As I made this long, incoherent speech, I looked down at the table and when I finished looked up, almost scared of catching Alex’s eyes. He was frowning, with a look of alert concentration that I hadn’t seen before.
‘You may be right,’ he said, almost muttering it.
He took my mug and his and put them in the sink. Instead of returning to his chair he began to pace up and down. I didn’t know whether I should say anything but decided not. Finally, he sat down again.
‘You’ve probably got false ideas about the process of therapy. You may have seen films in which someone’s psychological problem is dramatically solved. You may have friends who are addicted to analysis and they talk to you about the wonderful insight it’s given them into their problems and how much happier it’s made them. It may have done, but if you’ve spent three hours a week for five years and twenty grand, then you’ve got a vested interest in its success.’
‘Well, why…?’
Alex held up his hand to silence me. ‘You do interest me, Jane. I think we could do something. However, I think we’ve both got to be clear about a few things first. This process isn’t going to be like going to the doctor with an infection or a broken leg. You might ask me if I’m going to make you better and we might then have a boring philosophical discussion about whether I am going to do anything for you at all and what we mean by making you better.’
‘I’m not looking for some easy answer.’
‘I don’t think you are. So let me be as clear as I possibly can about what may or may not happen. Let me give you a couple of warnings. You may feel, like many people do, that there could be nothing more pleasant than spending two or three hours a week having a good natter about your problems, getting them all off your chest. In my own experience this is hardly ever true. The process may be unpleasant in itself. How can I describe it?’ Alex looked around the kitchen and grinned. ‘The mess in this kitchen probably appals you. It certainly depresses me and infuriates my wife. So why don’t we just clear it up? Well, although it looks dreadful we’re actually used to it and we can find most things we need quite quickly. If I started to clear up, it would involve making everything even more chaotic for a while as I would have to empty all the cupboards as well. There would be a time when everything was worse, with the added fear that we might lose our nerve and leave it in that disastrous state. It would keep on seeming worse until just before the clean-up was completed. Even then, it wouldn’t feel quite as comfortable as it did before. And although theoretically the new arrangement might be more functional, because it has been rationally arranged, in practice we would probably be unable to find things more often because we would still be used to the old irrationality. So, you see, I’m an advertisement for leaving well alone.
‘You may not even achieve anything. I make no claim at all that after, I don’t know, six months or a year, you will be happier or better able to deal with the practical problems in your life. You’ll still be living in a world where people die and have irreconcilable conflicts. But I can guarantee at least something. Your life at the moment may seem like a collection of rough notes and impressions. Perhaps I can enable you to turn them into a narrative that will make sense to you. ‘That may help you to take responsibility for your life, even, perhaps, to gain an increased control over it.
‘That’s something at any rate, and it’s the least we can hope for. There are other possibilities as well. Let me give you one speculative example. I’m intrigued by the way you talk about your sister-in-law having been buried there, at the heart of the landscape of your childhood. That’s a telling image. Some of us may have bodies in our minds, hidden, waiting to be discovered.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t worry about it, it’s just a thought, an image.’
‘What about the practicalities? What do we actually do?’
‘Good. Now it gets straightforward. I want to see you twice a week for an hour which actually lasts fifty minutes. My fee is thirty-eight pounds a session, payable in advance at the beginning of each week. As I have said, it would be entirely understandable for you not to go into therapy at all. I can assure you almost a hundred per cent that without any therapy or treatment at all, you will be feeling substantially better in a year or so. The pain of your sister-in-law’s reappearance will have receded and you will be used to your new life. If you do decide to go ahead, and I hope you do, then you have to make a commitment. By that I mean that the sessions are sacred, not to be missed because of work, illness, sexual opportunity, disenchantment, tiredness or anything. If you break your leg, come here on your way to A and E. Naturally, you are perfectly free to stop the therapy at any time, but I think you ought to make a private commitment to stick it out for something like four or five months at the very least. And also a mental promise that you’ll give it a chance. I mean emotionally and intellectually. I know you’re smart and that you’ve probably read Freud more recently than I have. If you come in here and start wanting to discuss transference, which I don’t believe in anyway, then we’ll both be wasting our time and you’ll be wasting your money. There. Have I said everything?’
‘Will it be like this?’ I asked. ‘Sitting in your kitchen, drinking coffee and chatting?’
‘No. As you say, this is just a chat and we’re deciding on the rules. When we begin we’ve got to, as it were, run out on the pitch and start to play. In my view, if this is going to work properly it has to be ritualised, it has to be something outside your normal social life. So, if you want to go ahead, then the next time you come it will be different. It will be in the room that is used for therapy.’ He used the word ‘therapy’ as if it were an unwieldy term that had been foisted on him. ‘It won’t be a social occasion. We won’t be drinking coffee, we won’t really be chatting. You’ll lie on a couch, not because that is a psychoanalytic prop, but exactly because it shouldn’t feel the way we are today, comfortable, getting on, looking face to face. Now, I’d like you to think about what you want to do, and then phone me.’
‘I know what I want to do. I want to go ahead. If I’m not happy with what’s going on, then I assure you I’ll stop.’
Alex smiled and held out his hand.
‘I suppose that’s as much of a commitment as I’m going to get from you. All right, it’s a deal.’
Seven
From signing divorce papers in triplicate at my solicitor’s and rejecting the idea of marriage counselling, I cycled on a cold clear day north through London to the site of my hostel, the very thought of which already caused me a pang. The original idea had been for an entirely new building which would house fifteen Section 117s, that is, mentally ill patients discharged from hospital but still requiring some sort of supervision, if only to make sure they took their medication. I’d provided an elegant, functional and cheap design which, to my not very great surprise, had been rejected out of hand. If my career continued like this, I’d soon have designed as many unbuilt buildings as Piranesi, or Hitler. Plan B was to convert a building that had been a squat and had spent the last two years without a roof.