The patient is a fifty-year-old woman, divorced, with a twenty-five-year-old son who is independent. She is dark haired and dark eyed, a middling attractive woman. She comes from New York, the youngest of three children: an elder brother followed by a sister and then herself. The brother was an accountant with a leading, worldwide firm, and helped the patient get a job with this same firm. Her major had been in business, and she had also earned an MBA from a good Eastern university. She came to Los Angeles to get away from family and in-laws after her divorce became final some ten years ago; she wanted to make a fresh start. This she has done so well that she is a mid-level manager with ambitions to go higher.

Her parents are elderly and live in a retirement home; her sister is a married homemaker; her brother, the eldest sibling, is a more distant figure. She is an ideal candidate for psychoanalysis in that she is unmarried, has no current romantic interest, and has no real obligations to family. She helps out monetarily with the care of her parents, with whom she talks frequently by phone, and whom she visits often enough to satisfy her conscience.

In addition to business she had majored in the humanities, and over the years developed a great interest in psychoanalysis. She had a prior analytic experience in New York but was left restless and enquiring by it.

Several years ago she came to see me, having heard about my work from a former patient. We began a four-times-a-week analysis that has been going on for more than five years. Her major complaint was a restlessness and boredom in life. She had no symptoms that bothered her except this pervasive ennui.

Now as time has gone by and as she has learned more about herself, she has developed a broader and deeper interest in analysis, so much so that she began attending various analytic meetings that were open to the public. At the time of this session she had just come back from a national analytic meeting in the East that I had also attended.

The stimulus of these two dreams was the beginning of serious dating by the patient after she felt ready to do that judiciously. She had sporadically dated during the course of her analysis but with disastrous results to herself.

Dating in one's 40s, 50s, and 60s is, in a way, a new phenomenon and the culture is coming to realize it is neither simple nor easy, for the goals are not that of the young person who sees the other - male or female - in terms of children and commitment to rearing them. Obviously different goals must be derived since this part of life is essentially behind us. However, what is not behind us is the subtle presence of the mother's imprint in all its virulence.

Dream One July 18, 2008

I am analyzing events, feelings and emotions. There are all sorts of actions that can be taken. I am trying to see which would be most beneficial. I examine and discuss them with my teacher. We put some away. Others are possible. Do I load them into the trunk of my car to take with me?

Association:

As I write down this dream, playing in my mind are the lyrics to the song – “Live and Let Die”. It was the theme song to a James Bond movie of the same title, sung by Paul McCartney…..”And in this ever changing world in which we live in, makes me give in and cry – live and let die.”

Dream Two July 18, 2008

Mother is giving me tiny pieces of advice. I need to listen and see which pieces make sense. I need to run it all through me. What does it mean? I can’t understand it well.

Associations:

Patient: Both dreams have the same theme – information is being provided, analyzed, sorted and accepted or not. In the first dream, I’m with my teacher. I think that’s you. The weird thing about the stuff being analyzed is that it appears like ropes or strings of light. Feelings aren’t tangible. But in the dream the feelings being analyzed were very tangible – they were strings of light. The ones I decided to keep could be laid in the trunk of my car.

Dr. B: Why are they strings?

Patient: I think they are your interpretations. I think your words are like threads of insight. Thread is like string. Many strings bound together are rope. I think I am sorting out what you are saying and how much of it I can take into my personality which is my car.

Interpretations:

Dr. B: You put these strings and ropes in the trunk of your car. Your car is like your mind. You are keeping the information in the back of your mind. It’s like saying that you are considering it and trying to determine at some point how and when you will reach in and use it.

Patient: I’m not using any of the interpretations well or intelligently now. I feel stupid and stuck. All the dreams this week have been about the need to be patient and wait. Wait for an answer. Wait for guidance. I’m sick of waiting and being patient. I want to be feeling better. I want to feel happy. I’m depressed and sad and grieving. I feel no end in sight. I want to quit everything and live an unenlightened less emotionally challenging life. I’m sick of trying to achieve a clearer mind and heart. There is no connection to God. I’m isolated and alone. I want to quit therapy.

Dr. B: You told me that many of your friends have called to check on you and ask how you are doing as you grieve your Father’s death. So, you are not alone.

Patient: Even though they call, it does not help. I feel lost, lonely and so deeply bereft I can hardly breathe. The emptiness inside me is so vast that I have no way to bridge it or fill it or survive it. I want to slip into the grave and follow my Dad. It would be easier than to suffer like this.

Dr. B: You are not suffering only the loss of your Father. You are suffering the feelings of loss you felt as an infant. This is another experience of the grief and loss you felt when a part of you – the essence of you – was dealt a blow of unconscious material from your Mother. The wound was vast and deep. You were reeling from the blow. Parts of you were destroyed leaving an empty, lonely void. You are feeling those feelings now.

Patient: The words that came to me are “blunt force trauma”. That’s all I can think. That’s how I feel inside. Everything is the outcome of a blunt force trauma – like being hit on the head with a massive club. You see stars and lose your orientation. You are frozen from the blow.

Dr. B: Imagine as an infant being dealt such a blow. The pain would be unimaginable. You are defenseless. You don’t know why it happened. You don’t know what to do. What can you do? You have no skills. You can’t talk. You’re an infant. You suffer terribly. How can you survive this?

Patient: I got a massage last night. The muscle under my heart was so sore that even when the massage therapist touched it lightly – like pressing a doorbell button – so lightly – I was screaming and shaking. I couldn’t tolerate it. It hurt more than anything.

Dr. B: The physical body was suffering the memories and emotions that were not processed out of the unconscious. The pain is so deep and pervasive that even our sessions this week could not alleviate it all so it got stuck in your heart and surrounding muscles and tissues.

Patient: My scoliosis is twinging right now. I feel like I could just barf. I am so sad. I feel so alone. I feel like I did as a child. No Mother or Father to hold me. I have no memory of every being hugged or kissed by my mother.

Dr. B: Never?

Patient: Never. I have no memory of it at all.

Dr. B: This splitting asunder of your psyche would have been so painful and destructive for you that you would have sought some mechanism to survive it. This is the beginning of your need and desire to be special and get the gold star. Some part of you determined that if you could achieve intellectually, your Mother would be pleased. That would encourage her to take care of you, hug you, kiss you, love you. You would survive. It was the start of your incredible need to bring home the gold star – “Good girl” and a pat on the head from Mom. “Whew, I must be loved”, is what you thought. And from there, it became a survival pattern for you – perform, achieve, be recognized and then you are special and you will survive. Your incredible need to be special makes you vulnerable to the world and to men. If a man treats you as special, you react as if he is your Mother and you believe that he will dispense to you the right to survive and all the love your Mother never gave you. This is your Achilles’ heel. We have discussed it many times. You feel special and you fall over. You forget everything you know and have learned and you are willing to do almost anything. You will even put yourself at risk of dying – just to feel special. You thought that if you were special to Mom, she would love you, feed you, nurture you and you would survive. You make men into Mom. You think you will only survive if you are special to them – then they will take care of you like Mom. You will not die if you are special. But you drown yourself with these men because you are so thirsty. You are like a dying man in the desert. You come upon water and drink so much so fast that your body goes into shock and you die. A little water is like a little love – in small doses – is what is necessary.

Patient: I can’t do this any other way. I can’t survive without being special. How am I supposed to give this up? It’s a part of me that is so deep that I can’t even find its source.

Dr. B: I just told you its source – the imprint. Your Mother is its source – she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t help it. But she is the source. And now it’s time for you to live and time for you to let this die. That’s why you are dreaming the song “Live and Let Die”.

Patient: I want to do that. I don’t know if I’m worthy.

Dr. B: Your Mother is giving you permission. She is giving you tiny pieces of advice in your second dream. She is giving you small apologies to help mend the wound. She is saying she is sorry.

Patient: So I am supposed to do this for my Mother? Give up my Achilles’ heel and my need to be special?

Dr. B: Everyone likes to be special. Of course you want that. But to want to be special to the point of risking your happiness, health, well-being and even your life is not what you want to be doing.

Patient: For whose benefit am I giving it all up?

Dr. B: You tell me – for whom?

Patient: For you. I have to give it up to prove that I am worthy of this work – to prove your theories and show that the work can be done.

Dr. B: No, absolutely not. Do nothing for me. If people wish to work with me, that is their choice. If they decide this work is not for them, that is also fine. No – you cannot do the work for me. You can only do it for yourself.

Patient: Then I guess I have to do it for me.

Dr. B: That’s right. Everything you do is only for you. What you think and believe and feel is all about your life. It’s up to you to make your decisions and live your life and accept the consequences of what you do.

Patient: But if I make this change and give up this part of my imprint, I don’t know who I will be. I don’t know if I can do it just for me.

Dr. B: Since there is a lot of God consciousness in your analysis, do it for God. Do it in service to God and to honor God. After all there is the song you wake to and if we apply the lyrics to your situation, is it not saying “Live and Let Die” what has always been painful and no longer useful. Your unconscious intuits exactly the right song with absolutely the right message.

Patient: That I could do. I can do it for me and for God. Together. For us both. If it honors God, it is good. I could live and let the past die.

Dream July 21, 2008

I am reprogramming the computer to be sure all the codes are in. They must be right. The information needs to be correct and ready for a seminar where I will be speaking and participating. The song in my head at awakening: “Man From Galilee.

I’m on a trip in Europe. I’m trying to get into my hotel room but must enter through the room next door. They just painted it so it is smelly. Now my room smells like paint. I’m actually in a consulate of some sort. Security is high. I have a large valise of peaches. I’m going to take it on the plane home for snacks. It will be heavy. Maybe my ex-husband will carry it – first to the train station where we have to walk. Then the train will take us to the plane. But I have to go downstairs to the lobby to pay 900 pounds for my ticket. There is a young girl – 14 or so – downstairs. I give her my phone number by writing it on a piece of paper and holding it up through the glass pane of a window. She’ll call me to make plans. She hands me medicine through the window – what’s it for?

Associations:

Patient: The computer reprogramming is obviously about our work together. The dreams and your interpretations are reprogramming my unconscious and reorganizing my mind. I need to get the detail and structure just right for me.

Dr. B: What is the issue in the hotel?

Patient: First, I’m annoyed because I have to go through a smelly just painted room to get to mine. But I think the consulate is also about our work together. In this office working through my feelings,/. I am safe. Just like there is safety in a consulate. High security.

Dr. B: Don’t you also get a visa at a consulate?

Patient: I suppose, but so what?

Interpretations:

Dr. B: You are trying to get to a foreign place – a new place in your psyche that you haven’t known before now – the place where you don’t need to be special to survive. You will need this work to do that. You will need a visa to get there and get your emotional situation resolved.

Patient: If I’m not special, I won’t be loved. Being special has driven my whole life – the men I married, the jobs and colleagues…my question is always the same. Do they like me? Are they nice to me? Am I special? Do they love me? My whole life was crafted around who would treat me as special because finally I’d then have the love my Mom didn’t give me. That is what I thought. That is how I functioned.

Dr. B: Astonishing, isn’t it? A whole life crafted around the pathology of needing to be special which came from an imprint where your Mother also had a deficit. She wasn’t loved or kissed by her Mother. It is a huge, severe deficit not to be hugged or kissed. What normal person doesn’t want to cuddle, hug and hold a two year old or three year old. It’s inconceivable that as a young baby/toddler/child that this was denied to you.

Patient: I suddenly understand why I am so impulsive with men and physical chemistry. My sexual response is very fast. I can just be kissing and my readiness goes from zero to 60 mph in ten seconds. I’m only being kissed. But that’s enough. Finally–affection. The hugs and kisses that I missed as a child are all wrapped up with the kisses from a veritable stranger. I’m so happy to be kissed that I am overwhelmed with desire -/. The kiss means life and survival when it was from Mom and now it means the same from these men. I am making them the loving Mommy I didn’t have – the affectionate, kissing Mommy.

Dr. B: We are back to water in the desert. You are like a man dying of thirst who comes upon the oasis. These men are like a drink that you drown in. It all gets spoiled for you. A dying man in the desert cannot drink too much too fast or he will die. His body loses its homeostasis. You are doing the same and losing your balance with men.

Patient: Why am I paying 900 pounds for a ticket? Isn’t “9” the hermit?

Dr. B: If you understand and integrate these changes about needing to be special, you will have achieved a perspective and an understanding. You will be like the wise old hermit on the mountaintop – observing and being Light. He is the Light and he shines the Light for others.

Patient: I think I am dreaming of my ex-husband as a substitute for my Mother. Am I still traveling with my Mother even though I am trying to minimize the impact of the imprint?

Dr. B: The smelly, painted room is your Mother who you are freshly painting -- an attempt to white-wash the reality of your imprint -- giving her a new face, making her a new Mom. But why is she smelly? Because you know underneath the new paint she still is the person responsible for your pain. Your ex-husband is your Mother in the dream, but you make him carry the heavy bag of peaches. The peaches are the hugs and kisses you never got – someone is peachy if they’re sweet. You kiss a peachy girl – a sweet loveable girl is a peach. You want your ex-husband, AKA your mother, to deliver the peachy kisses and hugs. She needs to claim the bag and carry it for you because she didn’t dispense the kisses in life. You are giving her what she did not have in life.

Patient: Why the girl of 14 years old with the phone number written and held up at the glass window?

Dr. B: You are trying to communicate this information about being special to the teenage girl part of you. You are holding up your number – a phone number is a way to get in contact. You are wanting your adolescent self to understand that needing to be special is what drove you to fall in love with your first husband. It’s that need to be special that’s driving you now to act like a hormonal teenager when it comes to men. It doesn’t work for 14 year olds, and it won’t work for you now.

Patient: Nothing in my life has worked because of this severe deficit of love. I’ve looked to fill it all my life in all aspects of my life. If I don’t need to be special because I heal that part of my imprint, what will happen?

Dr. B: You will have balance and peace. You will hold the Light for your own life and hold the Light for others.

COMMENTARY

I will take these two sessions together and point out the transition from the desperation of feeling deeply the impact emotionally for the first time to the point of wanting to die and be done with life. These feelings I take to be those she had on experiencing the blunt blow of the imprint and its consequent devastation. It is interesting that she said, at the time, "I feel I am in a cocoon suffering and nothing can come in to alleviate that suffering." I think this pictures the plight of the infant as it has just received the blow.

There was no question of the authenticity of this expression and I think it is important to realize how these feelings, split off and repressed for a lifetime, can surge and break the surface of consciousness to overwhelm the personality.

Naturally for the therapist it occasions a great deal of very careful observation so that it is controlled and does not lead to an unfortunate accident.

Further it is interesting that the patient wakes up with a song which clues the therapist into what is going on and helps to make very real for the patient what she is dealing with and what she must put to rest at last.

The second dream is essentially dealing with trying to rehabilitate her mother. Her second husband, like her first, represented her mother. Of course the imprint, doing what it does, operates silently and unconsciously for the patient to repeat her infantile trauma.

The dream identifies her efforts to rehabilitate a mother, to make her capable of having peaches (love, kisses and hugs) to give to the patient and we see attempts to connect with a younger version of herself, so there is integration going on all the while.

It is as if the patient is saying, "I will give you what you did not have," to the mother, "and what you did not get in your infancy and childhood. I can do this and now we can both have what we need."

The question for the analyst, is this a further idealization of the mother even though the mother has passed? It is not a good idea for the patient for she would then unconsciously invest someone, perhaps a future husband, with these qualities that do not exist.

The answer to this question came in a later session in which the patient dreams she was in college and in the lunchroom picking up a plate to select her food from the cafeteria line. She found a small plate used for bread and butter under the large plate and it was used. She put the dirty plate down. Her association to the applesauce was that she could take medication only by opening the capsules up and mixing them with applesauce. It was the only way she could take pills. Then she recalled her first mother-in-law had given her a large vitamin pill, which she swallowed. She felt a raw, burning pain down the length of her esophagus. From then on she had to take all medication with applesauce. She said, "I think this is good. I can put the plate down and I do feel better, calmer about myself. I have never been more efficient at my work and I have a different take on T," a man very interested in her sexually, "Even on M," a man she thought she might see next week. Moreover she doesn't feel that sexually turned on by thinking of him as she did before. "There has been a change in me", she said.

I said, "A good one. And we can understand the applesauce is the idealization of your mother, the only way you can swallow the medicine. Mother's do good things for us in the main but they do hurt us, as you described in your dream of the bump on your head and the pain in having to swallow the imprint which was excruciating for you, like swallowing the vitamin pill." We sweeten it with applesauce. Now if you put the plate down, you no longer need the applesauce. You no longer need to deny what you have denied your whole life."

CODA ONE

As a coda to this aspect of the dream I reiterate that all infants are "knocked on the head" by the mother’s unconscious, unbearable feelings in varying degrees with varying consequences none of which offer good solutions for living.

We all have our own brand of applesauce to get the bitter pill of our imprint "down our throats". For some or many it remains a streak of soreness in the whole reach of the esophagus and we all have some modality of trying to tamp it down, trying to not let it erupt in our daily lives.

CODA TWO

I think it is necessary and important to note that in the dark night of the soul as when one is seized by the unexpectedly cruel pain of the imprint, there is Spirit which makes its contact to sustain the life of the organism incarnated. I ask you to remember the two songs to which the patient awakes.

Psychoanalysis at this level can usually bring back this contact, this illustration that Spirit is ever with us especially in our most perilous moments.

LYRICS:
Artist: Paul McCartney/Wings
Song: Live and Let Die

When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say life and let live
(you know you did, you know you did, you know you did)
But in this ever changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry

Say live and let die
Live and let die
Live and let die
Live and let die

What does it matter to ya
When you got a job to do
You gotta do it well
You gotta give the other fellow hell

(Repeat of first two stanzas)

LYRICS:
Song: Man from Galilee

Put your hand in the hand of the man
          Who stilled the water
Put your hand in the hand of the man
          Who calmed the sea
          Take a look at yourself
And you can look at others differently
Put your hand in the hand of the man
          From Galilee

My momma taught me how to pray
Before I reached the age of seven
When I’m down on my knees
That’s when I’ closest to heaven
Daddy lived his life, two kids and a wife
Well you do what you must do
But he showed me enough of what it takes
To get me through.

(Repeat chorus)