(Blog number five) Psychoanalysis

Now this one is going to be a hard one to write.  This stuff is interesting to me, since it is about me, but will it interest readers or potential readers?  I dunno.  It's like rolling dice.  You just don't know what's going to come of your toss.

By the way, do you realize that present tense is more interesting than past tense?  For instance, I might say, "My throat was dry so I went to the store to get some bottle water, leaving the guy lying in the gutter, the ligature still around his neck."  Now I try, "My dry throat is the reason I give in an account of why I am going to the store for bottle water instead of taking care of my strangled handiwork."

Aw hell, I don't think I did that right.  I just read somewhere that you should write in the present tense instead of any other, but I ain't no expert, God knows.  Just ignore the above, OK?  Back to the hard stuff.

I was analyzed by a classical Freudian Jewish Psychoanalyst for about a year -- maybe more, I don't remember.  Six days a week, fifty minutes a day.  I loved it. 

My analyst's name was Dr. Burke.  Dr. Burke was a small elderly legally blind English physician who always wore a brown suit and tie.  Very classy guy.  I lay on a couch and in my line of sight was a bronze bust of Dr. Freud sitting on a table.  The first day of analysis I asked him if I should lie on the couch and he replied that my mother always told me where I was to shit.

One day I happened to mention that I hated it when one of my wife's friends told her I seemed, "nice."  Dr. Burke asked me what being nice meant.  I said, "Oh, you know..."  He said, "No, I don't know.  Tell me." 

I immediately got very tired.  Exhausted.  I just did not want to talk about that anymore.  He kept digging at me and finally he said, "You mean gullible.  When someone says you are nice, you think they are saying you are gullible."  "Right!"  I absolutely recognized the truth of that as my energy returned in full force.  I think that was the first time I got to see the mind's ability and power. The loss of energy and the wish to drop the subject was a defense mechanism of my mind wanting things to stay like they are.

Now normally I would go into a long lecture right here about the mind's ability and workings, but I figure you would hate that,so I won't do it.  But know that I sacrifice my pleasure for yours.  Sometime I may ask you to return the favor.

One thing I find humorous now was that I often told Dr. Burke that I didn't need therapy - there was nothing wrong with me. (Hah!)  I wanted to learn from him how to psychoanalyze someone.  He would reply that he couldn't teach me to psychoanalyze, but that in the process of being psychoanalyzed, I would know how to do it.  I never believed that, thinking that he didn't really understand what I meant.  He had to be wrong because that didn't make any sense to me.

What I find humorous about that attitude of mine is that the person who didn't know how to psychoanalyze (me) was in effect telling the person who DID know how (Dr. Burke) how to psychoanalyze.  I absolutely did not think he knew what he was talking about on this topic, although I trusted him implicitly as my analyst.  Ain't that weird?

I originally was hesitant to tell him that I was only coming because I wanted a teacher, thinking he might toss me out on my ear.  He must have thought, "Aw, isn't that cute?  Baby wants to run and can't even crawl yet."  I can see now that he knew exactly how I felt about the whole thing. He knew his words were falling on deaf ears.

That's all for now.