The Final Analysis

I started seeing Dr Reich about six months ago. I'd been having terrible nightmares. I would be in a narrow room, with bare floors, or in a wide, empty desert plain. Always alone, but with a sense of menace. It's hard to explain.

Dr Reich said he knew what I meant. He'd been having bad dreams too. He dreamed of gathering together small pieces of string, which were then torn from his hand by the wind with personality, and scattered across a devouring sea.
I wondered if it might be a castration anxiety dream. He told me to eat my copy of Freud, page by page, to teach it a lesson. I swallowed the first 20 pages, and then threw the rest away. I didn't tell Dr Reich.

A friend of mine, Bill, an actor, said:

"Do you think this guy's doing you any good, Bill?"

Bill calls everyone Bill. It's just his gimmick.

I said:

"He comes highly recommended. Anyway, the nightmares have stopped."

And they had. But then, I wasn't sleeping.

Dr Reich used to lie on a couch during analysis. He had me lie next to him. It was a big couch. Once, I leaned over to look at Dr Reich, and found that he had taken off all his clothes, except for one sock, which he had placed over his penis. I said:

"Dr Reich, why am I putting up with this?"

He said:

"Because you're paying $250 an hour."

I felt that I was coming close to a breakthrough.

He asked me to tell him about his father. I said I didn't know about his father, so he told me. Then I told him. We agreed that the story sounded better the way I told it. We made a pact to write each other's autobiographies.

I began to wonder when I would be cured. He placed his hand on my thigh and said:

"Darling, none of us is ever cured".

During sex, I heard a rustle of paper. I looked around and found that he was reading, rhythmically, a book with no covers. When I tried to see what it was, he threw it out of the window.

Once, I felt I was being watched. I ran to the curtain, and found his mother standing behind it. I recognised her from his drawings. He said:

"Don't worry, it's all part of her therapy. She needs to get out more."

I said:

"Dr Reich, I think this is an invasion of my privacy."

He said:

"You have no privacy."

I wondered what I'd been thinking.

I had lunch with a friend of mine, Grace. She's in finance. She said:

"You look tired."

I told her I felt alive with freshness.

She said:

"I'm beginning to worry about you, Bill."

I told her she was spending too much time with Bill.

I told Dr Reich I thought I was falling in love with him.
He explained that it was a perfectly normal part of therapy, and slapped me, hard, across the face. Then he sent me to bed without any dinner.

Later that night, I awoke to find him licking my face. He said he needed more salt in his diet. I suggested where he could find some.

Eventually, Dr Reich told me he thought I should leave.

"I feel," he said, "that I've moved past the point where these sessions are helpful."

I sank to my knees and began to cry. I clung to his legs. I begged him not to leave me. I thought that was probably what he expected.

He stroked my hair and told me I'd always be a part of him. I wrote him my final cheque.

I wondered if my need for therapy was over. I slept without nightmares, but I had begun to feel oddly unhappy around other people. I had cocktails with a friend of mine, Nancy. She's in PR. She said:

"I love your hair. What have you done with it?"

I said:

"Nancy, do you think I'm attractive?"

Later, during sex, she whispered in my ear:

"God, Bill, Grace said you were good, but I had no idea."
I started to feel cheap. I threw her out when Dr Reich called.

I said:

"Dr Reich, do you think I'm ready to start seeing other therapists?"

He said:

"Hey, why not? I'm seeing other patients."

So, now I'm seeing Bill's therapist, Dr Pink. He's been explaining to me that if I call everyone by my own name, my inferiority complex will disappear completely. I said:
"And then will I be well again?"

Dr Pink just smiled.

Biography

Naomi Alderman read (mostly) Philosophy at Lincoln College,
Oxford, and has spent the past seven years wondering how to
put the knowledge to some practical use. She is now taking
the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East
Anglia, where she was the winner of the David Higham Award.
Currently resident in Norwich, Naomi spent two years in
Manhattan, and is still looking for the perfect therapist.