He didn’t mean to suggest, he said with a hand on Don’s shoulder, that there had been anything lacking in his TV interview. Personally, he thought it had given a more solid impression of the department’s work than Sarah’s had. And the James Bond stunt had looked damn good on the screen. He wanted to thank Don sincerely for consenting to do that. But they both had been around long enough, hadn’t they, to know that where showbiz is concerned, you can’t win out against a pretty girl.
Don kept his face blank. He had sensed where this was leading, but he was in no mood to make it easier for Jerry.
Finally Jerry came out with it. Laz had called on the phone to say he had decided not to use the sequences featuring Don. The footage they had shot of Sarah was so good that nothing else was needed.
In a way Don was relieved to have it confirmed. The whole damn thing had left him cold from the start. But he was bitter at having been used. With sarcasm he asked Jerry if he had ever thought of a career as a casting director.
Jerry gave an embarrassed grin and said he supposed he had asked for that. He said he owed Don an apology for all that flak the other week. He didn’t want this to screw up the research program. He hoped there wouldn’t be friction between Don and Sarah, but in view of what had happened maybe it would be good tactics not to push the cooperation too hard for a few weeks. The synecological approach had a lot going for it.
Don did not commit himself. Nothing Jerry had said would stop him from getting a few things straight with Sarah — and very soon.
Ed Cunningham’s office-apartment was located at Seventy-Sixth and Park, where he shared a floor with two other doctors. When Sarah saw the metal plate on the side of the building with his name and a string of letters engraved on it, she had a spasm of panic. Ever since the trouble in her teens, she had resolved to keep away from analysts. Yet here she was, preparing to step voluntarily into an elevator that would deliver her to a psychiatrist’s office. How could she be certain she was not being conned into some form of psychoanalysis? She could not; she had to trust Ed. Anyway, if he did have ideas of analyzing her, there was nothing in it for him. No, he had told her this was a means of assisting his patients. She believed him. Recollecting the way he had put his proposition, as he had called it, made her remember her own expectation of a sexual overture — a prospect easier to face than the couch. She smiled, and it helped her relax. Maybe, after all, she would be handed a glass of champagne as she stepped from the elevator. She giggled a little, her panic overcome. She stepped in and touched the third-floor button.
“Hi, little lady. You found me, then,” he said when she appeared.
There was no champagne. No couch. The room was sparsely appointed, giving the impression of spaciousness. A desk and filing cabinets on one side, against the window. Nearer, low easy chairs and a white Melamite table. Two Benjaminas in white stands. On the end wall, where it was lightest, a large David Hockney of an empty swimming pool.
Sarah said, ‘This is how an office should be.”
Ed smiled and asked what he could get her to drink. He looked small in his apparently large apartment. He was wearing a dark-green silk shirt with a tan jacket of wool and suede and black trousers.
She said she would love a cup of coffee. “But I’ll wait till your patients come and have it with them.”
He shook his head. ‘Tm not expecting anyone this afternoon.”
“But I thought that was the reason for—”
“Sure.” He opened the door to a small kitchen and went on speaking from in there. “Before you meet my patients, I want to tell you how I treat them. It makes sense, doesn’t it, for us both to know what we’re aiming at?”
“I guess so.” Sarah crossed to the window, keeping a grip on herself. Yes, it was sensible. She wanted to trust Ed, but she would have been happier with someone else there.
When the coffee was made, he brought two chairs to the window and began to talk about the treatment of phobias, describing the improvements reported in as many as ninety percent of cases in which patients were trained in deep muscular relaxation. Injections, he said, were used in some cases to induce relaxation. Patients were then asked to imagine themselves in increasingly frightening situations, yet to associate them with their relaxed state. He preferred not to use the injections, but he regarded relaxation as the best form of therapy. He liked, if possible, to trace the phobia to its origin, which was generally a childhood experience. After relaxation, he said, came knowledge. Then understanding. Then familiarization. And finally self-control.
His way of talking, the soft pitch of his voice and the absence of any overt persuasion, made the treatment sound believable, but it was difficult for Sarah to see how she could contribute anything, and she told him so. “You see, I don’t fit this pattern. I got control of my fear of spiders because I wanted to get back at my parents after they stopped my dancing.”
“Sure. I understand that.”
“But how does that help your patients? They’re adults, I presume. I was just a kid.”
Ed nodded. “That’s true, but what matters is that you had a strong motivation to deal with your phobia. You had no need of help from someone like me. You conquered it yourself. These people don’t have your degree of motivation or strength of character or whatever it was that got you looking at spiders without panicking. They have to learn how to do it. I have to persuade them that it can be done.”
“And if they meet me, they might believe it’s possible?”
“Right. Most phobia sufferers have it fixed in their minds that they have some kind of kink — a flaw in the mechanism of the brain. They’re wrong. They learned to respond the way they do in certain situations. And they can learn to respond differently. We call it behavior therapy.”
“You mean I learned to be scared of spiders?”
“That’s my reading of it — without having a detailed account of your childhood. You told me your mother was fanatical about cleaning the house. You said the worst thing about a spider was that it violated the cleanliness of the house.”
His recollection of her words surprised and impressed her. “So I did.”
“Your mother’s strong reaction was imprinted on you from an early age. You learned to react with terror at the sight of a spider. But when your mother failed you totally by arresting the main thing in your life, you rebelled against her. You rejected her standards and the things she had taught you. For a time you kicked back by behaving antisocially. That was a cry for help, and the help it got you wasn’t to your liking. You didn’t want displays of affection from your mother. You wanted revenge. So you took it — secretly. You taught yourself to overcome the fears you had learned from her. And what started out as — you won’t mind if I say it? — a pretty adolescent and negative gesture ultimately became a thing of positive value in your life. Here you are earning a Ph.D. out of your knowledge of spiders. Even going on TV. So the story has a happy ending.”
Sarah mouthed a smile, but inside she was reeling as if he had struck her. Nothing in his rapid analysis of her life so far was inaccurate, but put together like this in terms of cause and effect, making more sense than she had ever perceived for herself, it pained her. She felt like a case history, a card in a file.