“Oh, I am,” Steve said. “I wasn’t speaking literally. Well, in a way, I suppose I was—but I was speaking figuratively as well, kike the rest of us, Danny’s involved in the collective unconscious’s construction of a mythical future. We live in an age of science, though, so the mythical future has to be responsible—at least to some degree—to what we can now anticipate about the inevitabilities of the actual future. In constructing its delusionary experiences of displacement, the collective consciousness is maintaining as much fidelity as it can to rational plausibility. Danny may be only a plumber, and must have made a mistake in assuming that he was space-traveling rather than time-traveling, but he’s obviously in closer touch with the Zeitgeist than he knows. If the mythical future is to perform its proper function within our imagination, it has to be built on sound foundations. If we’re to be effectively consoled as the consciousness of our own immediate extinction becomes more widespread and we pass through the denial phase of our reaction, then we need to know that life will go on, recurring in all its myriad forms no matter what future catastrophes overtake it—even the transfiguration of the sun. I only hope that we can learn to take sufficient consolation from that sort of knowledge before our own ecocatastrophe really puts the screws on. If we can’t....”
He stopped, figuring that the train of thought required further reflection before it could be sensibly carried forward. Milly was the kind of girl who read herself to sleep with pop psychology books, though, and she knew well enough which phase followed denial in the typical sequence of reactions to bad news.
“If we can’t,” she said, “we’re going to see anger on an unprecedented scale. If we can’t learn to accept our destiny, shrug our shoulders and say shit happens, we’re going to turn on one another with a kind of savagery the world has never seen before. It might have its entertaining aspects, though, don’t you think? Speaking from my own experience, road rage can provide some amusing spectacles, provided that you’re not on the immediate receiving end of it. Rage on the Road of Ages, as it approaches the abyss, will certainly be melodramatic.”
Steve thought about the abyss in question, but only briefly. “The problem is, he said, “that we will be on the receiving end of it, soon enough if not immediately.”
“I know,” Milly told him. “But I also know that it’s unavoidable. There’s nothing anyone can do about it—not even the collective unconscious, armed with a brand new vision of the mythical future. AlAbAn doesn’t have that kind of clout, even among its own members. It’s relentlessly placid, but you can’t imagine for a moment that people like Zoe and Danny have actually solved any of their personal problems by virtue of having had their experiences, let alone that they’re now equipped to look forward to the end of the world with equanimity.”
“No, I suppose I can’t” Steve admitted. “My theory obviously needs further modification. I really do need to sort that out, if I’m to make sense of my own story.”
“It doesn’t actually have to make sense,” Milly told him. “Sometimes, stories work better if they don’t. A little mystery does no harm.”
“My story has to make sense to me, if I’m to tell it,” Steve said. “That’s the kind of guy I am.”
“You don’t really know what kind of person you are, Steve,” Milly said. “That’s your trouble. You could be happy, you know, if you wanted to be. You could be contented. But you always insist on complicating things. You have to learn to let go, Steve. Janine’s history, and AlAbAn’s just a matter of people telling it like it was, and not worrying overmuch about what it might have meant in some great scheme of things. It’s you and me now, and we’d both be better off if you could accept that and make the best of it.”
“You might be more contented yourself,” Steve riposted, recklessly “if you weren’t feeling guiltier with every day that passes about having stolen your best friend’s boy-friend and ruined your friendship in the process. But you can’t help feeling guilty, and complaining about my lack of contentment is really just a way of regretting your own. You can’t help it, any more than I can. I’m really not the only one in this car who suffers from emotional incontinence, am I?”
“If you could be happy, I could be happy,” Milly insisted. “It’s not your fault, I know. You can’t help it—but it really would be better for everyone if you could help it. Lord knows, I’m not perfect, but I really do think that I restrain my innate tendency to emotional incontinence a little better than you do. I’m not the one who has phobias so painful that he can’t even bear to talk about them.”
“I was coping with those,” Steve said, “until all this blew up. I was making steady progress. I’ll be able to make progress again, in time. It just takes time.”
“Of course it does,” she replied, in a soothing tone. “That’s why I can’t bear to see you prolonging your turmoil. If you could just accept things as they are, count your blessings and restore your inner harmony, you’d be able to get on with the work of making yourself a better person, in full control of your fear and lust alike. I’m trying to help you, Steve, but you’re not really helping yourself just now.”
“No,” Steve had to admit, “I’m not. I do need to keep working on that. I’m not like Danny, though—I wouldn’t want to turn to stone in order to get away from the pressure. I like lust, even though it gets me into trouble sometimes. I like getting carried away occasionally. Obviously, I don’t like getting panic attacks, especially when they stop me doing things that other people do routinely, but you were right when you said before that underneath the subjective element of dread, it’s just an excitation of the nervous system. I ought to be able to moderate or renegotiate that excitement, if only I could master the trick of it. That’s all it requires, really—a trick, a technique. Relaxation can only provide a partial solution, just as repression can only provide a partial explanation, but that doesn’t really matter. The point is to find something—anything—that works for me. The trouble with self-help manuals and psychological theories is that they have to generalize, while the problems individual people have are often highly idiosyncratic. Advice and therapy can’t deal with the unique. That’s one of the good things about AlAbAn, I think. It allows people to express the uniqueness of their predicaments, the idiosyncratic aspects of their personality that can’t be shoehorned into conventional explanations—but it only provides a means of expression. It doesn’t provide answers, or practical solutions.”
“Draw breath, Steve,” Milly said, with a sigh. “You have to stop occasionally to draw breath, or one of your flights of fancy will choke you some day.”
“Sorry,” Steve said, through gritted teeth.
Milly picked up on his resentment and was instantly repentant. “No,” she said, “don’t be. I’m a cow. I ought to be pleased that you’re able to relax to that extent, to let yourself get carried away. I ought to be pleased that I can lend you an ear, and I ought to try harder to keep up with your runaway trains of thought. I need to do that, don’t I, if we’re ever to be content with one another, and put the unfortunate origins of our relationship behind us? You’re right— I’m as guilty as you are. If this is to work, I need to get a better grip on my own emotional incontinence. I can do that. It’s what I’m supposed to be good at—and I’ll pause to draw breath now, in case I’m the one who ends up choking on my own cataract of words.” She tried to laugh.
Steve tried to copy the laugh, even though it wasn’t one of the infectious kind. Outside, it had started to rain. He switched the windscreen wipers on, and their slow rhythmic thrum combined with the beat of the music on the radio to form an exotic and strangely hypnotic alloy.
Relax, Steve instructed himself. Relax, and let things flow. Give it time, and it will all work out, one way or another. Only give it time, and all the wounds in the world will heal.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t convince himself of that.
* * * *
Steve made yet another appointment to see Sylvia Joyce the following Tuesday. S
he welcomed him as she always did, glad to have a regular client but slightly frustrated by the fact that she wasn’t being permitted to manage his treatment as she wished.
“I gather that it’s not going well,” she observed, sympathetically, as he slumped down on her couch. Steve sensed a certain smugness behind the commiseration.
“It was going very well,” he said. “I was much more relaxed at work, and the time seemed ripe to move on from the quotidian to the exceptional, and make some serious inroads into my problem with bridges and heights. Then things went a bit pear-shaped in my love life, and the everyday stress went through the roof again.”
“Well, these things happen,” Sylvia told him, unnecessarily. “You have to put them behind you and move on. Would you like to tell me what happened?”
“Emotional incontinence,” Steve said, curtly. “I was perfectly happy with my girl-friend—really happy, for once in my life—but I ended up in bed with someone else. When my girl-friend found out, she dumped me. I’m still with the other girl, Milly, but she suspects that I’d rather be with Janine and she feels guilty because Janine was her friend, so it’s hardly an ideal relationship. It’s a complete mess, really.”
“Are you asking for my advice about that?” Sylvia queried, hopefully.
“No, that’s all right,” Steve said. “I can call myself a stupid idiot—I don’t really need you to do that for me. I know how stupid it is to say that I just ended up in bed with someone else, when I know perfectly well that it’s something I chose to do, even though I knew it could only lead to disaster, simply because it put an extra notch on my bedhead, another name in my little black book.”
“Why did you want to see me today, then?” the therapist asked.
“Because I’m having second thoughts about the regression thing,” Steve admitted. “I think I might need to go a bit deeper after all.” He tried not to look at Sylvia’s broad smile of triumph, but couldn’t help it.
“That’s excellent,” she said. “I really think we might make some progress, if we can get to the real root of the problem.”
“I don’t think the problem has a real root,” Steve said, “and I think that’s a major aspect of its problematic quality. I think it has an imaginary root—and is, in essence, an imaginary problem.”
“Calling it imaginary won’t make it go away, Steve. It’s a real problem, with a real root.”
“Let’s not get sidetracked into matters of definition,” Steve said. “The point is that I need you to do what you did before, and take me back to the abduction experience. I’ve tried to do it by myself, but I can’t. If you can help me get over that difficulty, it would be useful—if you could make a tape, maybe, that could take me back to it without your actually having to be present.”
“I’m not sure that would be a good idea, Steve, even if it could be done. If you’re trying to induce panic attacks in yourself, it’s probably a good idea to have someone else present. In any case, I’m not sure that the abduction experience is the target we should be aiming for—that’s an expression of your problem rather than a causative factor. We need to go further back in time, to your childhood.”
“I can see why you’re making that assumption, Sylvia,” Steve said, “but I have my own ideas about what’s going on here, and I’m not so sure that the answer doesn’t lie further forward in time. You were right about AlAbAn helping me to come to terms with the abduction experience, and I think you’re also right to assume that it might help me to tell the story of my experience to the group. In order to do that, though, I need to get a firmer grip on it—to remember more of it, if that’s the way you want to put it, although I’m beginning to think that remembering is only part of it, and not the more important part. Either way, I need to revisit it—and for that, it seems, I need your help. So, please will you regress me again, to the point at which I began to freak out last time? I’m sure I can handle it better now—at least, I’ll do my very best. It will help. I’m sure of it.”
Perversely, Sylvia no longer seemed at all sure that she wanted to regress him again. Perhaps, Steve thought, she didn’t like the manner in which her authority was being challenged. She wanted to be the one in charge, not some mere instrument of his plan.
“You seem a little confused, Steve,” she observed.
“Much more than a little,” he said. “But I’m trying to resolve things. I did think, just for a moment or two, that perhaps I didn’t need to get to grips with my problems any more. They’d only come to seem urgently inconvenient because I’d started going out with a travel agent, and now the travel agent in question has dumped me because of my affair, the fear of flying and the fear of bridges no longer seem so desperately relevant. Milly might not want to travel far, and even if she does, I might not feel the same pressure to fall in with her wishes. Indeed, the idea that my inability to travel might prove to be a breaking-point in our relationship doesn’t seem to be a particularly horrific prospect. I think I could walk away from Milly, provided I had an adequate excuse, far more easily than I could ever have walked away from Janine. On the other hand, I’m well aware that both those arguments show me up as something of a coward, and that it really would be better to get to grips with my phobias, even though the immediate spur is no longer there. I thought of trying Prozac too, but that just seemed to be another form of cowardice. At any rate, I want to try this first.” He took a deep breath.
“Your abduction experience can’t possibly be the cause of your phobias, Steve,” Sylvia reiterated, stubbornly. “It’s just another symptom. It would be a mistake to concentrate on it too intently, when we might get a lot closer to the cause by looking further back.”
“As I said,” Steve told her, doggedly sticking to his guns, “I understand why you would make that assumption, but I think there’s another possibility. I need to revisit the abduction experience, if only to prepare myself properly for letting it out at AlAbAn, and obtaining the kind of support that Walter Wainwright and his cronies can provide.”
“That might be a step in the right direction,” Sylvia conceded. “You approve of AlAbAn, then? You really are getting some benefit from it?”
Figuring that the therapist’ office was one place that he didn’t have to observe the AlAbAn code of practice, Steve felt free to cut loose “They’re all totally crazy, of course,” he said. “Every last one of them is deluded as to the nature and significance of their experiences. But yes, I do approve of AlAbAn, and yes, I really am getting some benefit out of the meetings.”
“I don’t understand,” Sylvia confessed.
“Yes, you do,” Steve said. “You know perfectly well that none of them has actually been abducted by aliens, any more than you or I have. Their experiences are products of their unconscious minds, which concoct and conjure up their supposed experiences in response to some inner tension, failing or yearning. All so-called experiences that come up by that sort of route, with or without the assistance of hypnosis—all the buried memories of child-abuse, all the past lives, and so on—are eruptions of raw dream-stuff that our unconscious minds shape into hollow imitations of real experience. You know that, but you also know that the experiences are no less valuable because of it. You know that it’s a good thing—a healthy thing, in its way—and that people really can get some benefit from it, in terms of self-knowledge and self-understanding. That’s why you sent me to AlAbAn in the first place, and that’s why I’m here now, wanting your help to make the most of the opportunity”
“I keep an open mind about the reality of all my clients’ experiences,” Sylvia told him, sternly. “I don’t pass arbitrary judgments of the sort you just did.”
“They have the same policy at AlAbAn,” Steve said. “I can see the point of that, too, just as I can understand why it’s so very difficult for me simply to dump Milly and go to Janine on bended knees, pleading for her to take me back. I’m even beginning to understand, I think, why I have so much difficulty walking or driving across bridges, even whe
n I want or need to get to the other side. But that’s the sort of crap I need to cut, the sort of confusion I need to clarify. I need to see the AlAbAn stories for what they really are, and my own story for what it really is. That’s why I have to go back to it. Are you going to help me or not—we haven’t much time left, if we’re going to do it today?”
Sylvia opened her mouth, probably to say that perhaps it might be better to leave the regression until the following week, when more time would be available—but she thought better of it. She closed her mouth again, paused for thought, then said: “If that’s what you want, I’m prepared to try it.”
Without any further ado, she began her relaxation routine. Steve fell in with it readily enough, obeying all her softly-spoken but imperious instructions. He wasn’t entirely sure that he would be able to recover the false memory, even with Sylvia’s help, now that he was so determined in his conception of its falsehood, but he figured that such adventures in fantasy might require two participants, just like the other adventures in fantasy that had landed him in so much trouble.
He relaxed, and gradually drifted off into the altered state of consciousness that some people thought of, rightly or wrongly, as a trance. For a moment or two, he even forgot what it was that he had been trying to do....
Alien Abduction - The Wiltshire Revelations Page 22
