I felt privileged to meet this New York psychotherapist in a rotating workshop where you get about 90 minutes with a variety of facilitators. I’ll never forget the hour and a half I spent with Lawrence Le Shan. As I entered the room, there was this teddy bear of a man sitting calmly in an armchair but somehow exuding peace, love and geniality.
He shared with us the story of how, as a psychotherapist, he came to write a book titled Holistic Medicine (LINK).
He had a friend who was an oncologist who sent him patients with cancer where there wasn’t much hope. Le Shan noticed that some patients were starting to get better and even recover. He noted that the patients who got better were not those who benefited from psychodynamic therapy (ie analytical style psychotherapy.) The people who did well, said Le Shan, were those who changed their daily lives as a result of the therapeutic process and finally learned the vital importance of what he called ‘singing their own song’.
I don’t remember much more of what he said, but the story of one patient he helped will stay with me forever, as it showed me what he meant by singing your own song. This is how I remember Lawrence Le Shan telling the story of ‘Mac’.
“Mac was a 68-year-old man with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and a poor prognosis.” Le Shan told us. This is how the first session began:
Le Shan: Do you know what you always wanted to do with your life?
Mac: Yes
Le Shan: What was that?
Mac: Be a doctor.
At this point in the workshop, Le Shan confided to us that he thought, “Oh no, not even a private medical school in the Caribbean will accept a 68-year-old man with non-Hodgkins lymphoma as a patient! What happened next is THE most inspiring story I’ve ever heard in person from any healer about one of their patients/clients.” Le Shan did not give up; he continued brilliantly:
Le Shan: Okay, what sort of doctor would you have liked to become?
Mac: Dunno.
Le Shan: Well, can you say how often you would like to see a patient? Every day, once a week, occasionally…?
Mac (interrupting): No, just once.
Le Shan: Just once and never again?
Mac: That’s right.
At this point, Le Shan told us the rest of the story. The sort of doctor Mac wanted to be was an A&E specialist or someone working in the Emergency Room. Fix or stabilise the patient and refer them on if necessary. What happened to Mac resulted in Le Shan making a journey years later to Miami Beach, where Mac lived. He described driving along an endless coastal road with hotels, restaurants and other tourist attractions on either side of the road. Stuck between these was a tiny booth with a sign saying INFORMATION. Behind a small counter sat Mac, and Le Shan stood around and watched what happened next.
A large car pulled up. This was in the 70s, and air-conditioned cars were not the norm. A sweaty, clearly irritated father walked into Mac’s booth:
Tourist: ‘Can you recommend a hotel?’
Mac did not answer immediately. Instead, he went to the car and encouraged a large family to enter the booth. Le Shan observed that Mac’s smile and warmth were starting to calm the family down. He then asked them a series of questions, including things like whether it mattered which side of the road a Putt Putt course was on and which fast food outlets the kids liked. As Le Shan put it to us: “I watched him take a better case history from that family than I was used to making! I was amazed to see the whole family transformed by the enthusiasm and genuine warmth of a man in an information booth.”
Mac and Le Shan, in their chats, had found a way for Mac to sing his own song, without going to medical school.
This has remained the most inspiring story of healing I have ever heard in person.. Some cannot change their lives, and some will not change their lives, but some do. Many decades after meeting Le Shan, a patient in his 80s who had had a successful career in business, happened to mention in passing that an actor’s agent told him that he was the ‘most natural actor she had ever met’. I told him that times had changed and that anyone could be an actor on YouTube. Not only did he do that, but he was also invited as a commentator on several mainstream radio and television shows. He loved doing this much more than making money in business.
Whenever I see a patient, I try to discern whether he or she has found a way to sing their own song. Strangely, once you think of doing this, it’s often quite obvious what they need to do. One way to find out what people need to do is simply to ask them what they would do if they won the lottery. In my experience, at least 80% of people could live their ideal life right now – ie sing their own song – without any lottery money at all! When they do, their lives are transformed, and this can have a big effect on many physical conditions.
Lawrence Le Shan died in 2020. I wasn’t surprised to read that he had lived to the age of 100. Clearly, he too had sung his own song.