Story
A young girl sat with her grandmother. A drawer to the old lady’s living room cabinet was open and some of the artefacts it contained were on the side table next to the chair they were sharing. The granddaughter opened a small tin and held up a tattered old object. “What is this?” she asked.
Her grandmother replied by offering to tell her a story.
When I was a little girl my mother made me a beautiful blue velvet dress. I loved it so much, I never wanted to wear anything else. After a year or so, I grew too big for the dress and I cried, believing that life would not be worth living if I could not wear my dress. My mother soothed me and promised to convert the dress into a skirt. This she did and I wore that skirt every day until that too became too small for me. So my mother relieved my distress again, this time by converting the blue velvet material into the front portion of a waistcoat. The rear of course was made of silk.
There came a time when this waistcoat wore thin and, being old enough to carry out my own needlework, I used the least worn parts to make a pair of cuffs which I added to a blouse. Of course eventually the cuffs became too thin and frayed for me to wear the garment, so I bought some buttons and covered them in the remains of the blue velvet. What you have in your hand is one of those buttons.”
“Oh grannie,” the girl cried out, “that’s so sad.”
“Why is it sad?” her grannie replied.
“Because you no longer have your dress.”
“No I don’t, my dear, but I have my story.”
Kathy concluded her text with a comment.
“Sometimes we hardly know how to differentiate between dream and reality. If we have ever been in a dark place or we have been overwhelmed by our feelings, we tell a story to make it bearable. It allows us to come back into the light, into the warming, healing rays of the sun. Maybe that is what stories are for, whether we are artists or therapists.”
Stefan loved the story. He could see why it might connect well with psychotherapy and literature, but he wasn’t sure about it being the starting place of art; he regarded it exclusively as a visual medium. He pondered this for some time and then decided that art could indeed have much of its spirit here. Suddenly he wanted to become more intimate with art; he wanted to become familiar with the way it invited play. He thought that of all human activity, art was the discipline that flourished most successfully outside the walls.
Stefan went for a walk to clear his thoughts and succeeded in adding a good many new dilemmas to his encyclopaedia of adverse possibilities. On his return he got ready to go out for the evening. He had been invited to his friend’s dinner party and was looking forward to the change of scene, but once there he discovered he was in an irritable mood. After the main course he sat studying a man he had never met before. He was annoyed with him. The man was dominating his end of the table by insistently telling one joke after another.
A married man taking confession tells the priest that he almost had an affair with another woman.
“What do you mean, almost?” the priest asks.
“Well we got undressed and rubbed together, but then I stopped,” the man replies.
“Surely rubbing together is much the same as putting it in,” the priest tells him. “You’re not to see that woman again. For your penance you’ll say five Hail Marys and you will put £50 in the poor box.”
The priest watches the man very closely as he leaves the church. He passes the poor box too quickly to place £50 in it.
“I saw that,” the priest cries out. “You didn’t put the money in the poor box.”
“For sure, father, but I rubbed the notes on the box and you said that this is much the same as putting it in.”
Everyone laughed, but Stefan couldn’t help feeling that life was running away with this comedian. The man was trying too hard to be entertaining and Stefan couldn’t bear to watch him struggle. He was convinced that the buoyant persona being projected was all a show. He desperately wanted the man’s exertions to end, but the comedian continued.
A chap talking with an analyst asks if he could make an evaluation of his thirteen year old son
“Sure,” says the analyst. “He’s suffering from a transient psychosis with an intermittent rage disorder, punctuated by episodic mood swings, but don’t worry, the prognosis is good for his full recovery.”
“How can you say all that without ever meeting him?”
“You told me he was thirteen.”
It set the guests off laughing once again, but before the comedian could continue with his tirade, a man at the other end of the table spoke out.
“I like humour and I like comedians, but your endless string of jokes prevents me from receiving any attention. Do you think you could stop and allow us all to shine a little?”
The joker smiled and an awkward silence reigned for a few seconds before noisy chatter rose up to divert the impending embarrassment. Once dinner was over, Stefan saw the man who had spoken out. He was standing alone in the garden, so he went over to speak to him.
“My name is Stefan.”
“Stefan not Stephen?”
“Sorry?”
“You shouldn’t apologize so early in a relationship.
“Very good. And you are?”
“Frank. It’s not my name, but it’s what I’m called.”
“Frank?”
“Before you crack any jokes, I’ve heard them all before.”
“What kind of jokes?”
“Jokes, like, let’s be Frank, or frankly that’s not funny.”
“Those are jokes?”
“There’s no telling what some folk find funny.”
“It’s all a mystery.”
“Trickery or mystery,”
“Trickery and mystery and ambiguity. Did you find the boisterous comedian’s jokes funny?”
“Yes, the jokes were OK, but I prefer simple, or even silly jokes. I like surprise; it breaks up the unbearable rigidity that generally reigns at parties.”
“The jokes weren’t at fault, it was the fellow’s motivation; compelling us to give him attention, embarrassing everyone, putting himself in the spotlight. The embarrassment of others is a feather headdress for him. A comedian should make himself part of the embarrassment.”
“Are you an analyst?”
“No, I’m a therapist,” Stefan replied, surprised by the man’s insightful guess.
“What a shame. Tell me a therapist joke.”
By now Stefan suspected that his new friend was rather drunk, but he tried a joke, albeit a little too nervously.
“A forty year old Jewish man, still living with his mother, came home after a visit to the therapist. The mother asked him what the therapist’s prognosis was.
“A severe oedipal neurosis,” the man replied.
“Don’t worry, my darling, everything will be fine as long as you love your mother.”
Frank laughed and Stefan asked him to tell a joke.
“What do you get if you cross a cat with a vacuum cleaner?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either, but you can bet it drinks a lot of milk.”
Stefan laughed. “That’s just too silly. What do you do?” He asked. “If that’s not a rude question.”
“I try to get the day off.”
“Can you have the day off?”
“No, I can only have yesterday or tomorrow off.”
“Will that be the same tomorrow?”
“Yes, everything either goes backwards or forwards.”
“Sounds like you’ve walked through a looking glass,” Stefan declared, thinking again that the man was rather drunk. Frank had drunk two glasses of wine since joining him and now the fellow was taking another glass from the nearby table. It wasn’t his because it had lipstick on it.
“Maybe you should clean the wine glass,” Stefan suggested.
Frank drank the contents in a single movement of his arm and hid the glass behind his back.
“There is no
glass and no wine, so what is there to clean?”
“True,” Stefan agreed, “with time everything changes, but the subject and the object remain.”
Frank squinted at him as if he couldn’t quite focus on his face. Without turning away from Stefan, he put his arm out to return his empty glass to the table, misjudged the distance and the glass dropped to the paving, smashing into tiny pieces. To cover up his discomfort Frank berated the table for moving, telling it that it couldn’t be invited to nice parties if it refused to stand still. This created quite a stir and, sensing that his audience found this entertaining, he switched his attention to the surprised hostess who was sweeping up the glass.
“You really should audition the tables before hiring them.”
She smiled and, kissing him on the cheek, said she could guarantee they’d behave properly in future. Frank proceeded to show her how she might audition the tables for a part in a movie. Everyone was in stitches and, to keep the momentum going, he played the role of hostess trying to cope with errant tables that were intent on moving around the garden.
The host arrived with a fresh tray of glasses and Frank helped himself to one. He lifted it up to the audience, thanked them for their attention, bowed extravagantly and gently lifted it to his lips. He placed the empty glass very precisely on the table and escorted an invisible person into the house. Before entering the house, he turned and bowed again to the audience.
Stefan didn’t see Frank again that evening. He woke the following morning feeling that he would like him as a friend. Thinking of him fondly he wrote in his notebook – We can learn a great deal from a drunken man.
Enchanted interpretation
Some days Stefan, thrown in upon himself, could almost glimpse what his unconscious was trying to tell him. He remained pre-occupied with writing, with his own therapy and with the dreams of clients. He added a new dream to his Client folder.
Last night I saw my wife as a house; a large detached, self-contained house that sits elegantly in the street. She is a notable presence in the town and she is regarded as a fine example of local vernacular architecture. My wife is eating bricks and I am aware that it is my responsibility to deliver these nourishing bricks to her. Half my time is spent collecting the bricks and the other half - those plentiful minutes between the end of one delivery and the start of another - is taken up with listening to my wife explain in minute detail everything that has happened inside the house while I am away collecting bricks to feed her.
After musing about what he should say to his client, Stefan wondered if he could suggest to the man that he view his dream from a distance and engage with a vague impression of it rather than analysing the obvious content. On this particular morning his view of it was that a vague hint could be as revealing as the apparent truth, that the ambivalent world of the sidelong glance could be as instructive as a detailed reading. He’d no idea why he wanted to move away from the obvious, but he flicked through his files looking for notes he had written on metaphor.
He did not ask himself why he imagined that metaphor would verify his presumption, but he set to his task with close attention and serious intent. While reading his notes he came across an unrelated paragraph he had written many years ago.
My initial impression is one of vagueness. I am not aware of feeling anything special. I know I am gazing at a woman’s lips. I am amazed because I imagine they are just for me and then I realise that they are at peace, finally at peace, having rocketed across the skies from the other side of the planet at lightning speed.
That's how the enormous feelings of love began - everything was achieved by my eye and these lips. I told myself to keep calm. I spoke to myself in a momentous tone.
“Sometimes this kind of encounter is the beginning of a relationship that lasts a lifetime. Sometimes these few seconds are all there is.”
I directed myself to remember this and wrote in my diary. “I must never forget how this started; I must always be ready to recall the beginning.”
Suddenly, I am extremely worried that I will blow this up into the workings of some over-elaborate cosmic force and loose the sense of it. A pair of eyes and a pair of lips. Just that. It could happen to anyone at any time. I must remember this.
Stefan was shocked by the beauty of this fragment. He wondered why or when he had written it. He felt a deep affinity with his words. He would happily accept them as a portrait. It made him sound assured and he wondered about himself in times past when he did not appear to lack certainty. It was obviously a time when he trusted himself.
Surprising things happen when you are good to yourself, he wrote and continued. I want to declare that I am good enough. Generally I’m an affable character, even though I might swing between high and low now and then. My joy and misery are unpredictable. I’m cautious and nervous; I like to be in charge of my feelings, so I am tentative about intimacy of the passionate kind. I’m too sensitive for my own good. I can even boycott amorous intentions of the gentlest kind. I’m probably very difficult to be with.
No matter what I do I cannot pacify the habitual conflict and disquiet of my instincts and emotions. The psychotherapeutic relationship is the only place where I can enjoy and contain intimate affection. I attach too much significance to love. I find myself swimming in it. This intense human impulse makes me overwhelmingly perplexed. If I let my mind dwell on it I feel sick. My own therapy has not helped me get to the bottom of this.
This does not make me a dour, cheerless killjoy. I can enjoy the company of others and I do not lack visions of delight. When life is going well I’m inspired. I can write or talk with intensity about the sensuous elements in our natures. I can be generous and tender and often display a clear affinity with love. I can even inspire others to find love in their hearts.
I want to be tolerant and brave, and keep searching for truth. I am aware that I should take more care to tune myself to the kind of primary nature that is spoken of by those who are inspired by notions of self-awareness. Putting myself in that place where self-knowledge thrives must be possible. I have an acute desire to promote wisdom, especially in situations where deep sorrow abounds. Sorrow is everywhere; in the basic fabric of our daily life. The role I designate myself is to help some form of self-awareness to grow and preside over life’s affairs.
When I hear this voice I’m suspicious. I sound like a ‘do-gooder.’ Am I attempting to assuage my guilt? This is cynicism. I hate cynicism more than anything. I am only guilty about refusing to allow intimacy to flourish. Why I am anxious about love when I want so dearly to be loved is bewildering. It is a condition that analysis and therapy were instigated to deal with.
Why is self-awareness so difficult? I am eager to embrace expressions of spiritualised imaginative emotion yet I retreat from intimacy. I am happy to turn the simplest things into transcendent phenomenon yet I could flinch at a touch. On these issues I have only an intermittent clear-sightedness. Should I accept that this erratic lucidity is the best I can do?
Stefan filed his thoughts in a folder marked ‘self-reflection’ and returned to consider his client’s dream. It was clear to him that by dreaming of his wife as a house his client had converted a difficult issue into a narrative one, but Stefan wanted to know more than this. Having discovered his notes on metaphor he returned to the source of his notes; a book called Metaphor by Denis Donoghue. Opening it, he discovered a note he had written. It read; metaphor, those frequent visitors to dreams. He opened the book at a page he had previously marked.
“Metaphor is the use of a word or phrase that is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. A situation might be compared to a real thing, although the situation is not actually that particular thing. If, for example, someone uses the phrase ‘sea of grief,’ we accept the phrase, even though we only ever come across a sea filled with water and never one filled with grief.”
Stefan turned to another bookmarked page. He had written a note on the bookmark; an ambiguous
tale points to interesting psychological trouble. He read the phrase he had highlighted; it referred to the possibility that reading could be viewed as…“enchanted interpretation that sometimes involves foraging among the available senses of a word or a phrase to settle upon the one that seems most justly telling in its place.”
Stefan enjoyed thinking of dreams as metaphor. That enchanted interpretation might be engaged to determine the thing that is most justly telling was music to his ears. His client’s wife was definitely a house, just as the man was definitely hen-pecked, but according to Stefan it wasn’t enough for his client to realise this. He wanted to explain it to him in such a way that he could move out of his current dilemmas and return to being just a man living with a wife who is just a woman. He wondered if an enchanted interpretation would help. He wanted to explain the benefits of ambiguity to his client. He only had a vague notion of the reason he wanted to use it and hoped it truly did have something to do with both dreams and metaphor. He described what he might say to his client.
Trust your reading, enjoy your foraging and try to have dreams that are less obvious. Your world might improve if you could get yourself out of the way and trust what you know. Try to gain a closer connection with your subjective imagination. Practice understanding things with your good heart; you must keep open and ready to do this. If I make the subject clear to you and give it a concrete shape, how will this help you feed that part of you which is utterly starved of its own self-importance? You are so out of touch with your true Self it has to shout at you to be heard. You need beautiful, ambiguous dreams in your life. Analysing your simple dreams might get you nowhere.
Whether any of this was true or whether his client would understand it, Stefan was uncertain, but he had given his lyrical position more clarity. He read through it again, realising that these points could also apply to him. His sense of it was that simile and metaphor were useful companions when it came to illuminating the complexities of relationships. He returned to his little tale about the eye and lips. Again he found it full of charm and meaning while remaining blissfully unclear; it defied any attempt at definition. He realised that while his involvement should help to build clarity, he did not want to discourage ambiguity. He wrote a final note to himself.
The Analyst Page 4