Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"The Brownburn Method," Hannah said. "You constantly eat food that has no nutrition value and that your body can't possibly use, which makes you hypoglycemic. So you have to get to your Eat It Off Very Nutritious Brownburn Bar before you go under."

The door opened. Faith Baltsburg walked in. She stared.

Silence, one of, So You're a Pervert, eh?

Wordlessly I left.

AS A.K. HAD predicted, Cherokee Putnam failed to show up for his appointment a few days later. I was amazed. How had A.K. known? For the whole fifty-minute session I sat there associating to Cherokee and his perfect fit to Freud's homosexuality-and freeing up a few of my own homosexual associations, which involved first a round of golf with him and me bare-chested and then hugging him and burying my rough Jewish cheek in his smooth Episcopal one, all of this really scary-finally whispering to his empty chair, "You feel inadequate in this therapy and you felt inadequate for your father."

I ended the phantom session on time, closed the door, wrote up my associations in the ten free minutes, and then opened the door for Christine.

She too was not there. She hadn't shown up the week before either. My fantasy was that she was getting it on with Cherokee in a motel. As Freud said:

For the development of femininity, the unsatisfied wish for a penis should be converted into a wish for a child for a man, who possesses a penis, (emphasis, S. Freud)

Feeling silly, I did another phantom session, ending with a whisper, "You feel you are not enough and your seduction of Cherokee is an attempt to fulfill your wish for a child and a man, for me and your father."

I hustled downstairs out into the rarefied mountain air, and down the hill through the cold to Thoreau. Malik was coming out of his office with a woman wearing a gas mask attached by a hose to a box slung over her shoulder. They parted. I asked him what was going on.

"Environmental distress syndrome. She's so sensitive to the toxins, her immune system's gone crazy. That box purifies the air, lets her breathe." He looked at me intently. "Ohhhhh, shit."

"Go easy on me today, Malik," I said, "I'm feeling kinda shaky."

"Me too."

"You?" I asked, first surprised, but then remembering how he hadn't been himself lately, sneezing and coughing, sounding strident and intolerant.

"Yeah. I'm feeling really tired. C'mon in." In his office, action posters of pro athletes graced the walls. Spinning a basketball on his finger, he asked what was going on. As always when I was with him, I soon felt embraced by his attention, his energy, and his concern, and I opened up, telling him about Zoe and Christine and Cherokee, about how scared I felt, how confused.

"I'm worried about this guy Cherokee," Malik said. "You try his wife?"

"She won't come in."

"He's depressed. Think he's suicidal?"

"No."

"You asked?"

"Not recently."

"Ask. You gotta ask. Maybe he needs meds, a little Prozac?"

"I thought you didn't like meds."

"I don't, but I use 'em. How 'bout we see him together?"

"Nope."

"Don't be a hero, Basch."

"Don't worry."

"Ask for help, okay?"

"Okay." He coughed and blew his nose. "But right now," I went on, "hearing myself talk this way to you, all this Freud stuff seems, I don't know, kinda silly."

"It's bullshit. Worse-it's abusive. It's driving your patients away."

"But Zoe came back. And it fits. Perfectly."

'That's why it's bullshit-because it fits. Human beings are so complex, any theory fits. By fitting, the theory excludes the complexity, so you lose what's 'human.' Theories that fit exclude other theories, and so don't fit. Like religions excluding other religions, preaching peace, leading to war. What fits can't fit. The 'perfect-fits' fit the worst."

'That's crazy."

"Nope, that's Godel. Kurt Godel, Godel's Theorem. Paradigm shift, 1931."

"But the things A.K. is teaching me allow me to go deeper."

"You think people are like holes, where there's a deeper, and deeper is better?"

"You're the one always talking about 'understanding.' "

"In the present, not in the past."

"But the thing is, I feel it in myself! If I could only drill down to the roots of my behavior, in my past, I'd understand what I'm doing, and I'd be better. All of a sudden my mind is buzzing with the past!"

"See? That's it. A.K. gets you to think that if only you were good enough to see through the present to the past, you'd be really good, maybe almost as good as her. Analysis reduces one thing to another-this is not this, but that; the real is not real, but fantasy; the present isn't present, but the past. Kid, I got news for you: healing happens now. Nobody's healed in the past."

"Freud did it in the 'now.' In his cases, when the unconscious is made conscious, it's like a flash of light-a catharsis. Bingo. Better!"

"Never happens, catharsis. Never seen one yet, in three years here. And I don't know anybody who's seen one yet either. Freud lied, you know. A lot."

"Isn't it possible, Malik, that you're so anti-Freud because you've never been analyzed?"

"Whaddaya mean not analyzed? I tried it, okay? With an all-star analyst."

"Really?" This was a surprise. "What happened?"

"Stopped in the nick of time."

"Why?"

"My jump shot tailed off. And then someone I admired told me to stop."

"Who?"

"Dee White."

"Ike?" I said. "But he was an analyst himself."

"Right. So he knew. He lived it, he died it. With his brand-new analyst at his deathbed." He sighed. "Look, kid, I'll put it to you simple: analysis says that the way out of the old is the old. But it doesn't work. Going back over the old just grinds that needle down deeper into that groove. Round and round we go."

"What's the alternative?"

'The way out of the old is the new."

"I don't need aphorisms, Malik, I need help! I'm losing control! Down in the swamp of my mind my old man is drilling away on my molars, muttering curses, and my mother is throwing knives and crying her heart out and it's all there, right in front of my eyes, all the fucking time! I constantly feel I'm not good enough! Compared to you, I'm one sick puppy!"

He squeezed my shoulder, like he used to do. "There's nothing wrong with you, kid. You're fine." I felt a warmth, under his hand.

"But I feel sick, Malik. And you're not with me hi it!"

"Okay. You're right. I don't know what's wrong with me today. Talk."

"Look-all I want now is to learn to use psychology to help people."

"Psychology doesn't help people."

"I'm outta here."

"Wait!" He clutched my shoulder. "What helps people has nothing to do with psychology. It's not what theory you use, or what words you say."

"What helps people, then?"

"When a person feels seen, and you sense them feeling seen, and you feel seen by them. Right then, in that moment, there's a touch of the spirit. That's it, that's all. Spirit. Healing in psychotherapy is an act of spirit."

"I don't know from 'spirit.' I know you can't prove it, but I still-"

"Of course I can prove it. Psychology you can't prove, but spirit's easy to prove." He smiled. "Want me to prove it?" I nodded. "You're breathing, okay?"

"You want me to answer that?"

"Yes."

"Yes, I am breathing."

"Good. So'm I. Now, next step: stop breathing."

I held my breath, as long as I could, and then breathed out.

"No, no," Malik said, "I said, 'Stop breathing.' "

"I did."

"I mean stop breathing period."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Try 'n' stop breathing, see how far you get. Are you doing the breathing? Or is the life-breath something beyond you, something we call 'spirit'?"

"But I'm not there, Malik, I'm on real shaky ground. I need some real, concrete guidance. Freud and A.K. have it. Why are you bugging me, why?"