Patient: I want to tell you this dream I had this morning.

Dr. B: OK

Patient: I was on a train going somewhere. I didn't know just where and I was with a friend. My friend said you can stop off at "X" - I didn't know the place. I really didn't know any of the towns we passed. My friend who was behind me said, "There's an attractive girl you can meet at this town since I know you are in the market to meet someone." I nodded my head.

The patient continued, "It's true I'm looking to meet a nice woman. I still want to have a family and a happy life even at my age (62). Somehow there is no order in my life or in my house. When I was married to my last wife it was just awful. Everything was a mess. Now even without her it's still not right though I can arrange my house as I want.

Dr. B: Why are you not excited about meeting the attractive girl? You talk a great deal here about wanting to meet an attractive woman.

Patient: I realized in the dream that I kept making excuses so that I would not be able to meet her.

Dr. B: Who was this woman?

Patient: She wasn’t anyone I recognized. I guessed the friend I couldn't see must be you.

Dr. B: What about going somewhere on a train?
Patient: I don’t really know anything about trains. What would be the meaning of a train?

Dr. B: The train is a metaphor for your life and all the towns are places you can choose to be or not to be. Now why all the excuses after all the arduous work you have done on yourself from a physical point of view?

Patient: I realized I was frightened that she would turn me down. It is what I have felt all my life, that no girl would ever want me. I always felt I was just a piece of shit. No matter what I achieved, the high marks I got, the medical degree, the money. It all never mattered. Inside this is what I dreaded. And now what is more I know where I got that idea.

Dr. B: Yes, where?

Patient: From Irene (mother). She always gave me that feeling.

Dr. B: So you have been loyal to her feeling forever. This has the mark of an infant -- to be loyal to a feeling for 62 years. Nothing in the outside world so far has been able to change this feeling, even this work. Although increasingly, there seems to be a crystal clear ability to put the pieces in place.

Patient: No, no. On the contrary, the analysis has let me see this at last. Everything you have been telling me from my dreams is all true. And it seems I have done all the work and received all this knowledge as if it were yesterday. It's ironic. I'm a libertarian yelling for liberty, freedom from government, lower taxes. But I am the worst hypocrite because on the outside I proclaim libertarian principles and on the inside I crave only to be a slave to Irene. I saw my brother last night. He looked so bad. I never saw him so down, so hopeless. He told me he was at the end of everything, no hope and no work. But he also told me he didn't like his work and that a rich client didn't call him back. I asked him why and he said, "The client asked for something and I didn't do it". I said, "Well, that's understandable, why would he call you back?"

Dr. B: Let me ask you about him.

Patient: What?

Dr. B: Do you think he is living in this May 2006 reality?

Patient: What do you mean?

Dr. B: As you have told me, he has a half million dollars in the bank and money in the stock market. He lives in a nice area in Santa Monica. He owns a beautifully landscaped house. He has a dog he wants and loves. He has a wife who is attractive, who takes care of him, cooks and cleans for him and who even has a business that contributes to the family. Now tell me, is he living in this reality?

Patient: No, no of course not.

Dr. B: Then what reality is he in? Obviously in another one begun in his mother's womb -- your mother by the way -- a womb soaked in alcohol and nicotine. Then in the outside world your brother lived a place of abuse, of fear of deprivation, of hopelessness, of depression, of resorting to drinking at an early age and later becoming an alcoholic -- all of which changed with the help of his wife. So what keeps him in that reality of former times and not in this one? I suggest the same thing keeps him in his former reality as keeps you in yours.

Patient: I suddenly thought that you were talking of Rush Limbaugh, a good man over the years, a good Republican -- you know, smaller government, less taxes –who is now in some difficulty about his addiction.

Dr. B: I think it is interesting you admire this man who for years bashed people with drug problems. At heart he lies and is hypocritical, as you lie to yourself and espouse libertarian principles. You don't really live according to those principles. As a matter of fact, you run with the hounds and scamper like the hares. For example, let us take the government. Has it shrunk or increased?

Patient: OK, I get your point.

Dr. B: It's like your parents. They are the government and over the years they have increased and squeezed the life out of you and your brother. I can see you want to be on the government’s side (the parents’ side) in your everyday life but you are also on the other side -- the oppressed and impoverished. Obviously you don't like the other side but you are, as we hear this morning, fundamentally and unswervingly loyal to it. Now let's look at the tax cut. I understand if you make $20,000 per year your cut is $10. Hardly enough to fill your gas tank. But this is like the propaganda given. You are like your parents or the government. For example if you earn a million dollars your tax cut is something like $46,000. Tax cuts are good for the very rich. Life is good for the parents who beat the children and leave them with a legacy of never having a happy life. Indeed of always endeavoring to be loyal to what your mother gave you even perhaps before birth, that you are to be miserable no matter what in life you achieve and feel impoverished and if you want, to kill yourself like your sister did with her alcoholism.

Patient: You are right. I am a hypocrite for all the reasons you have said. I can see that for a long, long time I fought you and this work yet I finally know it is the only way out.

Commentary

It is an extraordinary adaptation man makes to live in two realities that may be quite at odds with each other as I have demonstrated in the above session. I would agree that the situation above may be an extreme one but it is not the most extreme. The latter are people who are termed borderline, psychotic or schizophrenic -- "the center did not hold" for them.

If the two realities we live in are not as outrageous as the above, we can manage the discontinuities more or less well, even though there may be upheavals now and then. The situation of living in two realities is one under which every man or woman lives. There is no other way to live if you are a human being.

It would seem that many people appear to be entirely free of the rumblings of their nether selves. Whatever the reason -- and these could be elicited -- they exercise their intellectual selves and high performance. Such individuals might include our worthiest inhabitants. They make the laws, do the science, deal with the numbers, help make the world go round. But there is a caveat here. One has to realize that their intellect is libel to error, and if one gives high honor to those of mighty intellect, why is the world essentially in a shambles and riven today as ever it was at any time in human history? Rationality and intellectuality have had a very long run. It obviously is not enough.

A patient once said to me, "Dr. B, the conscious mind is the domain of intellect; it is the domain of lies. The unconscious is always the domain of the dream and of the truth". I thought that was an accurate estimate of the two states of mind. The origin of Dr. D's psychopathology rests in his fetal or even pre-fetal state that is in his mother's mind. This fact is a hard nut for all of us to begin to accept and process. However, Dr. D's situation is rich in what it has to teach us, for the origins can be said to establish tentacles in man's politics, his economics, his mode of life, his or her mate, the nature of his progeny, and the nature of the society he fabricates for himself. For example, one might see the creationists as people like Dr. D who have a belief. Dr. D's belief is that he is a piece of shit and he knows and I know where this has lead him. People like this are so sure of their belief -- reified by their numbers -- they insist this is the truth. "Because we think it is", they will not allow any science to interfere with this "truth". It skews science. Their belief is science enough for them and they wish to impose this belief on everyone else.

I am reminded of Moses going to the mountain to get the ten commandants. When he returns, his followers – although not all -- had begun to worship the golden calf. Those who worshiped the golden calf, he killed. It reveals how deep the need is to believe in something whether true or false. In my view the golden calf is the mother's imprint. I am not suggesting we kill everyone that is swayed by it or lives by it. That would be just about everybody. I am only suggesting the origins of this omnipresent, hidden phenomenon.

Notice that Moses wandered the desert for 40 years. Why 40? I think it was to see to it that people would not be swayed by the imprint of their mortal mother, and in a lesser sense the father. But Moses wanted them to understand that it is the one God that rules the world and the universe; the one God to fall on one's knees for and to walk in gratitude for the wonder of this human experience.

May 2006
Copyright © Bernard W. Bail, M.D. 2006