“Smoke?”
“No.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
He gave him the whole bit. Writing. Inability to write. Feeling of emptiness. Worthlessness. No point in living. No one able to help him. Dislike of dependence upon drugs. If it wasn’t for Karen and the children probably wouldn’t bother to seek help.
Dr Adler listened, his facial expression unchanging. He did not interrupt. When Oscar had finished he put out his cigarette.
“Has anyone told you what analysis entails?”
“Partly. Long, expensive, and at the end of the day you may well be back exactly where you started.”
“Nobody comes out of analysis exactly the same as when he enters it. You may still become depressed at times but you will have learned the reasons which underlie it and should be able to cope with it in such a way that it will not last too long nor be so severe. Yes, it is time-consuming. I would want to see you five times a week. Your session will be at the same time each day and will last for fifty minutes. At the end of each month I shall give you a bill. If you miss a session other than through illness, you will pay for it. That time is yours. I keep it for you and cannot use it any other way. I take eight weeks’ holiday a year, two at Christmas, two at Easter, four weeks in the summer.”
“Suppose my holidays don’t coincide with yours?”
Dr Adler shrugged. “You will make them coincide. I have one session free at three o’clock each day. That should suit you. Most people are committed to jobs which allow them only to come early in the morning or at night. If you are late for a session you lose the time. The session finishes at ten to four.”
“Precisely?” Oscar thought of the lady and the speaking clock.
“Precisely.” Dr Adler was not smiling.
“How do I know that you are going to be able to help me?”
“You don’t.”
“For how long will I have to come?”
“Impossible to say.”
“You must have some idea. Do most of your patients come for three weeks, a year, ten years?”
“It varies.”
“How will I know when the analysis has ended?”
“We shall decide that together.”
“About my writing. I think it will do it harm.”
“Are you writing now?”
“No.”
“In analysis a writer with nothing to say will come to realize it. A real writer, such as I believe you to be from what Dr Dodson has told me, can only benefit. Your work will be better because you will have learned to use your insight.
“It is expensive in terms of both time and money. One other thing. You have to feel that you are going to get on with me. If you think I am not the right person for you, you must find another analyst.”
“How do you know that I’m the right chap for you?”
“I have nothing to gain. If you decide not to come I can easily fill the space. Not every patient is able to benefit from analysis and I would not take them on. I feel you are intelligent, have a certain amount of insight, and as far as I am able to judge from one interview, would derive considerable benefit. It is not, as you can see, a matter to be undertaken lightly. If you have no more questions I would like you to go home and think about it very carefully. Discuss it with your wife. The financial aspect will affect her, as will the fact that at times analysis can be extremely painful. She must be prepared to help you over the times when you seem difficult to live with, and to encourage you to continue with the treatment. I would like your answer within the next three days please. You may phone me between 10 and 10.30 any evening.”
He stood up. Oscar stood up. They went into the hall. “If you decide to come you will arrive at three o’clock each day. Let yourself in – the front door will be open – and sit in this room here,” he indicated a door, “until I am ready for you. The WC is this door here. There is no need to ring the bell.”
Oscar wondered if he should shake the hand of this shadowy figure. He knew what his decision was going to be. The difficulty was going to be the money. Already he felt some rapport with the gentle Dr Adler.
He went to see his father who was a GP in Brighton. He was past the age of retirement but continued to care for his patients night and day as he had for the past forty years, taking no advantage of the latest developments in ancillary help and ‘call services’. “If my patients want me they want me,” he was fond of saying, “not some moonlighter who couldn’t care less and knows nobody by name.”
They walked along the windy seafront towards Black Rock. Oscar had difficulty in keeping up.
He told his father he needed a loan.
His father said: “Is everything all right with you and Karen?” and called to heel the Yorkshire terrier which accompanied him everywhere.
“It’s not a woman.”
“I’m glad.”
“It’s for something I don’t really want to tell you about, but I will if you insist.”
“I don’t insist.”
“I shall write a book which will go ‘over the top’. I’ll pay you back – with interest.”
“I don’t want it back. You’ll get it eventually so you may as well have it now.”
It made Oscar uncomfortable when he spoke like that. He could not visualize his parents dying, as he could not visualize them ever having made love.
“They’re getting on with the Marina,” his father said, closing the subject. “I come down every day with Raffles. It’s quite exciting; ingenious, too, the way they’ve got those great concrete caissons out to sea. Do you know each one weighs 600 tons? Take the town into the next century when all this is finished. Bit of a change from the Domesday Book – Brighthelmstone, population 1000!”
Karen, having lived through his depression, had no doubt that he should go ahead with Dr Adler.
After two days he phoned him; at 10.15 p.m. precisely.
“I will see you on Monday at three o’clock then,” Dr Adler said. He seemed neither pleased nor sorry. Oscar felt hurt at his lack of enthusiasm; that to Dr Adler he was obviously the ‘three o’clock’, and if it wasn’t him it could quite easily be somebody else.
On Monday he awoke with a sense of excited expectancy; a child looking forward to a treat. He spent the morning thinking of all the things he wanted to discuss with Dr Adler and felt that if he could spin it out for a week it would be too long. There was certainly nothing that by any stretch of the imagination could take years. He was probably different from all the other patients; co-operative, intelligent. A month would most likely see the end of it. He knew little about analysis other than what he had read in books, seen in films and cartoons, or heard from American friends for whom a session with a ‘shrink’ seemed to form a vital part of their daily lives. He did not class himself amongst those neurotics with more money and time than they knew what to do with, and he certainly had no intention of becoming dependent on his analyst.
Monday morning dragged. It was 2.45 when he opened Dr Adler’s front door. There was no one about. There were flowers in a vase on the hall table. He wondered if he was married, had any children. He would ask him. He went into the room Dr Adler had shown him. It was small; an ante-room. There was a highly polished table and a copy of the New Statesman. Flowers again. He wanted to go to the lavatory. He remembered which door. It shone with cleanliness. The soap was attached to a holder by a magnet; he pulled it off and put it back again two or three times, intrigued. There was a clean, fulffy yellow roller towel, a spare roll of paper. Everything had been thought of. As he came out a girl in blue jeans and rimless glasses came out of Dr Adler’s room. She did not look at him as she went past and out of the front door. He didn’t know whether he should go in. It was five to three. There was no sign of Dr Adler. He went back to the waiting room and picked up the New Statesman which he had already read. At three o’clock precisely Dr Adler appeared.
“Yes,” he said. Then, “At three o’clock just walk into my room. It will be quit
e all right.”
Oscar followed him into the room. Philip Roth was no longer in its place. He wondered whom he had lent it to.
He stood waiting to see what was expected of him. There was a yellow-and-white cloth on the pillow. Following his gaze Dr Adler said: “I keep one for each patient. This is your colour. Please lie down.”
Feeling a bit of an ass he started to undo his shoes. “You can keep your shoes on.”
Oscar noticed, as he lay down, a sheet of vinyl at the end of the couch, presumably to protect it. The ceiling was paint over paper. He imagined he would get to know it well. The silence enveloped him. He wondered who would start the ball rolling.
“I will explain to you exactly how the analysis will go,” Dr Adler said. “I want you to tell me every single thing that comes into your head without criticism or selection, whether you consider it relevant or not. You are not here to tell a coherent story, but exactly what flashes into your mind as you are lying there. You must not repress nor reject anything catergorizing it as unsuitable, insulting to me, of no consequence. You must tell me exactly how it is, both in mind and body. I have to know a great deal about you. You will tell me everything you know about yourself. I am not your ‘doctor’ in the strict sense of the word, but you must mention every physical symptom, no matter how slight. Bring it all; dreams, thoughts, wishes, ideas which appear to you not to make sense. I will do the assessing. I only want to stress that there is nothing that passes through your head that is unimportant. I am not here to make moral judgment. I am an echoing board to help you to understand yourself.”
“That all sounds simple enough,” Oscar said.
“You will not find it easy, later on especially, to bring everything. The greater the aversion, the more important the matter you wish to reject. But I want you to bear in mind that anything that is said in this room will never, under any circumstances, go further. I shall not discuss you with anybody, not even your GP. If any member of your family gets in touch with me I shall speak to them only with your permission and with the proviso that anything they say will be related to you. You are the patient. As time passes I shall get to know you quite well, better perhaps than you know yourself. There is only one thing I must point out; no matter how long this relationship continues we will at no time socialize with one another. Apart from which there are no ‘rules’. Is there anything you want to ask?”
“Who says when I no longer need come?” Oscar asked.
“Difficult to say. We decide between us. There is no quick way.”
Behind his head Oscar heard him light a cigarette where he sat unseen. He could almost feel the silence.
It won’t take me long, he thought, because I shall co-operate. I shall tell him every damn thing.
“What are you thinking about?” Dr Adler asked in his flat voice.
“About the pattern on the ceiling,” Oscar lied.
Four
That had been three years ago. During that time Dr Adler had found out as much about Oscar as he cared to reveal. About Dr Adler Oscar knew nothing. Not for want of trying. He never saw anyone in the house except the two o’clock with the rimless glasses who flitted by like a shadow but never looked at him. Sometimes the couch was warm with the impression of her body. He often asked questions.
“Are you married?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It’s perfectly reasonable. I think you are.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I see a woman’s hand, the flowers, the way everything is kept. Any children? If so you keep them remarkably quiet.”
“Do you think it good to keep children quiet?”
“You make me sick. Sitting there like God Almighty snooping into the deepest recesses of my life and not giving a bloody thing away about yours, if you have one, that is, apart from sitting in that bloody chair all day sucking Glacier mints. Do you have to be so uptight? Would it be so terrible if I knew a bit about you?”
“It wouldn’t help you in any way to know. When did you notice the Glacier mints?”
“When I first started to come.”
“Why haven’t you mentioned it before?”
“Not important.”
“You must bring everything. Everything is important.”
Dr Adler never changed his voice. There was no indication of anger, praise or surprise. On one occasion Oscar had determined to shock him. He recounted a dream using the filthiest terms at his disposal. When he had finished Dr Adler said: “What are your associations?” as calmly as if Oscar had been telling him about milk pudding.
There had been other ploys. Once during the session Dr Adler had made him so angry he had got up and left the room, slamming the door behind him. The next day there was no mention of his behaviour. He tried other ways to throw him off balance. He missed his session without telephoning and was annoyed that he was not asked why he had defaulted. He stayed away a whole week determining never to go back; wondering whether Dr Adler would contact him to see what was the matter.
“I might have been dead,” he said when he finally did return.
“You wanted to punish me, but you only punished yourself. Five wasted sessions to pay for. You wanted me to show that I cared.”
“Care? You? You’ve got ice running through your bloody veins.”
“Who was it that didn’t care for you?”
“I went on a binge. Mars bars; put on pounds. Couldn’t stop.”
“Filling yourself up with love; milky love. You stay away, acting out your hostile feelings towards your mother, then attempt to deal with your aggression by sucking Mars bars; biting them perhaps as you wanted to bite the breast.”
“Sometimes you say such stupid things I could get up off this bed and throttle you.”
“Why do you call it a bed?”
“It is a bed, isn’t it?”
“Is it? Who did you want to throttle when you were tucked up in bed as a child?”
He had learned to accept the fact that at ten to four, no matter how important the subject under discussion, Dr Adler would say “Well, we shall have to leave it…”
Oscar had mentioned it once. Surely two or three minutes more to allow him to finish what he was saying?
“You always bring the important things when your time is almost up.”
He realized this was true.
Sometimes he saw the patient who came after him. A man in dark glasses who arrived in a chauffeur-driven Rolls. He wondered what his (headrest) colour was and if he got more attention because he was patently better off than either he or the girl in the rimless glasses.
The idea that he was gong to be the model patient, 100 per cent co-operative, had long ago been quashed. He repressed and rejected obstinately what really went on in his mind, and brought up either what he wanted or what he thought Dr Adler wanted to hear. He knew that he fooled no one, least of all himself. It wasn’t as easy as he had first thought. There were times he had wanted to go running to Dr Adler between sessions or at weekends with something he could not contain; a child dashing to Mummy and Daddy to ‘show’. On other occasions he entertained murderous thoughts in day or night dreams. He had never considered himself particularly aggressive but even he could now appreciate the violent part of himself.
Sometimes he did childish things: arriving late (no comment of course), lying there for fifty minutes without uttering a sound, sure that Dr Adler would break. He did, but only when the session was at an end: “Well, we shall have to leave it for another time.”
His ambivalent attitude to Dr Adler manisfested itself in many ways. On holidays he thought of sending him a postcard, but did not. In dreams he stuck knives into him. Often he felt so childishly grateful for some problem which Dr Adler had helped him resolve that he felt like buying him a present. He resented occupying the couch between rimless glasses and Rolls-Royce, wanting to be the only patient, to occupy all of his thoughts and time as he had wanted to occupy his mother’s. He had been going for
so long now he felt the crazy paving to the front door must surely be worn with his steps. It had become a pattern, part of his day, his way of life.
On the day following the Beaumonts’ party he could hardly wait until three o’clock when he could divulge his new and disturbing thoughts to Dr Adler. He arrived too early and flicked through the New Statesman, hating the girl in the rimless glasses. He was part way through London Diary when it was his time.
He went into the room which never changed and carried out the ritual of lying on the couch, head on his yellow-and-white cover, and settling down, making himself comfortable. Sometimes he grimaced, knowing that Dr Adler could not see his face. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, realizing that the sign language of his body added to the importance of what he said. Sometimes he lay with his hands behind his head, sometimes they were at his side, sometimes folded, sometimes thumbs stuck into the waistband of his trousers.
This small busyness being over he opened the batting.
“I met a girl.”
Silence.
“Well, a woman really.” He often forgot how old he was.
Silence.
“At the Beaumonts. We were there for dinner.”
Unwrapping of Glacier mint.
“She’s a doctor. A woman doctor.” Stupid.
Sucking of the Glazier mint behind his head.
“I want to f— her.”
Pause in sucking.
“I keep thinking about her.”
More sucking.
“I try not to. The more I try the harder it becomes. I’m obsessed. Karen has asked her to look after Rosy and Daisy when they’re ill.”
The Life Situation Page 6