Saturday, August 9, 1997
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Sunday, August 10, 1997
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Monday, August 11, 1997
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Tuesday, August 12, 1997
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12 pm. Eighteenth Session with Eliza Raven. Eliza dropped in unannounced and fortunately I was able to see her without an appointment. She looked like hell. Her eyes were red and bloodshot, her hair was greasy and unkempt, her complexion was sallow, and her mouth was set in a permanent scowl. She also lost some weight since I last saw her. She curled up in a chair, with her knees tucked into her chest. She spoke alternately in a flat monotone or bitingly spiteful tones, but not very much like the personable young woman that Eliza has always been. When she began to cry, she could not stop and she must have spent a full ten minutes crying during the session. Two traumatic events happened to Eliza since I last saw her. The first is that her mother and Ben demanded that she move out of their house. They provided her with an apartment and a source of funds, packed her possessions, and bodily removed her from the premises. Her mother said that she couldn't abide Eliza's "negativity." Eliza's felt that her mother had abandoned her for the second time. In subsequent conversations, Eliza said that she can't feel any love emanating from her mother and that she's aware of an icy detachment. Reeling from being evicted in this manner, Eliza sought Peter's company. Peter already described to me how disastrous that "date" really was. Eliza said that, instead of comforting her following her mother's actions, Peter blamed her for ruining his aspirations of becoming a higher-being. When Eliza tried to make it up to him by showing him signs of her physical affection, Peter turned cold. Eliza began to cry. She jumped up and ran out of the house, and Peter, of course, never followed. Eliza believes that Peter hates her and that she ruined his life. Eliza said that she took all the sharp instruments that surrounded her, including her Xacto knives, razor blades and cutlery, and threw them away. Although she used suicidal imagery in her conversation, I came to the conclusion that she wasn't an imminent danger to herself, although I believe that she must be carefully monitored to make sure that she doesn't turn towards more active suicidal ideation. She asked me to call her once a day just to check on her, and I'll do so. I think it's a good idea, given her somewhat brittle emotional state.
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Wednesday, August 13, 1997
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12 pm. Twelfth Session with Alex Rozzi. Alex was decidedly upbeat during this session, almost strangely so. There seemed to be a tinge of hysteria just under the surface. Apparently, Alex has been trying to exorcise the demons which have tormented him since he found out that Benny had been using him to satisfy his pedophiliac lust. When Alex found out that Benny's interest in him was motivated by perversion rather than affection, all of the sexual acts which Alex had happily engaged in when he thought that the two of them were in love became memories of being used and abused . Benny's wife Dora called Alex and told him that Benny tried to commit suicide in his cell and was placed in the prison's psychiatric ward. Alex has no sympathy for Benny's current predicament and plans to testify against him. Alex told me that Roly's reaction to discovering Benny's pedophilia has been more severe than his own. Watching Roly break apart motivated Alex to try to avoid a similar self destruction. The night after Dora called him to tell him about Benny's suicide attempt, Alex and Roly snuck into Benny's backyard teahouse to drink a bottle of tequila and smoke some marijuana together. With an intent to destroy Benny's cars, they broke into his garage and started to smash at his car with sledgehammers. Screaming and smashing in the middle of the night, I'm amazed that the police didn't come. But Dora did. Alex turned around and saw her standing, crying and child-like, but making no move to try to stop them. Alex said that the image of her standing there weeping was very sad. They all reacted emotionally and had a "group cry" as Alex put it. Dora told them that they needed to forgive Benny, but Roly and Alex aren't ready to do that yet. So Alex and Roly left Benny's house and they went to sit on some girders underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. I think that Alex got violently sick there. Roly "freaked out," as Alex put it. The police were called and Roly was arrested for public drunkenness. But afterwards, Alex was left to himself, and he spent much of the night sitting underneath the bridge thinking about his life. He made some decisions, all positive. He decided that he wants to get a high school equivalency degree and he wants to apply to a school that will allow him to exercise his creativity, perhaps the Culinary Academy or an art school. Alex thought about the possibility of rejoining his family as well. The impetus, apparently, is his two half sisters, Racyl and Rhea, thirteen and twelve respectively. Alex was rather surprised to discover himself feeling brotherly affection towards them. Alex has fantasized about being part of a big family, but as it came to pass, he felt himself an outsider. I told him that feeling was likely to be temporary and that he would soon adjust to his new circumstances.
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Thursday, August 14, 1997
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3 pm. Fifteenth Session with Katherine Lippard. Katherine began the session by talking about work. On the surface, she's concerned because Lloyd Major has come into her department and is searching through her files, brushing off her inquiries and stirring up her staff. But the subtext is really more enlightening. When Frank Herald was her boss, and he was giving her great autonomy in connection with the Apple Computer transaction, she was very suspicious of his motives--she thought he was setting her up to take the fall for that misguided project. Now that she's going to be a senior executive who is only subordinate to the CEO and the board of directors, Katherine is setting herself up in an adversarial relationship with the person who's going to be her superior at work. If I was a pop psychologist rather than a psychiatrist, I might relate Katherine's abandonment by her father to her habit of positioning herself as an adversary to those who have authority over her. But I think it runs quite a bit deeper than that. And while I don't know how Lloyd feels about Katherine personally, I'm also concerned that if he sees her as an impediment, he will simply brush her aside. Katherine may be considering hiring a private detective to track down her father. She was focusing on her father, but when I shifted the perspective back to her feelings, Katherine had a bit of a breakthrough. She said that she obviously hadn't loved her father enough to keep him from leaving her. And she believes that the men in her life have left her in search of adventure which she couldn't provide. She sees that as a failing in herself--a sign of her personal inadequacy. Then, in an apparent non-sequitor, she said that she was going parasailing with Jake. When I asked her why she had brought that up just then, she made the leap herself to realize that perhaps her dangerous adventures with Jake are an attempt to insure that he won't leave her for a similar reason. Surprisingly, Katherine seemed very concerned about proving that she is self-sufficient without a man. She's driven to repeatedly prove that she doesn't really need a man in her life. I told her that I didn't think that was her problem. Instead, quite to the contrary, I think that it would be much more difficult for Katherine to give in to the interdepency of a strong relationship and lose that element of control. So instead, I urged her to try to strike a balance between her needs and her perception of the needs of the man in her life. I told her that if she puts on an adventure-seeking persona for Jake, then she's just playing an act for his benefit and not allowing him an opportunity to know and understand who she really is.
4 pm. Fifty-Second Session with Anna Green. Anna proudly reported to me that she spent the week not being sexually provocative to Kathy--she said that she kept her underwear on the entire week. But the reality is that Anna's sexual experimentation with both Martin and Kathy continues. The three of them went to an S&M club together and Anna found herself volunteered to be the paddler in a seminar on proper paddling technique with Kathy as her submissive. At the club, Anna also saw Kathy engaged with Martin in a public dominant/submissive scene, before Kathy went off to play in private with her "beating buddy." Although Anna realizes that both Martin and Kathy get sexual enjoyment out of such a scene, she feels that it is somehow different from "real sex"--when I probed that attitude, she responded that her bright line rule is that there should be no "flesh to flesh" contact. I think that Anna is deluding herself, but I stayed silent. Anna continues on her course of trying to fulfill everyone's sexual needs and desires before her own. She finds herself warming to the idea of having a three-way relationship with Martin and Kathy. Although she's concerned about some of the practical negative consequences, she claims that she can see much to recommend itself in such a relationship. Primarily, she imagines that Martin and Kathy can fulfill each other's S&M needs, and leave her free to enjoy a more ordinary sexual relationship with Martin. While Anna believes that the decision of whether to enter into a three-way relationship is still somewhere in the future, I believe that she's slipping into it even without her realization: Anna has paddled Kathy, Kathy has paddled Martin, and Martin and Anna are engaging in some sexual activities. The reality is that a three-way relationship is already upon Anna.
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Friday, August 15, 1997
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3 pm. Second Session with Alan Kurtz. The ever-charming Mr. Kurtz came for a session today, and immediately told me that he was going to have to cut it short. He really wanted to let me know that he was just far too important to talk to me. His condescending and churlish tone remained through most of the session. When I questioned Mr. Kurtz on what was keeping him so busy, he informed me that it was office politics, rather than work, which had him in a snit. I'm getting a better picture of Mr. Kurtz. His primary motivation seems to be getting what he deserves--and in his view, he deserves it all. I was startled at how up-front Alan is with his basic feeling of superiority over everyone and everything. In his view, his universe--the people he interacts with at home, at work, in his family, and in his social life--revolves completely around him, and that's as it should be. If any person or situation doesn't match his expectation or fall into line in orbit around Alan, he denounces it as stupid, misguided, or sees it as proof of deliberate malice against him. So, for example, another employee in his department was given a perk: a company junket to the Bahamas. Alan was outraged and has embarked on a campaign to rectify this gross injustice--at least for next year. Alan is convinced that the only reason that the man is going instead of him is that he has seniority, or he is sleeping with the boss. At no point did he even entertain the possibility that the man was more deserving than he was. Alan sees his department head as an obvious incompetent because he didn't have the smarts to be able to pick out Alan as the appropriate candidate. Alan also wanted to continue to develop a strategy to "weed out the losers" among the women he dates. Alan has compiled a list of the faults that he believes his various girlfriends have shared--they have trouble accepting good advice (his), are poor listeners, refuse to do what it takes to get the things they want, are easily sidetracked, don't have their act together, and keep messy apartments. Alan bristled at the notion that he was a patient of mine--he continues to be completely unwilling to admit that there is anything within him that needs to be fixed. I had to invent some bullshit in order to convince Mr. Kurtz to even allow me to know his own impressions and feelings about the failed relationships. Alan told me a bit about his family. He says that he doesn't have much use for them, although they fawn over him. They live in Portland, Oregon. Alan also has a sister who studies at Reed, a liberal arts college. Alan believes that a liberal arts degree is useless--he derides his sister's philosophy major, saying that she'll end up as the "best-educated burger-flipper at McDonald's." There were times when his cold malevolence was almost palpable during the session. All in all, Alan continues to be a real charmer.
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Charles Balis' Personal Diary & Log