Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy (9 page)

“Hunches about this dream, Rick? Tell me anything that comes to mind.”

“Well, baseball. I used to love playing when I was young. My favorite sport. I was good at it. Shortstop with a helluva peg. Could have played college ball, maybe even pro, but I had to go to work. My parents had no money.”

“Keep going. Say more about the dream.”

“Well, kids were playing, and I wanted to play. But I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Feelings about that? Or other feelings you had in that dream?”

“Yeah, my therapist never fails to ask that question. I don’t recall any feelings. But let me try—
happy
when I first saw the ball game—that’s one feeling. And then some
aching
and
bafflement
when I saw I couldn’t play. If you want feelings, though, the other dream last night had some stronger feelings. Lots of aggravation and frustration. In that dream I was . . . I am in the bathroom looking at myself in the mirror, but it is all blurred, as though the mirror is steamed over. I have a spray bottle of cleaner, and I keep squeezing the last spurts in the bottle, and I keep rubbing and cleaning the mirror, but it just will not get clear.”

“Isn’t it strange that you hadn’t dreamed for months
before
—”

“I said ‘
weeks
.’”

“Sorry, you haven’t dreamed for
weeks
, and then last night, the very night before we meet, you have these two strong dreams. It’s as though you dreamt them for our session today, as though your unconscious is sending us some clues to the mystery.”

“God, the way you guys think—my unconscious sending mysterious messages to my conscious for my shrink to decode. You can’t be serious.”

“Well, let’s examine this together. Think of the major problem you bring here, that you can’t adjust to your community, that you are shackled by alternative desires. That you end up frozen, not doing anything. Right?”

“Yeah, I’m with you.”

“Surely the first dream speaks to that. Keep in mind that dreams are almost entirely visual and convey meaning only through visual images. So look at the picture your dream offers of your life dilemma. You want to play baseball, the game you loved as a kid, the game you had great talent for, but you can’t join that game because of your age. There’s another game there for folks your age, but you can’t join that game because you can’t get past the fence around the ball field. So, you’re too old for one game and fenced out of the other. Right?”

“Right. Yeah, yeah, I see your point. Well, perhaps it
is
saying I don’t really know my age. It’s saying I’m foolish by thinking that I’m young enough to play in the baseball game. I don’t belong there.”

“And the other game?”

“Behind that fence? That part’s not as clear.”

“Still see the fence in your mind’s eye?”

“Yep.”

“Keep looking at it, and just let thoughts about that fence drift into your mind.”

“Plain old chain-link fence. Used to look through them when I was a kid to watch the older kids playing ball. And oh, yes, we had a class B minor league team in our town, and there was a little slit in the fence in center field where we use to watch the games before we got chased away. Ordinary fence—see ’em everywhere.”

“If that fence could speak to you, what would it say?”

“Hmm, a little Fritz Perls technique, huh? I remember that from my counseling program.”

“Right you are. Fritz knew a thing or two about dreams. Keep going. What might the fence say?”

“Uh, damnedest thing happening.”

“What?”

“Well, I hear a tune playing in my mind right now. ‘Don’t Fence Me In.’ You know that song?”

“I think I remember a bit of it.”

“Here’s the thing. Last week that tune invaded my mind for hours, and I couldn’t get away from it. It just kept playing like background music. I tried to remember all the words but couldn’t and finally went to YouTube and found a video of Roy Rogers riding his horse, Trigger, and singing that song. Great lyrics! Then, when I saw a computer ad to get the melody of that song as the ring tone on my cell phone, I was tempted to order it and clicked on it. I nixed it when I saw they were going to charge some goddamned outrageous monthly fee.”

“Remember some of the lyrics?”

“You bet.” Rick closed his eyes and sang softly:

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above

Don’t fence me in

Let me ride through the wide open country that I love

Don’t fence me in

Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze

And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees

Send me off forever, but I ask you please

Don’t fence me in

“Great, Rick. Thanks. Lot of heart in your singing. Those lyrics—‘Don’t fence me in’—really do speak to your life predicament. And I get a kick out of thinking of you having a phone ring tone with that melody. I wonder if it would help.”

“It sure would keep my predicament front and center. No hints about the solution, though.”

“Let’s turn to the other dream—the mirror that you kept cleaning? And the spray bottle’s last spurts? Any hunches?”

Rick flashed a big smile. “You’re making me do all the work.”

“It’s your dream. You’re the guy, the only one who can do it.”

“Well, my image in the mirror is blurred. I know what you’re going to say.”

“What?” I raised my chin.

“You’re going to say that I don’t know myself, that my own image is blurred to myself.”

“Yep, probably what I
would
say. And the last spurts?”

“No mystery there. I’m seventy-seven.”

“Exactly, you’re trying to get yourself into focus but can’t do it, can’t make the image sharper, and it’s getting late. I’m impressed by your effort in the dream and your effort in coming all this distance to see me. Seems as though there is a powerful desire within you to know yourself, to sharpen your focus. I admire that.”

Rick looked up and finally caught my gaze.

“How did
that
feel?” I asked.

“How did what feel?”

“What you just did. Looking at me. Looking into my eyes.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“It seems to me that this was the first time you really looked at me, the first time we really touched.”

“Never thought of therapy consultation as a social hour. Where’s this coming from?”

“It was that statement you made earlier, ‘I was too damned lonely.’ I was wondering how lonely you’ve been feeling in this room with me.”

“I don’t think about that. But I admit you’ve got a point. There are people all around me, but I just don’t connect.”

“It would help me understand more if you’d take me through a twenty-four-hour day. Pick a typical day last week.”

“Well, I have breakfast . . . ”

“What time do you wake up?”

“About six.”

“And your typical night’s sleep?”

“Probably six to seven hours. I go to bed around eleven and read myself to sleep around eleven thirty or eleven forty-five. Get up to take a leak about two or three times.”

“And you mentioned you don’t dream often.”

“I rarely remember dreams. My therapist’s been on my case about that. Tells me that everyone dreams every night.”

“And breakfast?”

“I get to the dining room early. I like that because I can sit alone and read the paper with breakfast. The rest of the day you already know about. I torment myself about going or not going to activities. If the weather’s good, I take a walk alone for at least an hour. And I often take lunch in my room alone. But then at dinner you can’t sit alone. They seat you with others, so I put on a good act of socializing.”

“Evenings?”

“TV, or sometimes a film at Fairlawn. Most of the evenings alone.”

“Tell me about the main people in your life right now.”

“I spend a lot more time avoiding people than meeting people. A lot of single women there, but it’s awkward. If I get too friendly with one, then she’ll be looking for me at every meal and every activity. If you get involved with one, there’s no chance you can date another without hell to pay.”

“How about people you knew before you went into the retirement community?”

“I have a son. He’s a banker living in London, and he phones or, lately, Skypes every Sunday morning. Good kid. Two grandchildren—a boy and a girl. And that’s about it. Lost touch with everyone else from my former life. My wife and I had a lively social life, but she was the hub. She organized everything, and I just went along.”

“It’s curious, isn’t it? You say you’re lonely, yet you have such good social skills, and you’re surrounded by people whom you try to avoid.”

“Doesn’t make sense, I know. But not sure how this is connected to my problem about spontaneity and indecision.”

“Perhaps there is more than one problem. Perhaps, as we proceed, some connection will emerge. What strikes me is your strong focus on task and your inattention to relationship. Your description of your dilemma about your activities at Fairlawn involves only the nature of the activity, but no mention of other people. Who’ll be there? Who’s guiding the activity? Who would you like to hang out with? And we had a small taste of that here today as you focused only on getting started quickly and being efficient but sought no real encounter with me. You never inquired about who I was or what I had to offer. Until I invited you to question me, you expressed no interest in me.”

“I did say I read your book and already had an introduction to you there.”

“Right. But your relationship to me was private and excluded me.”

“Come on, this sounds silly. I’m here to get something from you. I’m paying you for your services. I’ll most likely never see you again. What’s the point in social make-believe?”

“Earlier you mentioned your training program as a counselor. Right?”

“Yeah, two-year training program.”

“You remember that the interview, like our interview today, consists of both process and content? Content is obvious—it’s the information exchanged. The
process
—that is, the relationship between interviewer and interviewee—gives you even more relevant information, in that you get a glimpse of the client’s behavior toward others. It’s important because the interview situation is a microcosm of the client’s behavior with other people. So
that’s
what I’m noting. That’s why I’m commenting about the absence of connection between us until that moment you caught my glance.”

“So you’re saying that my behavior here tells you about my behavior with others.”

I nodded.

“Sometimes I think shrinks place too much importance on relationships. There are other things in the world. I’m not craving to meet others. I’m getting along fine without them. Some folks prefer solitude.”

“You’re right. I
do
make the assumption that relationships are central. I believe we’re embedded in them, and we all do better in the presence of an intimate nourishing relationship. Like that long, good, loving one you had with your wife.”

“Well, that’s gone, and, frankly, I don’t have the energy to begin again.”

“Or maybe you don’t ever want to face that kind of loss and pain again. No relationships, no pain.”

Rick nodded. “Yep, I’ve thought of that.”

“You end up protecting yourself, but the cost is high. You cut yourself off from so much. And let me repeat this: even your quandary of ‘Which activity?’ might lose its power if you put ‘Which people?’ into the equation.”

“Right. I never think of that. You may have a point, but I think you’ve glossed over my original concern, my devotion to
spontaneity
. You just writing that off?”

“No, I’ve been thinking about it the whole time we’ve been talking. I personally treasure spontaneity. I rely on it when I write. I value being pulled by something unexpected and going off into unpredictable directions. In fact, I love that. But I don’t think much of your behavior is now propelled by spontaneity, that is, being pulled by something outside yourself. You’re not being pulled, but, instead, you’re being pushed by some force inside that is trying to escape fear or danger.”

“Can you translate that into plainer language?”

“I’ll try. Let me put it this way. I think there is a sense of great danger lurking within you that is corrupting your natural spontaneity. You said yourself that your spontaneity had morphed into a monster. You’re not being pulled by some goal. Instead your actions seem aimed at warding off some internal danger.”

“What internal danger?”

“Afraid I’m only going to be repeating myself, but I don’t know how else to say it. The danger is mortality, the danger confronting all of us. It lies in your dealing with the knowledge that if your wife dies, then so shall you. The retirement home, however lovely, is also foreboding, and you experience it as a trap, a final stop, as a prison confining you, and you don’t want to go along with any part of its schedule.”

I could see him shaking his head ever so slightly. “I’ve never thought of it as a prison. It’s run damn well, and I can leave anytime I choose.”

I knew I wasn’t getting through. I glanced at my watch. “And speaking of schedules, Rick, we’re up against one today, and I’m afraid our time together is running out. I know you’re left perplexed, but will you think about all I’ve said and get back to me by email and let me know if any of this clicks for you later? My hope is that our session will give you food for thought and help get your therapy unstuck.”

“I’ll think on it all right. It’s a bit of a jumble now. But I’ll mull on it, and I’ll write. Are you available for another session, say in a few months, in case I want to repeat this course?”

“If I’m here, I’ll be glad to see you again.”

I was tired when Rick left. The session had been a contest, a struggle, and as I thought about it, I never explicitly addressed the paradox of his having made such an effort to see me yet resisting almost everything I offered him. All I can do in one session is to be real, to leap into the patient’s life, to offer observations in the hope that he’ll be able to open doors and explore some new parts of himself in his ongoing therapy. I expected to hear from him, but there was no word for a long time.