Empathy Read online

  She was not interested in any of this. Thank God those names were timeless. They involved no commitment. It was like saying “but,” “that,” and “which.” Prince Rainier was daily life.

  More important than the stories were the advertisements because People’s articles tried to homogenize while the ads wanted to grab you. One said REORIENT YOUR THINKING. It was from Nissan. Behind the car was a glossy blue sea. The sea reminded Anna of those window displays with shreds of tin foil fluttering in the breeze of an electric fan. It wasn’t sexy. The Japanese were people to admire grudgingly, but never strive to be. They weren’t sexy. They didn’t appear in their own ads. The car was enough.

  Anna skipped to the video section, tried the movie section but had to skip it after reading one word. What were they talking about? She couldn’t understand why they thought something was important. She couldn’t understand the values. There was nothing in this magazine that she saw in the mirror. No person, gesture, slogan, or hairstyle looked like her. In fact, there was no magazine on the entire newsstand rack that had her in it. The ones that said they did didn’t have good pictures.

  Anyway, People had great titles, like “Mummy Dearest,” where Anna could get the idea without having to read the article.

  Stop it, she told herself. I’d better stop paying too much attention or I’m going to get alienated all over again.

  Time to eat, but what?

  She could go get a bowl of soup. She could afford it. But there’s that problem of restaurants being depressing plus going out on the street when she knew it would smell of macaroni and cheese. No, no restaurant. It’s just not worth the money except once in a while when she’s ready to hang herself. No restaurant. Chris Evert. Chappaquiddick seemed like a diversion. More nostalgia.

  Even the free handouts on the street had nothing to do with her life. She wasn’t going to see Sister Rosa, faith healer. She didn’t need artificial nails. Cheap therapy, now that might do some good. She didn’t want a free Chicken McNugget with every three Big Macs. There was nothing left to do but go to sleep.

  That night Anna had a strange dream. When the radiator knocked, she changed, but it wasn’t waking. It was a half space filled with revelations. Each one about the dream. The dream.

  Convinced, she fell back asleep. Compared with memory this was gentle and easy to slip into. But the second time the dream had more power. In it she was astonishingly vague. Trying to think at face value without realizing how much that was actually worth.

  I could provide a description of giving head, she dreamed. A head filled with breathtakingly beautiful images cannot pay attention to the radio or laundry, so bleed on me.

  She woke with the breath of a ghost on her back. She was green orange. Her orgasm was square. A pink star, a spider web, a dancing star too and a point and a shadow. A sky below, a calico rose in the middle of her skull. A red mask. A red egg. A moonscape made of glass. Magnified tongue cells. Salted spongy things. Mountains of black. Gray hills.

  Chapter Three

  As the sun came up Doc heard a little rustling from the kitchen. At first he assumed it was another family of mice to be hunted out and slaughtered. He resolved to set some little wooden traps and bait them with bits of rock-hard stale corn muffin. If the mice did not bite, the glue traps were next. Those wooden ones snapped their necks causing instant death without awareness. But the glue, though more efficient, caught frightened vermin squeaking away for help. Doc would throw them out the window hoping for total destruction on impact.

  He heard the rustling again and then a thin whistle of wind, like some papers sailing onto his wooden kitchen floor. Further inspection revealed that some stranger, some unidentified person, had slipped a small pile of pages right under his door.

  Attached to the first page was a short note.

  DEAR DOCTOR,

  I received your business card on St. Mark’s Place. We seem to have a common sensibility and I wonder if you might be the therapist for me. I am enclosing a term paper that I wrote for a college class thirteen years ago. Many of the same issues still plague me and I wanted you to see them in the intellectual and emotional context in which I experience them today. If you think that this is a case that interests you, please leave your door slightly ajar tomorrow at two o’clock.

  Sincerely Yours,

  Anna O.

  Doc lay down on his couch, not even bothering to get dressed. He stretched out with two pillows and began to read.

  ASSIGNMENT: Interpret your own dream using Freudian dream analysis.

  Anna O.

  Winter 1978

  Freshman Seminar

  Self, Culture, and Society

  Professor Bertram Cohler

  “’TIS THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF”

  A QUEST FOR IDENTITY THROUGH FREUDIAN DREAM ANALYSIS

  by Anna O.

  Freud claims that a dream is a symptom of a pathological idea. The dream is the “fulfillment of a wish” that is socially unacceptable.

  THE DREAM

  I was standing by the lake with Eleanor. I was shy and strong and in awe of her. We wore identical black tank suits and our bodies were changed to resemble each other. I was thinner and shorter with smaller breasts and hips. My hair was longer and fuller than usual.

  She communicated to me, without gestures or noise, to dive into the lake. When I did, I discovered that I could breathe underwater. Then we were standing on the rocks by the shore, my hair was dry. She put her right arm around my waist in an authoritative manner, not an affectionate one, and guided me across the rocks.

  We walked over a coarse area without difficulty although there should have been some. She had me sit beside her on the rocks with our feet in the water. We watched the red sunset together.

  In my dream, the most outstanding element was Eleanor and her power over me.

  There were some inconsistencies in Eleanor.1. She was physically altered.

  2. She had superhuman abilities.

  3. She enabled me to breathe underwater and walk over rocks without effort.

  This makes me think that she represented more than herself. I think she represented a group of people with whom I share physical similarities. I assume that to be woman-kind in general.

  We see that what appeared in the dream as Eleanor was actually what Freud calls a Composite Figure upon which numerous trains of thought converge.

  If the objects which are to be condensed into a single unity are much too incongruous, the dream work is often content with creating a composite structure with a comparatively distinct nucleus, accompanied by a number of less distinct features. (The Interpretation of Dreams p. 359)

  In my dream, the unacceptable Dream Wish, which pertained to my relationships with women, was recast into a situation full of sensual and powerful symbols.

  Freud also notes that dreams are sometimes composed of two different fantasies that coincide with each other at a few points. One of these points is superficial while the other is an interpretation of the first.

  In my dream the superficial fantasy was being able to do what Eleanor could do. The underlying was finding solace in sexual relationships with women. It should be noted that a possible reason for such an ambiguous image as a setting sun might be because the thoughts at the base of this dream do not admit to visual representation.

  The most important meaning for me, in the dream, is that after accepting these feelings and succumbing to Eleanor’s power, my travels became effortless. In other words, my life became easier.

  Even though I am only nineteen, I have seriously wondered if I could ever accept sexual feelings toward women without first making myself more feminine. This comes from a terror of masculinizing myself. Even though I know that women are better for me, I fear being told that I really want to be a man. It’s an accusation that everyone seems to make.

  So, if others thought I was more feminine than I currently am, they would stop accusing me of wanting to be a man. Then, I could have women’s lo
ve more easily because I would not have to endure these kinds of assumptions. The fact that I had longer hair in the dream than I really do, confirms that I looked more feminine and therefore was able to relax and relate to Eleanor on a sexual level. But throughout all of these considerations, it is still the case that in no matter how many moments I may have wanted to conform to the social patterns of mainstream America, I have actually done nothing that would divert me from my present course of pursuit.

  In conclusion, by using the psychoanalytic approach, it has been demonstrated how an unacceptable wish that was formed in the primary agency of the psyche was distorted by the secondary agency so that it could be rendered acceptable to consciousness. The second agency imposes cultural considerations upon a person’s essentially a-cultural thought thereby showing that the particular person is also a social being, a product of culture.

  END

  A-

  A thoughtful analysis of the dream that uses the power of Freud’s technique in the best way. By the way, what happened to the concept of representability in the dream?

  - B. Cohler

  Chapter Four

  By one-thirty the next afternoon, Doc was a nervous wreck. He paced and paced, opening and closing the refrigerator, rearranging all the food. Finally, at three minutes to the hour, he recovered somewhat and managed to slip delicately back into the office mentality.

  Doc didn’t believe in regular appointments. His patients only came when something was up. And even though Ms. O. didn’t officially know the rules, something appeared to be definitely up. He hoped this would be more meaningful than most patient encounters. He hoped Anna O. would want to really discuss. Usually Doc just sat there while they talked about the unpleasant side of life. Then he did his bit.

  Finally, at exactly two o’clock, he heard his door creak open and Doc saw a young woman standing in the threshold. She reminded him immediately of himself as a girl. She was a little pudgy, a little too soft. She had messy, romantic brown hair and noticed everything at once. She stepped into the room the same way he did, with a hesitant self-confidence. She had that kind of alienation that Doc recognized from years of therapy - somewhere between feeling exceptional and feeling like a clown. Anna came from the same kind of middle class that Doc knew oh-so-well. The kind that could pass up just as easily as down.

  “Could I have something to drink?” she asked.

  “Uhh.” Doc walked over to the refrigerator. “I’ve got mayonnaise, cocktail sauce, Canada Dry, white rice, Hershey’s chocolate milk, and boxed corn muffins.”

  “Water will be fine,” she said. “I’ll get it,” following Doc into the dark kitchen.

  “There’s no electricity in the bathroom, bedroom, or kitchen,” he said apologetically. “The whole place functions on extension cords.”

  Then he laughed the way a man is supposed to laugh when brushing off his own inadequacy.

  “I love this neighborhood,” she said.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Do you live here too?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I fit in perfectly. Everyone here has a secret and people they can’t run into plus others they’re always looking for. The potatoes are soft here. The wine is bad. It’s strange here. Many people have died and left a lot of stuff for the living to avoid. There is baggage.”

  “Oh, your friends died of AIDS too,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “And two got shot.”

  Anna settled into his couch and took a look around. The whole place was plain. There was no television, no tape player, no CD player, no VCR, no computer, no camera, no stereo. It was basic.

  “You’re a yes-and-no person, aren’t you, Doc?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe in good and evil.”

  Anna looked him over, clumsily adjusting her skirt. Clumsily she crossed and uncrossed her legs.

  “I find these clothes so humiliating,” she said. “These stockings are so expensive. Your toenail becomes your worst enemy. Your couch is old-fashioned. I like that.”

  Doc smiled. He was still anxious about having admitted his belief system, so this slight compliment was warmly welcomed.

  “I never buy anything interesting new,” he said. “Just a coffeepot and towels.”

  They looked so much alike. Doc noticed that there was practically no difference except that Anna had to wear clothes that she hated and he could wear whatever he liked.

  “I also believe in good and evil,” Anna said. “Things are falling apart in this country with great rapidity and everyone wants to pretend that they have nothing to do with it. That no one is responsible. Now, I happen to be a happy person, Doc. I like my life the way it is. But when I look around for one minute I get … ideas. Ideas about structures.”

  “You mean politics?” he asked wistfully.

  “Well, I do know that there are other things going on out there besides my happiness, if that’s what you mean by politics.”

  “How strange,” Doc mumbled and covertly made a note.

  “What is it, Doc?” she asked, sinking back even more into the sofa’s springless cushions, legs crossed tightly at the ankles. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “You’re suffering from empathy,” he said. “You must have some unresolved past experience.”

  “I have to go retouch my makeup now,” she said. “I feel naked without it.”

  Waiting in his chair for Anna’s return, Doc gleefully reserved judgment. He was so happy to find a patient with an intact set of beliefs. What a relief. Doc had had his since childhood and found it easier to get along with others who had their own beliefs too. When he was a kid, there were two systems. They were called Capitalism and Communism. Morality was easy then. Even later when he started thinking for himself, Doc could still tell right from wrong because both systems were wrong and the third system, the Imagination, was right. But these days there were no more easy Cold War systems to position himself against. Doc found this very trying personally because there was no longer an existing method for evaluating situations. Banality was the new enemy within.

  Outside, global relations seemed to be one big blob. A comet. Out of control. One day Doc even crossed his fingers hoping that President Bush would die of a heart attack soon because nothing else he could imagine would get rid of that guy. It was a humiliating last resort, but he had to try everything.

  Anna returned from the dark bathroom where she’d clearly thought things over.

  “Well?” he asked gently.

  “Well,” she said, courageously. “I guess it all started with my childhood.”

  “I thought so,” Doc said.

  Then he waited. There is a way that people tell their secrets. If they make it into a big production, it’s no secret. Only shame is the true indication of authentic camouflage.

  Chapter Five

  Anna sat back on the couch. She looked at Doc and then looked down at herself. She was relieved to have taken this step. Maybe things would be more soothing from now on. As Anna began to recite her autobiography, she felt even more comfortable. After all, she had long been the kind of person who explains herself regularly. It was part of a longstanding faith in being understood and a desire to apologize for every inadequacy. To ask forgiveness.

  “Well … let’s see,” she said, “should we start with school?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, elementary school was fine, I guess, until I started to get my own values. I remember exactly when that happened. It was one winter day, in class, when the teacher told us that light was the opposite of dark. I listened closely and tried to go along with it for some time. But then, that very evening, I noticed that light was like dark. Both were complete and ethereal, easily recognizable and metaphoric. That was when my problems began.”

  “Go on,” Doc said.

  “The next morning, on the subway to first grade, I decided to ask the teacher a question about the way that thoughts were structured - both his and mine. I wondered if everything was already k
nown and each person just selected the facts that work for them. Or, were there still completely undetected ways to live?”

  “What did he say?”

  “My teacher couldn’t cope. He seemed to be demanding over and over again that I justify my opinion. I couldn’t just have it. That day, after nap time I walked into the wrong bathroom by mistake, and then made deals with God to get me out of that dump. Being doubted was so humiliating. I felt uncomfortable for the next twelve years.”

  Anna looked at Doc. He too was overweight. On a woman the fat goes right to her ego. Then every man on the street has to mention it for the rest of her life. Doc just had a potbelly, she noted. Surely no one ever said a thing about it.

  “How is this revealed in your contemporary life?” Doc asked.

  “Well, Doctor,” she said, finally hooking her stockings on the jagged frame of the couch. “Doctor, in all my years of homosexuality I have never had sex with another lesbian. I’ve only made love to so-called straights or ambivalent bisexuals. Do you think that could be connected to not having been acknowledged as an intellectual?”

  “Do most gay women love each other?” Doc asked.

  “A lot of them love closeted movie stars,” Anna answered thoughtfully. “But I can honestly say that most of them love each other too. They have more trouble with themselves.”

  “Anna,” Doc said. “What were some of the explanations that have gone through your mind, historically, when you have faced this question?”