Review: Therapy
You’ve been in and out of therapy for two years and are not sure if you’re supposed to be in therapy. On the one hand, the specific problems you began the therapy in order to address have been resolved. On the other hand, the process of their resolution has prompted discussion of the forces that caused the problems in the first place, which is ostensibly enlightening and preventative. So maybe you should continue. It is also possible that your doubts about continuing therapy constitute a subject worth examining in therapy. You imagine telling your therapist this, and then you imagine your therapist’s expression of mild amusement, which seems to be her reaction to most of what you say. You wonder if, given that you’ve apparently chosen to remain in therapy, it’s a bad idea to invest so much effort into amusing your therapist, or to assume that her look of amusement actually indicates amusement. Don’t you already spend enough time trying to amuse people you are not paying for their time? Maybe they’re not amused, either. Maybe your need to amuse everyone, including the therapist, is something worth talking about in therapy.
Your therapist’s office is large, comfortable, and clean. There’s a couch, but only in the waiting room, which is much larger than the consulting room, which is where the therapy takes place and which contains only chairs. Your therapist sits in a wheeled office chair, and you sit in an armchair. There’s another armchair that remains empty—presumably it is used for couples therapy. You often imagine that whomever you are talking about in therapy—you’re always talking about somebody or other, and the complexities of their interface with you—is sitting there, nodding as you speak. You imagine saying things about this person in therapy, then turning to him or her there in the chair and saying, “Right?” And he or she replies, “Right!” You wonder if your acquaintances would be amused to know that you have created affirmation-avatar versions of them for use in the imagined life of your therapy sessions. You think maybe most of them would. You might be wrong.
You like the therapist’s waiting room more than the consulting room where you and your therapist actually spend your time together, and sort of wish you could talk in the waiting room instead. The sofa is comfortable and the building’s venitlation system emits a constant, gently high-pitched tone that randomly fluctuates between an A-flat and and D. You know this because you once took out your phone and opened up your electronic synthesizer app to check. These two notes are a tritone, or augmented fourth, also known as the “Devil’s Interval.” You’ve never told your therapist this: maybe you should. It might amuse her. Usually the waiting room is empty when you arrive or leave, but one day a woman you know, who works in your building, was sitting on the sofa when you emerged from the consulting room. You said, “Hi, Susan!”, and she smiled, awkwardly. For the next couple of sessions, she stood at the window, her back to the room, as you departed, and presumably moved only once you were gone. Not long after, she changed her appointment time. Now she won’t even meet your gaze at work. Another time, a new client came to occupy the slot before yours, and you encountered her on her way out. She lingered audibly in the waiting room, then, while you were amusing your therapist in the consulting room, managed to lock herself into the bathroom. Your therapist had to go help her once the desperate pounding on the door became too distracting.
Your therapist is a married woman twenty years your senior. You like her—you share a conversational sensibility and a hobby. You think she likes you, too. In fact you often make the mistake of thinking of her as just some lady you’re friends with. You really would like to be friends with your therapist—it might be preferable to your present arrangement, and would allow you to commiserate about your common hobby, which would seem a poor use of your paid therapy sessions—but it’s unlikely that you would become friends with someone in her position, at least to the extent that you would want to be friends with her, which is to say, a person with whom you share your innermost thoughts every week. You have a lot of friends you routinely share your innermost thoughts with, which, according to your therapist, is not the norm among her clients. For some reason this flatters you. A lot of things flatter you. This is either a narcissistic personality flaw or evidence of a healthy interface with the world. The latter possibility, combined with the freedom you enjoy in sharing your thoughts with friends, makes you wonder what you need the therapy for. You’ve been in and out of therapy for two years and are not sure if you’re supposed to be in therapy.
Three stars.
★ ★ ★
