Boundary Violations

By Robert Lobis

Shakespeare-loving Charles Prinzmetal is an elder statesman of American psychoanalysis, a staunch defender of Freudian orthodoxy and a rigid arbiter of the profession’s ethical standards. However, he harbors a dark secret: earlier in his career he had an affair with a patient, and the patient became pregnant. Prinzmetal arranged for the child to be adopted by old friends, Cynthia and Alfred Kahn, concealing his paternity in the process. Now the Kahns are seeking his help for their daughter – his child.
When Kat Kahn was eighteen years old, Cynthia and Alfred revealed to her that they had adopted her at birth. At that point the feisty, self-confident young woman began a downward slide. When she moved from San Francisco to Boston to teach art at a private school, she developed incapacitating symptoms of anxiety and depression. At that point, her adoptive parents asked their friend, Charles Prinzmetal, to help her.
Prinzmetal agrees to see Kat in consultation, hoping to help her without compromising his secret. However by correctly interpreting Kat’s symptoms as stemming from her conflicts around her adoption, his consultation inadvertently launches her on the quest to discover the identities of her birth parents that may prove to be his undoing.
After seeing Kat, Prinzmetal arranges her treatment in a way that he believes will ensure that his identity as her birth father remains hidden. He refers Kat to Andrew Goldberg, a junior psychoanalyst whom he supervises, intending to direct Kat’s treatment to his advantage by using his supervisory sessions to manipulate the hero-worshiping Goldberg. Unfortunately for Prinzmetal, his stratagem fails. Instead of harmlessly “working through” her adoption conflicts on the analytic couch, Kat becomes convinced that she must actively seek out her birth parents, thereby setting herself on the potential collision course that Prinzmetal hoped to avert.
Initially discouraged, but eventually encouraged by the hapless Goldberg, Kat tenaciously pursues the quest that brings her ever closer to discovering Prinzmetal’s identity as her birth father. Terrified of ruin, Prinzmetal employs increasingly desperate measures to protect himself against exposure. But even the series of murders that he orchestrates to cover his trail does not deter Kat. She and her boyfriend, Will Blake, follow the evidence to an inevitable showdown with Prinzmetal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Lobis
• Release date: Nov 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465981646

Robert Lobis

Robert Lobis has written two novels. He lives in Boston and coastal Maine.

Book preview

BOUNDARY VIOLATIONS

ROBERT LOBIS

Copyright 2011 Robert Lobis

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold, reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support

I wish to express my gratitude to my wife and children for their patience and encouragement, and to my patients and colleagues who taught me what matters and what doesn’t.

"More matter with less art."

Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

ONE

If a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt in this ballroom, wiping out most of America’s psychoanalysts, who would care? Will Blake wonders this as his bored and restless eyes wander over the audience of mostly bearded men and sympathetic-looking women attired in stylish, ethnically inspired clothes. All are nodding attentively, contemplatively, and in unison.

American psychoanalysis owes a profound debt to Charles Prinzmetal. Dr. Prinzmetal, or Charlie, as he allows some of us to call him . . . Here, Martin Fielding pauses for a charming aside. "I remember the day that I finally graduated from the Boston Institute, after ten rigorous years of training analysis, control analyses, seminars, and massive amounts of reading. Charles Prinzmetal approached me and said, ‘Congratulations, Fielding, you’ve earned the right to call me Charlie now.’ I think he was joking. I never dared to call him Charlie . . . until now. Here Fielding smiles deprecatingly. Charlie Prinzmetal is one of the last lions of classical psychoanalysis. Theoretical purity and exactitude are defining characteristics of Charlie’s . . . Fielding gives a boyish laugh. I can’t do this. Theoretical purity and exactitude are defining characteristics of Charles Prinzmetal’s work. I should know. Fielding sweeps back his mane of black hair with both hands, a signature gesture, while the audience politely laughs. Rock-star glamorous, he is dressed in a slim black suit that accentuates his height, white shirt, no tie. Italian reading glasses complement his two-day growth of beard. Like a compass that always shows true north, Charles Prinzmetal has always pointed us toward the true north of Freud’s vision. This afternoon, Dr. Prinzmetal, in his paper, ‘Rigor in Psychoanalysis,’ has once again elucidated this vision with clarity and simplicity. And, as I have indicated, Charles Prinzmetal’s middle name is rigor." Again there is polite laughter.

A man seated to Will’s left whispers, This is the same damn paper Prinzmetal’s been presenting for twenty years. The man’s nametag says he is from Chicago. Will is tired. After a long night of strenuous lovemaking, he has been sitting uncomfortably through this daylong symposium, Psychoanalysis Old and New, breathing recycled hotel air. He is the guest of Shoshanna Rubin, his latest girlfriend. She is an advanced candidate at the San Francisco Institute. The symposium is part of the American Psychoanalytic Association annual meeting, being held this spring in San Francisco. Will’s nametag identifies him as a visitor – William Blake, PhD. People will think he’s a psychologist, but he’s not. By coming to this symposium he has made a concession to Shoshanna to venture beyond their ritualized dating, superficial conversation, and athletic sex into the realm of meaningful experiences. Shoshanna believes that she will be improving Will by bringing him to this analytic meeting. Will studies the enormous chandelier in the center of the ballroom where this plenary session is being held. The chandelier, with its symmetrical array of golden struts and points of light, reminds him of one of his radiographs. He starts to count the light bulbs in the chandelier, but he loses track. He is unwilling to make the effort to do it systematically. Will is a molecular biologist, specifically, an x-ray crystallographer. He is fascinated by the patterns and arrays of molecular matter that he captures in his radiographs. Even when he is not working, like today, his brain’s visual cortex processes the world in the same way.

Martin Fielding is supposed to be responding to Prinzmetal’s paper. Will has noticed that each discussant of the day’s previous papers needlessly summarizes the paper’s contents, says laudatory things about the author, then picks some aspect of the paper and illustrates it with a case example from his practice. The author then responds to the discussant in an equally laudatory manner. No penetrating questions, no controversy. This tame back-and-forth is followed by a few fawning questions or comments from the audience. The ballroom is large. They bring a cordless microphone so people’s questions can be heard on the dais. Still, many of the senior psychoanalysts seated in the front of the room cannot hear. They shout Huh? or What? or Say that again in peevish voices.

This isn’t like any scientific meeting I’ve ever been to; it’s like some sort of kabuki theater, Will whispers to Shoshanna, who is seated to his right. She knits her brows and frowns.

Fielding, however, does not intend to follow the script. He grips the lectern; hunching over it he looks like an adder about to strike. Now compasses were fine in their day, but we are in the era of GPS, so to speak. Charles Prinzmetal continues to proselytize for the old one-person psychology when the field has moved beyond it. No one has delineated it better, as I have said. However, to ignore the relational and contextual aspects of the analytic encounter, as he does, is to ignore the vital contributions of the past half-century in interpersonal, object relations and intersubjectivity theory. Theories, I might add, that have been supported by evidence from social science and cognitive neuroscience research, as well as the rigorous clinical research of several of the participants in this symposium, myself included. Fielding takes off his glasses. He brushes back his hair. He pours himself a glass of water and takes a delicate sip, letting his words sink in.

There is tension in the ballroom. Will senses it along with everyone else. He is no longer bored. He studies Charles Prinzmetal seated on the dais, a compact man in a gray suit with a sour look on his face. He wears a pale blue shirt and a solid navy bowtie. He has a small head with small ears that sits on a thick neck. His thin, dark hair is brushed straight back. Will thinks he looks like a cross between a San Francisco Harbor sea lion and a bulldog, or maybe like a smaller, smoother version of Winston Churchill. Prinzmetal’s shoes are black, traditional businessman’s shoes – accountant’s shoes. They are planted firmly on the floor. Will observes that he has small feet, small hands, too. He is a polished, tidy man, outfitted in a bland, monochromatic way. Still, though small, he creates in Will’s mind the impression of composure and strength.

Fielding keeps looking at Prinzmetal, addressing his increasingly critical remarks directly to him – actually, to his profile, since Prinzmetal isn’t looking at Fielding. At one point, Prinzmetal opens the thin laptop perched on his knees and quickly types something. The rest of the time he looks straight ahead, motionless and confident, never glancing at Fielding. Will finds his self-possession admirable. He sees, he imagines, steel behind Prinzmetal’s liquid, sea lion eyes.

Will is having trouble following Fielding’s argument. Fielding speaks disdainfully of the myth of the isolated individual mind. He speaks of the collaboration between analyst and analysand and the death of the omniscient, authoritarian analyst. Fielding tosses off phrases like co-consciousness, the interpenetration of subjectivities, the mutual quest for authenticity in the relational matrix, the co-construction of the experience of being understood, and on and on. Old-school psychoanalysis, on the other hand – old-school analysis as practiced by Charles Prinzmetal – is mechanistic, totalitarian, and sterile. It is outmoded, a relic of the past – as is Prinzmetal, presumably. Fielding doesn’t quite say that Prinzmetal is obsolete, he is too slick, but the implication is clear. Shoshanna takes notes. Prinzmetal continues to look serene and confident.

When Fielding is finished, Prinzmetal takes the podium to reply, opening his laptop. He says, I appreciate very well Dr. Fielding’s position. I guess I should call him Marty. Hmm? The audience laughs, nervously this time. I am at this symposium once again in the accustomed role of defender of the faith. The role is not a popular one. Those of you who know me know that my love of Freud is equaled only by my love of Shakespeare. In fact, you might say Shakespeare was my first crush. I was smitten with him well before my betrothal to Freudian psychoanalysis, and Shakespeare has remained my faithful mistress. So if you will permit me, I will summarize Dr’ Fielding’s position in Shakespearean terms: Prinzmetal is no heroic Henry the Fifth, rather, he is a doddering old Lear, hmm? He casts a baleful smile over the silent audience. "Today, though, I choose to present myself as the melancholy Jaques of ‘As You Like It.’ I intend to suck the glamour out of Dr. Fielding’s virtuoso presentation ‘as a weasel sucks eggs.’

"I do not take issue with the interpersonal perspective that Fielding and his cohort champion. In all honesty, I must admit that I do not understand what intersubjectivity really means. Of course every analysand has his or her subjectivity and I have mine. I don’t deny it. I am an old white male physician. Hmm? But I have been rigorously, thoroughly, I would even say ruthlessly trained as an analyst, and I am sufficiently disciplined to know my subjective self and to keep it from influencing my analytic practice. Dr. Fielding would argue that this is impossible, and that we should therefore embrace our subjectivity and use it in the analytic encounter to create a richer, deeper experience. Richer? Deeper? Who can say? I don’t know and I don’t care. I only care about whether the experience is therapeutic. Does it help relieve the patient’s suffering? Hmm? Perhaps it does? It is no longer clear to me whether today’s revisionist psychoanalysts are even interested in the relief of suffering. It often appears to me when I read the current psychoanalytic literature, and I assure you that I do read the current literature, that their sole endeavor is to give the patient a humanistic experience, whatever that is. One of my teachers once said that every brand of therapy helps somebody some of the time. He was referring to the smorgasbord of therapies then in fashion: gestalt and rational-emotive and existential therapies – EST, Primal Scream, even. None of these now-defunct ‘humanistic’ therapies is psychoanalysis, nor is the current, so-called revolutionary new approach espoused by Dr. Fielding and his colleagues truly worthy of being called psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis leads to insight, which is acquired slowly and painfully. Fielding’s psychoanalysis-in-name-only leads to comfort and relief from responsibility for self-scrutiny. It is palliative rather than curative. Classical psychoanalysis and only classical psychoanalysis is curative of psychic dis-ease. By classical psychoanalysis, I mean the deceptively simple process by which those psychiatric symptoms that are manifestations of a patient’s unconscious conflicts are brought into consciousness, understood as the product of childhood wishes and fears, and seen from an adult’s perspective, thereby freeing the patient from the unconscious need to repeat old, maladaptive behaviors, and relieving her or his distressing symptoms. The analyst’s only tools are clarification and interpretation. These tools are applied to the transference in which those pathogenic childhood wishes and fears are displaced onto the analyst. No other aspects of the analyst-analysand relationship matter. There may be a so-called ‘real relationship’ between the two, but it must be kept to an absolute minimum lest it inhibit the free flow of the analysand’s associations. That’s it. Psychoanalysis is not rocket science, but it is science. Granted, no two people are alike and therefore no two analyses are identical. Still, the commonalities of lives and the sameness of the basic psychic apparatus make all analyses more alike than different. Each psychoanalysis should be no more of a unique creative experience than an appendectomy is. And it should be no more collaborative than an appendectomy. After all, I would not want my surgeon to hand me a scalpel in the midst of my appendectomy so that I could collaborate. Here, Prinzmetal looks at Martin Fielding for the first time, somewhat scornfully. Dr. Fielding suggests that my approach, the classical approach, is mechanical. Hmm? I agree. I am proud to be a mechanic of the psyche. I only wish that psychoanalysis were more standardized and routinized. The other approach, Dr. Fielding’s approach, is fraught with peril. It is a slippery slope, leading all too often to boundary violations, exploitation, and far more harm than any antiquated analyst like me could cause."

Will enjoys Prinzmetal’s spirited rebuttal of Fielding’s attack without any sense of who makes the better case. Will also enjoys the allusions to Shakespeare; they lend Prinzmetal a donnish air, and remind him of one of those pipe-smoking, Oxford-educated British Secret Service types who populate the spy novels that Will is fond of reading. Following a clearing of throats and a noisy shifting about, members of the audience begin, hesitantly at first, to comment. Their careful remarks are of the on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-other-hand variety; no one wants to take sides or to ask a direct question of either of the combatants. He wonders whose side Shoshanna is on. He will find out over dinner. Will says to the Chicago analyst on his left, Good show, huh?

You think so? the man says.

I especially liked the way he quoted Shakespeare, Will says.

"Yeah, Prinzmetal is quite a Shakespeare buff. It’s part of his Cultured Old World shtick." Obviously, the Chicago analyst is not a Prinzmetal fan.

There is a wine and cheese reception after the symposium. One good thing about Northern California, no matter how pedestrian an academic function is, the wine is always excellent. He has a glass of cabernet and some Humboldt Fog cheese on a cracker. There is a fairly long line of people waiting to talk with Fielding and Prinzmetal, who seem on good terms with one another now that the symposium is over, like a couple of professional wrestlers after a bout. Will has another glass of wine. Hotel waiters stand around looking somnolent. The analysts are an abstemious bunch. They neither eat nor drink very much. They do, however, talk and talk – after all the silent listening they do day in and day out, they seem glad to have an outlet. Will watches Shoshanna’s progress through the line, admiring how put-together she is – elegant shirt, cut to show her body to advantage, fitted jeans that look less expensive than they are, improbable Jimmy Choo shoes. Her hair is ultra-short. She wears dangly earrings made out of some kind of fused glass and silver. Appearance-wise, Shoshanna is fine. Will heads back to the bar for another glass of wine. He resolves to stick with the surface manifestations of their relationship for now, leaving well enough alone. The bartender looks at him. Most psychoanalysts don’t like to drink. Will says to the bartender, I’m not a psychoanalyst, helping himself to a two more glasses of cabernet, one for him and one for Shoshanna or perhaps for himself if the line moves too slowly. He puts a five-dollar bill on the bartender’s tip plate.

A woman ahead of Shoshanna in line catches Will’s attention. She has long, dark hair, a chiseled jaw line, and a slender neck. Her strong sternocleidomastoid and trapezius muscles – Will remembers his gross anatomy – are apparent, even at a distance. The configuration is that of a serious jock, triathlete maybe. She is wearing baggy cargo pants, an old plaid men’s shirt, and running shoes. A tattered messenger bag with a water bottle carabinered to it is slung over her shoulder. Now she is talking to Charles Prinzmetal. She uses her hands a lot. Prinzmetal smiles. When she turns away, Will sees her face full on – a pattern recognition bull’s eye! Will feels tingling in his groin. He wonders, with more than scientific curiosity, what it is about the arrangement of some women’s anatomical planes that attracts him more than others.

For Kat Kahn, the symposium is like a bar mitzvah to which she has gone with her parents out of filial obligation, not knowing anyone and not really wanting to be there. So many self-important stiffs, she thinks. Kat has been waiting patiently in line to speak to Charles Prinzmetal.

"I wanted to say how much I enjoyed your talk. I really dug the Shakespeare references. Honestly, it was the only part I could relate to. You know, when I was in high school I played Jessica in The Merchant of Venice.

Prinzmetal recites: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov’d her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, And ne’er a true one.

Yes, yes, I remember those lines, Kat says to him, beaming and squeezing his smooth hands in both of hers.

Thank you, young lady.

I’m Katherine Kahn, Dr. Prinzmetal. I’ve waited a long time to say this to you: thanks for arranging my adoption. Cynthia and Alfred have been like real parents to me, and I’m just so grateful.

"Katherine, my dear, I’d recognize you anywhere. You’re so . . . so, how shall I put it, so fully formed. Prinzmetal has a quizzical look on his face. He studies Kat for a moment. "You say like parents, hmm? As if they really weren’t your parents." She wasn’t supposed to know about me. Bound to happen eventually, though.

Well, they’re not my birth parents, are they? Kat brushes a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. Anyway, I’m sorry that I won’t be at dinner tonight. Plans I can’t change, I’m afraid. No doubt you and my parents will find some deeper meaning in it. She smiles disarmingly at Prinzmetal. Anyway, you’re really smart; you must know all of Shakespeare by heart. Great seeing you again, I guess. Kat smiles, turns, and slips away into the throng of analysts.

God, she is so lovely, Prinzmetal thinks.

Finally, Shoshanna makes her way to the head of the line. She talks earnestly with both Prinzmetal and Fielding. Will still can’t tell whose side she’s on. When Shoshanna comes over to him, he leads her to the bar, having already drunk the glass of wine meant for her. He’d have another to be sociable, but he’s already feeling tipsy after four glasses of wine and only a few pieces of cheese. It would be uncool to spoil their meaningful experience by passing out. Now let’s find Goldberg, he says, I’m starved. Goldberg is Will’s medical school roommate, from when Will was in medical school, before he quit to get his PhD. Goldberg is an advanced analytic candidate, like Shoshanna, only in Boston. He is in town for the meeting. Will had invited Goldberg to stay at his apartment, but Goldberg declined, saying he wanted to be at the hotel – where the action was. Will and Shoshanna will scoop up Goldberg, then go to Shoshanna’s place in Berkeley for more drinks – cocktails though, not wine. He knows that Shoshanna will have great hors d’oeuvres from the Cheese Board. She’ll lay out a big spread then tell them not to spoil their appetites – a perfect Jewish mother double bind. Goldberg has secured a reservation at Chez Panisse for them, by calling the restaurant months in advance and leaving a deposit on his credit card. He has told Will that the deposit would be refundable if they had to cancel up to twenty-four hours in advance. Shoshanna’s place will be very convenient. Will has assured Goldberg that they will not get hijacked on the way there and they will not have to cancel at the last minute.

Goldberg comments that he has seen photographs online of the décor at Chez Panisse. He asks Shoshanna, Is it Craftsman Style or Mission Style? She says she thinks these are two different names for the same thing, but she’s not sure.

How did you guys get to know each other? Shoshanna asks. She is asking Goldberg, but Will answers. They made us roommates in the dorm, first year. We hit it off. Goldberg tried to educate me to things an unsophisticated Midwestern jock from Dartmouth wouldn’t know about.

I tried to turn him on to psychoanalysis, Goldberg says. Will went with me to a kind of off-the-books seminar on the unconscious that some of us had persuaded Professor Frisch to give. Frisch was glad to do it; you know, proselytize for psychoanalysis before the biological psychiatrists indoctrinated us."

It was pretty cool. Frisch based the whole seminar on analytic patients’ dreams and children’s drawings, Will says.

So how come you ended up becoming a molecular biologist?

Because, basically, I’m a very concrete person. I enjoy stories about people – movies and novels and all – but I only believe what I can see or touch, you know, what’s tangible.

You’re equating psychoanalysis with fiction? Shoshanna asks, mildly indignant.

"Well . . . I mean stories – like, well, personal narratives are by their very nature unverifiable, no?

Narrative truth is a different kind of truth, Goldberg says.

And entirely valid in its own right, Shoshanna adds.

Hey, don’t you two go ganging up on me, Will says, "Anyway, toward the end of our first year, I saw a display of prints of electron micrographs that had been made by the chairman of the cell biology department, and they just blew me away they were so beautiful. I can’t tell you why, exactly. I was just walking through a corridor in Building C, on my way to the library when I saw them. I had no idea then what they were, even, but I just felt when I saw them that if I could have a career making images like that I’d be in heaven. They were so intricate, so precise, so symmetrical, so, I don’t know, harmonious. And they had that tangibility – they were real. Plus, I’m the kind of person who needs to make things, not just think things. Will is getting so excited that he is starting to gobble up all the hors d’oeuvres, giving Shoshanna another reason to find fault with him. Do you know that with the imagining technology we have, we can see molecules? So what I was looking at in Professor Jamison’s electron micrographs – like knowing what I was seeing without knowing it – was the basic structure of life. How cool is that! No disrespect, but I mean, if you can’t physically represent the id or the ego, or at least correlate them with some imageable brain functioning, then what’s the point?"

Hold on there, Will, Goldberg says, "Aren’t the quark and the mu meson every bit as much constructs as the id and the ego? The constructs id and ego are important because they have heuristic value. It’s as true in particle physics as in psychoanalysis that we don’t observe things themselves, we observe their effects. It’s a good analogy. Goldberg is pleased with himself. An analysis is like in a cloud chamber, he says, You don’t see the atomic particles themselves, you see their trails, so you know they exist. It’s the same with the id and the ego; you see their trails in the analysand’s associations and behaviors."

Whatever. Anyway, Will says, After Second Year I transferred into the PhD program in molecular biology.

Then when I started my clinical rotations, Will and I just passed each other like ships in the night, Goldberg says. Still, we stayed friends. Goldberg gives Will’s forearm a squeeze. Jeez, it’s good to see you, Will.

You too, Goldberg.

Shoshanna looks at her watch. How about if we continue this over dinner.

Goldberg giggles. I always say, ‘Shall we pause there?’ when I interrupt a patient at the end of an hour.

At Chez Panisse, Shoshanna takes charge of interpreting the menu and ordering the wine. She says to Will, I notice he calls you ‘Will,’ but you call him ‘Goldberg.’ Isn’t that a little lack of reciprocity?

Goldberg doesn’t have any other name – just Goldberg.

Actually, it’s Andrew, Andrew Goldberg, Goldberg says to Shoshanna.

Really? Will says in mock amazement. I never knew that. He proposes a toast: "Here’s to Andrew Goldberg, for he’s a merry old Soulberg. And he’ll always be twenty-four carat Goldberg to me."

Will and Goldberg trade anecdotes for Shoshanna’s amusement. This may sound blunt, she says, pretty buzzed from the cocktails and wine, But it’s really hard for me to picture you two being friends. You’re so different. Clearly, there must be some dynamic here that I’m missing.

Round-faced Goldberg blushes. He doesn’t usually drink. Two margaritas at Shoshanna’s without much to eat, since Will had been scarfing up all the hors d’oeuvres, have gone to his head. And now the wine – much more than he is used to drinking. Goldberg blushes easily anyway, but with the alcohol he reddens dramatically. He would be called baby-faced even with his heavy, Richard Nixon-style beard that requires twice-a-day shaving. He must have been a pudgy child, probably teased often, Shoshanna thinks; he always wanted a macho buddy, like Will, but what’s in it for Will?

You’re thinking what? Homoerotic? Goldberg says, winking at Will and giggling. "Am I reading your mind, or what?

Will blows satirical kisses at Goldberg. It started in the first week of classes. We were lab partners in biochemistry. Goldberg says to me, ‘What the hell is an Erlenmeyer flask?’ It was love at first sight. Will and Goldberg laugh. Will makes sucking kiss noises.

As they make their way through the four-course meal, Goldberg and Shoshanna lapse into inebriated psychoanalytic shop talk, ignoring Will. Will is content to eat Alice Waters’ excellent food. He has decided he’s done with Shoshanna anyway. Goldberg can have her, except he lives three thousand miles away. Will is missing Beth – blond, tan, big-breasted, small-waisted Beth, a quintessential California girl, uncomplicated, physical, in-the-moment, unintrospective Beth. They met when they were in Hawaii surfing. Why had he thought he needed something more meaningful than Beth? It doesn’t matter anyway, since his post-doc at UCSF is ending this summer and he is moving back to Boston to a pharmaceutical company-funded biotech startup where he will pursue his radiographic cell membrane research and make, for once, a decent living.

Goldberg sees Will staring off vacantly and tries to include him in the conversation. He and Shoshanna try to explain to him the long-running debate about one-person vs. two-person psychologies, about intrapsychic vs. interpersonal theories. Will nods, the way he has seen the shrinks nod.

Whose approach do you favor, Shoshanna asks Goldberg, Fielding’s or Prinzmetal’s? She is talking much too loud.

Well, I definitely believe that psychoanalysis has to acknowledge two psychologies in the consulting room, and I do think that intersubjectivity brings a sensitivity and a nuance to the analytic conversation that is missing in the classical approach. At the same time, I worry about a lack of rigor in the Fielding school. And they overreach, I think. Sometimes they seem pretty grandiose. There’s got to be some uniformity and consistency to analysis. I agree with Prinzmetal there. Psychoanalysis can’t be all art and no science. God, I’m holding my liquor really well, he thinks.

Will chimes in, Exactly. Where’s the science?

In Fielding’s approach?

In any of it.

Shoshanna says, "Psychoanalysis is an art. To try to make it into a science when it’s not only trivializes it and undermines its credibility. Prinzmetal pays lip service to the art of psychoanalysis by sprinkling his papers and presentations with Shakespeare quotes, like he did today, but he really doesn’t grapple with the premise implicit in intersubjectivity that the analyst is a true creative artist; he just sidesteps the whole issue by saying he’s a mechanic or a surgeon."

I liked the Shakespeare stuff, Will says.

You know Prinzmetal is called ‘The Bard’ around the Institute, Goldberg says. He doesn’t see the mockery in it, or maybe he doesn’t care. He used to teach an elective seminar on Shakespeare and psychoanalysis. He held it in the evenings at his big house in Cambridge. The candidates used to call it ‘Sherry with The Bard.’ He would act out the characters in the plays with real passion. Everybody would loaded on sherry and join in on the performance. In those days, the candidates thought he was brilliant.

And what did you think? Shoshanna asks.

I never got to go. He stopped giving it the year before I would have been eligible attend.

How come? Will asks.

Because too few candidates were attending. A different breed, I guess.

Yeah, Shoshanna says. With families and two hundred thousand dollars in student loans to repay. To busy moonlighting to indulge William Shakespeare Prinzmetal’s playacting, I imagine.

So he was abandoned, like Falstaff in Henry IV, Part Two, Will says, smiling at the look of astonishment on Goldberg’s face. Wow, Goldberg mouths. I took a humanities course or two in my day, you know, Will adds.

Well-put, William. Shoshanna squeezes Will’s bicep affectionately. I rest my case.

So you side with Fielding, Shosh? Will asks.

Yes, she says, "And you, Goldberg? Are you frum?"

"Frum?" Will looks puzzled.

"Frum is the Yiddish word for pious. Shoshanna means am I an orthodox Prinzmetal worshiper? Goldberg says, No, I’m pretty eclectic. I appreciate how intersubjectivity is a powerful, maybe even essential point of view. But I maintain that you need to use the scientific method – hypothesis, data, and hypothesis revision. You need the rigor, the discipline."

That’s why you like Prinzmetal.

"Yes. As a matter of fact, he’s been supervising my first control, and I’ve really learned a lot from him, especially about technique. He really demands rigor, just like Fielding said of him. He tells you that you don’t just say something to a patient because it feels right. You need to know why you’re saying what you’re saying at all times. Goldberg blushes again. I must say he’s very tough, very severe."

So that explains why you suck up to him. Goldberg must get off on being humiliated by that fascist, Shoshanna thinks.

I like Prinzmetal, Will says emphatically. He’s a tough old dude, I can tell. Talks straight, none of this intersubjectivity kumbaya.

TWO

The San Francisco spring is mild and sunny. The profligate profusion of anemones, tulips, hyacinth, clematis, and daffodils is jarring to Prinzmetal. It is as if the flowers are making loud, dissonant music. He is unprepared for so much color this early in the season, and he foolishly worries that it will aggravate his angina. In Boston it is still gray and rainy. He is used to that and almost prefers it. Although he travels frequently to lecture, present papers, and attend American Psychoanalytic Association committee meetings, he always finds travel unsettling. Traveling coach class, he feels packed in, and he unfailingly associates to the sealed boxcars that carried doomed Jews to Auschwitz. Fortunately, on this trip he is staying with his old friends, Alfred and Cynthia Kahn. The Kahns have a lovely small Victorian in Pacific Heights. From the front steps he can see the Golden Gate Bridge. The ground floor windows are practically floor to ceiling. French doors at the back of the house open onto a deck. Beyond that is Cynthia’s meticulously tended garden. Houses in Pacific Heights are very expensive. Alfred, an interventional cardiologist on the faculty of UCSF, must do quite well – carriage trade patients and medical device company honoraria, no doubt – at least half-a-million a year, probably more like three quarters – Prinzmetal thinks. Cynthia is a psychiatric social worker at Mount Zion Medical Center. She was one of the first so-called lay analysts, meaning non-physicians, to be trained in San Francisco. She is more catholic than the Pope when it comes to psychoanalytic orthodoxy. Most of her patients are troubled creative people with family money.

Prinzmetal will have a late supper with Alfred and Cynthia. Their daughter, Katherine, has told him that she will not be joining them. She stood in line after the symposium to tell him this, and to tell him that she knew she was adopted and that he had arranged it. She told him she liked his Shakespeare reference and that she had recently played the role of Jessica in an amateur production of The Merchant of Venice. How apt, he thinks, daughter of an old Jew.

Prinzmetal is tired after a long day. He had been up since dawn, having first walked from Pacific Heights to the hotel in Union Square, then chairing an Ethics Committee meeting, then participating in the symposium. It seems to him that Fielding is becoming incrementally more aggressive toward him – well, not toward him, toward classical psychoanalysis. It is necessary to rebut Fielding equally forcefully, if not more so. I will not be Swift Boated by that fop. But it takes something out of him, this constant defending of the faith. He will take a nap before supper. He plugs in his laptop charger. On the computer he listens to classical music, reads The New York Times, and conducts email correspondence, just as he would at home. Odd that a computer should now is his constant companion. He had resisted this technology for the longest time. Now, the laptop feels like his closest friend. That is to say, he reminds himself, I am now my own closest friend. For so long it was Esther. Prinzmetal keeps a small framed photograph of Esther, his late wife, now five