Lying on the Couch (37 page)

Marshal listened to Shelly's associations for half the session before offering an interpretation.

"What strikes me, Mr. Merriman, is your deeply ambivalent feelings toward both Willy and your father. I believe that your relationship to your father is the template by which we can understand your relationship to Willy."

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"Templater

"I mean that your relationship to your father is the key, the foundation, to your relationships to other 'big' or successful men. Over the last two sessions you've told me a great deal about your father's neglect or disparagement of you. Today, for the first time, you give me a warm, positive memory of your father and, yet, look how the episode ends—with a terrible injury. And look at the nature of the injury—a bite on the finger!"

"I don't get your point."

"It seems unlikely that that is an actual memory! After all, as you yourself point out, how can a squirrel bite your finger as you are flinging peanuts? And would a father allow his son to feed a rabies-bearing rodent by hand? Unlikely! So maybe that particular injury— getting bitten on the finger—is a symbol for some other kind of feared injury."

"Come again. What are you getting at. Doc?"

"Remember that early memory you described last session? The first memory that you can recall in your entire life? You said that you were on your parents' bed and that you put your toy lead truck in the light socket on the nightstand and that you got a terrible shock and that half of your truck melted away."

"Yeah, that's what I remember. Clear as day."

"So let's juxtapose these memories—you put your truck into mother's socket and you get burned. There's danger there. Danger in getting too close to your mother—that's father's territory. So how do you cope with the danger coming from your father? Maybe you try to get close to him, but your finger gets badly injured. And isn't it evident that these injuries—to your little truck and to your finger— seem symbolic: What else could they represent but some injury to your penis?

"You've said that your mother doted on you," Marshal continued, noting that he had Shelly's full attention. "She lavished affection on you and at the same time denigrated your father. That sounds like a dangerous position for a young child—to be set up against his father. So what do you do? How do you cope? One way is to identify with your father. And so you have, in all the ways you've described: imitating his tastes in burnt potatoes, his gambling, his carelessness with money, the way you feel about your body resembling his. Another way is to compete with him. And so you did. Pinochle, boxing, tennis; in fact, it was easy to defeat him, to be

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better than him, because he was so unsuccessful. And yet you feh very uncomfortable surpassing him—as if there's some danger in that, some danger in succeeding."

"What's the danger exactly? I honestly think the old man wanted me to succeed."

"The danger is not in succeeding per se, but in succeeding over him, besting him, replacing him. Perhaps, in your young boy's mind, you wanted him gone—that's only natural—you wanted him to disappear so you might have sole possession of mother. But 'disappearing,' to the child, is equivalent to death. So you had death wishes for him. And that's not an indictment of you—that's what happens in every family, that's simply the way we're built. The son resents the obstruction of the father. And the father resents the son for attempting to replace him—in the family, in life.

"Think about it—it's uncomfortable to have death wishes. It feels dangerous. What's the danger? Look at your truck! Look at your finger! The danger lies in your father's retaliation. Now these are old events, old feelings—they happened decades ago. And yet these feelings haven't dissolved. They are buried inside of you, they still feel fresh, they still influence the way you live. That child's sense of danger is still in you—you've long forgotten the reason, but look what you've told me today: you act as if success were very dangerous. Hence, you don't let yourself be successful, or resourceful, around Willy. Can't even allow yourself to play good tennis. So all your skills, your talents, stay locked up, unused, inside of you."

Shelly didn't respond. Not very much of this made sense to him. He closed his eyes and sifted through Marshal's words, searching frantically for some scrap that might be useful.

"Little louder," Marshal said, smiHng. "Can't quite hear you."

"I don't know what to think. You've said so much. I guess I've been wondering why Dr. Pande didn't point all this out to me. Your explanations seem so right on—so much more on target than that homosexual garbage with my father. In four sessions you've done more than Dr. Pande did in forty."

Marshal was soaring. He felt like an interpretive stud. Once ever year or two he entered a "zone" in basketball: the basket looked like a huge barrel up there—three-pointers, twisting lay-ups, jump shots with either hand. He just couldn't miss. Now he was in a zone in his office—with Peter, Adriana, Shelly. He just couldn't miss. Every interpretation went whizzing—zzzooommmm—straight to the heart.

2-40 "->- l-yifig on the Couch

God, he wished Ernest Lash could have seen and heard this session. He had had another run-in with Ernest during their supervision yesterday. They were coming more frequently now—almost every time. Christ, what he had to put up with. All these therapists like Ernest, these amateurs, just don't understand—just don't get it—don't get that the therapist's task is to interpret, only to interpret. Ernest can't comprehend that interpretation isn't one of many options, isn't just one thing the therapist can do—it's all the therapist should do. It's an insult to wisdom and the natural order that someone at his level of development should have to put up with Ernest's juvenile challenge to the effectiveness of interpretation, Ernest's blather about authenticity and openness, and all that transpersonal horseshit about soul meetings.

Suddenly the clouds parted and Marshal saw all and understood all. Ernest, and all the critics of analysis, were correct, all right, about the ineffectiveness of interpretations— their interpretationsl Interpretation, in their hands, was ineffective because its content was wrong. And surely, Marshal thought, it wasn't just the content that made him excel, but his manner of delivery, his ability to frame the interpretation in precisely the right language and the perfect metaphor for each patient, and his genius in being able to reach every patient in any walk of life: the most sophisticated academic, the Nobel laureate in physics, down to the lower lifes—gamblers and tennis bums—to Mr. Merriman, who was eating out of his hand. More than ever before, he saw what a superbly honed instrument of interpretation he was.

Marshal thought about his fees. Surely it was unnatural for him to charge the same as other therapists when he was obviously top of the line. Really, Marshal thought, who was his equal? Surely, if this session were watched by some heavenly tribunal of analytic immortals—Freud, Ferenczi, Fenichel, Fairbairn, Sullivan, Winnicott— they would marvel: "Wunderbar, amazing, extraordinary. That kid Streider is something. Give him the ball and get out of his way. No question, he's the world's greatest living therapist!"

It had been a long time since he had felt this good—perhaps since his glory linebacker years in college. Maybe, Marshal thought, he had been subclinically depressed all these years. Perhaps Seth Pande hadn't really analyzed in depth his depression and the graying of his grandiose fantasies. God knows Seth had blind spots in regard to grandiosity. But now, today. Marshal understood more clearly than

Lying on the Couch ^ ^ 2.41

ever before that grandiosity need not be abandoned, that it's the ego's natural way of staving off the hmitations, the dreariness and despair of everyday Hfe. What's needed is to find a way to channel grandiosity into adaptive, fulfillable, adult form. Like cashing a bicycle helmet check for six hundred thousand dollars or being sworn in as president of the International Psychoanalytic Association. And all that was coming. Soon!

Unwelcome grating words yanked Marshal out of his reverie.

"You know, Doc," Shelly said, "the way you got right to the bottom of things, the way you helped me so quickly, makes me even more pissed at the way this Seth Pande prick ripped me off! Last night I was making an inventory, adding up how much his treatment—what did you call it . . . his 'errant methods'?—cost me. Now this is between you and me—I don't want this made public—but I figure forty-thousand-dollar losses at poker. I explained to you how my tension around men—tension Pande caused with his nutty explanations—has screwed up my poker. By the way, you don't have to take my word about the forty thousand—I can easily prove that amount, to any investigator, in any courtroom, with the bank records and canceled checks of my poker account. And then there's the job and my inability to interview well because of the effects of bad psychiatric treatment— that's at least six months without salary and benefits, another forty thousand. So what are we talking about,^ We're talking, ballpark, eighty thou."

"Yes, I can understand your feelings of bitterness toward Dr. Pande."

"Well it goes beyond feelings. Doc. And it goes beyond bitterness. To put it in legal terms, it's more like demand for reparation. I think, and my wife and her attorney friends agree, that I got a good case for lawsuit. I don't know who should be sued—Dr. Pande, of course, but in these days the attorneys go after the 'deep pockets.' That might be the Analytic Institute."

When he had the right hand, Shelly was a good bluffer. And he was holding pretty good cards.

The entire recall scheme was Marshal's baby. He had jumped on the idea and hoped to ride it straight into the institute presidency. And here, the very first recall therapy patient was threatening to sue the institute in what would undoubtedly be a highly visible and embarrassing trial. Marshal tried to keep his cool.

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"Yes, Mr. Merriman, I understand your distress. But will a judge or a jury understand it?"

"It seems to me this is an open-and-shut case. It'll never come to trial. I'd be very willing to give consideration, serious consideration, to a settlement offer. Maybe Dr. Pande and the institute might split it."

"I can only function as your therapist and have no authority to speak for the institute or anyone else, but it seems to me it would have to come to trial. First, I know Dr. Pande—he's tough. And stubborn. A real fighter. Trust me, there is no way in the world he would ever admit malfeasance—he'd fight to the bitter end, he'd hire the nation's best defense lawyers, he'd spend every cent he has on the fight. And the institute, too. They'd fight. They would never voluntarily settle because it would open the path to endless lawsuits—it would be their death knell."

Shelly called Marshal's bet and cavalierly raised. "Trial's all right with me. Cheap, too. All in the family. My wife's an incredible trial litigator."

Marshal reraised without a blink. "I've been through trials involving therapy malpractice. Let me tell you, the patient pays a high price emotionally. All that personal exposure—not only you but others. Including your wife, who might not be able to be your attorney since she'd have to testify about the degree of your emotional pain. And then, what about the amount of your gambling losses? If that were made public, it wouldn't be great public relations for her legal practice. And, of course, all your fellow poker players would be called to testify."

Shelly confidently shot back, "They're not only poker players but close friends. No one, not a single one, would refuse to testify."

"But would you, if they are friends, ask them to testify—to go public with information that they're involved in gambling of this magnitude? May not be good for their own personal or professional life. Besides, private gambling is illegal in California, isn't it? You'd be asking each one of them to put his head in the noose. Didn't you say some were attorneys?"

"Friends do things like that for one another."

"When they do, they don't stay friends."

Shelly took another look at Marshal. This guy's built like a brick shithouse, he thought, not an ounce of flab — he could stop a tank. He stopped to take another look at his cards. Shit, he thought, this

guy's a player. He's playing it like an aces-high full boat against my flush. Better save something for the next hand. Shelly folded his cards. "Well, I'll think about it, Doc. Talk it over with my legal advisers."

Shelly lapsed into silence. Marshal, of course, waited him out.

"Doc, can I ask you something?"

"You can ask anything. No promises about answering."

"Go back five minutes. . . . our talk about the lawsuit . . . you hung in there pretty tough. How come? What happened there?"

"Mr. Merriman, I believe it's more important to explore the motivation behind your question. What are you really asking? And in which ways might it articulate with my interpretation earlier about you and your father?"

"No, Doc, that's not where I'm coming from. We finished that. I got it. Honest. I feel all sorted out about my mother's socket and my father and competition and death wishes. What I want to talk about now is this hand we just played. Let's go back and play the cards open. That's the way you can really help."

"You haven't told me why yet."

"Okay. Why is easy. We been working on the cause of my actions—what did you call it? The temple key}"

"Template."

"Right. And it looks like we got that down pat. But I'm still left with damaged patterns, bad habits of showing my tension. I'm not here for just understanding; I need help changing my bad patterns. You know I been damaged—otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here giving me free hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar sessions. Right?"

"Okay, I'm beginning to get your drift. Now tell me again what you're asking me."

"Back then, five or ten minutes ago when we were talking about the trial and jury and poker losings. You could have folded your hand. But you coolly called my bet. I want to know how I gave my cards away!"