Response to Following Sybil

What a treat, to respond—as a man, as an analyst, as a writer—to Ted McCrorie's Following Sybil. Empathy flows toward the poet as well as toward his lover: she, so scarred, violated—in today's catchall label, “abused”—by so self-absorbed and self-serving a captain (Colonel John, as her father is described in the poem); she, so unclear about light, about shapes, about ownership, about authorship, about power; the lover/poet, so relentlessly trying to reach, to understand, to act “correctly.” Can he figure out, touch, connect? Will he make such difference as to engage Sybil, assure recognition from her, gain her responsiveness? Can the poet embrace Sybil without losing himself? Her wise therapist's warning to him:

The poem is about her, about him, but, especially, about them. The poem is about failing lovers, but also about the challenges and perils of our psychoanalytic enterprise. Has there not been for each of us, as analyst, as for most of us as lovers, that person (man, woman) who touches us, who gets under our skin, whom, despite our cautious training and “neutrality,” we seek to save, to reach where none before has touched? Speaking here as man/analyst/writer, I think of a favorite challenging, under-the-skin-writhing woman who came for therapy to find meaning and succor, who would settle for no less than a hand-touch to define my existence for her. Not a traditionally sexual demand (fortunately), but sensual, nonetheless. Or of an early Sybil in my life, where my assignment was to soothe, reassure, engender “aliveness,” which she could not seem to provide for herself.