Empathy

by Sarah Schulman

  Doc had recently been contacted by a new set of clients, a couple that were having problems loving each other. He saw their arrival as a wonderful opportunity to try out his new perspective on people giving themselves and each other a break.

  Of course this reminded him of his own experiences with that woman. Then it occurred to Doc that everything fit together. All along he had believed, instinctually, that his broken heart had something to do with the collapse of the culture. He had wanted to blame it on economics instead of on the fact that she was a fucking bitch.

  Eureka, I found it, Doc thought, so gleefully. I’ve solved my own and other people’s problems.

  Doc needed to get his shit together. That couple was coming in a few days. What exactly did he have to offer them? In preparation, Doc reviewed what he already knew about fighting couples. Usually, Doc observed, one of the members was destroying with more rapidity than the other. These types of situations are very difficult for the therapist, because long ago a propaganda evolved claiming that they could not exist. “It takes two to tango” isn’t even true on the dance floor. One person can do a lot of evil all on his or her own. But the Theory of Mutual Blame arose sometime before Doc was even born. Perhaps it was a takeoff on Freud’s seduction theory or the more generic practice of blaming victims for being alive. Its origins were unclear, but no one had ever had to take full responsibility for their own actions since.

  Doc relaxed. If he could only get that woman in the white leather to stop interrupting and be kind instead, all America would change. She would have to think about things and America would have to too. All his life Doc had been told that America was the freest country on earth. America is the most powerful country on earth. We’re number one. We’re number one. And Americans believed it because, after all, what did they know? To the north there was nothing and to the south there were people who wanted their jobs. All they could look in the eye was each other. It was just like that woman in white leather.

  One day Doc and she were walking around Manhattan. It was a cool day, crisp, one of those days where the buildings stand out in the sunlight, shining like a razor. Doc was filled with love. He turned to her, the leather cap white, like the clouds, and said, “Isn’t it exciting that now that we’re both finishing up big projects, the whole world is open before us and anything can happen?”

  But she, she acted just like America. She said, “Don’t compare yourself to me.”

  They both think they’re so great but there’s not one ounce of truth in the whole shebang. The country is so big now anyway no one can know what’s really going on in there. No one’s got a grip on it. The TV is run by God. What do all those blondes have to do with us? The newspapers have football on the front page. The only thing Doc knew for sure about the United States of America was that virtually everyone in it used to smoke pot.

  When the phone rang this time he glanced at the magazine beckoning from the corner but got distracted by the silence on the other end. The person was still there but they would not talk. Doc felt a twisted excitement.

  “Hello?” Doc said. “Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?”

  He recognized the tactic and wanted power because he was so afraid of the person attached to it.

  “Hello?” he said, wanting to keep it going as long as possible. “Hello? Hello?” as though he had never said it before because he was unwilling to let on that he had. If she would just answer he would let it all go.

  When he hung up Doc had an emotional reaction, the kind that is hypnotizing. He was trapped in a brick. He was the subject of a million stories. He went to the other side of the street. He was too far from the racetrack. He had egg on his hands.

  It was quiet. Doc sat in his chair. Outside there were people in the street trying to murder one another. Doc listened carefully. None of them were his clients. Once he’d stopped paying attention there was an illusion of silence. Finally other lives and their murmuring had ceased to penetrate. Doc fell asleep.

  Four hours later, he awoke resolving to give more to his clients.

  Doc had an appointment coming up with the couple, and this time he really wanted to make a difference. So he decided to take the dramatic step of consulting with his mentor, the elderly Herr K.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Herr Doktor K. came shuffling down the block. His hair was purely white. His beard was purely white. His skin was translucent. His eyes were blue. His glasses were as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles. He wore a black suit with vest and fedora. He carried a well-worn mahogany cane.

  “Doktor,” said Doc. “Thank you for meeting with me. I hope I find you in the best of health.”

  “Ya vell, doctor,” said Herr Doktor K., “I am, I’m afraid, a victim of the mental health system. I have spent the last thirty years of my life caring for the most desperate and disturbed people of New York City, six days a week. Rarely do I have the chance to discuss with someone who is in control of their own behavior. Even since the budget cuts, psychiatric patients must wait three days before we can find them a bed. I spend ten hours a day with people who are handcuffed to chairs, attempted suicides before the age of twelve, patricide, matricide, infanticide, genocide, homicide, fratricide.”

  “What do they call it if you kill your sister?”

  “Tsuriscide. That’s a joke.”

  “Herr K., what a toll this must take on your life.”

  “You shouldn’t know from it. I can’t hear. I can’t see. I can’t walk. I can’t remember.”

  “How old are you now, Herr K.?”

  “Forty-eight.”

  They took seats in the window of Café Geiger on East Eightysixth Street. The Doktor ordered Sascher Torte mit Schlag and Koffee. The Doctor ordered Jell-O and Sanka.

  “Look around you,” whispered Herr K. “The greatest talents in the study of the human mind. Look, Doktor Frankfurter of Frankfurt, the one with his teeth on the tablecloth. He discovered Valium. And he’s not even smiling. All dat money he made, the poor schlep never even took a vacation. And in the corner, Doktor Helena Schwartz Von Klingenfelder, discoverer of sibling rivalry.”

  “How does she get along with hers?”

  “They were all killed in concentration camps.”

  K. wiped his glasses on his shirt.

  “Doktor Schwartz Von Klingenfelder and Doktor Frankfurter from Frankfurt had a love affair in 1932 and they still won’t speak to each other. It’s a strange group, these German Jews. They produced Marx, Freud, Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and Walter Benjamin. Look at them now. They can’t even chew.”

  Doktor K. was the Doc’s mentor. He had been a pioneer in the field of interruption theory and the world’s most renowned expert on the patterns some people enforce in order to keep others from finishing their sentence.

  “Herr K., I come to you seeking your esteemed advice on a very interesting case.”

  “Doctor,” said the Doktor. “I am happy for you that you have an interesting case. Knowing how to observe is not enough. You still need something meaningful to look at.”

  Then he fell to his knees and began to have convulsions.

  As Doc watched him writhe on the floor he noticed what a symbol K. was of another time.

  “Better now?” Doc asked.

  “Ya, ya, gut, gut,” Doktor answered, brushing himself off and only drooling slightly. “Are you still there?”

  “Oh yeah,” Doc answered. “I didn’t go anywhere and I haven’t come back.”

  Herr K.’s neck looked like hand-carved wood, peeled and ribbed, rubbed raw and pink.

  “Now that I’m reaching old age, I watch myself very carefully,” K. said, wiping his glasses on a linen handkerchief.

  “What do you see?”

  “I see that after a lifetime of analyzing, I do it instinctively even when there is nothing worth understanding.”

  “I’ve noticed the same pattern in myself,” Doc answered.

  Doc then relayed the case of his couple who would not decide to listen.
As Doc spoke, Herr K. ate his Schlag, every once in a while pausing to cough up phlegm. It was an uncontrollable condition that did not disgust Doc. In fact, he found it endearing, like the way one gets used to a lover’s growing deafness. Whenever the tone gets too low, you lean over automatically, waiting for her to say, “What?”

  “Doctor,” said K. “Listen to me closely and you will understand.”

  “I know,” Doc said.

  “There are words like emotions, which I will refer to here as chemical reactions. Now, we know that there is a part of the brain that is responsible for feelings such as anger, fear, tenderness. Then there is a part of the brain that is concerned with perception, awareness, comprehension, understanding. They are connected.”

  “Spiritually?”

  “No, biologically,” K. continued. “Certain experiences, for example, abandonment, create chemical reactions that disrupt these connections and result in keeping awareness away from emotions, psychologically. Denial is actually a chemical condition. People in this state protect themselves from information that they are not equipped to handle. Then they remain psychologically unaware of their own feelings. To keep this information out permanently requires large amounts of interruption.”

  “Oh,” said Doc. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Now,” Herr K. said. “This may appear to you to be a crackpot theory. But, frankly, doctor, what isn’t? If you think there is one true explanation for anything, you are wrong. So, understanding that, my explanation is as good as any.”

  Doc whacked his package of Sanka against the table before tearing it open. But the water was tepid and the granules lay there in brown clumps.

  “But, Doktor, if your theory is true, then the only people who can understand the human mind are scientists. Second, what about responsibility? Isn’t listening a human responsibility and aren’t people responsible for their own behavior despite all the excuses our culture has invented?”

  “Doctor,” said the Doktor. “Politically and morally, I agree. But politics and morality have little to do with human functioning. The sad reality is that people do not listen and do not take responsibility. A lifetime in the office and in the laboratory have not revealed a way to change all that. In conclusion, doctor, there are many people who will be civil to someone who is extraordinarily kind. There are very few who will be kind first. If you want to call this a lack of responsibility then, I’m afraid, doctor, that you will be a more unhappy man than I who call it simply a series of chemical reactions.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Two weeks had passed and Anna had felt no need to telephone Doc. Besides, her three sessions were over. She knew what the relationship would be when she stepped into it. And now it was done. Mrs. Noren’s love had thrown Anna a bit off course. It was like she had forgotten about that side of life. She needed some time to just sit around. She needed time to put her feelings in order.

  “Phrase it, I mean, face it,” Anna said.

  She was thinking about sounds when the telephone rang. She let it ring and then thought about words. There were only words for a limited number of feelings. This became increasingly inadequate, inappropriate, inaccurate. Anna named a few ideas for which she needed words.- Stop talking so you can be happy.

  - Saying something prejudiced and later insisting it wasn’t.

  - I only have power when I destroy.

  - That place between the shoulder and the breast.

  The phone rang again.

  Anna had been feeling suspicious all afternoon because she was contemplating how to get ahead in a dying civilization. The options for growth industry seemed to be HIV counseling, hospice work, or teaching English to Russians. This fed into an ongoing suspicion she’d been having about her telephone ever since tiny beeps started to appear during the course of banal conversations. Only she could hear them. The other person could never hear them. Finally she decided that her phone was being tapped. It was a natural conclusion for someone of her generation. They expect the government to oppress them. As she would speak and listen to the beeps, she would listen to herself more carefully to try and determine what it was the government was after. But that never became clear.

  Anna noticed a pattern evolving as a result of her therapy. Maybe people offered more than she had ever known and the government offered less.

  When the phone stopped ringing she perceived a peculiar silence. One of many. Which one? There is a silence of perception. It wasn’t that. Thoughtless silence? Forced silence? Chosen silence? Silence because you’re listening. Fearful silence. Because the radio’s broken. Hesitation. When you don’t say it because you don’t want to hurt the other person. Enraged silence. When you don’t say it because it’s not going to do any good. Waiting. Thinking. Not wanting to be misunderstood. Refusing to participate. Self-absorption. When a loud sound is over. Shame.

  The phone started ringing again. She let it.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The next day the phone rang and there was silence again. Doc wanted to sound loving. He knew it would give him more power. He wanted to sound like someone that this person would want to be kind to. But he couldn’t think fast enough, so he said something weird instead.

  “I know you’re reaching out,” he said. “I know you’re doing the best you can. I’ll hang up now and turn on the machine so you can leave a message.”

  Only, somehow, saying the words “leave a message” sounded awfully flat. It had become impossible to include them in casual language without sounding robotic. She didn’t call back.

  “So, John,” Doc said as he and Cro-Mag wrapped up their final session. “I’d like you to tell me about your artwork. You refer to it regularly but you never say exactly what it is that you do.”

  “My art is like … jazz … man.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, it comes out of the body.”

  “The body?”

  “Well, my body. In other words, I’m the one who makes it.”

  “But what is it about?”

  “It’s about intentionally undermining meaning.”

  “Would you say that it’s about being?”

  Doc intentionally opened the window.

  “No … it’s too ethereal to be summed up.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to ask you to reduce your art, but could you tell me what values are at its core?”

  “Doc, my work is based in values by chance.”

  “You mean it’s about nothing.”

  “Well, there are some materials.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Time and space. Sequence and duration. You know, lack and all that stuff. Naked brain.”

  “Naked brain?” said Doc. “Now that’s interesting. How did you think of that?

  “I saw it on TV when I was stoned.”

  “Do you watch a lot of TV?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you like about TV?”

  “It’s so colorfully constructed along the lines of color.”

  “Oh, you have a color TV?”

  “Yeah, a really cheap one. A lousy one. A broken-down one. I don’t have enough money for anything decent.”

  “John, let me ask you a difficult question.”

  “Huh?”

  “Why do you think that you are poor? What in the world gives you that impression?”

  “Doc, the above is equal to the below, so I am as proletarian as the next guy.”

  “Frankly that sounds like peripheral logic to me.”

  “Peripheral logic? Wow, Doc, now you’ve got a good one. What channel?”

  “Uh, I don’t have a TV.”

  “So, I’m subletting my apartment - at profit, of course - and going on vacation for a while.”

  “Again? Where to?”

  “Well, my family has an estate in Georgia. I like to go down there.”

  “What kinds of things do you do down there?”

  “Oh, you know, going to the dentist, super
vising the plantation, fucking slaves.”

  Okay, Doc thought. This is my chance. I have a prime example of the oppressor class right here in my living room/office. Someone who knows absolutely nothing about how other people are living, someone who defines the world uniquely by his own experience and is a parasitic complainer. I have to use every element of my analytic ability to find a way to explain to Cro-Mag why that is not an acceptable way of thinking. I have to explain why that way of thinking is a product of, and at the same time a prototype for, a very sick way of life. If I try hard enough and am logical enough and am clear enough, I will be able to save all the people who will have to come into contact with this shmuck.

  “You racist maggot,” Doc said.

  “What’s your problem, Doc, can’t you take a joke?”

  It can’t be, Doc thought. It just can’t be. If Herr K. is right then there is no point to therapy. If you can’t help people be responsible and kind then why be with them at all. Why interact?

  Doc had to face the truth, that he was old-fashioned. He was always looking for a simple, familiar, low-tech solution. But people are no longer interested in analysis. They all prefer catharsis now. They all prefer to say that they are helpless and can’t change other people, i.e. the world. Marxism has been replaced by postmodernism. Psychoanalysis has been replaced by twelve-step programs. It was the end of the content. The whole way of looking at things was changing, and Doc was left behind.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The next afternoon, Doc sat on the chair in the middle of his apartment. In the refrigerator were frozen carrots, a pink doughnut, leftover carryout waffles, grape soda, and orange soda. It was beautiful. It was also sometime in the afternoon and all the light came from outside, in puddles, which changes things. As time passed, the light moved to different spots and got smaller or longer or other variations on shape. There was no thought as pleasant to Doc as sleep.

  If only I could perfect forgetting and being awake at the same time, Doc thought, I’d be happy and put the alcohol and pharmaceutical companies out of business simultaneously.