The Good, the Bad, and the Amiable

November 10th, Colin arrives for his session. For the first time in 8 years of treatment he announces, “I had a dream.” In the dream Colin is traveling in a desert. Probably it is the Southwest, probably the Sonoran dessert. He is on a long trek. Two “Mexican guys” with horses have a roadside stand. They are selling refreshments, a drink. The drink is fresh squeezed from cactus. They sell a drink to Colin. It is revivifying, refreshing. They are very generous; they do not charge much for the drink and they give Colin extra. They are old Mexicans with leathered, weathered faces. In the dream everyone is smiling. In my office Colin is smiling.

Colin is the only person in my practice whom I had fantasized voting for Trump.

His actual politics had never expressly entered the room, by which I mean they had never been vocalized. And yet, always and of course, there is a sense of a given person’s political and ideological identity and affiliations. In Colin’s case such affiliations were prominently coded into his job, where he lived, his family structure, his hobbies, and so on. Which is to say his politics, his ideological undergirding, had always been in the room for the past 8 years. Which is to explain my fantasy that he voted for Trump.

Colin, I know, and also fantasize, stalks me online. I know because he has told me of checking my Facebook page, and I fantasize because, well. My Facebook page has naught to do with psychoanalysis and much to do with progressive leftist politics. Left of Lenin is there somewhere as a self-description.

Given his presumed knowledge of my politics I imagine him tensely holding on to what has long been an idealizing transference. And a transference analysis has long eluded us in this treatment. So Colin knows my politics. And, in the wake of the election, I think Colin fears my hatred. The good Mexicans Colin dreamed up are his redemptive genuflection, angling to forestall my hatred. However, the truth is we have known each other’s politic