In Treatment 2 -- Week 6 | Jung At Heart

In Treatment 2 -- Reflections

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:20:15 -0400

"It's not about you, Paul. They're human beings. They're struggling with profound problems. If only you could find courage to sit with the fact that what we do is hard, and sometimes it makes you feel like an idiot. It's a humbling profession, and if you lack anything as a therapist, it's humility." -Gina

This week is when all the chickens have come home to roost for Paul, when he hits the wall of not being able to make anyone better or happier or be in less pain. Paul would do well to heed what Gina said to him or as Jung put it:

"The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering. " (Jung, CW, V. 16, p.81)

This is not a message most people want to hear. It is tough to accept that suffering is part of life, that it is meaningful and unavoidable. It is hard for patients and often hard for therapists as well to stay with what is painful, to resist the urge to dart away into what is more comfortable, soothing, or easy. This way of understanding therapy also flies in the face of a feel-good orientation which seems to dominate American culture. We want to medicate, meditate or otherwise eliminate suffering, not face into it, sit in it and explore its meaning.

But it is a doomed quest for a therapist to try to soothe away or take care well enough that his patients stop suffering. It is not what therapy is about nor can he succeed in doing it. And when he tries, he ends up as Paul has, feeling frustrated and angry with himself and with his patients for his failure to fix things for them and their failure to feel better and make him feel good in the process.

April and Oliver wanted Paul to become the good and loving father, to keep providing for them the tender care he was able to give in the midst of crisis. He wasn't wrong to take April to the hospital or to give Oliver the sandwich. The error lies in his own belief that his action would somehow be curative and result in the patient getting better. And in his belief that he could possible meet their need from his position as therapist. He needs to feel the need, accept the need, care about them, carry the hope that they will find what they want and need, *and* resist the urge to try to make it all better for them. Because they cannot get to where they need to go without suffering and going through what is their reality.

This is a place where this shortened season does not serve the therapy story-lines well. That Oliver wants to live with Paul, wants him to become his parent, would in actual therapy be worked through, the desire acknowledged and explored without further enactment on Paul's part. One or both parents could be persuaded to continue to bring Oliver to see Paul while the work gets completed. Because Bess and Luke have much work to do also and their surfaces have not even been scratched yet.

For Oliver, Paul's inability to become his father is experienced as a betrayal, as it is for April in her situation. To believe that one can count on another to never hurt or betray or violate trust in any way is naïve and is to live in a bubble of unreality. Primal trust, arising from the relationship between infant and mother, even that trust, gets broken as the mother does not come immediately to soothe the infant or fails to correctly identify the source of difficulty. Development requires betrayal in order to develop tolerance for the frustration of ordinary failures in relationship and the resilience to not only survive but learn from them. This is the task of therapy, not rescuing from the feelings and suffering. But to get there requires time, time that the demands of the show do not allow.

"We can be truly betrayed only where we truly trust – by brothers, lovers, wives, husbands, not by enemies, not by strangers. The greater the love and loyalty, the involvement and commitment, the greater the betrayal. Trust has in it the seed of betrayal; the serpent was in the garden from the beginning…Trust and the possibility of betrayal come into the world at the same moment" (Hillman)

In Treatment 2 -- Gina, week 6

Mon, 18 May 2009 22:57:42 -0400

Paul is on the phone talking with someone about his father's estate. Every place he calls puts him on hold and he becomes frustrated and throws his phone which starts to ring just as Gina comes to the door.

Paul tells Gina that he is trying to get his father's estate settled but he keeps being put on hold. Paul asks if Gina will proofread a letter he wrote -- then tells her about meeting with Alex's father. She is astonished that Paul wrote the letter. Paul says his attorney says the letter will end the lawsuit and the insurance will pay everything. Otherwise it could go to court and he will lose because according to the lawyer, everyone hates therapists. Gina expresses skepticism about the lawyer. Paul tells her he thinks he is not helping anyone anyway and he wants to send the letter and find something else to do. Gina corrects him and says he does more than just listened to. Paul says they want love, a parent, things he can't give them.

Gina asks if what he wants to do is make people happy. He says absolutely yes, he does. He says he will become a life coach and give advice. Gina says to Paul that if Mia, as an example, were able to accept love, she wouldn't be coming to him. Paul attacks Gina for not being willing to accept responsibility for her patients. She says that doing what he says makes patients dependent on therapists and unable to decide for themselves.

Gina reflects that she let him down because she failed to protect him from the pain he is experiencing now. Paul says no, he has disappointed her. She judges him, he says. He demands she tell him what she really thinks. She says she really thinks he is acting like an asshole, has little insight into his own behavior. She says she is furious with him. And that maybe that is exactly what he wanted, for him to become the authority figure who failed him so he can again be the innocent victim.

Gina says he would always rather yell than think. She asks him why he thinks she has stuck by him because despite what he thinks she believes he is a good therapist. That he has a great ear and a great sense of empathy. Paul becomes quiet.

Gina tells him he isn't failing them, that they are human beings in great need. She tells him he has to become able to tolerate that therapists don't save people, we can't. Paul tells her Walter tried to kill himself. Gina wonders why he didn't tell her. Paul believes if he had succeeded in killing himself, it would have been his fault. He knew Walter's daughter is like he was and how he wanted to tell her to get out now and make her life. He understands why Walter would want to kill himself to take control. Gina asks if he thinks about this himself and he denies it because he has children. He tells her he vowed he never would do anything like that when his own mother died. Paul asks Gina if she has ever thought about suicide and she says yes. Gina asks about April. Paul stops early -- he says he is exhausted. He has become quiet. Gina says she will keep the letter and he should think about it for a week and if he decides he wants it back next week she will give it to him. She tells him to see his patients and to act as if he believes.

Years ago a friend of mine said that we become therapists because we fail with our first patient -- our mother or father -- and then set out to do with others what we could not do with him or her. Paul was unable to keep his mother alive. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he loved her, he was not enough to keep her from killing herself. And we learn tonight that Paul has been trying to be enough to fix his patients all these years, just as he tried with his mother. And that effort, in most ways, is as doomed to failure as his childhood efforts were.

Paul wants to be able to take responsibility for his patients' lives -- to give Laura enough love, Alex reason to live, Mia the holding and love she wants, April the good father, Oliver the loving caring parent. And he cannot do it, not literally. And underneath it all, on some level he is also angry at them as at his mother for not making him feel better by allowing him to heal them.

As Guntrip said, Paul would rather be bad than weak, rather believe that it is his failing that has kept his patients from getting what they want and need, rather than that he is powerless to give it to them as he was powerless to make his mother want to stay alive.

It can take a long time, even while working well as a therapist, to come up against these unconscious forces at play in our work. It has taken the confluence of events -- the lawsuit, his divorce, his father's death -- to bring Paul to the point of having to recognize what he has been trying to do and why it has failed. And that in his efforts to be what his patients needed and wanted and failing, he has not see his actual gifts of being very good at listening and being empathic. Gina is right on the money with this. This is Paul's dark night of the soul for himself as a therapist. He needs to become willing to sit with his patients, to listen, to interpret *and* to allow them to feel their pain and discover that the way out is through it. And in order to do this, he must feel his own suffering and find his way through it with the support from but not rescue by Gina.

We also see here that Paul has a maternal transference to Gina. He has tried so hard to be good, be what he thought she wanted and he has failed and he is furious with her, as he has not been able to be with his mother. His fury goes to Gina because of all that she now stands for in his life.

Someone may well ask if it was all right for Gina to get angry, to let her anger show. And while it would not work a a deliberate therapeutic technique, it was the right thing at the time because it opened up something between them. Paul needed to know he could not jab at Gina as he was without consequence. She is not, after all, his punching bag there to take whatever abuse he wants to dish out. The exchange between them was areal rather than therapeutic and these moments do happen in long term therapy. It is important that the therapist also be as skilled as Gina in then seeing what just happened and understanding it and be able to interpret it, as she did with Paul.

In Treatment 2-- Walter, Week 6

Mon, 18 May 2009 22:16:11 -0400

Walter is in the waiting room. He has a hospital ID band on and his daughter is with him. He tells her she is not going in with him. Paul comes to the door to greet them.

Walter tells Paul it is good ti get out. He says his wife and Natalie have taken him out for lunch. His wife cried over lunch. He is humiliated that he has to have his daughter or wife with him to leave. Paul says it is because he is a danger to himself. Walter does not like the hospital -- the staff is not very bright, he thinks, not like Paul. He says the staff talks to him like he is a child. Paul says he feels patronized and Walter uses it as another occasion to compliment Paul. But Paul points out that in fact Walter seems annoyed by him and does not like how he works. Paul asks why he is sucking up to him.

Walter's face gets hard. Then he shows Paul a potholder he made in OT. He speaks scornfully of the whole program -- group therapy and what the other patients say. He says he cannot relate to them. He does not believe that he belongs with those people. Paul suggests he is angry that Paul couldn't save him from the depression he fell into. So walter counters by telling him that one of the psychiatrists said Paul was reckless and opened Pandora's box at the wrong time. Walter then bullshits about how highly he thinks of Paul. And finally he says he wants out of the hospital. He pleads with Paul to call them and tell him he can go home. Paul says first they need to talk, that he has to become honest with him.

Walter says he was ashamed. He says it has been hell being in the hospital -- nothing to do and he can't do what he wants to do. Being unable to do anything bothers him so he paces and walks the hall. The time drags and he stares out the window and thinks about how much he could be doing if he were at his job. He says he is just not comfortable wasting time. Pul suggests he might find the time now to reflect and see how things are inside. Walter says Natalie tells him he should listen to his inner voice.

Paul asks what he thinks about as he walks the hall. Walter says he thinks about money, the bills, what happened to the kids hurt by the formula -- their families.

The staff keeps wanting to go over the crisis and the firing. He compares it to a deposition. He hasn't talked about his history with them at all. He painted the picture he thought they wanted. Because he thinks the staff is just worried about his medication and how much insurance he has. Paul asks if they might be thinking about anything else and Walter reluctantly says they are wondering of he will try it again and he knows that will be with him the rest of his life. Walter gets up and walks to the window and says Paul lives on a pretty street.

He sits down again and asks Paul what he would have done if he were Walter. Paul tells him he has thought about it and he understand s how hopeless it felt and how he wanted a way out. He tells Walter that the worst night of his life has now passed. Walter says he kept wanting to come up with a way to stop feeling. He had always been able to get out of bed and work but not this time. He says he never knew this Walter existed, the one who is weak and unable to stand up to the pressure. Paul suggests maybe this is the first time he hasn't had to answer the call to work and so now there is room for the other Walter to emerge. Paul refers to Connie's rehab. Walter is angry but Paul tells him that people in therapy talk about these kinds of things. He defends Connie. He says her problem is his fault because he was always traveling and she gets in a mood and slides downhill and he would have to come home. He says he ha always been her rock until now and he has let her and everyone down. Paul says he has been everyone's rock -- but he wonders about the pressure and the need. Paul says it worries him that he doesn't know what to do without a crisis, a situation he has been in since his brother died. He can't just be, play, not be in charge. Paul asks what would happen to this other Walter, the little boy who lost his childhood, if walter goes home now? Walter cannot understand why Paul thinks it is important to connect to the part of himself that crumbled -- Paul says that is not the part that crumbled, it is the part that wants to live. Walter starts to sob. Paul walks over to the couch and puts his hand on Walter's shoulder.

Paul again does a very nice job with Walter, continuing from their session in the hospital.

Walter wants out of the hospital and he starts by sucking up to Paul, because he sees Paul as holding the keys. Inpatient units have their own culture and what is normal outside the hospital is not normal inside. For example, an introvert enjoys time alone and may well choose to spend time in his own company every day but in a hospital setting, this could well be seen as isolating behavior and not acceptable in someone who is depressed. This can be frustrating and difficult, especially for someone like Walter who is used to being in charge. So he tries to game the system -- answering what he is asked but not offering much more, trying to butter up Paul, anything that will get him his way. This is the Walter who will not accept that he has a problem, who if allowed out quite likely would attempt again to kill himself .

The version of himself that Walter says he never knew is the one who carries the pain and suffering and is something more than work. This Walter has a faint inkling that he needs to be taken care of for a while -- the Walter who sobs at the end when Paul talks about him. Paul had to find a way to connect with this more open and vulnerable Walter in order for there to be much hope for treatment. The hard-driving executive Walter has contempt for his little boy self, for the one who cried, for the one he left behind when his brother died and he will resist any attempt to reveal him. There is a lot more resistance, aggression and denial in store for Paul if Walter actually continue in therapy.

In Treatment 2 -- Oliver, week 6

Mon, 18 May 2009 21:35:20 -0400

Bess and Oliver are in the waiting room. Luke arrives. He and Bess trade barbs. Paul invites them in but Luke says he and Bess need to talk with him first. Oliver is not happy about this.

Luke and Bess sit far from each other. Luke reports that Bess called and told him she is moving upstate. Bess says she got a job offer. She has an opportunity to adjunct at Bard College but did not tell Luke until she made all the arrangements. Paul confronts Bess with the problem of not having talked with Luke about it. He asks her why this job is so important to her. She says it is a chance to get an inside track on getting a fellowship to complete her degree. Paul says it is a huge change for Oliver. Luke suspects she wants full custody of Oliver but Bess wants him to stay in the city and live with Luke. Bess thinks the best plan is for Oliver to live with Luke until June and then they can see where to go from there. Paul says this is a huge change from not wanting Oliver to stay one night with Luke to wanting him to live with him. Bess tries to make Oliver's best interests her reason. Luke says it is impossible for him to take him on full time because they can't get along. They are now fighting over who has to take care of Oliver. Paul points out that neither of them wants to take care of Oliver right now. They fall silent. He tells them they have to figure out a way to look after their son. Paul reiterates that they need to find a compromise. Luke suggests Oliver stay with Bess during the week and take the train to the city weekends. Bess thinks he is too young to go on the train by himself. Paul tells them it is potentially harmful to Oliver to uproot him. Paul keeps pushing them to think about it but Bess and Luke want to tell Oliver right now, They refuse to take time to think it through.

Paul calls Oliver in. He is reluctant to come in. Luke moves to the couch and Oliver sits between them.

Bess tells Oliver that they have good news and she tells him she has gotten a job. Oliver looks very unhappy. Luke tries to convince him it is a good change. Oliver asks who will live in their apartment and expresses concern over someone else living in his room. Paul asks Oliver what he wants to say and Oliver forcefully says he does not want to go. He tells is father he doesn't care what Oliver thinks. Paul lets Oliver know it is a lot for him. Bess wants Luke to move into their apartment. Oliver says he can't live with his dad because he gets drunk. Luke and Bess start bickering. Paul tells them to stop fighting because they need to take care of Oliver. Oliver yells Fuck You! and runs out. He is on a swing in a park when Paul, Luke and Bess arrive.

Oliver asks to speak alone with Paul. He asks Paul where he is going to live. He says his mother and father don't want him. Oliver says if he were gone, his mother could go start her job and his father could live alone and be happy. Paul tells him that his parents love him very much. He asks him to tell him all the things that make him happy and comfortable. He tells Paul he is comfortable in his office and he likes talking with him. Then he asks if he can live with him. Paul says that sounds like a good idea but he can't come and live with Paul. He has parents of his own. Oliver says he likes Paul better. Paul says he can come visit him any time. Oliver says Paul doesn't want him either. Paul tells him he is happy that Oliver likes to talk with him. Oliver says he is going to talk with his parents alone, that he knows he is moving and will never see Paul again, despite that Paul says he will always be there as his friend.

This week we, and Oliver sadly, must deal with the fact that neither parent wants to take care of him. It maybe a fine point, but this does not actually equate to neither of them loving him, only that neither wants to carry the responsibility of his care. As happens more than once in a while, divorce sets the adults back into the place in their lives they were when they were last single. And for Luke and Bess this was on the cusp of having adult lives -- living alone, pursuing work, being responsible only for themselves. That is where they were when Bess got pregnant and all of that young adult life got cut short as they took on being married and stereotypic roles. Now the marriage is over and they want to get back what they each lost. But they have a child and so now comes the struggle over who will be the adult, set aside personal desires, and care for him. None of this is Oliver's doing and he can do very little to change any of it. He truly is a pawn in their lives. And right now it does not appear that either of them is willing to consider what they are doing, to take the time to reflect on options and their responsibilities. Bess failed to start talking with Luke about her plans until it was too late for him to be able to persuade her to not take the job -- because she knew he would appeal to her sense of responsibility and she, having tasted what it is like to have only herself to care for, does not want to be a full-time mother now or perhaps ever again. It is not the feelings that Luke and Bess have, not their wishes that they could reboot their lives and be fully separate and without the responsibility for Oliver, but their lack of will or desire to explore those feelings and work to arrive at a solution that is a good compromise and in the best interests of their child. It seems unlikely that Paul will be able to persuade them to do this.

So here Paul runs hard into the basic frustration of working with kids -- their parents. Because right now, Oliver's problem is his parents and he is powerless to do anything about them, except by acting out or even worse, acting in and taking it out on himself, as he has with his not eating.

Oliver wants Paul to take over being his parent. He knows Paul cares about him and listens to him. Here Paul runs into another frustration of working with children -- he cannot take over caring for this child and give him the parent he wants and needs. This is painful for Oliver and for Paul. And is a conflict that Paul has to contain. He needs to allow Oliver his anger at him for not stepping in to be his parent.

In Treatment 2 -- April, Week 6

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:54:06 -0400

April is on the far end of the couch. She is angry. Paul says he is afraid that what happened last week changed their relationship. April says they have no relationship. She says she has dumped people for less. Paul suggests she wanted to tell him in person. She is furious with him. Paul says he had to tell her mother because she was delirious. She was taken to the ER with a very high fever. He tells her if it happened again he would do the same thing. She tells him she was leaving therapy.

Paul tells her he did not think it was right to leave her there alone on the brink of death. April says he does not understand what he was to her. Then she asks what her mother said to him when he called. He tells her that her mother was surprised because she didn't know April was seeing anyone. She would meet him but she did come to the hospital. He says he recognized her because they look alike. Paul tells her what he told her mother. April asks if she cried or was angry. Paul says not at all. That she had a hard time believing April would keep something like that from her. They spoke for just a few minutes because she wanted to see April.

April says she woke up to find her sitting next to her. That it felt like when she was a child. She feel asleep and when she woke up she was still there and glaring at her as if she had gotten sick deliberately.

April tells Paul he broke her heart, worse than Kyle. She went for coffee with him and thought he looked like a boy and that she wanted a man like Paul. Paul says last week he was heroic and good and today he is her betrayer. Paul says that as a parent he knew he had to call her mother. When he made one decision that did not agree with her, he becomes worthless. No one can live up to her standard because she cannot live up to it either.

April says that her friend Leah lets her down and that's okay because she knows she loves her. Paul says Leah got in when they were children, before she closed the gate to others. Paul suggests to her that she is someone with heightened emotional responses that she has been working overtime to bury. He asks why she thinks her mother used to tell her to keep her feelings to herself and suggests that she didn't want her to be like Daniel. He tells her she has been living for a long time in reaction to her mother and doesn't really know herself. Her mother was agitated and she couldn't deal with her but when her father came he was perfect and got her what she needed. He sat by her and told her she is a strong girl and will beat it. Paul suggests he is comfortable in hospitals while her other was out of her element.

She tells Paul he over her. He is puzzled and asks what she means. She says because he called her mother. He pulled rank on her and called her mother. Paul asks if she thinks of herself as an adult and she says not really. Paul says maybe that's because she didn't have time to be a child. She says their work is done and Paul says it is just beginning.

Paul tells her that he wonders if maybe she came to see him so that he would tell her mother after she had gotten chemo, so that she could be the hero child, the perfect child who caused no problems. She says she thought the cancer would clear of all of this, but it is worse inside, that she no longer believes in anything any more. Paul reminds her of her dream last time, where she is dying. He says he thinks maybe it is about a rebirth, the dying of the old self. He asks her to call him when she gets the results of her blood tests. She asks him to help her get up.

This season is starting to feel rushed -- too much accomplished in a short time. I am finding I have to imagine that the time span between sessions is longer than the story line suggests. I understand they are meeting the demands of the schedule but this really is very condensed.

April is in the grip of a fierce complex about perfection, fierce enough to kill her in her efforts to be the perfect undemanding child. It is a possession really when we are gripped like this, rather like being under a spell or enchantment and such a spell must be broken if she is to survive. We might guess that April has always been furious at the demands her brother makes on her mother and the way that has deprived her of much needed attention. Her solution has been to strive to be perfect, in absolute contrast to her brother with his inability to control his emotions and the threat of violence hanging over the family from him. If she can be perfect, so perfect that she even takes care of herself -- as when she made herself not cry when she fell from the window and then didn't even tell them what had happened, or in her current effort to deal with her cancer alone and not tell them until she has managed to deal with it -- if she can manage this, then she can allow her mother to know and her mother will appreciate her and love her. But this is a deadly pursuit. Which Paul understands. Acting out of his own experience as a parent and knowing her mother would not want to be left uninformed, he broke it open. And yes, April is angry because he thwarted her perfection project. But I believe he is correct that she wanted Paul to be the vehicle for informing her mother because she needed her to know.

Caught between her mother, who by April's description flutters around trying to get information and cannot hide her own distress, and her father who meets her physical needs and tells her how strong she is, April is not being met where she is -- which is frightened, sick, depressed. Only Paul really sees this and she is furious with him. But she cannot get what she needs from her parents unless she is willing to let them in, let them care for her. And allow Paul to help her find her way through this so that she might have a better life going forward. His reference back to the dream in the previous session seemed spot on -- that what was dying was the perfect child she could never be, a death which must occur in order for her to have a full life.

Next week is the final episode of the season. We would expect work with a patient like this to go on for many more weeks. So I do not expect the conclusion to be terribly satisfactory. If April decides to remain in therapy, she can do very well.

There is a lovely book by Jane Wheelwright, who was a Jungian analyst. The book, The Death of a Woman, recounts Wheelwright's work with a woman in her 30's who was dying of cancer. They worked through her dreams and it is testimony to a kind of work that can be done.

In Treatment 2-- Mia, Week 6

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:54:02 -0400

Paul opens the door to find Mia in the waiting room. She says it is over, that she is no longer pregnant.

She says she isn't feeling well and she called in sick. She complains of being tired and not being up for the whole session. She does not want to move into the office, preferring to remain on the couch in the waiting room. Paul offers to fix her tea but she declines.

She tells Paul she started bleeding Friday and it didn't stop. Paul asks how she is emotionally. She says she's numb. That she had felt different for a little while, that she had a purpose. Being a mother answered all the questions about her life. Paul suggests there are other ways to have a child if she wants one but she rejects adoption or artificial insemination. She says she never found the right man or she pushed him away and now she has no man and no child.

Paul asks if she called anyone. That she could have called him. She says she spoke to her mother. Paul again suggest they move into the office. She follows him. Paul asks about the conversation with her mother who called when she did not attend her niece's piano recital. She had been paying for the piano lessons. Paul suggests she wanted to be certain music was not taken from them as it had been from her. When she didn't answer her mother's call, she came over and asked if she had the flu. She cried when her mother asked and her mother says maybe that's nature's way. Her mother attempted to make a consolation toast and said she was proud of her, because she is independent and has a career. She told her mother that was odd given that she always accused Mia that she had ruined her modeling career. Her mother told her she never actually had much of a career, that she lost her mind not her looks when Mia was born. She told Mia she stayed in her room because she was afraid she would kill herself and didn't want to do that to her. Her father moved into the living room when this happened but got no help for her. Paul suggests she had no mothering for a year. Mia said her mother told her when she came out of it she had a rush of feeling and wanted to be close to her but Mia was close with her father and didn't want her. And her father couldn't forgive his wife.

She also found the twins were an accident. Her mother told her it was her father's idea to send her to his sister's family when the twins came along because he wouldn't hire help for her.

Mia is angry that her mother spent so many years telling her she had ruined her life and now she tells another story. Paul tells her he understands her anger -- her mother never mothered her and now wants to be close to her. As Paul tries to help Mia see that maybe her father was not all that she thought, Mia accuses him of taking the mother's side. Mia asks if he is accusing her of pushing her mother away. Paul asks what about her father? Has she considered that her father colluded in the lie? Mia is furious at the thought that her father was not the hero. Paul says maybe she has to reevaluate her parents and what they did. Mia insists her father was always there for her and her mother never was. Paul points out that she becomes angry whenever he suggests she look at her father more closely. Paul tells her she needs to question the way she has thought about her parents, that it isn't about blame but about the image she has carried. He tells her about discovering too late that his father wasn't who he had thought. That if she doesn't go through this she will stay where she is.

Paul asks if her mother told her what happened to the piano. he tells him her mother said her father sold it because with two babies, that was enough noise. Paul asks what would happen if she entertained that her mother told the truth. Mia tells him her mother called her doctor and insisted she go to see him. So she took Mia there. He ran some tests and told her that she hadn't been pregnant, that she had not miscarried and likely would not get pregnant. He told her he sees this often, successful women who come in believing they are pregnant and they are not. Paul asks if she had done a test. She says no, that she thought she would wait because she had been so sure. She tells Paul he is wrong, she does not have to grieve for a child she never had. Paul says in a way it was, in the desire to create new life. After making a joke about meeting a man in the bar, she gets ready to leave. Paul asks her to call during the week because he wants to know how she is.

I wondered last time how Mia could know so soon that she was pregnant. And I wondered if perhaps she was wishing for a child so much that she was convincing herself that her late period meant she was pregnant. And indeed it appears this is what happened.

The experience of what she believed to be a miscarriage brought her mother into the picture as a person for the first time and we see that Mia has been so firmly attached to her father, so in the grip of her negative mother complex, that even now she cannot accept any version of her life which does not place her father as hero and her other as villain.

The revelations from her mother -- that there was no modeling career, that there had been a deep and serious postpartum depression which left her father to care for her, that it was her father who sent her away when the twins came, and it was her father who took away her piano -- are too much for her to take in. They create such serious dissonance for her that she rejects them because to do otherwise, to entertain even part of them would necessitate a radical revision of the story she has told herself about her life. It is often the case when one parent is idolized and the other demonized that a closer look reveals a different and far more complex story.

All of us have a story we are living. And we work to defend and maintain this story because it makes sense of our experiences and feelings. Mia's story is that she has a doting father and a rejecting mother and that her mother has been the source of all that is bad in her life. She cannot bear to see her father as other than the hero. Though she is not happy with her life, is despondent about her failed relationships, to make any serious change she must be willing to look at the story she is living and be willing to revise it, to see her parents as they were not as she wanted them to be, not as she felt. And she is at best ambivalent at this prospect.

Paul was quite good with her this week. But I suspect she will push him away again because to allow him to care for her, to allow him t help her means she must be willing to look at herself and at her parents and how the story has shaped her entire life. He seemed on the mark when he suggested that in way she had been pregnant, pregnant with the desire for a new life and that losing that possibility deserves grieving. What remains to be seen is whether or not she is willing to continue to work on bringing a new life into being for herself.

The only way out is through

Negative mother complex

Father hero