4. Which doctor?

4.1 Over the summer I have been chewing people’s ears off about my plans for a more bohemian existence here in San Francisco. In particular, I said I wanted to build my own furniture. I didn’t think it could be all that difficult. And even if the resulting pieces were a bit haphazard, they would have a rustic charm. So, having moved into my new flat here, I set about finding a timber merchant within walking distance. There weren’t any, so I found one online and phoned to inquire about deliveries. And that is when the full absurdity of the enterprise struck me. I had no idea what type of wood I’d need, or what tools, or how to build even a simple chair. And having a sitting room full of timber and sawdust doesn’t appeal that much either. I am going to wait until I move to a rustic setting before I start making my charming rustic furniture.

However, I thought I could remain half true to my vision by eschewing contemporary urban minimalism and buying cheap antiques instead. I went to a number of antiques malls and warehouses. I saw some stuff I liked – old wooden chairs which looked like they had been left on a beach for half a century; tattered, smoky green leather sofas; rusty wrought iron tables. They were the kind of objects you might see being fly-tipped. The only difference is that, since they are in an antiques mall, they cost ten times more than they did when new.

The only thing I have acquired is an old globe on a stand. For ten days it was my only piece of furniture. It is not very practical but I have always wanted one. And it will be an excellent prop for armchair travel, when I have an armchair.

In the end I swallowed my pride and ordered online from Ikea. It took me four and a half hours to put together my desk yesterday. I did it so badly, and the result is so haphazard, that it looks like an original rustic piece which I built from scratch. That consoles me.

4.2 Earlier today I walked past Ghiradelli’s World (?) Famous Ice Cream Parlor. Inside there were twelve nuns clad in white habits. Some were white, some were African, others were Indian; all were ancient. They looked like missionaries gathered from the distant corners of the globe. Each nun was tucking joyfully into an enormous ice-cream Sunday, bedecked with whipped cream and crowned with a cherry.

4.3 In my Observation and Interviewing class we have to do a fair amount of role-playing. I hate role-plays. I am a dreadful actor and, in any case, there is a lot of material in the literature about the importance of authenticity in the therapist-client relationship. That makes sense to me, which is why I find role-plays such a struggle. I don’t believe in my role or the other person’s.

However, I was asked to be the client in our first session. My partner was a large, cheerful lady in her fifties. I decided to base my client character on one of Irvin Yalom’s psychoanalytic cases from his excellent collection, ‘Love’s Executioner’.; I thought that would make it easier for me to believe in the role. Yalom describes a wealthy, elderly Jewish man (‘I can live off the interest of my interest’) who has started getting migraines. The elderly man’s doctor refers him to Yalom – the psychoanalyst - because wasn’t able to find anything wrong with him. Yalom discovers that the migraines have coincided more or less with the man’s retirement and that, on closer investigation, the retirement has stirred up all sorts of existential anguish.

So, I introduced myself to my ‘therapist’ (the cheerful 50 year old) as an elderly Jewish man, much to her surprise. However, it wasn’t until she started to question me about my wife that I recalled the other salient feature of Yalom’s case, namely that the migraines coincided precisely with the first instances of impotence in the elderly gentleman’s life. My ‘therapist’ was a little taken aback when I announced in front of the class that I couldn’t get it up. However, she diligently pursued her line of inquiry, forcing me to admit that I was only truly happy when my wife held me in her mouth – another case detail. My ‘therapist’ went on to draw me into more and more intimate pseudo-confessions and I was relieved when the session was over. My performance as client was praised and it wasn’t until I was walking home that the full ridiculousness of the situation struck me.


4.4 I have taken to swimming in the bay here. There is a rickety old wooden house on the beach which belongs to the Dolphin Club. You can pay to use their facilities for the day as a guest. The water is pretty cold and murky. Most of the members of the Dolphin Club - they call themselves dolphins - appear to be quite senior citizens, though their hardiness cannot be denied. There is a group of them who swim every morning at 6am, even in winter, in the fog and the darkness.
Shaking with cold after my first swim, I headed straight for the sauna. Inside I listened to three elderly dolphins chewing the fat:

Dolphin 1: I felt a seal brush against my leg today. They’re getting frisky.
Dolphin 2: Yes, I saw him, and smelt him too. Awful fish breath.
Dolphin 3: I had a sea lion jump over my back yesterday.
Dolphin 1: Really? But did you sea the tiger shark last week?


Maybe they were just trying to scare me. They succeeded.


4.5 An interesting excerpt from one of my textbooks:

"In one sense psychotherapists are a genus of the world species of witch doctor. We are a bit more refined, but no less confident, and not much more effective than an Ethiopian spirit doctor, Peruvian curandero, Puerto Rican espiritista, Navaho medicine man, Hindu guru, Tanzanian Mganga, or Nigerian healer. We are faith healers. We all cure people of their suffering by capitalizing on our power, prestige, communication, sensitivity, and rituals while playing on the client's expectations and trust. All healers work by naming what they think is wrong (diagnosis), assigning meaning to the suffering (interpretation), and intervening in some therapeutic way (herbs, medicine, reinforcement)."

The Imperfect Therapist by J. Kottler and D. Blau.