Hysterical by Rebecca Coffey
Author:Rebecca Coffey [Coffey, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2014-06-25T16:00:00+00:00
Chapter 20
In any psychoanalysis, the analysand eventually learns that objecting to an analyst’s interpretations is counterproductive, for analysts understand objections as covert affirmations.
“Having diagnosed a case,” Papa once wrote, “we may then boldly demand confirmation of our suspicions from the patient. We must not be led astray by initial denials. If we keep firmly to what we have inferred, we shall in the end conquer every resistance by emphasizing the unshakeable nature of our convictions.”
In other words, with Papa, gentle, courteous questioning was hardly ever the order of the day.
“Heads I win, tails you lose,” as the joke goes.
“Now for the connection between your dreams and your beating fantasies,” Papa began our session the next night. “Your earliest fantasies I have now heard aplenty. ‘A child is being beaten.’ Which child? It doesn’t matter. All we really know is that it is never you. Who is doing the beating? Again, it doesn’t matter. All we know is that it is always a man.
“While your earliest fantasies were repetitive and fairly devoid of nuance, your current fantasies are rich in overtones and significance. Your protagonist, interestingly, is always a boy, and it is you. Your antagonist is always a powerful and evil man who clearly enjoys delivering the blows.
“I would like to suggest to you that in your childhood fantasy—let’s call it the ‘Phase One Fantasy’—you were a mere onlooker while I was the prominent figure. I was the beater, and the child whom I beat was one or another of your siblings. This early fantasy was a perfectly normal one. Its emotional impact was ‘I am watching my Papa beat everyone but me. Papa doesn’t beat me. Papa loves me best.’ Often you masturbated in your happiness after that dream. It’s possible that sometimes you didn’t. No matter. All was good for you.
“Your current fantasy, the one in which a powerful man beats a beautiful and brave boy who also happens to be you, let us call the ‘Phase Two Fantasy.’ For personal reasons, perhaps, I find the fantasy discourteous. For, again, the person doing the beating is I. Now, however, I am finding pleasure in inflicting pain, and this I don’t understand.
“So, I have a question that I would like you to answer. How did your fantasy life evolve from Phase One to Phase Two? How did you proceed from your once-harmless Oedipal preoccupation to your current problematic focus?”
I lay there trying to understand and then conjure answers to Papa’s questions. As I did, I thought I heard a stray note or two from the music box, but when I looked at the Buddha atop it, he was stoic and smiling, with no sign of recent motion. An image of my mother and aunt, snoring obliviously and chastely in their adjacent beds, ran through my head. Then I thought of all the empty beds in the apartment—Mathilde’s, Martin’s, Oli’s, Ernst’s, and Sophie’s. The boys’ beds were as severe as army cots, and the girls’ as frilly as doll furniture. Sophie’s long-abandoned stuffed animals were no doubt reflected dumbly in her gilded mirror.
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