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

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