Lying on the Couch (20 page)

But there was one hitch: Marshal needed publications. He had no shortage of ideas. One of his current cases, a borderline patient who had an identical twin who was schizoid with no borderline features, had enormous implications for mirroring theory and was crying to be written up. His ideas on the nature of the primal scene and execution audiences would result in a major revision of basic theory. Yes, Marshal knew his ideas flowed in abundance. The problem was his writing: his ungainly words and sentences hobbled far behind his ideas.

That's where Ernest came in. Ernest lately had become irritating—his immaturity, his impulsivity, his sophomoric insistence that the therapist be authentic and self-revealing would try any supervisor's patience. But Marshal had good reason to be patient: Ernest had an extraordinary literary talent. Graceful sentences flew off his keyboard. Marshal's ideas and Ernest's sentences would be an unbeatable combination. All he needed was to restrain Ernest enough to get him accepted into the institute. Persuading Ernest to collaborate on journal articles, even book projects, would be no problem. Marshal had already planted the seeds by systematically exaggerating the difficulty Ernest would face in attaining admission to the institute and the importance of Marshal's sponsorship. Ernest would be grateful for years. Besides, Ernest was so ambitious, Marshal believed, he would snatch at the opportunity for co-authorship with Marshal.

As Marshal neared the building, he took several deep breaths of

Lying on the Couch ^ 12.7

cold air to clear his mind. He would need his wits about him; a battle for control was sure to erupt this evening.

John Weldon, a tall, stately man in his mid-sixties with a ruddy complexion, thinning white hair, and a long, wrinkled neck fronted by a formidable Adam's apple, was already standing at the podium of the book-lined room that served double duty as the library and conference room. Marshal glanced around at the large turnout and was unable to think of any institute member who was absent. Except Seth Pande, of course, who had been interviewed at length by a subcommittee and who had been specifically asked not to attend this meeting.

In addition to the members, there were three student candidates present, analysands of Seth's who had petitioned to be present. This was unprecedented. And their stakes were high: if Seth were expelled or banished or, indeed, if he simply lost his training analyst status, they would lose credit for their years of analytic work with him and be forced to begin anew with another training analyst. All three had made it clear that they might refuse to change analysts, even if that meant resigning their candidacy. There was even talk about forming a splinter institute. Given these considerations the governing committee, in the hope that the three would discover their loyalty to Seth was misplaced, took the extraordinary and highly controversial step of permitting them to attend as nonvoting participants.

The instant Marshal took a seat in the second row, John Weldon, as though he had been waiting for Marshal's entrance, pounded his small lacquered gavel and called the meeting to order.

"Each of you," he began, "has been informed about the purpose of this extraordinary meeting. The painful task confronting us tonight is to consider serious, very serious, charges against one of our most venerable members, Seth Pande, and to see what action, if any, the institute should take. As you were all informed by letter, the ad hoc subcommittee investigated each of these charges with great care, and I think it would be expedient to proceed directly to their findings."

"Dr. Weldon, a point of procedure!" It was Terry Fuller, a brash young analyst admitted only a year ago. He had been analyzed by Seth.

"The chair recognizes Dr. Fuller." Weldon addressed his comments to Perry Wheeler, a seventy-year-old, partially deaf analyst

12.8 ^ Lying on the Couch

who served as institute secretary and was furiously scribbling minutes.

"Is it proper for us to consider these 'charges' in the absence of Seth Pande? Not only is a trial in absentia morally repugnant but it violates the institute's by-laws."

"I spoke to Dr. Pande and we both agreed it would be best for all concerned if he did not attend tonight."

"Correction! You, not we, thought it would be best, John." Seth Pande's powerful voice boomed out. He stood in the doorway surveying the audience and then picked up a chair in the rear and carried it to the front row. On his way he gave Terry Fuller an affectionate pat on the shoulder and continued, "I said I would consider the matter and let you know my decision. And my decision, as you see, is to be here in the bosom of my loving brethren and distinguished colleagues."

Seth's six-foot, three-inch frame had been bowed by his cancer, but he was still an imposing man with gleaming white hair, bronzed complexion, fine hooked nose, and regal chin. He had come from royal lineage and in his early years had been reared in the royal court of Kipoche, a Northeastern Indian province. When his father was appointed as India's representative to the UN, Seth moved to the United States and continued his education at Exeter and Harvard.

Holy shit, thought Marshal. Get out of the way and let the big dogs eat. He ducked into his collar as far as possible.

John Weldon's face flushed purple, but his voice remained calm. "I regret your decision, Seth, and I sincerely believe you'll have reason to regret it as well. I was merely protecting you against yourself. It may be humiliating for you to listen to a detailed public discussion of your professional—and nonprofessional—behavior."

"I have nothing to hide. I have always been proud of my professional work." Seth looked over the audience and continued: "If you need proof, John, I suggest you look about you. The presence in this room of at least a half-dozen of my former analysands, and three current ones—each creative, integrated, a credit to his, or her,"(and here he bowed deeply and gracefully toward Karen Jaye, one of the female analysts) "profession—attests to the solidity of my work."

Marshal winced. Seth was going to make this as difficult as possible. Oh, my God! In his sweep of the room, Seth had momentarily caught his gaze. Marshal looked in another direction only to find

Lying on the Couch ^ ^ 2.9

Weldon's gaze awaiting him. He closed his eyes, squeezed his buttocks together, and shrank even more.

Seth continued. "What would really humiliate me, John, and here I may be different from you, is to be falsely charged, possibly slandered, and make no effort to defend myself. Let's get down to business. What are the charges? Who are my accusers? Let's hear them one by one."

"The letter each of you, and that includes you, Seth, received from the education committee," John Weldon responded, "catalogues the grievances. I'll read them off. Let's start with bartering: trading analytic hours for personal service."

"I'm entitled," Seth demanded, "to know who has brought which charge."

Marshal winced. My time has come, he thought. It was he who had brought Seth's practice of bartering to Weldon's attention. He had no choice but to rise and speak with all the directness and confidence he could muster.

"I take responsibility for the grievance about bartering. A few months ago I saw a new patient, a professional financial adviser, and in our discussion about fees he suggested an exchange of services. Since our hourly fees were similar, he said, "Why not simply exchange services without the necessity of taxable money changing hands?" Naturally, I declined and explained why such an arrangement would, on a number of levels, sabotage therapy. He accused me of small-mindedness and rigidity and named two people, one of his associates and a client, a young architect, who had a bartering arrangement with Seth Pande, the former president of the psychoanalytic institute."

"I'll respond substantively to that grievance in due course, Marshal, but naturally one cannot first but wonder why a colleague, friend, and, even more, former analysand chose not to speak to me, not to raise the question with me directly!"

"Where is it written," Marshal responded, "that the properly analyzed analysand must forever treat his former analyst with filial partiality? I learned from you that the goal of treatment and of the working through of transference is to help the analysand leave his parents, to develop autonomy and integrity."

Seth flashed a broad smile, like a parent beaming when his child checkmates him for the first time. "Bravo, Marshal. And touche. You've learned your lessons well, and I take pride in your perfor-

mance. But still, I wonder whether, despite our scrubbing, our five years of psychoanalytic rubbing and polishing, there still remain stains of sophistry?"

"Sophistry?" Marshal dug in stubbornly. As a college football linebacker, his powerful, churning legs drove men twice his size relentlessly backward. Once he engaged an opponent, he never gave way.

"I see no sophistry. Am I expected, for the sake of the analytic father, to put parentheses around my conviction—a conviction I am certain everyone in this room shares—that bartering analytic hours for personal services is wrong? Wrong in every sense. It is wrong legally and morally: it is expressly forbidden by the tax laws of this country. It's wrong technically: it plays havoc with transference and countertransference. And its wrongness is compounded when the services enjoyed by the analyst are of a personal kind: for example, financial advising, where the patient must know the most intimate detail of your financial life. Or, as I understand it in the case of the architect patient, designing a new home where the patient must be privy to the innermost details of your domestic habits and preferences. You cover your own mistakes with smokescreen accusations of my character."

And with that Marshal sat down, pleased with himself. He refrained from looking around. It wasn't necessary. He could almost hear the gasps of admiration. He knew he had established himself as a man to be reckoned with. He also knew Seth well enough to predict what would happen. Whenever Seth was attacked, he invariably attacked back in a manner that implicated him even deeper. There was no need to explicate further the destructive nature of Seth's behavior; he would do the damage to himself.

"Enough," said John Weldon, pounding his gavel. "This issue is too important for us to become embroiled in an ad hominem squall. Let us stick to substance: a systematic review of the charges and a substantive discussion of each."

"Bartering," said Seth, entirely ignoring Weldon's comment, "is but an ugly term insinuating that an act of analytic agape is something else, something invidious."

"How can you defend bartering, Seth?" asked Olive Smith, an elderly analyst whose major claim to fame was her psychoanalytic regal lineage: forty-five years before, she had been analyzed by Frieda Fromm-Reichman, who, in turn, had been analyzed by Freud

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himself. Moreover she had once had a brief friendship and correspondence with Anna Freud and knew some of the Freud grandchildren. "Obviously, an uncontaminated frame, especially concerning fees, is integral to the analytic process."

"You talk about analytic agape as a way to justify bartering. Surely, you're not serious," said Harvey Green, a rotund, smug analyst who rarely failed to make an irritating comment. "Suppose your client worked as a prostitute? How then does your bartering system work?"

"A venal and original comment, Harvey," shot back Seth. "The venality, well, that is, of course, not surprising from you. But the originality, the cleverness, of your question, that is indeed unexpected. But a question of no merit whatsoever. Sophistry has made a home in the Golden Gate Institute, I see." Seth turned his head toward Marshal and then glared back at Harvey. "Tell us, Harvey, how many prostitutes have you analyzed recently? Any of you?" Seth's dark eyes swept the room. "How many prostitutes can take a deep analytic look at themselves and still be prostitutes?

"Grow up, Harvey!" Seth continued, obviously relishing the confrontation. "You confirm something Fve written about in the International Journal, namely, that we old analytic denizens—what's the official term you Yids use? Alte cockers! —should be required to have regular maintenance analyses, say, about every ten years or so. In fact, we could serve as control cases for the candidates. That would be a way of preventing ossification. Surely this organization needs that."

"Order," Weldon said, pounding his gavel. "Let us return to the business at hand. As president I insist..."

"Barter!" continued Seth, who had turned his back to the podium and now faced the members. "Barter! What a crime! A capital offense! A highly troubled young architect, a male anorexic, whom I have treated for three years and brought to the brink of major characterologic change, suddenly lost his position when his firm was ingested by another company. It will take him a year or two to establish himself independently. Meanwhile he has practically no income. What is the proper analytic move? To abandon him? To allow him to incur a debt of several thousand dollars, an alternative fundamentally unacceptable to him? Meanwhile, for reasons relating to my personal health, I had planned to build a wing to my home including an office and a waiting room. I was searching for an architect. He was searching for a client.

13 2^ ' ^ . Lying on the Couch

"The solution—the proper, the moral solution, according to my judgment, which I do not have to justify to this or any other audience—was obvious. The patient designed my new structure. The fee problem was alleviated, and he was positively therapeutically affected by my trust in him. I plan to write up this case: the act of designing my home—the father's inner lair—delivered him into the deepest layers of archaic memories and fantasies of his father, layers inaccessible by conservative techniques. Do I, have I ever, needed your permission to practice creatively?"

Here Seth dramatically scanned the audience again, allowing his glare to rest for a few moments on Marshal.

Only John Weldon dared answer: "Boundaries! Boundaries! Seth, are you beyond all established technique.' Having the patient inspect and design your home? You may call this creative. But I tell you, and I know I am joined in this by all, it is not analysis.'"

"'Established technique.' 'Not analysis.'" Seth parodied John Weldon, repeating his words in a high-pitched singsong manner. "The mewling of small minds. Do you think technique comes from Moses' tablets? Technique is fashioned by visionary analysts: Fer-enczi. Rank, Reich, Sullivan, Searles. Yes, and Seth Pande!"

"A self-proclaimed visionary status," Morris Fender, a bald, pop-eyed, gnomelike man with enormous spectacles and no neck, pitched in, "is a clever, a diabolical, vehicle to conceal and rationalize a multitude of sins. I have some deep concerns, Seth, about your behavior. It undermines the good name of analysis to the general public, and frankly I shudder to think of you training young analysts. Consider your own writing—like your statements in the London Literary Review."

Morris drew some newspaper pages from his pocket and tremulously unfolded them. "This," he said, wagging the pages in front of him, "is from your own review of the Freud-Ferenczi correspondence. Here you publicly proclaim that you tell patients you love them, that you hold them and discuss intimate details of your life with them: your impending divorce, your cancer. You tell them they are your best friends. You invite them to your home for tea, you talk to them about your sexual preferences. Now, your sexual preference is your own business—and its nature is not at issue here—but why does the entire reading public as well as your analysands have to know of your bisexuality? You can't deny this." Again Morris rattled the papers in front of him. "These are your own words."