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The Analyst stares into the steam of his green tea. Some of the more proactive flakes escape a tear in the frail nylon sachet, wending to the surface, a morning Rorschach for no one to interpret.
The first of his five patients for the day is out in the waiting room, flicking through one of the old copies of the LRB fanned out on the scuffed coffee table with splintered legs.
After all, the Analyst wanted to make and maintain the right impression — urbane, intellectual, and playful were three adjectives he hoped crossed some folks' minds some of the time.
The Analyst should be revisiting his process notes. Instead, he is brooding. Since his midcareer burst of publications on posthumanism and psychoanalysis, he had been wondering whether he was a better therapist than person.
The idea skittles his viscera. Think of the sensation of ingesting a large pill on an empty stomach.
The notion was a parting gift from his second wife, a landscape architect with kind eyes. The day she uttered those freighted words, they separated. For several months, he had been urging her to seek psychodynamic treatment.
“Address the relational disturbance inherited from your deprecating parents.”
His formulation, not hers.
In the Analyst's mind, every one of her attempts to connect became instances of neurotic transference, unjustly projected.
Really they were meant for her absent father. For weeks, he'd wake up in the early morning with molten tension in his legs, arms, and abdomen. He'd shake her from her sleep.