Mysteries are great fun. We are compelled by the great mystery writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Dashell Hammett, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Simenon to buy their books and millions have been sold all over the world. Each country has its' number of famous writers and the people in the world have their favorite.

Without making it an intensive research project, one might ask why are people so fascinated by these mystery-detective stories. They are all to do with a crime of some sort, characters that fill the pages with action, romantic interludes and a confusion about the ending, carefully thought out by the writer, who wishes to mystify us to the very end. We are borne along the story, relish the details, the conversations, the sensuous exhibitions but always by the turn of events - all meant to puzzle us yet to keep our attention going so we must finish the story whether late at night, on the subway, during lunch, on an airplane, whatever.

My thought about it is that lurking behind every mystery, every detective story is the search all of us are making, some more consciously, to find ourselves and to know ourselves. Even those who read with swift superficiality are creating ripples in their unconscious. One day a wave may dash upon a more receptive shore.

Certainly our own early life, in the womb, is a mystery to us with all kinds of strange noises and feelings permeating through us, sudden pains that frighten us terribly and still there are pleasurable feelings that come through us. All must be a wonder, a question, when we do not yet have the apparatus to question, let alone receive an answer.

It seems there must be infinity of mysteries about our early life even after birth; the strange people who we don't know, the objects that surround them and us, are “creatures” for a long time, anymore than we know ourselves as related to a thing or a creature or a human being.

All of that sorting out comes later and, by the time what we call civilization arrives - that is talking, recognizing familiar faces and functions, and other faces and bodies in the vicinity - we tend to be forgetting about all the mystery of the womb, the birth and, so it seems, about the utter impossibility of fathoming any of it.

Yet, if I am right, those who write such books -that is mystery and detective books - must be engaged in the way they know how to delve in the prose of their artistry, to explore the subject and attempt to master it by creating stories with twists and turns, surprises, moments of fear, moments of pleasure - all the elements I have described as part of the mystery of early life.

These stories have all been produced on the radio, in movies, on TV and in the theater. This is not solely an American phenomenon but a human one since every country has its' favorite writers and the aficionados sometimes cross the oceans to discover exotic talent. All of us are on a quest to find out who we are and what we are and how did we get to be ourselves. We are correct to do that because - I can say - so few people are what they present to the public or even who they present to themselves.

I have written extensively about Charles Cohen. Those who have read my book (The Mother's Signature, Chapter 13, Case 8) know a lot about him and how he became a gay man. Succeeding essays on my website (The Prayer and the Gift and Where God Is) have added additional information to his knowing himself. At times this analysis has been a surprise to him but overall he finds himself still without a companion (his initial complaint), but busy with many projects and carrying on and living an interesting life.

Inevitably we must come to the mother and father of all mysteries, the Immutable Mover of all things in the universe. It is as if this Force said, "Here's the deal. You see all I have done before you. Now figure it out. Some of you have been clever enough to discover when I did it and how I did it but not why. Keep at it and find ME."

Mankind has been on this journey for thousands of years, each generation in its own way putting down a little of the road. It has required the development of scientific inquiry in every manifest field of human accomplishment. It has been the evolution of consciousness of ourselves and the universe around us. We persevere in our insect like devotion doing the task, extending the path another bit. "Find ME and you shall know it all."

"Find Me."

Below is a summary of the dream the patient told me in this recent session.

DREAM - 2010, April 1, April Fool’s Day

An old woman friend is on vacation in a small hotel by the sea. Short, each weekday she appears on the boardwalk outside the hotel wearing white. On Sundays she appears wearing yellow.

In a play in a small downstairs theater, I have the main part. A short good-looking man I know from years ago has a small part. “You look great,” he tells me. Dandling him on my knee, I tell him, “You look delicious.” Someone laughs at the word “delicious.”

DREAM - 2010, April 4, Easter Sunday

On a crowded Florida beach surrounded by buildings and beach bungalows -- I sit on a deck chair facing the ocean. A couple of friends sit to my left. To my right sits my longtime lover with whom I’m quarreling as always. He’s furious with me. But we’re holding hands. Where we sit is partly sunny, partly shade – stripes of sun and shade.

Patient: These two dreams feel like slim pickings.

Dr. B: Where is the beach where the woman appears?

Patient: I want to say Italy.

Dr. B: What resort?

Patient: I’m not sure. Oh, I know. There’s a Noel Coward song in which a respectable English widow after her husband’s funeral travels to “a bar on the Picola Marina” to pick up sailors.

Dr. B: Tell me about the crowded beach in Florida.

Patient: It feels a little like New York where I have a small apartment facing the Hudson, but everywhere around it is crowded with buildings. This is the part of the city where Tom lived too. I associate lying on deck chairs with Tom’s recovery from heart surgeries.

Dr. B: Who is the man you dandle on your knee?

Patient: Well, he’s short. He could be an actual three-year-old who indeed I find delicious. Or he could be one of three short gay men I knew many years ago. All three were interested in me, but I didn’t like any of them much.

Dr. B: You could write a short story about that.

Patient: Ha!

Dr. B: If you associate the short actor with men you didn’t like, how come you call him delicious?

Patient: I don’t know.

Dr. B: I think he's the part of you that you projected on to Tom. I’ve been waiting for ten years for this dream. Now we finally know why you loved Tom so much. He was your “delicious” three-year-old self. Of course Tom and you argued because —

Patient: He didn’t want an image projected on to him. Who would?

Dr. B: The sun and shade are prison stripes. You were in prison.

Patient: Who’s the woman?

Dr. B: A spiritual woman who is freed. Maybe on Sundays she likes to have sex, God bless her.

Patient: If I find my three-year-old self delicious --

Dr. B: I think you do, and your mother did.

Patient: – why didn't I incorporate him instead of projecting him on to Tom?
Dr. B: You’ll have to dream about that, won’t you? These dreams weren't slim pickings.

COMMENTARY

Analysts by nature are suspicious people. Their ears are unusually attuned to language, to the inflections and usages of expressions. So when the patient says "slim pickings" and went on to tell me a quite respectable dream, I wondered why. To me "slim pickings" would be a dream with a feeling or a dream with only a word or a fleeting scene barely recalled, a person's face; slim in that it would leave the dreamer frustrated, unable to go further, unable to push into the veil. But as you read the dream above, this was not the case. There were amble associations and when I heard them I understood the meaning of the dream and understood the intensity of the patient's 40-year-old love affair in which his love and devotion to another man seemed to be all in the patient's mind. It did not matter that a number of people who knew him and his lover had told him he was foolish because his lover did not really care that much for him. It had been a question that I asked myself years ago when I knew everything I did at the time. The question was why? I had put aside actively thinking of why the patient had devoted 40 years of his life to another person who was not particularly happy about their relationship. This unhappiness is reflected in the dream as the reader might go back and see. I know that usually in analysis asking a direct question does not bring much reward so in this session the answer came unexpectedly, when the patient might be able to tell me, unbeknownst to himself, and the answer did not come up like "…thunder across the bay" (lyrics from song “On The Road to Mandalay). It was quietly said.

There it was with a "short" man who he dangled upon his knee calling him delicious. Anyone would know at once this is a little child and the patient did say, "It's what I call an actual friend who is three". So I expected it would be his mother. After all, do not grownups say to little children, "You are so sweet, so delicious, so delectable, I could eat you."

I recalled his mother did have a name for him when he was little. It was a French word for a little deer. That is all he thought of at the time but that was not really the answer because in thinking of the little man he thought of three friends, none of whom he liked. Why would he project this "delicious" aspect of himself into his lover who never really accepted this projection? It did not explain why he invested 40 years of his life giving up his professional promise and his career to look after not his life or career but his lovers. Now we know it was this "delicious" part of himself he was looking after so carefully and so lovingly.

So when we say homosexuality is a narcissistic disorder, this open statement above is a confirmation of that observation. This for me was a mystery solved.

The question - is this a prototype for relationships between same sex individuals? I believe it is. If so it has profound implications for understanding people so involved.

There are other questions that derive from this session. Who was the old woman who was pure, who dresses in white six days a week and wears a yellow dress, yellow like the sun, on Sunday? It was my thought she (in reality the patient) is harking back to pagan days before there were strictures or mores, guilt and remorse, before there were the various religions who built up a code of morality. The patient still has discreet lovers. Libido still lives and it wants its' say.

I share this essay with the reader because I assume you too would like to be in on the unraveling of the mystery of these patients who have been willing to share their lives of pain and suffering, their intimate moments passing through the maze of daily life with its' disappointments, its' deaths and the knowledge it is ever closing in on us. At the patient's age there are more closures than beginnings. He has known what it is to see friends fall away during the great aids epidemic, the ravaging of the city and the country. Yet he still is here, still working and writing, and in the main optimistic, yet still and again "slim pickings". Why?

To be continued.......

ADDENDUM

The patient said he felt different after the last hour and that his dreams since then seemed different.

Dr. B: I am glad you bring up that last hour for there is still the problem with this scene of you holding the short man on your knee and calling him "delicious". We know now that must have been what your mother called you or felt about you. The further problem is why you have attached this term to the three short men whom you do not like. Can you explain that?

Patient: Offhand I can't.

Dr. B: Let me remind you that your mother's name for you was little deer or fawn.

Patient: I think I identified with my mother in loving someone, me.

Dr. B: You must have identified with your mother in her distaste for masculinity. I would say that the three short men would represent the male genitals. You, or really your mother, did not like that for herself and you identified with your mother and didn't like it for yourself. We know from past history that your mother was not a particularly sexual woman.

Patient: But I do like men.

Dr. B: If we look at your beloved, you projected "delicious" onto him, a projection he did not particularly like, and you cared for him much as your mother cared for you as a child.

Patient: That's true. I did not abandon him for 40 years, no matter what. I guess that is how a mother would be.

Dr. B: Your mother was never the beloved. See how faithfully you've reproduced this situation, never to be loved yet loving another. You understand then how difficult it would be to find a companion if you are not carrying that vibration but only the vibration of loving a "delicious" child, which Tom apparently was for you.

COMMENTARY

The session of this day turned to another subject due to a death in the patient's family. It was, as much as such things can be, a "good" dying that brought the family together. It seemed to me the patient provided a source of strength to his family. Of course, this is something he can do very well. He can be a devoted giver of love and comfort.

DREAM – April 14

I try to climb up an escalator. Then I'm standing at the foot of that escalator with a dear friend, a woman. She is greeting a seemingly endless line of people. Everyone shake hands with her and then goes up the escalator. I notice an old friend, Luke, who committed suicide many years ago. He shakes her hand and goes up the escalator. Another person on the line is a very old Fred Astaire. He has something in his hand. He says, “I have a gift for you.” He's going to teach us ballroom dancing. We are to go upstairs and dance.

ASSOCIATIONS

Patient: I have talked to you before about my dear friend. She is very beautiful and very old now. I saw her recently, bed-ridden; she's attended around the clock. She is alertly present at times and sometimes she floats off. The TV is playing constantly so that she can look at it anytime she wants. She has a beautiful air about her and her smile is a blessing. Her cheeks are filled out. Probably for the first time in a long time she is receiving proper nourishment - by tube. Her hair is short and white, truly a crown. I think she must represent the Divine Mother.

Dr. B: And what about Luke?

Patient: He was a creative genius. But eventually when he discovered he had AIDS, he committed suicide. Everyone on the line seemed to come from the same world, somehow. We had something in common. I think that Fred Astaire is you and the gift you are giving is really your work, which teaches people the dance of life.

Dr. B: I teach people about the impact of their unconscious, about what is in the unconscious that is causing ripples and, more than ripples, causing storms that break into the consciousness and disrupt our daily lives. I think to be represented by Fred Astaire is indeed a high compliment. All of us have to learn to really dance in life, which means all of us have to be aware of what is in our unconscious and understand it.

April 2010