TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

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CLIENT: Betty has been especially fun the last couple of days. We had an old family friend staying with us. She was only going to come overnight but she got snowed in. It’s really [not fun.] She showed up at the collective restaurant the day I was born. She was a friend of one of the other members and had come in from Cape Cod or something. [00:00:56] As my mother tells the story, my father was at the restaurant and my father said, “I just had a baby. I have to go to the hospital,” and handed her the keys. (both laugh) Sounds very plausible. It was interesting. It was really good to see her and she was really enjoying our household. She had not yet met Rich before. [00:02:02] This is not something I keep track of, but my uncle, the orthodox uncle, is fairly [ ] (inaudible at 00:02:13) – my only uncle at this point.

THERAPIST: The one in New York?

CLIENT: No. He’s in Pittsburgh. The one in New York is a first cousin. He’s fairly conscientious and is married to a Catholic. He’s fairly conscientious about announcing the Hebrew liturgy of my father’s Yahrtzeit, which I can never keep track of. He had just had a grandchild, my cousin, who is living in Jordan, in this enclave. [00:03:04] He just had a daughter and so he was flying to Jordan and he sent a message to my sister and mother and I announcing that he was going to say kaddish for my dad on his official Yahrtzeit. My sister sent this message that I found very moving, just saying that it’s been such a wonderful . . . He had two grandchildren this year and my father has had two grandchildren this year. Hilda sent kind of a wistful, very sweet note back saying how she was kind of sad that he didn’t get a chance to meet all these grandchildren and great nephew and nieces. [00:04:01] I don’t know. I found that kind of moving. We had a little ritual on the kaddish. We lit a candle and we all said something. (pause) I guess somehow there were a lot of – not the only connection with this – but there were a lot of stories about my father surprisingly, all of which were very . . . I mean after several of them [Jennie] said, “Wow, this really upset me” or “this really made me mad.” [00:04:52] Even Hilda, who is probably the least conflicted of all of us about my dad, the story she told was about how he used to go and find expired food in the frig and eat it and pretend to have a paroxysm, ptomaine or something like that.

THERAPIST: Why?

CLIENT: Just to kind of gross us out. I don’t really know exactly what he had in mind. Maybe it was intended didactically or he was trying to make a point about not letting food go to waste or something.

THERAPIST: So the expired food he would find, he would actually eat in front of you?

CLIENT: And then he would pretend to have a conniption, which, I guess, at some level was kind of cute. I also remember him picking stuff off the floor and eating raw hamburger. [00:06:01] I don’t know. I remember a lot of good stuff. (both laugh)

THERAPIST: I guess so.

CLIENT: It was not like a sweet, fond memory. And then there was the story of driving across country in three days and refusing to stop to let us go to the bathroom and my mom said, “Oh, yeah. I remember that.” She remembered a genuinely sweet story of when we were driving across country in three days and my sister forgot her favorite stuffed animal at a rest stop and he drove back200 miles or whatever. Anyway, it was fairly conflicted. It was unusually conflicted. I think what my mother said was, “Wow, we really had a bumpy ride, but I miss you.” [00:07:03] It was funny. It was funny. It was unusually frank. It was interesting. (pause) And Veronica mentioned that she had another friend of ours from the same year who talked about the effect that the collective had on me and Eileen and said, “Oh, God. It would have been so awful.” I don’t know. (pause) There was something funny about the winnowing away of all of the layers of nostalgia and sepia tones. [00:08:04] I think I mentioned last time that my mother had told the story about my dad leaving Jordan to found this collective and she was like, “What the fuck?” It was, I guess, a continuation of that theme, and yet [Jennie] certainly had nothing to do with it and I really had nothing to do with it. It was all other people, other people who, at least in my presence, have been very (pause) fond – I don’t think fond is the right word. [00:09:01] I’m struggling for the right way of characterizing things. They were reluctant to imply censure, I guess, or anger or dissatisfaction, which I suppose is natural when someone dies, but 17 years later . . . So that was interesting.

THERAPIST: Are all of you sort of maybe suggesting that there is some sort of relief for you or even hearing how it actually was rather than something . . ?

CLIENT: No, I know how it actually was. I’ve talked, God knows, enough about how it actually was, I think. [00:10:01] I have long since gotten my mother to – I don’t know if concede is the right word – but endorse this very minimum conflicted portrait so I don’t feel like I need validation in particular. I guess one thing that was interesting or striking to me was that we had this conversation in particular about this and then Veronica came and rather than just being kind of a love fest, I remember such interactions about my dad being . . . you know, she certainly my father is very dear to her and she was much more reluctant than Eileen in the conversation that she reported to kind of endorse the idea that it was so bad for me, but Walter Carr did take me under the car (laughs) while he was [ ] (inaudible at 00:11:10). There was all of this stuff that I kind of had this heart to heart with my mother about and I think somehow that was the tambour of the discussions about this. She seemed relieved that our household was so nice and that Grayson was doing so well and that I was doing well and relieved to see me as a father. Maybe that’s what it was. It was relief. It was like I was not a total fuck-up. It didn’t really have the effect that people had apparently feared, maybe, when I did not reproduce or have a family or seemed to be kind of settling down for so long. [00:12:17] I can imagine those conversations. So it was interesting. (pause) It was a good visit. Very sweet. [ ] (inaudible at 00:12:40) he was particularly cute. He’s great. What is he up to? He’s laughing a lot. He’s laughing a ton. He’s about to roll.

THERAPIST: He’s four months?

CLIENT: Not yet. He’s three-and-a half. [00:13:00] He’s about to roll. He’s about to develop that shit. He’s so locked in. He’s just loving all of the stuff around him – light and rattly things. I told you we got this book. He loves reading the book. It’s high-contrast pictures. He’s just doing really well. He’s really progressing and his world is opening up pretty fast. He’s growing a lot. He’s really fat. (laughs) He has just grown a ton in the last three weeks or so, which is nice that it coincided with my mother’s visit. [00:14:00] I got him a pair of Levis at Goodwill and a flannel shirt. It’s very cute. So we were in the middle of an interesting conversation Tuesday. I was on my way out the door and you said something about working together and I said that it reminded me of this moment in Wilma’s little library at the Oregon State and you said something like, “That’s interesting.” (laughs) We hit the slopes.

THERAPIST: Right. (pause)

CLIENT: I didn’t have any trouble remembering that one. (both laugh) [00:15:05]

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause) I remember the moment you’re talking about and I remember being struck, too, by your association to my comment, the implication being that there is something repulsive to you in the same way that the guy on his way up or down the stairs said to the other guy in the library.

CLIENT: Or a woman. I don’t think I remember it was a man or a woman. Repulsive. That’s a very strong word. (pause) It’s a very evocative word. It makes me think of spoiled vegetables in the frig. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: Gee. I guess it keeps going.

CLIENT: Um. (pause) Yeah. There is something . . . I mean part of it is a kind of caution about psychobabble, I think, or therapy speak or just being too captivated by the process of talking about myself all the time. [00:17:11] It’s what we do and there is specific content there that I think I feel conflicted about and so calling it “work,” well, you know, I’m not working. Something along those lines, but there is also a generic content to it that was the reason for that particular association because those two people were talking in a self-conscious way about their work and I just had this weird reaction or strong or striking or evocative reaction that I thought about a great deal since then, so associating it with your comment seemed meaningful, or at least interesting. [00:18:23] The way I have understood my reaction is that (pause0 there is some kind of (sighs) (pause) aversion now that I try and find the right word. I think of the palate of vocabulary that you use to describe a fear of spiders to being endowed that’s related to all of these different environments that I’ve had to inhabit as a kid in such close proximity to each other. [00:19:26] Just kind of be so protean and really not taking on any kind of character was just maladaptive in a weird way, just going from the Trotskyites to the bourgeois household to this religious environment where I’m wearing a yarmulke and just all this stuff, this paraphernalia, to the ghetto. [00:20:15] We talked about this enough, but there is something that made me intensely uncomfortable with being comfortable and being settled somewhere. Just seeing the ease and kind of casual interaction in the professional setting that these people were exhibiting was troubling to me in some profound way. I guess the other piece or scenario or element or whatever that has occurred to me about this has been something about the way that my father used work as an excuse to do whatever he wanted. [00:21:08] There is something troubling about his sense of vocation that made me not want to adopt it, either what he wanted me to do or his own sense of commitment to this work that drove him to do all of these things, or at least to justify all of these things by it. Anyway, God knows. These are two different threads of speculation that I pulled out of the even that seemed analogous, at least, to my reaction to your comment. (long pause) [00:23:38]

THERAPIST: One thing I’m thinking about is that it related to the relief you were describing a few minutes ago. None of this really applied to you, happily, with being a dad. [00:23:58]

CLIENT: [Oh, this is relief?] (ph?) Oh, like the fear of commitment? Or lack of it?

THERAPIST: Yes, like feeling like being stuck in a role for a long time, essentially. (pause)

CLIENT: It’s professional somehow. (pause) I remember feeling it the August that we began working together (laughs), a term I never have used before and probably never will again. (both chuckle) I was feeling it very intensely. I remember having all of these escape fantasies of one kind or another, so there’s something there; but, yeah, I feel pretty locked in. [00:25:16]

THERAPIST: And pretty unhappy about it, it sounds like.

CLIENT: Yeah. I guess I meant locked in less in the passive sense of the term than in the active sense of the term, the way that Grayson is locked into the high-contrast cow, which [ ] (inaudible at 00:25:40) (both laugh). It’s none of the [ ] in this Catholic philosopher. He wrote beautiful music, as well as the philosophical words. [00:26:08] (pause) So that’s true. That’s interesting. What do you make of that? (long pause) [00:27:17]

THERAPIST: I’m still working on Hildegard. (both laugh)

CLIENT: Okay. What’s the word? (pause) It’s like a stuffed cow. It hangs from his – what do you call it? It’s like a geodesic dome kind of things with two crossed, flexible poles and you can hang all these toys from it. He reaches for it and grabs it and it has crinkly materials in it. [00:28:07] What’s interesting about Hildegard?

THERAPIST: Well, (pause) the first thing that struck me is that it’s like making play out of work and there’s something playful about it that seems so different from how work so often feels for you and how this sense of committed-ness, like what you’re saying about the identities and being with the Trotskyites and then being among this religious community – or in terms of your reaction to the thing on the stairs. [00:29:25]There’s no fun in any of that. I’m not saying there couldn’t be, but the way you’re talking about it now, it’s serious and – I don’t know.

CLIENT: Grim?

THERAPIST: Yeah, grim.

CLIENT: So my association is (pause) this manner that Jennie really hates that I go into sometimes when I’m talking about something like that or I’m kind of lecturing, it’s like I’m kind of cut off from her, from the person that I’m talking to. [00:30:24] I guess I imagine it to be a little bit sing-song and just kind of disconnected.

THERAPIST: When you say you’re talking about something like that . . ?

CLIENT: Like work, like something that’s defined as work, I guess. It’s not engaged. It’s not good. I think I’m aware that this happens and one way I avoid it when I have to give a talk is by writing stuff out. [00:31:17] Anyway, this thing that she complains about sometimes made me think of your comment. Hildegard, in my opinion, I know is a writer of beautiful music. There is something true there. There is something right there, even if this particular thing for me is not like a workplace association, but it’s something with fun thing in it. It’s almost, by definition, work related. I kind of get the point even though it’s not necessarily specific to this sense. [00:32:02] (sighs) I’m pretty playful, I think, when I’m sort of writing well and happily on work stuff. I like to make jokes and puns and stuff. But you’re right that it doesn’t feel that way much or most of the time. What does that tell us? Can I interject something completely unrelated? I told you about the three strengths, of which you were the third and you were the [ ] (inaudible at 00:32:48). Something that Grayson loves, and I assume this is probably universal to babies, he loves to have his pants off. He loves to have his legs uncovered. [00:33:03] He likes to have his feet uncovered, too. We were getting nostalgic. I was remembered that I, too, loved to have my feet uncovered, so much so that in class, when I was in elementary school I would get in trouble because I would take my shoes and socks off and I would just sit in the back there. Probably I was getting in trouble for reading novels or something in whatever class in elementary school. The other thing that they would complain to my parents about was that I took my shoes and socks off; and also that I had my shoes untied all the time. Anyway, it’s interesting that the lack of joy with which I talk about and, I guess, I feel anguish about it. [00:34:07] I feel anguish about my unsuccessful, dramatically unsuccessful struggle to find a place in that part of my life, so it seems natural as I think about your comment that it should feel grim somehow. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s odd. (long pause) [00:35:59]

THERAPIST: I’m thinking about the woman on the stairs and your association in here with that and I think I understood what you said about your thoughts about the woman on the stairs and you sort of explained commitment because of how things changed when you were a kid – pulled out of one environment and pulled into another one; pulled out of that one and plunked into another one. It was jarring and also because of your dad and his, I guess, in a way his manipulated youth, his commitment to work, in a way. [00:37:11] The sense I had to your response to the woman on the stairs was that you felt this kind of aversion in a kind of visceral way to what the person said.

CLIENT: Like [ ] (inaudible at 00:37:50) almost.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: How they were being. [00:37:59]

THERAPIST: I feel like you don’t even have the whole story and what you said about the environment when you were a kid and the changes and your dad was sort of in the direction of a story or inclination, but I guess it would go something like, “Well, feeling committed to something or believing in a commitment to something gets you in trouble and I’ve had that so thoroughly inculcated into me that when I hear somebody referring to it, I get repulsed and worried.” [00:38:55]

CLIENT: Another way of kind of understanding it might be a bit more meta, just like seeing them doing it and I felt this intense anxiety because I don’t have it. It’s a time when I had just come back from Holland and I was trying to set back upon the dissertation as a thing to do and move back to San Diego and was trying to figure out what the next thing was and I didn’t really have a place at the time or a gig or a concept, other than that I have this settled family life that’s wonderful right now. It’s much like it is right now at this moment, so I can imagine just knowing how complicated these emotions are that what I’m interpreting – or we are at the moment at least interpreting – as aversion, was more something just like fear, just free-floating anxiety, something that felt like aversion just because aversion and this anxiety touch on the same complex of emotions somehow. [00:40:36] But it was about me. It wasn’t necessarily – maybe it was a little bit about them. Yeah, that was one of the things that was so curious. It was like “wow, this is silly” or “wow, what trivialities.” Yeah, there was some of that. [00:40:59]

THERAPIST: I think I remember you saying as well this sense of “I wouldn’t want that for myself.”

CLIENT: Maybe that’s right. Maybe that does make sense, even as there is, again, this kind of protean quality to where I was in my life at the time and where I found myself again to my regret and this kind of trying things on and I saw this thing that they were doing and I don’t know whether it felt too limited or limiting or whatever; but what was striking about the exchange was, indeed, just their familiarity and kind of the regularities of going to work and seeing somebody all the time and sort of talking casually about this thing that they do in this library. [00:42:00] I don’t know if it was the limitation of being the librarian or what.

THERAPIST: It sounds like what you’re talking about is actually wanting to maintain a protean state.

CLIENT: That’s the weird thing. On the one hand, it’s giving me pain. I feel pain and I feel this great difficulty and even aversion to somehow assimilating at least the sense of expertise that would come with it. It’s painful for me not to have it, but yet there is an aversion. A classic thing that one would come to [ ] (inaudible at 00:42:41) about it, in retrospect, it’s like there is this double bind that I’ve put myself in. (pause) And I don’t know why really. As you say, the story is, at best, just kind of fractional. [00:43:04]

THERAPIST: And it seems half of that, in a way, is very straightforward – like the part about wanting the feeling of expertise and feeling bad or sad that you don’t have it.

CLIENT: I don’t need you to tell me that, to explain that.

THERAPIST: Right. It’s the other part that . . .

CLIENT: But it does really motivate what’s really weird about the other part, or at least a great commitment. It really is the measure of the commitment that I have to this other mysterious, aversive phenomenon that I am so troubled by my commitment to it, that the implications of that commitment are so troubling. [00:44:01]

THERAPIST: I guess this is the thing that struck us both on Tuesday, is that how that has transferred to this interaction.

CLIENT: I don’t think we made any progress in that direction. (both laugh) I think we’re probably close to the end of our conversation today. Anyway, I’ll think about it. [ ] (inaudible at 00:44:26) (laughs) Okay. Tuesday. Don’t trip over your [ ].

THERAPIST: Thank you. (both laugh)

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