Francis Levy - Seven Days in Rio

That was precisely the problem: my intellectuality is a defense that I often use to avoid confronting my issues. I still play the good student, coming home to mommy and looking for approval. I have always tried to impress my analysts with how much I know about analytic theory. But it’s not limited to psychoanalysis. I know just as much about automobile repair as I do about analysis or prostitution. For instance, when I had a problem with the knocking sound coming from the engine of my beat-up, old Ford, I was more knowledgeable about what was going on with the distributor than the mechanic. Like the old comedian Professor Irwin Corey, I’m one of those guys who tries to be the “world’s foremost authority,” but sometimes I actually succeed. That was part of the problem. Not only was I gratifying my fantasy of being the best and most interesting patient China had ever had in her practice, I also felt that I could one-up her at her own game. I might not have been able to be a good whore, but I did have the disconcerting feeling that I might have out-analyzed my own analyst. If indeed she had fallen head-over-heels in love with me, as appeared to be the case, I could conceivably be more on top of the situation than she was. Even if I had also fallen for China, I’d been able to maintain my neutrality as a patient. In other words, if she hadn’t gotten down on her knees and sucked my cock, I certainly would have been able to curb the turbulent emotions China had aroused in me by exposing the organ that rhymed with her namesake.

“Have you run all this by Schmucker?” I inquired.

“Of course. He’s my lover.”

A sudden burst of homicidal jealousy served as a good indicator of the depth of my passion for China. While it was considered a breach of professional ethics for an analyst to have sex with his or her patient, there had been many celebrated cases of such goings-on, especially in the early years of analysis, the most famous involving a young woman named Sabina Spielrein, who had been a patient of Jung’s.

“He’s also your supervisor, isn’t he?” I said, thinking that China might consult with Schmucker about me, in the way that Jung had consulted Freud about Spielrein. As I listened to China try to address both my amorous and competitive fantasies, I began to think that someday I might use all the knowledge I’d gained through the painful and joyous experiences of my time in Rio to help other people. I might not become a full-fledged analyst, as Spielrein had, but at the very least I had enough onsite experience to become a counselor to prostitutes.

I’d read about the movement toward intersubjectivity in analysis, in which the notion of the analyst as a distant tabula rasa on which the patient projects his or her fantasies had been questioned. It was widely acknowledged that the benefits of neutrality are often outweighed by the inequities of a one-sided, at times authoritarian relationship. I wondered if the changing relationship between China and me wasn’t reflective of some of the new currents in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic communities. Even though we had only been seeing each other for a relatively short period of time, it was obvious that there was a sea change between our first few minutes together and what was now beginning to transpire. Whether the deeper changes in analytic theory were affecting us or not, there was no doubt that China needed me as much, if not more, than I needed her. One of the by-products of this particular analysis was that the patient and the analyst had reversed roles, with the patient now performing a therapeutic and healing function for his own analyst.

“I think you should probably run this by Schmucker,” I suggested.

“I don’t think that what has been going on during this session can be called analysis,” China confessed. Our session ended, more or less as quickly as it had begun, and when she answered the door after the requisite ten-second interval, her demeanor was markedly changed. She had arranged her blouse and her hair and she seemed remarkably composed. She flipped on the television, as was her custom.

“I don’t know where to begin today,” I began, pretending that I was a run-of-the-mill analytic patient who came for his 50 minutes once a day, four days a week.

“I feel self-conscious for some reason,” I added.

There had never been any pretense about our unconventional schedule at any time during the previous day’s sessions. I simply came in and out of the hotel room, neither acknowledging nor denying that it was a strange practice. I just went along with the arrangement, to say nothing of the fact that China often seemed to be more interested in what was on TV than in the analysis itself.

“Why don’t you simply talk about your feelings?” she offered.

“I guess what I’m worried about is that I’ve gotten to like you. You’re the kind of whore I could make a life with, but you’re my analyst . My discomfort is compounded by the fact that I will be returning to New York in a couple of days and I don’t even know where your practice is. Of course, you’re my analyst, so it’s not necessarily important that I know anything more about you other than where I have to go for my appointments. But I feel like it wouldn’t be totally unprofessional if you told me a few things about your life in New York. Can we at least make an appointment?”

China looked in her appointment book, which lay on the hassock on which she rested her legs. She had a look of concern on her face. I had to be realistic and confront the fact that it was unlikely she would see me as intensively as she had in Rio. I was afraid that she was going to tell me she couldn’t fit me in, but I was flabbergasted when she informed me that, while she had available sessions, she wasn’t sure how it would work into my schedule, since she didn’t live and practice in New York at all, but in Vancouver.

“Vancouver!” I cried. “I’ve been telling you I live in Manhattan. Listen, I’d gladly move to Vancouver to marry you and pay you for love, but I’m still trying to find a relationship with a whore I can pay for sex. I guess I was thinking I could get a two-for-one and pay someone to be both my whore and my analyst.”

“You feel you are paying for my favors?” she asked, raising one of her perfectly groomed eyebrows.

“Well you wouldn’t have seen me unless I’d paid, and I don’t think we would have tried to have sex unless we’d had the transference that resulted from the analysis. I’ve been getting two services for the price of one, and for all intents and purposes I would have been quite satisfied, that is until you informed me that you were geographically challenged.”

“Life isn’t perfect,” China said. She abruptly flicked off the television. The sound of the cheering crowds that had always accompanied our sessions was suddenly gone, and we were just facing each other in silence. I noticed that China’s legs were crossed primly in a way that no longer let me see her vagina. Even though she didn’t say anything, something had changed between us. Perhaps I’d inadvertently terminated the analysis with my last outburst. Like a good analyst, China had heard what I wasn’t yet able to admit to myself. She’d seen that I was beginning to understand the inherent limitations of the analytic situation, and that the person I felt the most intimate with was also someone who wasn’t really a part of my life.

I got up and left the room. I could have waited a few seconds and rang the doorbell, pretending nothing had happened, but I didn’t. For a moment, standing in the elevator down to the lobby, I wondered if there’d really been an understanding between us, and if the therapy was in fact over.

On a pragmatic level, I also wondered if she was going to charge me for missing our last sessions. I knew in my heart that what I’d seen and felt was true, but, compulsively, I told myself that I ought to go back to room 1269 just to check. I could tell her that I was coming back because I wanted to give her a billing address so she could mail me a final invoice. I would tell her to send the bill to my office, just to make it clear that I wouldn’t be coming anymore.