by Elie Wiesel
“Well, it's possible to be anti-racist and anti-Semitic.”
Very soon, something about him intrigues me. Nervous energy, pathological touchiness, personal ghosts that make him angry. Obviously, he has suffered a lot. Too much perhaps? That's meaningless. To each his yardstick. Each person has his own conception of what is too much and too heavy a burden. Hegel talks about excess knowledge. Can there also be excess memory? A mildly unpleasant remark for one person is as unbearable as a bludgeoning for another. Therefore? While observing my visitor and taking mental notes on this first meeting—or should I say first confrontation?—I wonder, What makes him tick? as they say. In other words, what motivates his behavior? What should his illness be called? What disturbs him in his social relationships? What misconceptions does he have that disrupt his perception of reality? What aberrations did he live through? What pains him at night and frightens him in the morning? Is he just suffering from a pathological nostalgia for a lost paradise, filched by strangers?
I explain to him briefly what I have in mind—one or two (well-paid) sessions a week to start, length of treatment unpredictable—and I expect him to tell me I'm too expensive, but he interrupts me: “Forget money issues. It's very kind of you to accept me as a patient, but I'm entitled to my say in the matter too, am I not?”
Surprised, I quickly answer: “You can't pay?”
“Pay? I'll pay whatever you want. And more, if necessary.”
“So money isn't a problem for you—”
“Are you making fun of me, or what? I can pay; I've always paid for everything. And don't ask me the source of my revenue. It's none of your business. Besides, that's not what I want to talk to you about. Would you have the kindness to listen to me?”
“Certainly. Go ahead, I'm all ears,” I say.
“Since we're going to spend a lot of time together, it's important to me to know who you are.”
“That's no concern of yours.”
“Sorry to contradict you, but if I understand correctly, it's my mental health, if not my life, that's at stake. Don't I have the right to know in whose hands I'm putting them?”
I try to keep calm and explain to him, very summarily, Freud's conception of psychopathology, trying to adapt it to the circumstances. Association of ideas. Essential mutual trust. Mandatory distance between therapist and patient; eliminating it would jeopardize the cure.
He objects. “I've read a lot about hysteria, neurosis, psychosis, and schizophrenia. I've even studied split-personality syndrome. But Freud is dead, may he rest in peace. It's not him I'll be ambling—or living—with for months or years to come, but you. You'll find out everything about me. I'll have to reveal my innermost secrets to you, if I understand your approach correctly. And meanwhile I'll know nothing about you? Where you're from? Who your parents are? Whether you have brothers, or cousins? Friends, devoted or hypocritical? Whether you're married? Whether you love your husband? Whether you've been unfaithful to him, if only in your thoughts? And whether you're happy when you're alone? So finally: Will you answer my questions, yes or no? If it's no, then I'll leave you, and may that anti-Semitic bastard Gallagher go to the devil!”
I frown and keep silent for a while. What should I reply? That I'm Jewish and the only daughter of survivors who refuse to talk about their past? That I love my profession? That I'm married, faithful, and have no children? That happy people may have problems but no story to tell? I just reply with all the sincerity I think is fitting: “Very well, Mr. Waldman. Your argument isn't without merit. I'll make a deal with you, or if you prefer, a wager: Let's proceed on the basis of exchange. I'll do everything I can to get to know you better, and you'll do the same thing. And we'll see who'll be the first to succeed.”
He accepts the deal—and I wonder which one of us will be the first to regret it. And why.
I ask him what he lives on; he answers by shrugging. Can he really afford to pay me? Another gesture, almost of disdain. He talks and behaves as if this is the least of his worries. Is he really that wealthy? Could that be his problem?
So the show is on the road. That's how the treatment began. It wasn't easy. The first fifty-minute session went rather badly. First, he refused to lie down on the couch. Then he didn't want me to sit behind him, notebook in hand. An unpleasant discussion—it nearly ended in a quarrel—took up all the time I had decided to grant him. As he got up, he said, “I'm not sure I want to come back.” I replied that he was free to do as he pleased; he could just phone my secretary and cancel the next appointment. He took an envelope out of his pocket and put it on my desk; it contained a check covering an entire month's treatment. One of these days, I thought, if we continue, I'll have to question him—discreetly—about his financial resources.
He didn't phone.
He arrived for the second session in a bad mood, but it ended comically.
“I don't think you can help me” were the words he assailed me with at the door. “I came back because I'm interested in you. I have a feeling you need me more than I need you.”
I replied that if I lost my patients, my husband wouldn't like it.
And then, again, he refused to lie down. Never mind. Since he lost the first battle and reappeared, why not let him win this one? He insisted that we sit facing each other. Very well, we placed two chairs accordingly. He didn't look comfortable, nor, I imagine, did I. A heavy, hostile silence set in. I asked him in a dry, cold, neutral tone: “What are we going to talk about?”
“You're the physician. You suggest the topics.”
“We could start with the present. What did you do and how did you feel this morning when you woke up? Did you remember your dreams? Were you in a good mood?”
“Let's hear your second suggestion.”
“We could talk about your parents.”
“What for?”
“So I can get to know you better.”
“No.”
“Do you ever dream of your mother?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I'm awake.”
“Never when you're asleep?”
“I sometimes see her in my sleep. Then it's no longer sleep.”
“Do you see her otherwise than in a dream?”
“Sometimes.”
“How is she dressed?”
“White shirt, light blue skirt.”
“What is she doing?”
“She's resting.”
“And your father?”
“He's resting.”
“And you?”
“I look at them rest.”
“Are they kissing?”
“They kiss me.”
“And when they're alone?”
“You're annoying me, Doctor. I don't feel like talking about them anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because I don't understand what you find interesting about them.”
“But I find everything you say interesting.”
“Especially my mother, right? She's the one taunting you. You'd like to hear me say I was in love with her. Come on, I know what's up. You're not the only one who's read Uncle Sig-mund, as we call him in certain literary circles. Be a bit more original, Doctor. And a bit more daring. Why don't you start by throwing your routine questionnaire in the trash can?”
Then he clammed up. I tried goading him, but in vain. I brought up other subjects: nothing doing. The silence persisted and became unpleasant. Doriel got up five minutes before the end of the session, headed toward the door, and, without turning around, gave me something of a warning: “I told you a lot of things this afternoon. If you didn't hear anything, you have only yourself to blame. It's your fault, not mine. Better yet: if, for all your studies and experience, you still don't know that each person has his own questions and his own distinctive way of elucidating them, you should change professions. At any rate, what I have to tell you now is simple: the session we just had doesn't deserve payment.”
He left without saying whether he would r
eturn.
I hoped he would.
“So, in order to help me get better, you want to know everything about … my disease, my illness. And about my life. Well, I promise I'll make an effort.”
“I'm listening.”
“I'm frightened. And when I'm not frightened, I'm frightened of not being frightened. Frightened of losing my stability, my reason. Madness, Doctor—let's not be afraid of saying the word—that's what I dread. When my illness appears, it doesn't come from others but from myself. Its seductive capacity as well as its destructive power, its ability to shake everything up, to invade everything, to envelop everything: I fear these. To escape its grasp, I sometimes use the biblical images of punishments and curses: in the morning I call for the night, and at night I wait for the day. It's an enemy that's always on the lookout, a dagger in each hand, ready to stab me. Sometimes I feel like running to the other end of the planet and hiding. But I don't move. I know that there is no refuge in my life against what is called mental illness or madness. Do you understand what I'm saying, Doctor? Do you honestly think you'll be able to show me that this refuge exists and tell me where?”
Doriel is on time. Sullen, taciturn, he doesn't greet me, goes over to the couch and sits down. The next minute, he gets up and settles in his usual chair.
He doesn't look at me. Motionless, he stares at a specific point in space. As though I didn't exist? Rather, as though I alone exist. In order to better get ready to confront me, defy me, contradict me.
The hands on the little wristwatch Martin gave me for our first wedding anniversary move forward, painfully but stubbornly.
“How about telling me about your day yesterday?”
He pretends not to hear. In the closed world he's locked himself up in, perhaps he can't hear. Does a man who is born deaf hear noises in his sleep? Does he think everyone is like him, deaf to the music of words and sounds?
“Doriel,” I say, “the fact that you're here means you think I can help you. But if you keep remaining silent, I can't continue.”
You'd think I hadn't said anything.
He's trying to annoy me; that's obvious. Destabilize me, make me vulnerable. What's his aim? To prove to me I'm weak when faced with his desire to create a space between us, a space that I, whom he sees as an explorer of the human soul, will never be able to cross? Well, he won't succeed. I can be strong, stronger than he can imagine. I speak to him in a calm, very calm, unruffled tone of voice: “Apparently you like silence, Doriel. That happens. There are men like you. They've given up on speech. In their despair over language, they choose silence. As a goal or a means? They're not the same. As a means, silence can last indefinitely. It can be explained and is translated into a rejection of language as being another form of silence. But as a goal, silence implies speech if it wishes to delve deeper and justify itself.”
Doriel says nothing, walled up in his determination to reject any attempt I make to approach him.
By then, imperceptibly, we are more than halfway through the session.
“Is it because I didn't tell you anything about myself that you're silent? Is your silence meant to punish me? Meant to force me to confide in the stranger you still are, for me and for yourself? Are you trying to inflict a lesson in modesty on me? Go on, put me to the test, ask me some questions, just one for a start, on my professional or private life. Ask me anything. In your situation, the challenge will be less offensive and more fertile than your retreat into silence.”
I lean toward him. Should I touch his arm or his shoulder? I feel like doing it. After all, I can't just wait for him to pull himself together and snap out of his torpor. But I decide against it. In my profession, physical contact with the patient is forbidden. But what if he remains in this hypnotized and aphasic state for the next fifteen minutes? How will I let him know the session is over? It is coming to an end and we're sitting here, each of us conscious of our powerlessness, condemned to endure the eternal absence of communication between human beings who are each experiencing the moment in a different way, even though they're on the same quest.
I get up. A minute later, he gets up too. He heads toward the door. He opens it and stops, probably hesitating about leaving me without saying a word. He decides to turn around. And suddenly his expression changes. A smile appears on his face for a fleeting second. A sign of victory? As if to say: You see, Doctor, I won. I feel like conveying to him, with gestures, that we're not playing a game.
But he's no longer there.
Anxiety mixed with vexation. Has he left for good?
In the evening, at dinner, trying unsuccessfully to control the tic that makes his eyelids flutter, Martin stares at me with a troubled expression. “Bad day?” he asks. “Is your work giving you trouble? You seem on edge.”
My husband knows me well; he can guess—this happens once in a while, but rarely—what I'm trying to hide from him. But why worry him? He has his own share of problems. At the library, wealthy donors keep complicating his life. Never satisfied, they assign him absurd, if not unfeasible, tasks. They each come up with ideas for attracting more people. Some would like to see movie stars photographed reading the latest fashionable writer. Others suggest that students distribute old books door-to-door. Or that they read to the elderly in old people's homes, in the presence of journalists and photographers. In vain, Martin explains that, as a chief executive officer, he does not count publicity his area of expertise, or his dream, and that if they're serious about their harebrained publicity stunts, they should hire a professional. But with what budget? The institution has far more important needs when it comes to finances. In their stubbornness, the donors assail him over and over again.
“So?” Martin asks. “You're not answering. Was your day beyond bad?”
I tell him about my day. My unbearable eighth patient. He wants to be helped but does everything to prevent it. It's like pure sabotage.
“Oh, he'll get over it,” Martin says. “Eventually he'll fall in love with you and all his problems will be solved. And mine will begin.”
This is Martin's miracle cure. He's convinced that men can be divided into two categories: the men who have already fallen in love with me and the men who will; he thinks I have occult powers. When I object, he replies: “Isn't that method the one you used to solve my problems?” And it is up to me to settle the matter by saying, “You're incorrigible.”
But not tonight. Suddenly I wonder, And what if that happened? What if Doriel became infatuated? Impossible? Quite the contrary, rather probable. Transference is a common occurrence in analysis: the patient becomes enamored of the analyst. And what would I do then? With a wave of the hand, I reject this thought as premature, if not frankly indecent. Should I have a word with Dr. Gallagher? Ask his advice? After all, he foisted this burden on me—me, his former student.
“You're right,” I say to my husband. “He'll get over it.” Naturally. Next time will be better. If there is a next time.
Decision: Not to go back over what happened. Not to mention the incident. Avoid traps. A kind of silence: taboo.
Besides, I have no reason to worry. Doriel seems in a good mood. Amiable, docile. Ready for anything. As soon as he sits down, he launches in.
“So, shall we start?”
“Fine.”
“You know I come from a religious milieu. But I'm not unfamiliar with literature and philosophy. How about you? Do you know Nietzsche? Not the philosopher or poet but the psychologist. Somewhere he says that man is his own dearest enemy: Is this true for you too? Are you afraid that this enemy will break down your resistance and shatter your hopes? Have you ever been frightened, yes, frightened, of finding yourself disarmed before invisible enemies, in a hostile universe where all victory is denied to you ahead of time? Frightened of no longer understanding or accepting what is happening to you, whether good or evil? Have you ever felt suddenly detached from your environment, separated from your fellow men, thrown into an abyss by the very people who loved you and whom you lo
ved? In other words, Doctor: Have you ever been frightened of losing your bearings, your reason?”
I jot down his questions in my notebook. I feel they have a meaning. They contain keys that will be useful to me. I underline Nietzsche. His influence? A feeling of being torn. After a fit of insanity in Turin in 1889, he didn't write another line before he died in 1900. If my patient wants to upset me, he's succeeding admirably.
“I'm waiting,” Doriel says.
Since I don't answer, as I'm busy jotting everything down, including his last remark, he repeats: “I'm waiting.”
“I see. And what are you waiting for?”
“For your answers to my questions. I know, they might be too personal, even intimate, but if you agree to answer them, Doctor, it will help our work together; you'll see. I promise.”
“Of course, I'm frightened at times, like everyone,” I say. “It's human. Frightened of solitude. Failure. Separation. Frightened of disease. Of shame and humiliation. Frightened of death. Someone who isn't frightened isn't human.”
“You didn't mention the only word I care about: madness. I'm asking you if you've ever been frightened of going crazy, nuts, being cracked or just plain mad.”
He's no fool. Nothing throws him off. If he's hooked on a word, he won't let go.
“What can I say, Doriel? As a student I lived among mental patients or close to them. The courses of your beloved Dr. Gallagher, for instance, were in psychopathology. Once a week, we attended his conversations with patients. And, to satisfy your curiosity, they often instilled fear in me.”
“Why? Why fear rather than repulsion, helplessness, or indifference?”
“What I felt was fear. Fear of seeing someone live in a reality that would remain forever out of my reach.”
“But not fear of waking up one morning imprisoned in that same reality?” he asked.
“Probably that fear too.”
“And what did you do then, and what would you do now to overcome your fear?”
