ‘Thank you, Adam. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. Can you move your lips? Make your lips form his name.’ Adam looked up with sick wariness. His lips parted and failed and tried again. Then his lungs filled. He expelled the air, and his lips combed the rushing sigh. He whispered the words seemed to hang in the air. Timshel. His eyes closed and he slept” (Steinbeck, 2002, pp. 591).

Melnik:

You want to explain the timshel? I don't think they got there.

Puder:

Timshel was, in the story of Cain and Abel, which is kind of a central archetypal theme of this book and of all sibling rivalry. Cain kills Abel. And there's different translations of the word that was spoken to Cain by God. It's like sin crouches at the door and thou shall rule over him. And Lee finds a translation with his scholars that “thou mayest.” Timshal. Thou mayest rule over. Which is a choice. It's not “thou shall,” which is a requirement. It's “thou mayest.” So it gives choice. So it's like sin is crouching at the door. And, you can do this evil act or you can choose not to. And so for Cal, it was kind of like a blessing because it was, “You can choose. You don't have to be like Cathy. You're not destined to be your mother.”

Puder:

You're not destined to be evil. You can choose.

Dreyfoos:

I really think that's powerful. And something that I was excited to read about was Lee's description of timshel. And it brought me back to training in meaning-centered psychotherapy and how we can describe suffering or how we experience suffering or perspective around suffering, whatever that might be. And the beauty that can be from something so ugly. Right? That there was, Lee had this, his birth was monstrous. I mean, it was really aggressive. And there was beauty within that. And the perspectives that we can take, when we are in suffering, or when our patients are in suffering, and how can we help, how can we help within that space? Like, what choice do they want to make? We can't make the choice for them. Sometimes I really want to make the choice for my patients, but I think there is, it's empowering and it's….

Dreyfoos:

Yeah. I just really love this part of the book because it resonated with me with Viktor Frankl and his existential look at suffering [see episodes 32 and 113] and what it means.

Puder:

Yeah. And I think the way that Lee communicates that is believable. Because it's like you can't say that without having made the choice yourself. Lee could have become the most resentful person for what happened to his mother, what happened to his childhood, what happened at the hands of the people that were basically enslaving him. So he could have been resentful. He could have been bitter. But he chose to connect with people and love people.

Dreyfoos:

And that's questioning the determinism. Right? Like, determinism is that you don't have a choice. Your upbringing, the actions that have happened, that determines what you're, you know, how you're going to be, how you're going to act. Whereas, we have that free will or that freedom of choice to become Lee, who was this really wise man.

Closing: Timshel, Reflection, and Why You Must Read This Book (01:36:16)

Puder:

Yeah. So I think this is a good place to wrap it up, actually. Any closing words? Any final thoughts? Littal? Anything brewing in there?

Melnik:

It's hard to cobble together last minute, but to read this book, I think as an adolescent, it was the first time I read it, it was this revelation of reflective function. Steinbeck's ability to put you into every single character and to feel with them is what makes this fantastic. And I hope listeners out there get a chance to read it.

Puder:

Yeah. Agreed. Even if the characters had low reflective function, the way he wrote about them was very reflective. Yes. Which I think is why this book is so timeless and it was his masterpiece. It's like, I hope in my life I can have something resembling that because that's my own, just appreciation of stuff like this.

Houghtelling:

Maybe this podcast.

Puder:

Yeah, maybe, maybe the symphony for us is not in writing a book. It's in, you know, helping patients, and the journey [see episode 107].

Puder:

Through their journeys. And sometimes speaking truth when it's difficult.

Melnik:

Did you love the Marcus Aurelius piece with Lee? I was like, "Oh, David's going to make this….” 

Melnik:

I love that. So that was what he was reading? 

Puder:

It's okay. I loved it for a couple reasons. One, because Lee stole the book from Sam.

Puder:

From Sam, right? So he steals this really nice version of [The Meditations of] Marcus Aurelius. And then he's kind of leafing through it in this moment. And for those of you who know, Dr. John Tarr [see episode 233], who was my mentor, who passed away a couple of years ago, he gave me his copy of Marcus Aurelius, which is priceless. It's like a hundred-year relic of the past, and it's just beautiful. And so, I too can leaf through my Marcus Aurelius. I'm glad you got that [see episode 120].

Melnik:

It's like the one point… I don't know if we mentioned it, but this book is just like, how do we cope with rejection. Right? This is a thing within father/son. This is a thing within romantic relationships. Even, like, you know, Desi dies from this. It's like, can we get our patients to kind of live through rejection? And their life is so much better if they are not crippled by this one phenomenon that is so human.

Puder:

Yes. Yes. And yet, it's probably, I think, a stage to be with them in that feeling that they're not going to move out of that place either. You know, like that torturousness of the rejection, if they felt that. It says something very important. It says they loved. It says they cared. It says there was something meaningful that they touched. 

Houghtelling:

And the whole idea of timshel. I've never used that word with my patients, but to help them get in touch with the fact that they have agency, they have options, they have choices for how they want to move forward with that. 

Melnik:

Yes. Yes. And that's what we wanted for Charles and what we wanted for Aron. Right? To be able to live through it. 

Puder:

Yeah. Now, there isn't that. 

Houghtelling:

In some ways, I wish that you could fast-forward it and see how Cal and Abra developed in the aftermath. We'll never have that rest of that story, but it's fun to ponder where those two could have gone.

Puder:

Yep. I don't think I really had an appreciation of a tragedy when I was a young man, you know? And it's like, in my older age, it's like I appreciate it so much more. Like, having tragic parts of the story that are just like, “Ugh.” 

Dreyfoos:

I've never read any of Steinbeck's work. This is my first reading of it. Wow. And I feel like I really appreciate that I read it now versus when I wouldn't have appreciated it when I was younger. I likely would've stopped reading it. But I just… just the tragedy and how he talks about it, it's so beautiful. He normalizes the suffering. And he normalizes some of these terrible acts that people engage in. 

Melnik:

I know everything was intentional in this book. And so, Cathy has this love of Alice in Wonderland and he names Charles's mother Alice.

Melnik:

Why those two?

Houghtelling:

Right? 

Melnik:

I think that I will grapple with that as we move forward. 

Puder:

Beautiful. All right, guys. We'll leave it there for today, okay? We're going to have to wrap it up. So let’s pull the threads together.

We started with this idea that personality health is not the disappearance of aggression, dependency, narcissism, withdrawal, guilt, or control. It’s the growing ability to recognize those conflicting parts of the self, stay in contact with reality, and stay related to people who cannot be made perfect.

That’s reflective function. And we watched it rise and fall all the way through this book.

Cathy is the extreme. She cannot see good. She cannot take it in. She uses beauty and seduction as control and when that power fades, she has no other way to live. That’s what low reflective function looks like.

Cyrus shows how grandiosity, favoritism, and a false identity get passed down. The less favored child carries the rage. The favored child carries the blindness. Then it repeats.

Adam falls in love with a phantom, not a person. He learned that love is silent, that conflict is dangerous, and that goodness has to be worshiped from a distance. His reflective function collapses around idealization. He recovers some of it, but not all of it. He still favors Aron. That part is painful and true.

Aron is the other side of the same wound. He builds a perfect world and cannot metabolize even one crack in it. When the truth about his mother arrives without enough holding, he shatters.

Cal can read Cathy. He can feel the envy. He does the harm. He also comes to the knowledge of the choice. That is why the book ends on him and not on Aron.

And then there are the people who can hold more. Lee and Abra. They stay curious. They stay related. They can see our shadow side without becoming it, and they can see the good without needing it to join the fantasy of being pure or perfect.

That brings us back to Cain and Abel. Envy. Jealousy. The feeling of being the less favored one. That story is the backbone of the whole novel, and it is the backbone of a lot of the work we do with patients struggling with envy or competition in a family without enough love.

Lee’s higher reflective function reading of that story is timshel. Not “you must.” Not “you are doomed.” Thou mayest. You have a choice. And that is the blessing that Adam leaves with Cal through Lee’s wisdom at the end.

I think of logotherapy, of meaning making [see episodes 32, 82, and 113]. In the end, choice and reflectiveness give clinical hope. Not that history doesn’t matter. Not that the worst parts disappear. But that a person can develop enough reflective function to see themselves clearly, stay related to imperfect people, including themselves, and still choose, even in times of stress.

If this episode does anything, I hope it helps you see that map more clearly in your patients, and in yourself.

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