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Every day, in every session for a whole year, Donald Moss chose a single sentence spoken by one of his patients. Preserving the order in which they had been uttered, he then collected them into units which are presented as poetic compositions (each sentence a “verse”). We feel the voices resonating almost concretely. We find expressions in them like those of our own patients. We appreciate their wisdom, their searing or gentle irony, their humour. We share their sadness, despair, boredom, their disillusionment at the sense of futility sometimes aroused in them. We don’t know who is speaking, whether there is one person on a certain page or several different people. In an editorial note, Moss informs us that the material comes from different hours with different patients on a single day; but we could happily turn the pages without knowing this information, pretending for example that it is all the same person, and therefore the many voices which echo in her head.
So, the book invites a work of invention, mixing and reassembling the given order. We could create our own sequences of phrases. For example, reading the book I enjoyed writing a sequence by putting together some “verses” in which patients refer directly to the analyst and, in so doing, fragment by fragment, they construct a mirror image of him. Sometimes patients provoke: “I never imagine you as human,” “People get the analyst they deserve,” “There’s no limit to my not caring what you say”; sometimes they apologize: “Dr. Moss, I do apologize”; or (apparently) digress: “Do you read French?,” “Are you reading Mrs Dalloway?”; or they are seductive: “In the dream, you and I were each wearing pajamas!,” “I can’t have you, so what’s the point?,” “You’re prescriptive about sex,” “Don’t fucking walk away from me,” “Six years ago I would have flirted with you,” “You can’t think of yourself as sexy,” “Are you globally irritated with me?,” “Have a good week”; at other times (often) they complain: “You don’t seem to car