TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
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THERAPIST: Tuesday morning is fine. There is an off chance that I would need to cancel, but I don’t think so, though. But I have other times, too.
CLIENT: There is an off chance that you would need to cancel?
THERAPIST: Yes, but I don’t think I will.
CLIENT: There is an off chance that I would need to cancel.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: Sounds great.
THERAPIST: The person I needed to see then has a medical problem and I think is probably going to be out, but that’s the thing.
CLIENT: You’ll just remind me?
THERAPIST: Sure. (long pause)
CLIENT: Good morning.
THERAPIST: Good morning. (long pause)
CLIENT: Marty Templeton is kind of out there. Sometime I would like to play you something else from the (inaudible) that I also love but that’s more in that tradition. I wonder if it’s like showing somebody this and saying this is psychoanalysis. You might want to show them another thing, too, even though you [love them both] (ph?), for example.
THERAPIST: We’re doing the Marty Templeton version?
CLIENT: Yeah. It’s not that far off. (pause) Then again, a person’s analysis, a musical person’s, is different from any other, so it’s hard to make big groupings like that. (long pause) I wonder what you were like in high school. (pause) Somehow there are reverberations from hearing your story. First, you kind of want to say, “I’ll take you. I want you,” but also there is a reflective when I think about what Jay was like; (long pause) and what the world was like in 1970. (pause) 1990.
THERAPIST: [It was the late ‘80s.] (ph?) (pause)
CLIENT: The college admission has changed, I imagine.] (ph?) I didn’t get into the school I wanted to get into. It doesn’t feel like I’m commiserating with you, but it did make me think of that. (pause) I wanted to go to UCLA and I applied early enough. I really didn’t get into any schools except Vassar and I didn’t want to apply to any Ivy League schools, except for UCLA, that I just sort of applied on a whim and Vanderbilt, Elon, and suddenly the whole landscape changed of what I thought I wanted. (pause) I guess I have a pretty persistent [imposter] (ph?) syndrome that comes up around that because my mom works at Vassar. She’s not a faculty member, but she’s been there for 26 years and she’s a computer scientist. She sort of manages a lot of projects managing to do with making things digital for students, like core selection and the online application and senior grades and course reviews – anything that students do on the computer – so she’s well known among the administrators. She works with most of them now. In reference to high school, there are a lot of students that when you hear that they’re going to Vassar, you think “Well . . . Their so-and-so works there.” You wonder if they would get in if that person didn’t work there, so I felt that way about myself for some time. You can’t really know and it doesn’t really matter, except that it feels bad. (long pause) [Took] (ph?) that energy for next year. (long pause) Where you shared with me, it sort of flowed effortless in the wind away and not sort of have it stick around. I don’t know. I think it feels like that’s the way that I would like to honor it and to show my appreciation for you sharing it.
THERAPIST: That’s how you want it to happen?
CLIENT: Yeah, but if I were cool, chill Allison. (scoffs) I mean, it sort of has. I don’t feel like I’m dwelling on it, like on what it means for me or for you or for us, like the way that I do sometimes with other stuff you say, but it has brought up a lot, like the things that I mentioned. It’s still echoing. Maybe, in part, because of what you expressed about wanting to be cautious and now I’m not sure what I have to say about that. (long pause)
THERAPIST: I imagine the part that us a little clingy and that you don’t want to be is relating to where I sat and, in a way, sort of relating to me in a more personal – not quite the word I want – way. (pause)
CLIENT: Yes. (pause)
THERAPIST: I guess I could say me in terms of my history, what I’ve been through, stuff like that.
CLIENT: Yeah, and how you feel about something, how you feel about what you went through and how you feel about sharing it. I guess it’s more something that you hesitated about it for the particular reason that you did. That’s why it’s sticking around in that sense. (pause) I don’t think it’s just that. I think it’s like this little gift that I’m cherishing. It’s hard to let it go. (long pause) But not because there is hope for some other kind of relationship; it just feels good. It feels good to have been shared with. It feels like part of this relationship, another one. (long pause)
THERAPIST: I think there is also some of the split happening with it, in that your focus seems to be entirely on the aspect of it as a gift or something that I shared. I can see how those are there, but the content seems gone.
CLIENT: Somehow that’s more (inaudible) let go of. (both laugh) I think that’s a pretty central interpretation to most things here. (pause)
THERAPIST: I was just thinking I didn’t know if you were referring to what I just said or the kind of interpretation from me yesterday that we were talking about; and then it occurred to me that they’re both kind of actually the same.
CLIENT: Complex to think about. The interpretation. In telling the story, the interpretation, maybe it feels to me like here sometimes with you and you are inviting and closed and maybe almost misleading. And then, at the end of the week, I go away and I don’t . (inaudible) So smiling with each other and then you are not sharing about it.
THERAPIST: [I guess (chuckles) what I had in mind was that I was, at that time, you and what’s going on here can, without quite realizing it, be living in the fantasy of being in.] (ph?) And surely there are things that contribute to it. I’m not saying that I’m not a part of that in some way, but that wasn’t where I intended the emphasis to be.
CLIENT: Just now?
THERAPIST: And yesterday.
CLIENT: What you were doing?
THERAPIST: You just said because of how you are and how you’re doing, I can feel this way. And I’m not saying that I don’t have a part in it, but to me the main point seemed to be, like with the weekend, I was talking about it, the point in my mind was like I was kind of in the same area. Of course, I’m in course steps that I’m doing and at the end of the year I’m part of things.
CLIENT: It’s kind of ambiguous, like you felt like you fit in when it wasn’t entirely because of your being in the fantasy.
THERAPIST: Absolutely.
CLIENT: In some ways you did fit in.
THERAPIST: Absolutely, but I had a fantasy about what that meant.
CLIENT: Yes. I see.
THERAPIST: You could say that circumstances pulled for me to have that fantasy, and maybe that’s true. I don’t know. But whatever the people around – the way it was set up or something – were doing, there was something I also really wanted to believe, that I was enjoying believing.
CLIENT: I’m not sure what it is I want to believe here anymore. (pause) I’m not sure what the equivalent would be. Maybe it doesn’t have to be anything specific. Maybe it’s just sort of general closer-ness than farther-ness or that I’m somehow different from everybody else in the way that you feel about me. (pause) Maybe it’s just as simple as you’re good at telling me what’s going on for you. (pause)
THERAPIST: I would imagine there are a few different things. At one level, I imagine it’s about I feel differently about you and everybody else. Then at another level, I think it’s that there is a kind of symmetry about what we’re sharing and how we’re relating to each other. And at another level, I think there’s probably (inaudible) going on. We’re the same. We’re together with no gaps. (long pause) I guess what we’ve seen is that, including just now, focusing on those things is, in part, to ward off feeling bad – and not simply feeling bad that those things aren’t quite the way you want them to be. Yeah?
CLIENT: Yeah. But it’s something else, too.
THERAPIST: Yeah. It’s not just like I want to focus on those because they’re just nicer to think about, it’s also because I don’t want to go to some of these other things that I’m sure really feels crummy. We have just a few minutes. (long pause) We should stop for now.
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