The Analyst

by Peter Stickland

  I should not rely solely on sharp definition, because if I am ever going to trust my heart, if I am ever going to practice and tune my intuition and sensibility, I will need to employ relaxed openness and acceptance. We go looking for our grain of sand, but we should get rid of it. Forget who we are; just trust.

  The therapist’s report

  On receiving another email from Kathy, Stefan went into a state of shock. Her news was that she was moving to be nearer her ailing mother and she could no longer keep Mr A as her client. The psychotherapy association had asked her to return Mr A’s case to him. She attached her report on Mr A. Stefan, too nervous to open the file, stared at it. In the remainder of her email Kathy apologised once again for being too busy to meet for lunch and informed him that she was giving up her London practice to teach part-time on an MA course in Psychotherapy. Nothing further could have increased the shock he was feeling. Stefan, bewildered and with great trepidation, printed out the report. His nervous hands shook as he read Kathy’s words.

  The Report

  At the beginning of my work with Mr A I focused on the statement he provided before starting therapy. This is attached. I suggest a careful study of this prior to reading my notes.

  I quickly determined that Mr A has a substantial but deeply unconscious need of approval, appreciation and love. He says he is desperate to move on but his actions don’t reflect this. He is in denial and unable to face reality. He has learned that by remaining a child, life is easier for him. There are times when Mr A wants to be argumentative and times when he needs positive endorsement. Just as a child needs praise and love from a parent so Mr A needs support from the world at large. When I indicated to him that his desire for constant approval could be characterised as an unconscious wish to adopt infantile forms of behaviour, he willingly agreed. I suspect his eager acceptance has more to do with his fear of conflict and his anxiety about being rejected than any insight on his part.

  Mr A has talked about his sexual frustrations in love and his lack of self-confidence, but he does not know how this relates to his inner core. His so called “relationship with Mrs X” is fuelled by her ability to play with her emotions and his. There is in truth no relationship there, but he wants to believe there is. He searches for knowledge in books in an attempt to explain his feelings and imagines he is doing the same thing a therapist does when attempting to resolve a conflict.

  Mr A compares himself to a bug and Mrs X to a luscious, red-hot flower. I suggested to him that he had set up a powerful hierarchical relationship with this analogy; the flower being big and beautiful and the bug being small and insignificant. He was, to say the least, genuinely unhappy with this observation; a mood that didn’t change when I explained how allegory might be used by our unconscious. He wanted to verify the fact that the flower and the insect needed one another for their existence and refused to comment on the insect’s need to fly off in search of another love. He hated my suggestion that the relationship relied on one part being active and the other passive and insisted that he had used this analogy to make a specific point. He wanted this view upheld and he tolerated no other interpretations.

  Mr A persists in his attempts to punish Mrs X by refusing to have anything to do with her, but Mrs X does not show sufficient reaction for him to feel the gratification he seeks. He is fearful of being destructive, but at the same time he has no skills for dismantling relationships or deconstructing events to his benefit. Consequently, he lives with his inner voices of frustration, reacting to her like an adolescent struggling to find his way. His emotions are overwhelming; he only knows what his body feels and his mind has the single desire to - in his words ­- ‘get to the bottom of this thing called love.’

  I can’t get Mr A to trust that the painful misery he suffers at the rejection of Mrs X could dissolve. I have also tried to get him to address other issues of rejection in his life, but without success. I imagine his preoccupation with Mrs X hides his true feelings and prevents him from exploring them. He uses silence and angry rhetoric to counteract what he sees as misguided suppositions. When I continued to question the insect in his tale he rounded on me.

  “Why do you turn everything round to make me feel insignificant, like some bug that comes and goes with no real place in the world?”

  Generally, he controls conversation and it is my contention that Mrs X has very little to do with what is going on in Mr A’s inner world. He is using whatever is in his vicinity to protect himself, to excuse himself from dealing with his true feelings. I suspect his central issue concerns the love of his mother, but he does not like talking about her. He was only indirectly rejected by his mother and this was on the occasion she had become ill. Mr A doesn’t like this discussion because he wants to point his finger at someone else; at anything actually as long as it is away from his mother and outside of himself.

  When Mr A’s mother was in hospital he could not visit her as her virus was exceedingly contagious. My supposition is that Mr A, a child of four, believed there was something wrong with him, that it was his fault he could not go to see her. Maybe he imagined he was the one who would cause infection, not the other way round, so the blemish was on him. Confronted with this hypothesis Mr A listened attentively and even nodded his head, but I am not convinced he let the notion sink in. His mother is sacrosanct, his memory of her is untouchable. He also rejected my suggestion that death could also be a form of rejection. He told me, in strident terms, I was overindulging in therapeutic rhetoric just to confirm my theory.

  When his mother died, his father married a second wife. His stepmother was very nice to Mr A and his sister. He is convinced he got all the love a child needs from both mothers. When I suggested that the problem might not be a lack of love, but his infantile belief that he had done something bad that prevented him from being with his real mother before she died, he retreated to his contemplative, silent world. He was totally overwhelmed. My suggestion had presented him with a cavernous unconscious issue. Most of us take some time before we are ready to digest such notions, but Mr A might need more time than most.

  One day, attempting to support his argument about the generosity of his stepmother’s love, Mr A offered me an axiom she had used. “Always let the beggars in, we are Christians.” I pointed out that the love his stepmother was referring to was not the love of a mother for her child. It was the love of one who accepts the merciful duty of looking after a guilty and wounded child. Mr A again became quiet. I think he knew what was coming, but I stopped short of suggesting that he imagined he was one of the beggars, not the one and only loved son. I doubt he is ready to contemplate this, though one can never be certain of thoughts that reign in silence. I was always aware that I should not give him too much to digest. He is sensitive and deeply affected by issues like this.

  His father, an intelligent and careful man, ran a small but successful engineering company. According to Mr A, he managed his family in the same way he managed his business. A good craftsman, a good manager, he was a perfectionist in everything. He probably engaged his new wife in much the same way as he would have engaged a new foreman. Mr A never had a chance to rival him or fight with him. His father always had the right answers. He cannot believe that the son of such a fine man, a boy who had the good fortune of having two admirable mothers, could have emotional problems. He cannot detect any complications in his biography and he can’t get to the bottom of the enigma that causes his desires to orbit around the same woman. I leave him still wedded to the belief that he is not sexy enough to conquer his beloved Mrs X.

  I am not happy about leaving him at this juncture, but my life dictates this move. He sees me now as yet another mother who is abandoning him. He probably imagines that he is the cause of it. In one of our last meetings he apologised for being an annoying client and asked if his problem lacked the kind of interest therapists liked to deal with. So the notion that he’s not good enough is a concern he often repeats. This should be the starting point in the ongoing the
rapy. I have managed to gently stroke a few of his knots and there are signs of movement, but undoing the knots is far in the distance. The worst scenario for him is to be with a competitor. He needs to feel he’s intelligent and the subject of interesting conversation.

  In conclusion I would say that Mr A appreciates endless patience and hates analytical themes, especially if they relate to his manhood. One day I suggested we talk about the Oedipus myth. I described how the hero kills his father and marries his mother and implied that in the deepest unconscious aspects of his psyche he has killed his mother and immortalised his father. He claimed to have no difficult issues with his father. I pointed out that his father made easy work of finding a second wife and mother for his children, while he appeared to be incapable of creating a secure life with a wife and could not easily display his success as a man. Alex growled and tried to look threatening. I quickly dropped the subject. It was too painful for him.

  So I, the new mother, have started to unearth issues and now it might be useful if a new father could help him discover how to overcome his restrictive, debilitating practices and become the hero. He definitely needs to find out how he can overcome the father and how to be a good father himself – not a good father exactly, just a father who is good enough in the eyes of others. The idea that he has to overcome and ‘kill’ the father is abhorrent to him. I never ceased feeling that I was his parent, always in the role of containing him, the child. He has the potential to make his bid for independence and not feel that every kind of parent or therapist is only going to let him down.

  Stefan was intensely moved by the report. Kathy had gone some considerable distance on the way to discovering where this man’s problems might be lurking. Stefan dearly wished she did not have to move away.

  Making preparations

  Stefan decided to accept Mr A as his client. He could not resist it. Clive was perplexed. He told Stefan that he over-identified with Mr A and he was not the right therapist to help him discover how to balance his complex dilemmas.

  “Talk me through your thinking,” Stefan requested.

  “Mr A is troubled by an unachievable relationship with a woman and you’re troubled by an unachievable relationship with all women. Mr A has a sexual fixation with Mrs X. He can’t understand her, yet he’s endlessly fascinated by her. You treat all women like he treats Mrs X; it’s a similar sexual fixation. You’re endlessly fascinated by them and you put them all on a pedestal, losing any semblance of confidence in the process. Neither of you can control your enchantment. So clearly, your issues are too close to Mr A’s issues. You can’t help him.”

  “There’s an over insistent presumption in your argument,” Stefan told him.

  “I don’t agree. You hate conflict of any kind and you will do anything you can to avoid it. You want to connect with the light and ignore the dark. You see merging as goodness and separation as badness. By avoiding the bad you agree to live without the good. You are afraid of commitment so you are afraid of separation; the classic polarities, the proverbial two sides of the same coin. What I am suggesting is that both you and Mr A can’t deal with these kinds of polarity. If you share a conflict, it follows that you also share similar fears and anxieties. You know all this, but it doesn’t help you resolve your issues. You also know that you cannot expect to treat someone if you cannot treat yourself.”

  “I still can’t see the similarity. I’ve never become fixated by a woman and surely this is the main issue with Mr A.”

  “I don’t agree. Let me put it like this. It is probable that your father unwittingly instigated conflicts around issues of weakness and strength, constraint and freedom, gentleness and aggression. This has made your life one long battle, never knowing peace. You would not have been old enough to unite the polarities, so you avoided the so called male qualities of strength, freedom and aggression and focussed your attention on the so called female qualities of softness, constraint and gentleness. So, like Mr A you also need to overcome the father and become the hero. Have you thought about it like this?”

  “No, but I will. So I’ll continue with him as my client in the hope that we’ll both learn something from our interaction.”

  “As you wish, Stefan, but I will keep a close eye on you.”

  Since this session with Clive, Mr A had been constantly in Stefan’s thoughts, but after reading the following story about a monk the focus of his thoughts shifted back to himself.

  The monk, Bobo-roshi, laughed a lot. He spent years in a Zen monastery where the rules were applied very strictly. He was a diligent monk, making extra rules for himself, but because he didn't understand his koan the master was hard on him. He tried doing extra meditation, sleeping in the lotus position, trying everything he could think of, but the koan remained a mystery to him. After ten years he left the monastery by simply climbing over the wall at night. He knew nothing about civilian life.

  “And there he was, in a sunny street, in a busy city, thousands of people about, all doing something, all going somewhere. He wandered about the city and found himself in the willow quarter, perhaps within an hour of leaving the monastery gate. In the willow quarter there are always women standing in their doors, or pretending to be busy in their gardens. One of the women called him, but he was so innocent that he didn't know what she wanted. He went to her and asked politely what he could do for her. She took him by the hand and led him into her little house. They say she was beautiful; who knows? Some of these women aren't beautiful at all but they are attractive in a way, or they wouldn't have any earnings.

  She helped him undress….He must have been quite excited after so many years of abstaining. At the moment he went into her he solved his koan. He had an enormous satori, one of these very rare satoris which are described in our books; not a little understanding which can be deepened later, but the lot at once, so you think the world has come to an end and you can fill the emptiness of the universe in every possible sphere.

  When he left the woman he was a master. He never took the trouble to have his insight tested by other masters, but kept away from the Zen sect for years. He wandered through the country and had many different jobs. They say he never forgot the link between his satori and sex, and he is supposed to have had many friends and girlfriends.

  Then he came back and rented a ramshackle house here in Kyoto. He has some disciples there now, odd birds who could never accept the monastic training as we have it here. They do as they please and observe no rules. He works with them in his own way, but he does use the Zen method, koan and meditation. The other masters recognize him, acknowledge his complete enlightenment, and never criticize him as far as I know. There are probably a lot of young monks who think that life in Bobo­ roshi's house is one long party; perhaps it is really like that, but I rather think that it is not.

  The night after reading this story Stefan had a dream. He was talking to a prostitute who was laughing at his stupid questions.

  “I’d go crazy if I related to my frustrated guys the way you do. In this business you have to learn the hard way, you have to know how bad it can be if you get too close. Some of my men are the very worst kind of people.”

  “And it never occurs to you that you might change them?”

  “You’re joking. All I do is give ‘em a brief moment of relief. That’s all anyone can do for anyone.”

  “But surely you identify with their problems?”

  “They got plenty problems mister.”

  “But you must know how sad they are feeling inside. They are looking for love. Doesn’t that make you sad?”

  “Mister, I can look out the window and feel sad.”

  With the dream and the story in his head, Stefan sat down thoughtfully to write his notes.

  The Buddhist story is a simple tale about learning by doing; gaining awareness by action. This is good. I do most of my learning by analysing; this could be bad. The dream about over-identifying with a client is also simple. The prostitute does not over-identify with t
he client or his problem. I might not over-identify with Mr A (having never met him) but I could easily over-identify with his bewilderment.

  Stefan sat for some time categorising the issues; he wanted to be prepared for any questions from Clive about the reconciliation of polarities and how he was going to engage with his conflicts. He was well aware how disruptive the one-sided approach could be and how the repressed aspect would do anything imaginable to make its voice heard, but grasping the essential characteristics of his polarities was a complex undertaking. His mind wandered off in the direction of the superego. He wrote another set of notes.

  A sadistic superego is never content; it always asks for more. It’s like an over- demanding parent. If Mr A has a cruel, demanding, devaluing superego, like the cynical voice he referred to in his original statement, then he needs to find a voice that could help him establish a balance. If he has symptoms of low self-esteem, then he needs to concentrate on building up his self-esteem or he will counterbalance this over-emphasis in a negative way. It is possible that his sadistic superego will want to gravitate towards a sadistic partner, because his underlying masochism feels safer with a sadist, with someone familiar, someone like his demanding parent.

  Without knowing her we will never know if Mrs X is a sadist or not, but the point is that Mr A thinks she might be. She may not always have been so of course. If she had complied with his desires early in their relationship then he would view her as a sadist once she rejected him. He probably wants to punish her for not having an emotionally strong relationship with him or simply for putting an end to sex. No matter how he has chosen to arrange these protagonists in his psychological drama, it’s certain that he’s chosen masochism; he has chosen to suffer. The suffering of a masochist is only a small price to pay for not having to take on fear.