A Thin Summer
39
Dr Fairbairn was something of a pioneer, and one of the techniques that he had advanced was what he called “Fairbairn’s List Approach”. In this, the child patient was invited to write a list of those matters which were most distressing and to rank these in order of seriousness. This was nothing new in psychotherapy; indeed, some perfectly ordinary parents, un-tutored in the techniques of Freud and Klein, had used just such a system in dealing with their unhappy or difficult children. “Tell me what’s worrying you – write it down and then we’ll have a look.”
That was all very well, and in many cases it helped to iden-tify the conflict points in the parent/child relationship. But what made Dr Fairbairn’s technique so advanced was that in addition to writing down the matter that was troubling or unsatisfactory, the child was invited to write down, in a separate column, who he thought was responsible for the state of affairs in question. In Dr Fairbairn’s opinion, this gave a direct and useful insight into the child’s view of the problem-producing dynamic.
Bertie had been asked to do this. “I want you to make a list,”
said Dr Fairbairn, giving Bertie a piece of paper. “I want you to write a list of things that make you unhappy – things you don’t like to do or would like to change. Then draw an arrow from each thing on the list – a nice long arrow, with feathers if you like – and at the end of the arrow you should put down whose fault that particular thing is. Do you want me to show you how to do it, Bertie?”
“Yes please,” said Bertie. “You make your list, Dr Fairbairn, and then I’ll make mine.”
Dr Fairbairn laughed. “I’ll not make a full list. You’re not my therapist, Bertie! Remember that! No, I’ll just make a little list just to give you the idea – here, pass me that pencil – a list of two or three things.”
The distinguished psychotherapist took the pencil handed to him by Bertie and quickly wrote a few lines on a piece of paper.
“There,” he said. “You see how it’s done.”
Bertie looked at Dr Fairbairn’s list. What on earth did this 40
Bertie’s List
mean? And what was that word? – he had never encountered that word before. He would have to look it up when he had the chance.
Now it was his turn. Dr Fairbairn passed him a fresh piece of paper. Bertie took the pencil and looked up at the ceiling.
There was so much wrong with his life that it was difficult to know where to start. Ranking would be the difficult part; the blaming would be much, much easier.
13. Bertie’s List
It took Bertie no more than ten minutes to write down his list of things that distressed him and to assign an order of magni-tude to each. But after a certain amount of crossing out and rewriting, he handed the paper over to Dr Fairbairn, who had been paging through a journal while Bertie worked.
“Now then,” said Dr Fairbairn cheerfully. “Let’s see what’s troubling you. Do you mind if I read it out, Bertie?”
“No,” said Bertie. “But don’t show it to anybody else. Will you burn it after you’ve read it?”
“Heavens no!” exclaimed Dr Fairbairn. “I’ll put it in this file where nobody else can see it. This list will be too important to burn.”
“I don’t want Mummy to see it,” said Bertie anxiously.
“She won’t,” said Dr Fairbairn. “You can trust me.”
“But you’ve already told her some of the things I told you,”
said Bertie.
Dr Fairbairn looked out of the window. “Have I? Well, perhaps a few little things. And surely you wouldn’t want to keep secrets from Mummy, would you?”
“Yes I would,” said Bertie.
“Very well,” said Dr Fairbairn. “This list remains absolutely secret. Nobody else – not even Mummy – will see it. You have my word on that.”
But Bertie did not trust Dr Fairbairn, and even as the Bertie’s List
41
psychotherapist started to read, he had begun to regret ever having committed these thoughts to paper.
“Number 1,” read Dr Fairbairn. “People making me do things I don’t want to do. I hate this. I hate this. Every day I have to do things that other people want me to do and it leaves me no time to do any of the things I want to do. And nobody asks me what I want to do, anyway.” And then there was an arrow, rather like an ornate arrow of the sort used by Red Indian braves, pointing at the word Mummy, which was written in capitals.
Dr Fairbairn looked up from the paper and stared at Bertie for a moment over his spectacles. “Number 2,” he read on. “Not being allowed to go fishing or go to Waverley station to see the trains. This makes me very sad. Other boys do these things –
why can’t I? It would make me so happy to be able to do this.”
And then the arrow, pointing again to the word Mummy.
“Number 3. Not having a friend. I hate not having a friend.
All I want to do is to play with other boys and do the things they do. I want to go fishing with a friend. I want to go camping with him and make a fire and cook sausages. I’ve never been allowed to do any of these things.” The arrow of blame pointed off to the right, to the word Mummy.
Dr Fairbairn frowned. All the blame seemed to be focused on his mother. It was not unusual for mothers to be blamed for many misfortunes, but to be the sole blame figure was excep-tional – and worrying.
He looked at the last item on the list. “Number 4,” he read out. “Having a pink bedroom. What if other boys saw this?
What would they do? What if it gets out at school that I have a pink bedroom? What then?” And the blame, again, was laid fairly and squarely at Irene’s door.
There was silence for a moment after the list had been read out. What puzzled Dr Fairbairn was that all this hostility was being directed towards the mother and none appeared to be directed against the father. This was unusual, because at this stage of his development Bertie might have been expected to be experiencing an Oedipal rejection of his father, whom, quite 42
Bertie’s List
naturally, he would see as a rival for the affection of the mother.
Yet Bertie in no sense appeared to be resenting his father’s share of his mother; indeed, it would seem that Bertie took the view that his father was welcome to his mother, if that’s what he wanted.
Dr Fairbairn looked at Bertie. This was a highly intelligent child – the most intelligent he had ever encountered, in fact –
and perhaps the psychic drama was playing itself out in a rather different way in his case. The underlying dynamics, of course, must be the same, but it was possible that Bertie’s understanding of adult feelings had enabled him to bypass some of the normal stages. So if Bertie had detected some fundamental pathology in the relationship between Stuart and Irene – a pathology which meant that maternal affections were in no danger of being diverted from Bertie to his father – then he might have decided that Oedipal feelings were simply unnecessary and a waste of energy. Why bother to view your father as a rival when he was clearly no competition?
Another possibility was that Bertie felt intense Oedipal jealousies, but was clever enough to conceal them. If this were the case, then he would have to try to winkle them out through dream analysis, as they would certainly turn up there. But before that, there were questions that could be asked.