She lay silent for a few minutes and then opened with "What have I been doing over the weekend? I had four dates but nothing special. My friend introduced me to a fellow she thought would be nice for me but he was nothing special, so its 0 for 4. Then she was quiet and said "I went shopping with my sister for Mother's Day. It was very hard to think of something to buy for Mom. My sister is much more attuned to Mom than I am. So I mostly followed her lead but, you know, my sister is very hard to be with. She again spoke of the boyfriend that just broke up with her, how mean he was, how it came out of left field, how this had never happened to her. She was completely floored. At one point, I said 'Carla, it's not possible; it's just not possible. There must have been clues all along the way', but she didn't answer and she felt a bit ruffled at my suggestion. It sounds, Dr. Bail, like she has forgotten everything that you have ever told her. "Well", she said, "let me tell you my dream."

I was walking with my old boyfriend, Joel. We were walking on a sycamore-lined street with those beautiful old-fashioned street lamps. A young girl in a pink tank top crossed the street. I knew her. She stopped to say hello and then told me she had a problem or rather that her brother had a drug problem and she didn't know what to do. I said, "You have to call the Dept. of Children and Family Services and report him." She said, "Well, you call and I'll talk" and suddenly I had a telephone in my hand.

Dr. B - You mean like the kind you have at home?

Patient - Yeah, it wasn't a cell phone. So I begin to talk and give the phone to her and she reports the story.

DR. B: Why call that department?

Patient: To report the child abuse.

Dr. B: Why does Carla ask you to dial and she will talk?

Patient: Well, we share the responsibility for blowing the whistle on our parents.

Dr. B: I understand the feeling about your mother and father – wanting to blow the whistle on them. In addition I think you remember an early dream in which your father attempted to stupefy you with alcohol. I suppose that is child abuse, isn’t it? – just as your mother stupefied Carla by endlessly breast feeling her. It is a paradox to be stupefied by breast milk.

Dr. B: How old is this girl?

Patient: Oh, about 13. She reminds me of a patient but then as I think about it she looked about nine.

Dr. B: Nine?

Patient: Well, this girl didn't have breasts or had just beginning breasts.

Dr. B: But you said 13 before and then it was nine.

Patient: Well, lets put it in the middle. Let's call it eleven because this girl in the dream just had beginning buds for breasts.

Dr. B: Where is this sycamore-lined street? Do you live on such a street growing up?

Patient: No.

Dr. B: Well, where did you see this kind of street?

Patient: Around the market place where Joel and I had supper on one of those streets.

Dr. B: How did you come to be on one of those streets?

Patient: Joel likes to walk after he eats. One time we were leaving a restaurant and we had eaten and he wanted to walk but it had begun to rain very slightly, so first I didn't have the right shoes and then I didn't want my hair to curl. So I said no. Well, you know Joel is a freak for exercise. I am so happy he is seeing Dr. X who has already helped him a great deal. I hope he does continue.

Dr. B: How did you come to have a house phone in your hand?

Patient: I don't know. It just appeared. You know I think what comes to mind is how much Joel reminded me of my mother and how much I have to take care of her.

Dr. B: Well, who could this girl's brother be in this dream because I think the girl in the dream is really representing your sister?

Patient: My father?

Dr. B: And what drug is your father on?

Patient: Marion, his mother. (The patient and I, on the basis of previous hours, have come to conclude that, in psychological terms, the father is really “drugged” by his mother and indeed has become his mother)

Dr. B: Yes, I believe so.

Patient: Well, I still feel I have to take care of my mother. It's so funny after all this time and here I am with Joel, who I stopped seeing a long time ago on the basis of work we did.

Dr. B: Well, you remember Joel was the kind of young man that would rather do exercise than have sex. He would rather walk on the beach than be in bed with you. And you know, from many past sessions we have had, Mom is hardly a sexual woman and all the work we have done has pointed to her not being up to the job of being a mother or a wife, which has suited your father fine.

Patient: It's so funny. When I am in this state, I have all kinds of men interested in me.

Dr. B: You mean the state of being cheek to jowl with your family?

Patient: Yes. As much as I hate to say it.

Dr. Bail: "There are lots of men who want a woman who agrees to everything, never complains, is a wife and a mother though she is not up to it. And there are men who are not up to being a man -- up to the task of maturity and up to relating to a mature woman – a formidable creature indeed!"

Patient: I don't know where my sister's head is. She just doesn't live in reality. I can tell by the things she says that she is not in this reality. For example, about this last boyfriend.

Dr. B: Well, your entire family seems to live in quite another reality. You know there is talk of parallel universes. I think your father, mother and sister all live in parallel universes but not in reality in this universe.

Patient: I am not in despair although I should be. I think all the time what I should do to really have my own life. I never realized it was so hard.

Dr. B: So, tell me why would you have this dream at this time. We know the cast of characters, we know the plot, we know the ending. So why would this be a repetition of something we know?

Patient: (Shook her head) I don't know. Well, actually what comes to mind is the lecture I attended on Thursday about the treatment of a dying patient. This was a psychoanalysis but it didn’t seem like one. I thought about the papers you wrote on working with terminally ill patients, particularly the first paper ever published about conducting a full analysis with a dying patient – the one titled, “To Practice One’s Art.” I didn’t raise my hand in the lecture to mention it and to ask the speaker if he knew of it, since it wasn’t cited in his presentation.

Dr. B: Right. Well, from what you’re saying, you sat on your hands like the family because the family is not to mention anything about me ---- the person who delivers knowledge of reality and wisdom from the unconscious. They are not to acknowledge my existence really in any way, so how could you? Because your dream indicates that you are, at this time, wholly part of your family. You know, people are like rubber bands…they go out, the equivalent of stretching the rubber band, but then one let’s go and the rubber band assumes its small original size. It never snaps though it is stretched to the ends of the earth You know, people are like rubber bands.... they distance themselves from the parent - the equivalent of stretching the rubber band. With a rubber band, when one let's go, it snaps back assuming its original small size. With human beings, the band never snaps even if stretched to the ends of the earth.

Patient: (She was silent there and then replied.) You know I guess I sat on my hands like my Mom and Dad being stupefied. After all asking a question means you are wide-awake to hear a question that requires an answer.

Commentary:

An imprint cripples everyone in life, some extensively, others less so. Let us use the rubber band analogy. It may stretch a bit or even a lot, but contrary to an actual rubber band, the bond between the mother and infant or mother and child never snaps. The mark left upon the fetus or infant, aside from the content of the imprint, is one of indelible fear of separation from the mother who has so wounded the child, the mother who so needs the child, and the mother who so hates the child, all unconsciously.

Imagine the earth and all it contains by way of people on rubber bands that may stretch but always come back to rest. Mankind is essentially conservative and innovation is difficult if not neigh impossible. New technical inventions may be welcomed but serve to allay and deny the anxiety attendant upon individual change. Therefore, society tends always toward stillness, sameness, oldness, comfortableness at almost any price. Of course, there are revolutions but history yields the knowledge that all revolutions serve in the end to become like the imperium which was revolted against. Again, history shows us that the few that emerge are the royalty while the masses continue their indentureship. This has been the history of mankind which ever touts its inventions but quails at the threat of personal liberation. Those millions that are taken advantage of are revealing the marks of docility to the point of self destruction (I question here the concept of the self preservative instinct) and a resistance to action that is borne of the fear and dread that another catastrophe will occur.

A session like the one described above gives one an idea as to how the world does not change, since it is a macrocosm of the smaller unit of the family and the individual within the family. Imprints may be so indurated that nothing the outside world offers is truly or possibly acceptable. It is important to put on disguises of adulthood with all such accompaniments; for example job, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, children, house, etc. And clothes in America are for some segments exceedingly important in the dissembling process. “Look at my clothes, my makeup, my figure but do not poke with any pressure. I do not like it.”

At heart there is an undying loyalty to stay attached to the family unit. I say “unit” as a metaphor for the mother --no matter what kind of mother one has had. This is a loyalty that transcends everything else in existence and loyalty to everything else is based on this original unchanging relation, as tightly constructed as electrons around a nucleus -- a unity that does not like to be interfered with even though the person may say, "Please help me change." If the person is really serious then he or she will begin the most strenuous struggle one will ever have to contend with, --a process equally as difficult for the analyst.

One might say the struggle is for the soul of the patient - arduous, painful beyond description and, in external reality, akin to the greatest wars in history or the war of the worlds.

Certainly this singular elasticity of the personality enables a mask to be assumed that presumes a change, a different creature from his/her ancestral environment. But when subjected to the scrutiny of this particular analysis which goes deeply to the dark heart of the matter, the surprise is not that release only occasions a return to its original state - the real surprise is that it breaks the electromagnetic field which keeps one a prisoner. That is rare but possible. One has only to be brave enough to dangle in the universe of the dark unknown until the light filters in for a new dawn.

THE LAST HOUR

What struck me as the patient came in on the following session was that she was dressed all in black, nicely dressed but all in black.*

She said, “ I had two dreams. I don't know which to tell you. Well, let me begin.”

In this first dream...

I told my supervisor that the patient that was coming to see me thought I was and M.D. but I said, "No, I am a Ph.D." The supervisor said, "That's no good, it will not work." She looked especially attractive in a peach colored jacket.

Patient: Yesterday I went shopping. There was a big sale at Bloomingdale's. I did try on a pair of peach pants. I don't have anything in that color. It is so beautiful but it didn't fit. I didn't buy it. The supervisor wears light colors and I think she may have a peach colored jacket. It fits her hair and complexion.

Dr. Bail: Why didn't you ask what the problem was – that the patient thought you were an M.D. instead of a Ph.D.?

Patient: I didn't.

Dr. B: Where is the curiosity a therapist is supposed to have?

Patient: I know, but I guess I just accepted it. All this has to do with that new case. The man who I will see on Monday knows I am a Ph.D. All of this has to do with a company that sends me mail and puts an M.D. on my name.

Dr. B: Have you called the company and told them to discontinue?

Patient: No. I just don't pay attention and the new patient knows I am a Ph.D.

Dr. B: I think you are the supervisor who is saying that being Dr. Z, your father, won't work and indeed it will not work for all the reasons you know.

Patient: Yes, I do know and not only in work.

Then she was silent. And then she said, “I had another dream.”

"I dream I am packing all of my things as is Kim, my roommate. We have been in school for a long time, college and graduate school, and the new people who are going to take over our room are waiting. The room is about as big as your office, which it was in reality, and indeed Kim and I were roommates in undergraduate school. I looked around and there were so many things I had to pack and take or get rid of. Likewise Kim. Oh, my parents were there and so were Kim's. I suppose they were there to help us. I looked through many books and thought I would only take one book and throw all the rest of them away. I had garbage bags in which to pour or throw what I didn't want and Kim had the same. As a matter of fact Kim had more stuff to go through and examine than I did, much, much more. Finally before the dream ended I looked up and saw there was a wet spot on the ceiling and I thought, 'Well this is a good time to move. The new people will have to take care of that'."

She then said, "Kim, you remember, is the girl with whom I did live in undergraduate school. She is a strange girl. I've known her since high school and we were close, as close as Kim could get. You know Kim was Chinese and she was brilliant. She was also very self-restrained. Many times I would ask her questions that girls ask of one another but she was reticent to give me any definitive answer. She was always vague, like 'I don't know', 'Maybe', 'I have to wait and see how whatever that was turns out'. I thought maybe because she was Chinese that it might be a cultural thing but I didn't really know. I haven't talked to Kim for about two years. I think she and her boyfriend are going to move to the Bay area. You know she is a doctor. She is a radiologist and I think that is a good specialty for her. It keeps her away from people, which is what she likes. I don't know if she and her boyfriend are married."

Dr. B: Wouldn't she call you with the closeness you had?

Patient: I don't know. She could very well not call me. One thing Kim had was a great sense of style and fashion but she had terrible taste in men. Her boyfriend in high school was awful and they were fighting all the time. Even when she went off to college he still was her boyfriend. He was very good looking and he did photography and modeling but he also slept around which drove Kim crazy. But she gave him up later when she went to medical school and met the fellow she is with now. At least I think she is still with him and his folks come from the Bay area. I assume they will settle there.

Dr. B: What else was there in the room besides books and which book did you take?

Patient: I took a book on statistics. It was a book that I used in my graduate school all the time. It was with me every day because I had to find a way to put my thesis into a statistical analysis, which I finally did.

Dr. B: So the book helped you to your success?

To answer my question, she said, (referring back to the dream), "I pulled open one drawer and there were these cheap things you find in carnivals, although I am sure you can find them at Wal-Mart or places like that, the sort of things children play with but they are essentially worthless - cheap, gaudy, easily breakable, and I told my father I would get rid of them and I put them into the garbage bag.”

Dr. B: What did Kim say during this time?

Patient: She said nothing. It seemed as if she were keeping most of her things and that was OK with her parents. They were prepared to carry everything down to their car or truck, whatever it was they had. I got into a fight with my parents because they wanted me to keep things that I no longer had any use for.

Finally as she was talking, and it was as if she were surveying what she was saying, she said "I guess Kim must be my Dad. He fundamentally is removed from people. He fundamentally is withholding although he appears to be giving. And he is always looking for something to buy for Mom: clothes, jewelry, and maybe that is why he wanted me to keep that junk jewelry."

Dr. B: What about the wet spot in the ceiling?

Patient: The girl in the downstairs apartment on the other side had that happen to her in reality. It was a leak in the plumbing of the apartment above that wet her ceiling which fell in. So she has been dealing with all the efforts to reconstitute the ceiling -- that is the landlord is -- to fix it.

Dr. B: It seems clear that what you were doing here is getting rid of all the psychical things you no longer need. It is interesting your commenting on people like Kim who, not having analysis, is doomed to keep all of her garbage and to do so out of filial respect at one level, and at a deeper level, it is the imprint that keeps her tightly bonded to her mother. Even though she may be marrying an American, deep below she is respectful of her culture. And furthermore I think your ceiling is wet in this dream because you recognize that if you don't get rid of all this stuff from your infancy and from your past, metaphorically the ceiling will fall in.

She was silent a long time and on this silence the hour came to a close.

Commentary:

There is a beauty in the mind’s ordering information. It is as if the most reasonable hand is at work simply doing what is reasonable with the assembled facts. Metaphorically, we understand the hard drive (from the computer) to be the brain and it's material substance, material which can be touched and examined grossly and minutely. But the software is the mind in which none of those operations can be described except through psychoanalysis. Except through psychoanalysis can one examine the mind, an entity difficult to describe, to tack down.

In this first dream the patient shows us that she has gathered up the accumulated information of past sessions and this one and has decided to seek the counsel of an older more experienced person, a person she admired and whose person in life she admires. Therefore she becomes the supervisor in peach who says in the dream "It will not do to be your father in any way."

So in light of the previous dream in which this patient who is mired in the parental quicksand has, by the agency of her higher consciousness, decided to get out of a sinking situation, to put behind her what she no longer needs to pursue her journey in life. This dream is heartening for both the patient and the analyst for it tells that hard things have been heard and said, that painful feelings have been felt and processed, and that a deeper consciousness and a higher purpose have been achieved than to be chained to a burden that neither parent could help imposing but is of absolutely no value except that of a drag on her life. Indeed this would have prevented her from having a life of real purpose and of real happiness. The choice she makes in this dream is toward that goal.

__________________

*I felt that her wearing black was a sign of her mourning of her leaving her parents behind.

May 2006