Stick’s one question about Jeffrey Y’s case was revealing, although not a surprise. “Do they usually end up becoming homosexual?” he asked.
I told a half-truth. “Once a boy has been anally stimulated, especially between the ages of five and ten, there’s a good chance he will continue to want,” and here I was deliberately crude, “to be fucked up the ass.”
He surprised me, not for the first time, and it was a warning that I had to be careful with him. I had provoked him, anyway, that night with the shower stall invasion. He stared into my eyes; his looked black and dead. He said, “Halley told me your mother had sex with you when you were a boy. What does that do to a man?”
He meant to devastate me with this sideways revelation that Halley had told him my “secret.” Of course my incest story came from my first dinner with her, not our recent encounters. I was taken aback, nevertheless. It was another reminder that I shouldn’t underestimate the depth of their connection. I don’t know how well I covered with my face, but my spoken answer was quick and effective. “It makes you a very confident man. It’s every boy’s dream, after all.”
[I hope I don’t have to explain why the above is a ridiculous lie. If Copley was enough of a scholar to check, he would have known from my book on incest that I was full of it. The latter didn’t overly worry me: in reverse therapy, if I may so label my new technique, Stick discovering I was untrustworthy might work to our advantage. He was probing for my weakness. That is the dynamic of this new therapy for an unneurotic sadist. We repeat the ancient drama: Copley searches for a way to defeat me, hoping for the same ending rather than a new one; while I, instead of replacing the villain with a caring parent, play my role better than the original.]
“Every boys dream?” he repeated, squinting and frowning. The lines of his face wrinkled with pain. I almost felt sorry for him.
“I never had any performance anxiety with girls, never worried about the size of my penis, and I never had to worry about competition with my father. I was a winner in the Oedipal game very early on, so I didn’t have anything to prove.”
He was disappointed at the result of his counterattack. He sipped his herbal tea. His eyes and attention wandered off, forgetting our battle. “I guess all boys worry about the size of their cock,” he said quietly, more to himself.
“Not all. Not even the majority,” I commented grimly. He looked up, startled. “Only the ones with small penises,” I said. Stick winced. I laughed, reached over and kneaded his shoulder. He disliked male-to-male physical contact — for obvious reasons, given his father. I took every opportunity to invade that barrier. “Just a little shrink humor. Of course everybody does,” I patted him. “It’s natural.”
I frustrated his bribes, threats, tests and ambushes of employees on the one hand, and I aided or provoked their ambitions and demands on the other. There were too many instances to catalogue; besides, they are repetitious. The examples I’ve provided should suffice. I ended Jack’s obsession with Halley by reinforcing his wife, Halley being one of the ways Stick knew someone was safely in his grasp. I encouraged Andy’s development as a manager, both with his own men and by introducing him to Jack and the other salesmen, just as I had once encouraged Gene to try for more responsibility, only this time — and this was also true in my defense of the Truman marriage — I had a diversion to keep them safe. The diversion was me. Copley was convinced I was the threat to his control of the company, by virtue of my relationship with Edgar, not Andy’s growing confidence and maturity. Halley was convinced we were having a love affair; so was Stick and that meant I was under control. In this first, and most crucial stage of therapy, only by presenting myself as a potential victim could I hope to be their healer.
This brings us to an aspect of the treatment it is crucial I warn other practitioners about. Two dangers exist in reverse therapy that, although they have corollaries in traditional psychoanalysis, are more present and intense. The first should be familiar, namely countertransference: I had to struggle to avoid forming a real attachment to Halley and I had to be careful not to want to harm Stick. The second danger, which unfortunately I did not fully anticipate, is that, since the treatment moves toward disintegration of the patient’s personality rather than greater control, caution must be taken not to push the patient into outright psychosis.
Halley was the tougher assignment in terms of countertransference. I don’t mean to make a vulgar joke of it, but my sexual frustration alone would have tested the patience of a saint — the pleasure was all one-sided and it was a mockery of lovemaking. I don’t suppose I need to explain how I found relief for my physical forbearance, and I won’t pretend fondling Halley was all work. The emotional frustration was another matter. I underestimated its danger. Although I limited physical contact with Halley to two nights a week of incest fantasy and my role demanded, when we were in public, that I treat her with stiff formality, almost contempt, nevertheless I had to (in order to play the part of lover/father) telephone her every day and maintain a deep emotional connection.
The routine was rigid. I telephoned her apartment at seven-thirty every morning, greeting her in a loving voice, “Hello, little one. How did you sleep?” The daily conversations, once she came to expect them so she picked up instead of her machine, lasted roughly half an hour. On weekends they sometimes continued for an hour or more. They allowed me to monitor the residue of my interference with the sexual and emotional dynamics of her relationship with her father; more importantly, however, I repeated the assurances her narcissism demanded. She’d rustle the sheets, groan sleepily, and ask plaintively, “Do you love me?”
“I love you,” I’d say.
“Then why aren’t you here?” she’d whine.
“Because yoü don’t love me,” I’d say.
“But I do!” she answered on the second week of these morning calls. The first week she tried teasing me with the reply, “Tough,” but I would only laugh at that.
“You don’t love anyone,” I said.
“Maybe I love you,” she said sweetly, playing the innocent music of a little girl. It was hard to remember that she was lying.
“If you love me,” I said, “then you’re going to have my babies and get fat. You’re going to be covered with spit-up and men won’t want you. If you give me a beautiful daughter, I won’t bother to look at you. If you give me a strong son, I won’t bother to talk to you.”
For a moment there was no reply. Then I heard a thump — I decided later it was her feet landing on the floor as she got out of bed. She said in an efficient tone, “That’s right,” and hung up with a bang.
The next morning she picked up and answered my, “Hello, little one. How did you sleep?” by saying, “I have a guest, I’ll call you later.”
She tried to make me jealous for two weeks, either by not picking up or answering only to say she had company and couldn’t talk. I ignored the taunts so thoroughly that (and maybe Stick proposed this or she intuited his desire) she appeared in the labs and invited Andy to lunch, using the ad campaign for Centaur as the excuse. She took him out twice more before giving up on him, probably when she figured out that Andy was gay. I half expected her male secretary to call him next, but evidently Halley was not a delegator — and besides, that would hardly have upset me.