Chapter 13 TAKE HIM TO A HEAD SHRINKER

Just beyond the edge of the lake, the therapists gather in a gaggle. Not so much Greek chorus as supporting cast in an amateur production of West Side Story. Perhaps in Eastbourne.

The Editor is busy checking the plural noun for a group of therapists.

Gee, Officer Krupke, the group sings silently, take him to a headshrinker.

The Ukrainian woman from Finsbury Park is there, looking concerned. “Do you need pills,” she says in broad and lovely inflected English. The thought – perhaps again – arises if the talking cure can work if the two people in it don’t speak the same language.

Then the young man, around 12-years old, from Saska Kępa. “The absent father,” he says solemnly. “We have not sufficiently explored the absent father.” The Man explains his predicament. He has no money and three boys at home to send on summer camp. He can barely afford a packet of cheesy crisps, let alone a 300-zloty therapy session.

“So, the absent father,” the boy-therapist says.

A day later he sends an invoice and an angry email asking for the money to be paid promptly.

The Dominican raises a finger. “What you need,” he says, “is forgiveness.”

“For whom?” asks the Boy.

The Dominican pauses. He had not expected a supplementary question.

The man from Crouch End sits cross-legged on the floor, barefoot, holding herbal tea in both hands.

“You are not being your true self,” he says.

“I’ve had about seventeen true selves this week,” says the Man. “One of them smoked twenty cigarettes and fell in love with a woman who explicitly said she didn’t want him.”

Master Zen doesn’t get the joke. “Nothing is accidental,” he says. “If it doesn’t hurt a bit it isn’t worth it,” he says.

The Boy remembers that old chestnut from 17 Grange Road.

Fifty quid in used fivers in a grubby envelop exchange hands. The Man leaves and vomits on the road outside the terraced house.

Fifty quid for that? I’d rather have a full fridge.

Beata smiles sadly, as if from another room. “You are very sensitive,” she says.

“I know,” says the Man. “That’s the fucking problem.”

So, take him to a social worker.

The Boy looks alarmed. “Please, anyone but Pat. Even Naam would be preferable.”

Lacan intervenes. No, no social workers. We haven’t finished doing the shrinks.

“They are just priests hearing confession,” he says. “You went to them not to change, but to perform wanting to change.”

Forgive me, therapist, for I have repeated the loop. Again. Loopy.

Like all good confessions, it depends on repetition. Same sin, new language. Same wound, improved packaging.

“How long since your last fantasy?” asks the Dominican.

“About twenty minutes,” says the Man.

The therapists nod gravely, as if this confirms their entire raison d’être.

Four different Hail Marys.

“Touch the feeling,” says the Ukrainian woman.

“Name the feeling,” says Beata.

“Understand the feeling,” says the young man from Saska Kępa.

“Analyse the feeling,” says the man from Crouch End.

“Perhaps,” says the Boy quietly, “he could just do something.”

There is a silence.

No one in the gaggle likes this. Action is so so vulgar. Action risks failure, while feeling can be repeated indefinitely.

The chorus falls silent for a moment.

Lacan, who has been loitering at the edge of the theraggle with the irritated expression of a man forced to watch his errant children reinvent the wheel, another loop, finally speaks.

“This is why therapy is a trap,” he says. “Not because it is false. Because it can be enjoyed.”

No one thanks him. They have heard enough already.

Somewhere beyond the therapagaggle, the lake waits, indifferent as ever. The Boy would prefer to be back there, scraping at the ice. The Man would prefer not to prefer anything at all. The Editor would prefer a cheaper rate and more insights per zloty.

The chorus falls silent for a moment.

Then the young man from Saska Kępa clears his throat. “Have we considered,” he says, “that M represents the missing object?”

“No,” shouts M, from somewhere offstage. “I represent M.” The Man, enlightened and poorer, says to his fellow inmates: “How can you not just love that? She’s got some balls, hasn’t she?”