thought; I carried darkness everywhere; no one could escape me (so melodramatically had my nervous condition taken hold of me). Elevator cars came and went. If I did not step into one soon, I would miss the patient’s session.
The cab seemed to float upward to the eighth floor. All the while my anxiety rose with it: What if I should lose my last protections? The protection of the patient, all that stood between me and the spider who even now legged her way toward me? What if, upon hearing the patient’s voice, I remained unchanged, unbecalmed, still the dark creature who might descend upon her? Her! Her! Her!
92.
Convince me, said the patient to open the session. Convince me it makes no difference if my father was a monster.
(Yes! I thought as I heard her statement. This is exactly what you must demand from the therapist: exoneration from the very nature of your ancestors. Fight for yourself! Fight for us both! Make Dr. Schussler do for you what she cannot do for herself: escape the evil of a father.)
Said the therapist:
Let us put the tape aside for the moment. Do you agree?
Yes, said the patient. Funny. I didn’t even bring the recorder today.
Good, said the doctor. So we both know what is the work for today: the question of your father. So let us return to the thought with which we ended last time. I asked, What does it matter if your father is a hero or a brute?
Right. That’s where we ended. And I said it matters.
And I was about to say that it matters very little, except as one thinks about it.
What do you mean, thinks about it?
What I mean is this: Your father, since you cannot know him, is therefore a thought, an idea, a feeling. And the thought, the idea, the feeling, is something we can talk about, a subject about which your opinion may change over time.
(Yes! I thought. Excellent work, Dr. Schussler!)
Humph! came from the patient. If Michal is my mother and I don’t look like her, then I must look like my father. I have inherited my body from him. It is not an idea. It’s in my body.
But what is in your body that predicts your behavior? You have been alive all these years, become the person you are. If you were to find out your father’s identity tomorrow, what possible difference could it make?
(Oh, no! The doctor had made a terrible mistake with that “possible.”)
Possible difference! the patient cried out.
(As I feared.)
Possible! That’s exactly the point. The probabilities and possibilities I have inherited from my father. Inclinations to respond one way or another. Temperament. My physical reactions. How do I know what’s hiding inside me, genetically? Given some jolt to my system, some extraordinary pressures, how can I know what might explode out of me? Bravery? Selflessness? Brutality?
But why on earth would you become brutal? asked the therapist.
Look at what happened to Patty Hearst.
(Ah! I thought as I listened. She believes as I do about Patty Hearst.)
But that was purely a product of confinement, replied the therapist, a set of severe social pressures which produce temporary—I repeat, temporary—psychological changes.
Oh, that’s just some drivel from Hearst’s defense team, said the patient.
(For that was indeed the line of defense her father and lawyer had begun to promote.)
But it is a real effect! said the therapist, nearly shouting.
(Most unusual behavior from the therapist.)
Two years ago, there was a bank robbery in Sweden, Dr. Schussler went on in a more subdued tone. Employees were held hostage for six days, during which time they became sympathetic to their captors, even rising to their defense after the robbers were captured and the employees were released unharmed. Since then, psychologists have studied this very closely.
Maybe they were accomplices, said the patient.
Not at all, said her doctor. Captivity, complete and enforced separation from regular society, fear of harm and death, a perverted social norm: These combine to coerce almost any sort of behavior in a human being. We are social creatures, born helpless. Our survival depends upon our living within a group. And our entire psychology is based upon that need: to be accepted within a society. So this has a very powerful influence upon behavior.
But some people resist.
Rarely. Given enough separation from other influences, almost no one resists. You know the Milgram experiment.
The one where they gave shocks.
Yes. Perfectly decent people, kept isolated, willingly administered to an unseen person what they believed were deadly shocks.