Mind Strings

“Francoise, there is a package for you,” was the first surprise I encountered that day. A package addressed to me at the institute where I trained? My mind started racing. Why would I have anything shipped to my institute? But there was the box. Huge.

I decided to open it there and then. When I saw the sender, my heart beat faster. A former patient who had moved away six months ago was making a spectacular comeback through the mail. How appropriate, I remember thinking. Clamoring for attention, commanding it by his very presence, taking me off guard, all old themes of his therapy. What was in store for me this time?

Entangled wooden limbs greeted me, as well as a scowling, menacing, snot-producing, incongruously red-lipped bald baby head connected to a piece of yellow fabric printed with white flowers. A hand puppet. Now I began to understand what was happening. A handwritten note was lying on top of this strange offering. It told me that my patient had been sorting through his belongings and could no longer relate to some of his artistic creations at this point in his life. However, he could not quite get himself to throw them out either and thought I might find a use for them.

Our work together had been greatly helped by his creativity and gifts, as he would often bring to sessions drawings illustrating the artistic impulses he had felt following our meetings. “The hand knows better than the brain,” he would say as he handed them over to me. He had asked me to keep them for him and had left them with me after we terminated. With his agreement, I was contemplating the idea of a show, which I thought I would entitle “story without words,” documenting his journey. No words needed. The images had a power of their own. I had by now quite the collection in my locker. The drawings were beautiful, evocative, very tortured. They were in a folder, and I loved looking back at them from time to time. But they were manageable.

The puppets were another story. There were three of th