Lying on the Couch (33 page)

"Fair enough, Mr. Merriman. The Psychoanalytic Institute has determined that Dr. Pande often offered interpretations that were idiosyncratic and entirely unfounded."

"Come again?"

"Sorry, I mean that he gave patients wild and often troubling explanations for their behavior."

"I'm still not with you. What kind of behavior? Give me a for instance."

"Well, for example, that all men may crave some type of homosexual union with their father."

''Whatr

"Well, they may want to enter their father's body and merge with him."

"Yeah? Their father's body} What else?"

"And that wish may interfere with their comfort and their friendships with other men. That ring any bells for you from your work with Dr. Pande?"

"Yeah. Yeah. The bells. It's beginning to come back to me. It was many years ago and I've forgotten stuff. But is it true that we never really forget stuff? Everything's upstairs in storage, everything that's ever happened to us?"

"Exactly," Marshal nodded. "We say it's in the unconscious mind. Now tell me what you recall about your therapy."

"Just that—that stuff about making it with my father."

"And your relationships with other men? Problems there?"

"Big problems." Shelly was still groping but slowly he was beginning to discern the contours of an angle. "Big, big problems! For example, I've been looking for a job ever since my company went

belly up some months ago, and every time I go in for an interview— almost always with men—I fuck up, one way or the other."

"What happens in the interviews?"

"I just blow it. I get upset. I think it must be that unconscious stuff with my father."

"How upset?"

"Real upset. Whaddaya call it? You know—panic. Breathing fast and all."

Shelly watched Marshal jot down some notes and figured he was hitting pay dirt. "Yeah, panic—that's the best term for it. Can't catch my breath. Sweating like hell. The interviewers look at me like I'm crazy and they gotta figure, 'How's this guy gonna sell our products?'"

Marshal jotted that down, too.

"Yeah, the interviewers show me the way out pretty fast, I'm so jumpy they get jumpy. So I been out of work a long time. And there's something else, Doc, I've got this game of poker—been playing with the same guys for fifteen years. Friendly game, but big enough stakes to drop a bundle . . . this is confidential, isn't it? I mean, even if at some point you meet with my wife, it stays confidential, doesn't it? You're sworn to secrecy?"

"Of course. Everything you say stays here in this room. These notes are for my use only."

"That's good. I wouldn't want my wife to know about my losses—my marriage is already rocky. I have dropped a bundle and, now that I think of it, I started losing about the time I saw Dr. Pande. Ever since my therapy with him I lost my ability—anxiety around guys, just like we were talking about before. You know, before therapy I used to be a good player, better than average— after therapy I started getting all knotted up—tense—gave away my hand . . . lost every game. You play poker. Doc?"

Marshal shook his head. "We have a lot to cover. Maybe we ought to talk a bit about why you first visited Dr. Pande,"

"In a sec. Lemme finish first, Doc. What I was going to say was that poker isn't about luck: poker is about nerves. Seventy-five percent of playing poker is psychology—how you handle your emotions, how you bluff, how you respond to bluffs, the signals you flash—unintentionally—when you got good hands and bad hands,"

"Yes, I see your point, Mr. Merriman. If you're uncomfortable with your fellow players, you're not going to be successful at the game."

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"'Not successful' at the game means losing my ass. Big money."

"So, let's turn to the question of why you first saw Dr. Pande. Let's see . . . what year was that?"

"So, the way I figure it, between poker and being made unhirable, this Dr. Pande and his wrong interpretations has ended up costing me money—a great, great deal of money!"

"Yes, I understand. But tell me why you first consulted Dr. Pande."

Just as Marshal began growing alarmed at the direction the session was taking, Shelly suddenly relaxed his grip. He had learned what he needed. Not for nothing had he been married for nine years to a crack tort attorney. From this point on, he figured, there was everything to gain, nothing to lose, by being a cooperative patient. He sensed he would have a much stronger case in court if he demonstrated that he was entirely responsive to conventional psychotherapy techniques. He therefore proceeded to answer all of Marshal's questions with great honesty and thoroughness—except questions, of course, about his treatment with Dr. Pande, about which Shelly remembered absolutely nothing.

When Marshal asked about his parents. Shelly delved deeply into the past: into his mother's unwavering glorification of his talents and beauty, which stood in stark contrast to her persistent disappointment with his father's many schemes and many failures. His mother's devotion notwithstanding. Shelly was convinced that his father had been the major player in his life.

Yes, the more he thought about it, the more disturbed he was, he told Marshal, about Dr. Pande's interpretations about his father. Despite his father's irresponsibility, he felt a deep connection with him. When he was young he worshiped his dad. He loved to see him with his friends, playing poker, going to the races—to Mammoth in New York, to Hialeah and Pimlico when they vacationed in Miami Beach. His dad bet on any sport—the greyhounds, jai alai, football pools, basketball—and played any game: poker, pinochle, hearts, backgammon. Some of Shelly's favorite childhood moments, he related, had been sitting on his dad's lap and picking up and arranging his dad's pinochle hands. His initiation into adulthood occurred when his father allowed him to join the game. Shelly winced when he recalled his smart-assed request, at age sixteen, for the pinochle stakes to be raised.

Yes, Shelly agreed with Marshal's comment that his identification

Lying on the Couch ^ 2.13

with his father had been very deep, very extensive. He had his father's voice and often sang all the Johnnie Ray songs his father used to sing. He used the same shaving cream and aftershave lotion his father used. He brushed his teeth with baking powder, too, and never, ever failed to end his morning shower with a couple of seconds of cold spray. Liked his potatoes crispy and, just like his dad, in a restaurant would often ask the waiter to take the potatoes back and burn them!

When Marshal asked about his father's death, tears flooded Shelly's eyes as he described his father dying of a coronary at fifty-eight, surrounded by his cronies, while pulling in a fish on a deep-sea fishing cruise off Key West. Shelly even told Marshal about how ashamed he was at his father's funeral for being preoccupied with the last fish his father caught. Had he landed it? How big was it? The guys always had a giant betting pool for the largest catch, and maybe there was some cash coming to his dad—or to his heir. He might never see his father's fishing friends again and was sorely tempted to pose these questions at the funeral. Only shame had prevented him.

Since his father's death. Shelly, in one way or another, thought about him every day. When he dressed in the morning and looked at himself in the mirror, he noticed his bulging calf muscles, his shrinking buttocks. At thirty-nine, he was, more and more, beginning to resemble his father.

When the end of the hour came, Marshal and Shelly agreed that, since they were on a roll, they should meet again soon. Marshal had several open hours—he had not filled Peter Macondo's—and arranged to meet with Shelly three times the following week.

THIRTEEN

"Q^i

^^ ( />/o, this analyst has two patients who happen to be close friends . . . you listening?" Paul asked Ernest, C__^^ who was engrossed in deboning a braised sweet-

and-sour rock cod with his chopsticks. Ernest had a book reading in Sacramento and Paul had driven down to meet him. They were sitting at a corner table in the China Bistro, a large restaurant with roasted caramelized ducks and chicken displayed on a central chrome and glass island. Ernest was dressed in his book-reading uniform: a double-breasted blue blazer worn over a white cashmere turtle neck.

"Of course I'm listening. You think I can't eat and listen at the same time? Two close friends are in analysis with the same analyst and . . . "

"And after tennis one day," Paul continued, "they compare notes about their analyst. Exasperated with his pose of serene omniscience, they cook up some entertainment: the two friends each

Lying on the Couch . ^ 2, i 5

agree to tell him the same dream. So the following day one tells the analyst the dream at eight a.m., and at eleven a.m. the other describes the identical dream. The analyst, unruffled as usual, exclaims, 'Isn't it remarkable? That's the third time I've heard that dream today!'"

"Good story," said Ernest, guffawing, nearly choking on his chow fun, "but apropos of what.''"

"Well, for one thing, apropos of the fact that it's not only therapists who conceal themselves. Many patients have been caught lying on the couch. Did I tell you about the patient I've been seeing who, a couple of years ago, saw two therapists at the same time without telling either about the other?"

"His motive?"

"Oh, some kind of vindictive triumph. He'd compare their comments and silently ridicule both for proclaiming, with great certainty, completely opposite, equally preposterous interpretations."

"Some triumph!" said Ernest. "Remember what old Professor Whitehorn would have called that?"

"A Pyrrhic victory!"

"Pyrrhic" said Ernest, "his favorite word. We heard it every time he talked about patients resisting psychotherapy!

"But you know," Ernest continued, "your patient who saw two therapists—remember when we were at Hopkins and we'd present the same patient to two different supervisors and joke about their lack of agreement on anything? Same thing. I'm intrigued by your story about the two therapists." Ernest laid down his chopsticks. "I wonder—could it happen to me? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I know when a patient is leveling with me. Initially sometimes there's doubt, but there comes a moment when there can be no further doubt we're together in truth."

"Together in truth —sounds good, Ernest, but what does it mean? I can't tell you how often I've seen a patient for a year or two and then something happens or I learn something that causes me to reevaluate everything I know about the patient. Sometimes I see a patient in individual therapy for years and then put him in a therapy group and I'm astonished at what I see. Is this the same person? All those parts of himself he hadn't shown me!

"For three years," Paul continued, "I've been working with a patient, a very intelligent woman, about thirty, who started— through absolutely no urging from me—spontaneously recovering

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memories of incest with her father. Well, we worked on this for about a year and I was convinced that, to use your words, we were together in truth. I held her hand through months of terror as the memories reappeared, I supported her through some hairy scenes in the family after she tried to confront her father about this. Now— maybe in rhythm with the public media blitz—she's suddenly beginning to doubt all these early memories.

"I tell you, my head's spinning. "I've no idea what's truth, what's fiction. Moreover, she's growing critical of me for being so gullible. Last week she dreamed she was in her parents' home and a Good Will truck drives up and starts battering away at the foundations of her home. Why are you smiling?"

"Three guesses who's the Good Will truck?"

"Right. No mystery about that. When I asked for her associations about the truck, she said jokingly that the name of the dream was: The Helping Hand Strikes Again. So the dream's message is that, under the guise, or belief, of helping, I am undermining the very foundations of her house and family."

"The ingrate."

"Right. And I was stupid enough to try and defend myself. When I pointed out that it was her memories I was analyzing, she called me simplistic for believing everything she said."

"And you know," Paul continued, "maybe she's right. Maybe we're too gullible. We're so used to patients paying us to listen to their truth that we're probably naive about the possibility of lying. I heard about some recent research that showed that psychiatrists, and FBI agents as well, were particularly inept at spotting liars. And the incest controversy gets even more bizarre . . . you listening, Ernest?"

"Go on. You were saying the incest controversy gets bizarre ..."

"Right. It gets really bizarre when you get into the world of Satanic ritual abuse. I'm the attending doc this month on the county inpatient unit. Six of the twenty patients on the unit claim ritual abuse. You can't believe what goes on in the therapy groups: these six patients describe their Satanic ritual abuse—including human sacrifice and cannibalism—with so much vividness and persuasiveness that no one dares to voice any skepticism. And that includes the staff! If group therapists were to challenge these accounts, they'd be stoned by the groups—absolutely rendered ineffective. To tell you the truth, several of the staff actually believe these accounts. Talk about an insane asylum."

Ernest nodded as he deftly flipped his fish over and started on the other side.

"Same problem with multiple personality disorder," Paul continued. "I know therapists, really good ones, who have reported two hundred cases of it, and I know other good therapists who have been in practice for thirty years and still claim they have never encountered a single case."

"You know Hegel's comment," Ernest replied: "'The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.' Maybe we're just not going to discover the truth about this epidemic until it passes and we can take a more objective look. I agree with what you've been saying about incest survivors and multiple personalities. But leave them aside for a moment and look at your everyday outpatient therapy case. I think that a good therapist recognizes the truth with patients."