blanket, was not sufficient to ward off the chill of the unheated office. The night seemed too still, as if no one existed but Dr. Schussler and I, and the doctor were speaking of the vanished. Patient two. A young man who could not separate from his mother. His “childhood fixations” and “transitional objects” and “organizations of reality”—I hated them, hated him, hated that he had been coded as “two,” which ordinally stood between me and the object of my desire: “three.”
Dr. Schussler had not turned on the light. She had barely moved. She was smoking constantly, one cigarette lit from another—no further scent of phosphorus had slid under our common door. And yet again I asked myself, Who was this Dora Schussler, this analyst in consultation with another analyst; this woman sitting beside me smoking in the gloom, in whose hands lay the patient’s fate?
She stopped speaking of patient two. Moments passed in which nothing happened. Then:
Note to transcriber, she said at last. Close now personal journal. Please to add the following to the journal of consultations concerning the patient formerly coded as three.
Patient three!
As we discussed, Dr. Gurevitch, said the therapist with a sigh, I continue in the analysis of this uncontrolled countertransference. I am taking careful notes in an attempt to make conscious to myself the areas in which I am overidentifying with the patient, and the effects of that overidentification.
However, she continued after a coughing spell—her deep sigh had disturbed her smoker’s inland sea of phlegm, which roiled while the doctor struggled to calm it. However, Dr. Gurevitch, despite our work, I am not certain if the client’s analysis is proceeding toward a successful outcome. I continue to feel that the damage is grave. I cannot undo my conviction that I have done irreparable harm to patient three.
43.
Irreparable harm! I wanted to shout. What harm? What! How dare you do irreparable harm to my beloved patient! I wanted to leap up and pound on the doctor’s door. Yet I was powerless. What good would it do to intervene now? The patient would not be served if I broke into Dr. Schussler’s office and dragged the woman away.
So I remained still, cold on the settee, suppressing my breathing. The tape recorder ran on in a low whine. The doctor switched off the machine. She sighed as one in grief. Then:
Clack. The machine came on again.
Yes, I know, Dr. Gurevitch, the therapist continued. I know. My guilt is part of the countertransference. Yet, as we are telling our patients always, understanding a feeling is no protection against actually feeling it.
To summarize, she continued after another long sigh, I have come to concurrence with the idea that it was not inappropriate for me to encourage the patient to explore the fact of her adoption, specifically exploring her feelings of not belonging in her family. Unconfronted, this has led her into a neurotic pattern of letting herself be chosen by inappropriate partners, since the feeling of “wrongness of match” is what she associates with love, is what is “familiar” to her.
There is some disagreement as to whether or not her lesbianism is part of this neurosis, said the therapist. The DSM has not yet specifically addressed female-to-female relationships—the recent delisting of homosexuality as an illness relates most directly to male homosexual relationships. Yet you and I agree, Dr. Gurevitch, that patient three’s sexual love for women is not necessarily part of her internal organization regarding inappropriate partners. The specific choice of a woman partner is what is at issue here, not the choice of a woman in principle. I will therefore continue to treat the breakup with her most recent girlfriend as an opportunity for the patient to examine her affective choices in the context of her larger psychological issues.
(“Opportunity!” I thought. Her grief over this breakup is not an “opportunity,” you damned therapist!)
You have helped me to understand, Dr. Gurevitch (the doctor went on as I calmed myself), that it was not necessarily an error to confront the patient with her continual evasions concerning her adopted status. Where I erred was doing so before I had prepared the psychic groundwork. I continued to believe that her resistance, her refusal to discuss the fact of her adoption—her habitual protection of her adoptive parents, another set of inappropriate partners, so to speak—was part of the neurotic pattern. My unconscious motive in doing so, as we discussed, was my wish that she would enact my deepest desire: to escape the sins of