“He wants to talk to you about something I told him,” she whispered. “Something … private. I hope you won’t be mad.”
His mouth went dry. What had she said to this man? What was going on? The doctor had expressly said that he did not need to speak to anyone but Chloe. He looked at Pauline. She stared at him with that inexplicable message of warning.
“He wants to talk to you now,” Chloe said.
There was no escape. He could not very well refuse to meet with his daughter’s court-ordered therapist. And so, with a deep sense of foreboding, like a man mounting the gallows, he turned and walked down the hall.
6
Dez, watching Jasper’s approach, was struck now by the clear signs of psychological distress that he had, earlier, stupidly misread as overwork: the haggard face, the haunted stare, the weight loss, the hangdog, sheepish, guilty look in the eyes. This was a man in the end stages of acute sexual despair. How could he have failed to read the symptoms! In any case, he read them now, and they told him that his work would not be difficult.
“Thank you for taking the time to talk to me,” Dez said, stepping aside to allow Jasper to enter the room. He followed his victim inside, then shut the door behind them.
“So what’s this all about?” Jasper asked, turning to face Dez. He spoke in as casual a voice as he could muster. “I thought you said you needed to speak only to Chloe.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Dez said, indicating with a wave of one hand the sofa that Chloe had recently vacated. “This won’t take a minute. Something has come up. I think it best we nip it in the bud.”
Jasper felt a fresh jolt of panic. Had he been less successful than he supposed in disguising his yearning for Chloe? Had she noticed something—and spoken of it to this man? She had seemed so happy, so well adjusted, so serenely untroubled by any of the evils her transitioning social worker had told him to look out for, and so unaware of his toxic lust. But was she? He tried to keep his features and voice neutral when he said as he sat down on the sofa, “I hope it’s nothing—nothing serious.”
“Well,” Dez said, resuming his place in the armchair, “I’m afraid it could become serious if it is not attended to in a timely fashion.”
Jasper studied Dr. Geld’s face: a lean, handsome face, but one whose skull-like qualities were not much mitigated by the presence of the short dark beard that clung to his jaws and chin. The man was scrutinizing him with a slight smile, and Jasper was suddenly filled with the odd conviction that he knew this man, that he had seen him before, talked with him: something about the almost mocking, insolent frankness in his pale, colorless eyes. Jasper dismissed this as a play of nerves.
Dez, in turn, studied Jasper’s face, cataloging the tics and twitches that made his victim’s pale, perspiring cheek flicker and spasm and that pulled one corner of his mouth into a desperate attempt at a smile. This was sheer delight! He could have stared at it all day—but there was work to do.
“Mr. Ulrickson,” he said at length, “would it surprise you to learn that your daughter has been harboring strong sexual desires for you?”
From thinking that Geld was going to ambush him with questions about his criminal lust for Chloe, he had been hit from a wholly unexpected direction—like the boxer who, feinting from the anticipated left jab, is all the more stunned by a strong right hook. He could do nothing but helplessly move his lower jaw up and down. He produced no sound.
“Your daughter,” said Dez, “has volunteered to me, in her session, that she has an overwhelming desire to make love to you. She has, to be frank, alleviated these feelings, as best she can, through onanism—but such a palliative can be only so successful when true obsession is at work, and I’m afraid that that is what we have in this case. Obsession. Compulsive, neurotic, sexual obsession. Now, before you judge her too harshly—before you accuse her of deviancy—I think it is essential that you understand that these erotic reactions are, within the situational matrix in which she finds herself, not only quite predictable but quite normal.”
“Normal,” Jasper said in a parched whisper. He was dazed, dizzy, barely able to form the word.
“Quite normal,” Dez reiterated. “How familiar are you with the tenets of Freudian psychotherapy?”
Jasper shook his head. “Not very.”
Dez happened to be well versed in the subject. While in the care of Dr. Geld, he had received many lectures on Freud. And indeed, in his younger days, when struggling to understand and curtail his compulsions, he had read widely in the Master and his followers—all to no avail, of course.
“Even in some psychoanalytic circles,” Dez said ruefully, “Freud has lost favor, his theories replaced by belief in the all-powerful pharmaceutical. I reject such fashionable apostasy and profess myself to be a strict adherent to the urtexts, and to what they tell us of the invisible currents of motivation and desire that shape our minute-to-minute, second-to-second actions. To say nothing of the fundamental building blocks of identity, which is what concerns us at present.” Dez scrutinized Jasper for a few silent seconds over his joined fingertips. “You are, undoubtedly, familiar with the term ‘Oedipus complex’?” he went on. Jasper nodded weakly. “Most people are—at least in rough outline,” Dez said. “Boys, Freud tells us, arrive at a healthy sexual identity by the successful working through of certain deep-seated urges. Namely, to remove the rival for his mother’s affections, and thus consummate desire for her. Bluntly put, to kill the father and sleep with the mother. But I would wager that you are less familiar with Freud’s theory of how female sexual identity is formed?”
“That’s true,” Jasper said.
“Oh, the casual male chauvinism of our sexist culture!” Dez lamented. “Well, in any case, as with boys, the process begins in earliest childhood and is activated by rivalry with the same-sex parent. Girls experience ‘penis envy’—a syndrome stemming from the small child’s conviction that the male sex organ, which she believes herself to have been born with, has been stolen from her in an act of parental castration—by the mother. To regain the penis, the child looks to the man closest by, usually her father, literally to ‘take back’ the lost member. It is in this yearning for possession of the father’s phallus that the daughter resolves her rage against the castrating mother and forms the underlying heterosexual erotic orientation which will, in later years, fuel her drive for marriage and procreation—a dynamic that Freud’s colleague Jung dubbed the Electra Complex.
“The point I am trying to get to, Mr. Ulrickson, is that your Chloe is currently in the throes of a most severe Electra conflict. And little wonder! We have, in her, a girl who grew up never knowing her father, a girl whose adolescence was characterized by flagrant Electra struggles with her mother—the denying, rivalrous and increasingly jealous mother who happened, tragically, to die before any of these universal mother-daughter tensions could be resolved.
“Then, at the tender age of seventeen, the child bravely speaks up about the secret of her true father. At eighteen, she goes to live with that father, who proves to be a deeply understanding, loving and openhearted man: a good man. Well, Mr. Ulrickson, should it surprise any of us who are students of the mind—and you, sir, a writer and artist, are every inch an expert in the universal truths that I speak of; Freud himself admitted that everything he ever discovered about the mysteries of human nature was first said by Shakespeare—should it surprise us if a girl with the history of your Chloe should, once accepted into the secure embrace of her long-lost father, find awakened in her breast those very conflicts never worked through during the requisite phase, the critical window, of childhood? A century of psychoanalytic thought has taught us nothing if not that those earliest childhood wounds do not magically heal themselves, but rather fester in the unconscious, distorting our growth and maturation, until they erupt in some form of neurotic, or worse, behavior. And that, Mr. Ulrickson, is what we see happening in your Chloe today.”
“My God,” Jasper whispered.
“I hasten to add,” said Dez, “that she feels especially guilty because you have been such a good father—one deserving of nothing but her chaste devotion. Yet, instead, she burns with this terrible, ungovernable lust for you.”
Jasper was dumbstruck.
“Do I understand, by your silence, that you had no knowledge of this?” said Dez.
“None,” Jasper said weakly. “None whatsoever.”
Or was this true? He suddenly recalled that doe-eyed, submissive, somehow come-hither look she gave him in the courthouse, when he first came into the small antechamber, and that charged, mischievous glance she pierced him with when she settled into the passenger seat of his car, tugging at the hem of her short skirt. The way she had displayed her legs on that car ride, and during her yoga stretches, and then, later, in his bedroom, how she had hiked herself onto his lap, crushed herself against him and stared into his eyes as if trying to hypnotize him into a kiss. Then her whispered request to sleep with him in his bed—a request that would, later (he now surmised), trigger that shattering dream.
“Perhaps …” Jasper said haltingly. “Perhaps there were some small signs, after all.”
“Aah, so,” said Dez.
“But tell me,” Jasper said, “how did she tell you? About her feelings for me?”
“The truth,” Dez said, “emerged quite without my prompting, in a spontaneous free association the revelatory power of which has left your daughter in a dangerous state of shame, confusion and embarrassment. What concerns me now is that we take proper action to neutralize, and normalize, Chloe’s psychological situation. May I speak plainly? I think unvarnished frankness is imperative. You say that you ‘never suspected.’ But, Mr. Ulrickson, in my experience, few men in your position fail to notice what is going on inside their child, owing to the unconscious ways that we—all of us—communicate with one another. In psychoanalysis, we call it the transference and countertransference.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Jasper said.
“It would be perfectly understandable, within the dynamics of the transference and countertransference, that you should, due to Chloe’s invisible—and quite unconscious—machinations and projections, begin to feel an ‘answering’ response. Not because of any deliberate, cold-blooded or (to cast this in outmoded moral terms) evil effort on the part of your daughter to seduce you. We are speaking of purely subliminal, subconscious actions on her part to arouse in you a reciprocal erotic response—all in the interest of resolving her Electra complex, all in her bid to repossess the male organ stolen from her, and thus feel whole. Do you see?”
Jasper was beginning to—and the illumination filled him with dread.
“Mr. Ulrickson, what I am trying to say, in my albeit roundabout and jargon-filled manner, is that your daughter has been trying to provoke a response in you. May I prevail upon your admirable honesty and ask if you have experienced any such countertransferential reaction? Please understand that anything you say in this session is protected under patient–doctor confidentiality; nothing can or will be used to undermine your custodial rights—quite the opposite. I am groping to understand the dimensions of poor Chloe’s complex in the service of strengthening the bond between the two of you and thus ensure that nothing occur that would lead to her forcible removal from the home.”
Jasper began slowly to move his lips, but soundlessly.
“Take your time,” Dez said.
“I—” Jasper said, then stopped. He felt an overwhelming urge to disburden himself. But could he reveal his terrible secret to this man? This stranger?
He could. Of course he could. Geld had come expressly to lay bare such subterranean drives and desires, to root them out and destroy them, not just in Chloe but in the rest of the family! If Jasper did not speak up now, when would he ever speak up?
“Yes,” he said at length. “Yes—and the feeling of counter … counter …?”
“Countertransference,” Dez said.
“Those reactions have not been subtle. I’ve had horrible, monstrous feelings. It has been overwhelming. I hope you can help us!”
“I am here,” Dez said, “to help you.”
“I’ve bottled it up,” Jasper said. “Trying to master myself. Trying to get it out of my system by writing it down. By—if I may be completely honest—by abusing myself. Mercilessly. Repeatedly. Nothing—nothing helps.”
“I must commend you for your wonderful, and quite rare, honesty,” Dez said. “With many fathers, it takes far, far longer to hear the truth. But the truth is critical. Freud taught us that we must confront our demons and thus exorcise them. And make no mistake, Mr. Ulrickson, what I have heard and seen here today from your daughter—and now yourself—convinces me that this is a much more advanced case than I had feared. I see in both of you signs of acute neurosis.”
“I haven’t been sleeping,” Jasper admitted. “And I cannot eat. Working has been out of the question.”
“Yes,” Dez said gravely. “A very advanced case. We cannot rule out the possibility that one or the other of you will do yourself harm, if the syndrome is allowed to advance unchecked.”
Suicide, Jasper thought. The doctor was talking about suicide. He flashed on thoughts that had plagued him in recent weeks: images of himself stepping in front of a speeding Amtrak train, or washing down a bottle of painkillers with vodka. Never before had he indulged such thoughts, not when his parents died, not when Pauline had her stroke. But the shame and humiliation of his incestuous lust had been so terrible, death had seemed a welcome respite.
“Have you had suicidal thoughts?” Dez asked.
Jasper silently nodded.
“Yes …” Dez muttered. “And I heard clear evidence of suicidal ideation from the girl.”
“Oh God,” Jasper cried. “Is there anything you can do to help us?”
“I?” said Dez. “Mr. Ulrickson, I’m sure you’re aware of the joke which asks: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb really has to want to change. That is, you and your daughter must do the work. You must both cease to blame yourselves for desires that society deems beyond the pale, but which psychoanalysis tells us are quite natural and even necessary. Freud often scoffed at society’s pious restrictions against such perfectly normal Id-cravings. In his divine Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, the Master, speaking to a learned audience of fellow mental healers about parent-child sexual intercourse, referred to the ‘horror that is felt, or at least professed, in human society at such intercourse.’ Or at least professed! Could he have been plainer? What hypocrisy it is to feign disgust at the powerful erotic attractions between parent and child, Freud tells us! For this delicate dance of family love is one played out in every household on Earth, where parents and children find themselves. ‘The nicest father is but an anagram for the incest father,’ as my training analyst in Zurich used to quip.
“But we get ahead of ourselves. We must take a proper history of the case. How have you behaved toward your daughter? Since recognizing these impulses?”
“I pulled away,” Jasper said. “Physically. Emotionally. I retreated to my office. But I haven’t been able to write my novel for weeks. Not since she arrived. Thank goodness she goes off to the club during the day, or sees friends. But still, she haunts me. We all have dinner together. I listen when she tells me about her doings; I ask appropriate questions. But I minimize contact. For her own good! I’m horrified to think that she might catch even the slightest hint of the—the urges I am having.”
“Rest assured,” Dez said, “that there is nothing about your instinct for retreat that is surprising. But it is precisely the wrong reaction—the most damaging you could have. You must not be standoffish, rejecting, shunning. Mr. Ulrickson, we are talking about a girl deprived of a father-daughter relationship while growing up! A girl who now, at barely eighteen, is regressing and enacting all the stages of earliest infancy. Just when she is yearning for contact and connection, you stand back, you treat
her coldly like the distanced, disapproving father of Victorian stereotype. I shudder to think what damage may already have been done with such a program of rejection.
“The prescription is for warmth, and expressed affection. You must break down the physical barriers you have erected, you must supply to her the touches, hugs, cuddles and kisses that she would have received from you when she was an infant, a babe in arms—what Freud and others have recognized as the sublimated sexual touching which, in fact, establishes the framework for later heterosexual responsiveness. Chloe missed all those stages with you, as infant, toddler and young child; hence her current neurosis—and your own. You must now make up for what was denied to her in her developmental stages. Mr. Ulrickson, you must feel no prohibition against physically expressed affection!”
“But she’s almost an adult now,” Jasper protested. “She’s no longer in that childhood phase when—”
“Mr. Ulrickson,” Dez interrupted. “Surely you, as a writer, know that this carapace of maturity that we all come cloaked in is merely that: a covering, a disguise—a shroud. Underneath, we remain frightened, needy children. Yes, your daughter has grown into a young woman. But this makes her no less a baby, your baby, who aches, with all her being, for your touch, for your caresses.”
“But,” Jasper persisted, “with all the feelings, the suppressed feelings, that we have for each other—”
“Do you suppose that pulling back, withdrawing, withholding is a better prescription for dispersing those yearnings?” Dez said. He smiled and dropped his voice. “Mr. Ulrickson, think of how you unhesitatingly soap up your younger daughter in the bathtub. Think of how you, without a worry in the world, take her onto your knee. Think of how you lie beside her in bed when she has a nightmare, how you stroke her hair and caress her cheeks, nuzzle her neck and kiss her bare belly. It is precisely such natural, loving touching with young Madeline that inoculates the two of you against future erotic acting out with each other! But you have missed that period of vaccination with Chloe; you have not been given that tiny bit of the disease that builds the antibodies against future illness, so to speak. You must vaccinate yourself, now, when there is still time, and before it is too late.”
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