You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The patient was self-referred. He had learned through a friend that his future therapist had written a paper on the treatment of manic depressive psychosis. He sought out the therapist as a means of helping his girlfriend, whom he had diagnosed as a manic depressive, and felt was in need of psychological help.
At first glance, Mr. Smith gave a rugged, tough, John Wayne-like impression. However, when he slumped into the chair for his initial consultation, his face showed lines of worry and pain. He did not look well physically.
“I haven't ate or slept in two months. You got to help me, Doc, and you have got to help Jane.”
Mr. Smith's story was a pathetic tale of paradise gained and paradise lost. He had known Jane for a year and a half. Before he had met her, he suffered the loneliness of being a widower. Before that time, he spent six long years nursing two dying women: his sister (an arthritic cripple) and his wife (a victim of cancer). At the end of his six-year ordeal, he had lost two very important love objects. His life, he felt, had lost all meaning until he met Jane.
“Jane gave me a reason to live,” he said. “We had thirteen glorious months, then she went to visit her daughter and came back changed. She no longer seemed interested in me. We stopped living together. Then we would see each other, and she would be loving and wonderful, and then she would stop being loving and push me away. She is the most wonderful and beautiful person I have ever met, and now I've lost her. I feel she must be a manic depressive, because she is two people. There is the good and loving Jane, and the bad Jane. You have got to help me make her well.”