Category Archive

How I love the silence of the consulting room when my patients are in their deep sleep and my fees are being paid. For me it’s like a lunch-hour nap I can be awake to enjoy. Two minutes ago, the confetti of their grievances was everywhere, and then—snap! I haven’t seen them this relaxed since, well, since last week. Concerned observers might ask why I don’t cure them. The answer is: I don’t cure, and there is no cure for riding a dead horse. Their problems are solved in advice columns every day. Mom, Dad, you’re sexually incompatible. That was clear when you were dating, but the fact that she liked to give you something “for special occasions” seemed charming. She’s unfulfilled, but not by you; for fulfillment she’d need a goal, and for that she’d need an imagination. No “occasion” will ever again be “special” enough. Why can you not see this? The kids see it. They “act out” because their personal family sitcom is all situation and no comedy, plus detention is cool in their circle. It’s no wonder I prefer the whole lot of them hypnotized. They dress well. If I propped their heads up, they could be posing for a catalogue. My diagnostic training is wasted on the bland. What I wouldn’t give for just one pungent psychosis that would flavor every family enmeshment, or a deviant strain of parentification over generations. I had a vocation for that, I thought; instead, I’m solving riddles of why girls eat, or why they don’t. Or why daddy here thinks his pothole under repair of a wife is unsexy. Maybe that’s the deepest plumbing of the heart; maybe my problems are as obvious as theirs; maybe I’m the one who’s being cheated when I put them down.

Copyright © January 1, 2007