Oedipus from Miami Beach: Book 1

By Gibbs A. Williams

The main theme of my journal is a search for my 'spiritual' Father as a bridge to connecting me with my true self while negotiating the many formidable obstacles put in its way.

This journal was begun as a desperate attempt to create order out of the chaos of my confused thoughts and feelings.

My lifelong preoccupation has been to un

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: May 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781958128336

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Copyright © 2022 by Gibbs A. Williams Ph.D.

ISBN 978-1-958128-31-2 (softcover)

ISBN 978-1-958128-33-6 (ebook)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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PRE - OVERVIEW

While recording twenty-eight years of journal entries, plus spending many more years, mulling their implications and meanings, I have experienced an increasingly compelling desire to share a journey of my Odyssey in inner space for the purpose of providing a detailed sample of one-road map for kindred spirits who are seeking liberation from the strangulating effects of their self-imposed bondage. To be noted by readers of this journal - whereas your personal inner journey is unique nevertheless you are likely to experience a kinship with me and everyone else who has taken a parallel psychanalytic journey.

I appreciate the content of this journal may strike some readers as the expression of a quintessential pathological narcissist. But for others, identifying with my initial psychological complaints, this content may be perceived as an accurate and illuminating description of the transformative process I experienced in my slow but steady progression from being a psychological ‘prisoner’ suffering from pathological narcissism and dissociation to a more balanced and healthier sense of self.

I am thankful that many past and present profound thinkers have provided concepts utilized as psychological ‘tools’ during psychoanalytic treatment in the service of organizing my own and others’ personal chaos. I am especially indebted to Baruch Spinoza for accurately describing my core psychological issue.

Spinoza says

"The impotence of man to govern or restrain the emotions I call Bondage for a man who is under their control is not his own master but is mastered by fortune,…so that he is often forced to follow the worse, although he sees the better before him."

In my quest to free myself from my self-imposed psychological bondage I sought professional help. But despite faithfully meeting with two reputable psychoanalytic psychotherapists over a period of six years, two sessions a week, I failed to obtain the sought-for relief I craved. The basic match in both cases between analyst and patient was too limited. I did not know at the time that I needed someone who was perfectly in tune with who I was – a person who would accept me unconditionally, was trustworthy, and had the capability of gradually learning to understand my idiosyncratic experiential logic in breadth and depth. Little did I realize at nineteen years old, entering my first journal entry while on a Christmas break at my home of origin, that I was embarking on a twenty-seven-year quest for a meaningful and sustained connection with my ‘spiritual’ father.

Like most of us, [I] was searching for the idealized parent, not unlike what Thomas Wolfe described in The Story of a Novel."

The deepest search in life, it seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living, was man’s search to find a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.

What follows is a detailed partial but substantial account of my quest to find and to successfully work with my Psychoanalyst – Rudolf Wittenberg - Ph.D.- in a team effort whose goal was for me to grow and sustain – a unified self, a strong ego, and peace of mind.

One last note – To present and potential patients who understandably believe that the contents of this journal are too intimate to read at this time I suggest you not read on until your own psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been completed.

OVERVIEW

As an adolescent, I was preoccupied with searching for the Real, the capital T Truth, and meaningful connections. This quest grew particularly intense when I was a sophomore at Columbia University. Even though I was located fifteen hundred miles from my parents’ home in Miami Beach, Florida I felt as if my father and stepmother were constantly watching me and negatively evaluating every move evoking a feeling of hyper self-consciousness. On the surface I looked OK but bubbling in my psychic depths was a troubled self that was divided, confused, fragmented, and isolated. Now at age eighty-five I recall those days as if they were a waking nightmare that has all but lost its ill effects except for triggered mostly painful memories of those dreadful times.

One night on a Christmas break from college, nineteen years old - while sitting on the bed in my former bedroom - in a desperate attempt to order my personal chaos, I spontaneously made the first entry of what would become a twenty-seven-year journal.

How I freed myself from being enslaved to linear time, identified, and reconciled my splits, filled the hole in my soul with meaningful connections, while unconsciously searching for a good father, and eventually finding him, strikes me as an important enough endeavor to share my experience with all those resonant seekers who identify with my life-long desire for personal transformation and peace of mind.

Thus, reviewing these journal entries from the perspective of eighty-five years, the main theme of my journal is a search for my ‘spiritual’ father as a bridge to connecting me with my true self while negotiating the many formidable obstacles put in its way. It is also an endorsement for undergoing long-term psychoanalysis for people like me who know from their hard-won experience that the widely accepted myth - ‘the past is dead so just focus on the here and now’ is simply not true. Additionally, in the process of growing a solid self with the collaboration of a trustworthy, brilliant, and loving guide, an original naturalistic theory of synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) was an unexpected byproduct.

Note

Readers, please note that a-periodically will appear brackets [ ] with commentary filled inside are additional journal entries I made as I edited these pages. Reasons for doing this are for a greater sense of clarity, understanding, and providing evidence of significant change.

YEAR 1 - 1956 - Age 19

The second semester of my freshman year at Columbia University, Christmas vacation in Miami Beach-conflict at home with myself and with my parents especially with my father and grandma D-my mother’s ’mother. - The first entry in what was to become a twenty-eight-year journal - I identify myself as an ‘outsider.’ I am between two wars - a revolution with my parents and society, and a civil war with myself.

19 years old – In my room at home. Journal entry #1

I must begin to write. But I find it painfully difficult to begin anything anymore due to the realization that nothing [including myself] exists in a vacuum. What a grand surprise to realize that behind all external manifestations lay internal motivating causes. This awareness opens worlds never dreamed of; yet, at the same time causes me new complications. Before it was [relatively] simple to act or not act. There seemed to be no choice. Now there always are too many choices. So, the question is not to choose or not to choose but to choose that choice which is best. This [persistent] question [How does one know what choice is best in each situation?] paralyzes me. My English teacher is fond of quoting Plato - The unexamined life is not worth living. This makes sense to me; however, I have [also] discovered that the overly examined life is incapable of being lived." [My confusion of sorting out too much information often resulting in a state of negative inertia might aptly be referred to as a symptom characterized by a feeling of data overload].

Despite my feeling trapped in psychological quicksand, I must begin to write so I will. What then do I write about? What goals do I have in mind? What is my purpose? What are my motives?

…I want to be an artist. That is, I want to live my life artistically. What is an artist? Artists are sensitive people who reach into the eternal chaotic flow of the river of lived experiences and somehow impose order upon these experiences. They boil, distill, crystallize, draw conclusions, and extract an ethic that gives meaning to their individual lives. There seems [for them] to be no choice about choosing. At the lowest biological level, our cells scream for oxygen, when we are hungry our stomachs demand to be filled up, our exhausted bodies insist on getting enough sleep and exercise, and our minds crave adequate stimulation. [Additionally] man [me] needs to communicate his [thoughts] and feelings.

January 2

…I am in the car with my father and younger brother talking about Grandma D. My father can’t stand her. He relates to her by telling her how irresponsible I am and what a beautiful car her Nash is. My brother and father laugh sarcastically noting a Nash [a real lemon] in front of us as the firmest car on the road. They chatter about the new sports cars as they listen to the top forty songs on WQAM ‘forcing the sundown.’

I should have stayed at Columbia. Miami Beach is a hell hole. I feel like a child again. No intensity, no vitality. The climate is oppressive, depressive, unlike cold New York air. In New York, I feel alive, self-aware. The minute I hit Florida contacting the family I feel depersonalized. I become an extension of them. They constantly criticize me no matter what I say or do. I still have [the same] contempt for Miami Beach I’ve had since the eleventh grade but that is starting to change. I must learn how to control these negative emotions of rage and contempt.

Later

Prager – my artist friend- says I must learn how to ‘feign emotion.’ He says - with my father, to admit his possible rightness but don’t give in completely. Act so it seems like my responses are genuine. Become involved but really save yourself by detachment and observation of the problem of the moment. It is a multi-sided problem.

He continued – You like to see people as ‘whaters’ or ‘whyers.’ Your father is a ‘whater’ and you are a ‘whyer.’ You must give your dad credit. He fought the hard way to build his empire. He is fighting for his life also. Accept it to eliminate friction. The problems of the ‘whater’ are different than those of the ‘whyer.’ Their problems are whether to tune into the new WQAM and listen to the latest rock and roll song or to be an escapee with WSKP or whether to buy a Cadillac or a Chrysler. The ‘whyer’s’ problems go further and deeper asking not what radio station to hear, or what car to buy but whether to do so or not.

Nighttime

I see myself in the mirror. I see a piercing probing intense lean reflection. I want to see right down into the guts of life and flesh. I demand to know and to find the truth. Nothing will stop me.

January 3

I wonder why I went to visit my friend, Maxine? It is as if the visit was almost willed by some greater force or is this something I need to believe? I talked with Maxine’s mother. The present has a link with the past. Maxine’s mother knew my mother when she was an organizational woman a few years before she died.

Ms. B said – I really didn’t know your mother as a person. I remember meeting her for the first time at a convention. I was awed by her dynamic personality as she stood on the stage. She was an excellent public speaker. Then she came down and sat next to me and seemed like a different person, still dynamic but something not there. It was as if your mother was always driving herself in her work.

Ms. B told me what she had thought of me as I was growing up. You always seemed like a sad little boy although externally pleasant and cheerful. How do you do, you would say, but something was amiss internally. No sparkle in your eyes, no smile, no will. How long have you been using your analytical mind? Why question so much? Be careful! It begins like a snowball and gets so powerful that it never stops."

P.M.

I finished Colin Wilson’s Book - The Outsider -

"Man stripped of his externals…[is] an outsider because he stands for truth…He sees too deep and too much and what he sees is essentially chaos…Truth must be told; chaos must be faced…The outsider’s business is to find a course of action in which he is most himself i.e., in which he achieves the maximum of self-expression…. He must commit himself to the idea: there may be something which is not futile, but it is completely beyond me…The outsiders’ problems are real problems, not neurotic delusions…The way is through the intellect and the business of the intellect is synthesized unendingly…[The outsider]…is struck forcibly by the kinetic nature of the world itself.

While before, he had seen the world as rather a static place, where all sorts of trivialities assumed importance…he now sees the world as a battleground of immense forces…."

I read Gurdjieff and Ouspensky - Recognize you are not free. Observe what actions are habitual and mechanical…Man’s freedom lies in refusing to act….

Later

Don’t analyze so much Ms. B advised me. Well, I respond, you seek pleasure by accumulating material goods, I by analyzing. You want me to live in the present and become a ‘whater.’ Does this mean I should damn my past? She said - I was a ‘boy of extremes. You must learn how to play with time.…‘play by ear.’ Be able to praise despite…We need each other to tell us who we are….

I ask myself - what is the business of living all about? What do I do next? Drift? Sleep? Go from one sexual climax to another? Why express any of this? I need to free myself from that which I know to be able to prepare myself for new knowledge to come.

January 4

Pager hurt me when he said: You still don’t laugh enough.

January 5

I disappointed my father again putting off calling Grandma D. again. Explosion! He lashes out at me saying ‘you are so irresponsible. I pushed back - Now that I am twenty are you ever going to let me be myself and accept me for what I am and not for what you think I should be? To advise me what I could be is love; to order me to be this or that is tyranny."

My father shouts back - You are irresponsible, and I can’t make you see it. You come home and see what you caused? We are happy all year long until you come home. You are nothing, never were anything. You are a snot nose, an idiot, a selfish prig. He slapped me saying - This is the first time I’ve hit you in twenty years. I should have done it long ago.

I think maybe Prager is right. I must try to accept Dad as he is. But I can’t. There is too much friction between us. Although he claims to act in my best interest he makes too many impossible demands. As I was thinking these thoughts I broke down and cried. Good, my father said, patting my head as my body slumped down on his lap - Now you are my boy. Now I know you need me. For the past year, I haven’t been able to reach you.

Later

Everyone has formulas for me to live by. My father says - Say you are a shmuck and agree with whatever is being said to you; Pager says - Feign emotion detach, observe and analyze; my stepmother says, live for the present."

I must know my past because something must be blocking my inability to act freely in the present. I hate my father’s rants - "I’ve done everything I can possibly do for that kid. I gave him an expensive present [an electric razor I didn’t want]. If I committed suicide, he wouldn’t even know enough to say thanks. He should forget the past. Live now. Other people have had tough experiences but managed to get through them. You should be like them."

Reflecting later

If I am a ‘whyer’ then I must analyze not for pleasure but simply for my survival. The alternative is death by mental strangulation or mental starvation. But thinking too much creates mental blocks and blocks spontaneity.

There again goes my father shouting - Now call Grandma and do it right now!

Later - I reluctantly call Grandma D

Upon recognizing my voice grandma says - my sweet little baby. Ugh!

January 6 – A Major Confrontation with my Father Intensifies my Hatred and Fear of him – I Experience Seemingly Irreconcilable Differences

Responding to my question what did mother really think of me, my father answered - You were her whole life, you were never neglected. She neglected both of us. She was the tyrant. As he spoke, I was keeping word-for-word notes. Suddenly he grabbed the notepaper out of my hands, tore them to pieces, and marched into his bathroom, throwing them into the toilet yelling: This is where this shit belongs."

I said to myself - he just threw away the symbol of my whyness, the source of all the conflict between us. For this, I am supposed to give him respect?

July 15 - Green Mountain Boys Camp – Back to summer camp as a counselor. I befriend the drama counselor, Cy – I am deeply depressed – I discover Freud.

Growing up is drunken madness. Ideas! Ideas! Ideas swarm around, tormenting my brain leaving me defenseless to myself.

I was feeling hopelessly lost and confused tonight. [Overwhelmed] I broke down. I talked to Cy, the drama director, telling him how [hopeless my situation] saying there is probably nothing I can do about my feelings. His response surprised me - There is something you can do. Have you ever heard of psychoanalysis?

By coincidence, I had been reading Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams whose [core] concept of the personal unconscious makes perfect sense to me as it resonates with my discovery of a hidden motivation behind the appearance of things.

August 1

Ever since my talk with Cy I, realize I am in a civil war between my emotions, body, and my intellect. It is a war between mastery, self-discipline, and indulgence. I think that perhaps my intellect is not as important as my feelings but what do I do with them?

August 24

This has been a worthwhile summer. The deep depression which I had at school from January through April has completely faded away. I have begun to relax for the first time in my life. Why have I felt as if I always must rush?

My self-confidence has doubled. I feel accepted. Physically I feel I am at the peak of my life. Weighing one hundred and twenty pounds I am strong and healthy.

Freud says - The mind is an arena, a sort of tumbling ground for the struggles of antagonistic impulses or that the mind is made up of contradictions and pairs of opposites. I like what Overstreet says in his book The Mature Mind - The love of a person implies, not the possession of that person, but the affirmation of that person.

August 3 - A trip to oppressive Miami Beach before the fall semester of Columbia - a talk with an old girlfriend discussing our high aspirations - I resonate with ideas of Freud both intellectually and experientially, my interest is stirred concerning psychodynamic understanding - nearly overwhelmed with intense negative feelings including, anxiety, depression, guilt - I actively search for good guidance especially from wise literary authors- I am very close to being ready, willing, and able to explore psychotherapy as my vocational choice.

I have been home for two days after an absence of eight months. The first day was fresh and new. The second has been miserable and [unfortunately all too] familiar. The air is hot and humid. The sun beats down producing lethargy. It is no wonder people down here are so stagnant and uncreative.

Later

I saw an old girlfriend tonight. We went to the beach and talked of many things sitting on the lifeguards’ chair watching the rolling waves lit up by a full moon. We spoke about love and marriage, sex, platonic and physical love, our ideals, values, hopes and dreams, our futures, our teenage years experienced as treacherous, the merits of existentialism, and Frost’s poem about the two paths on the road.

I began feeling sick again as too many ideas raced around my mind. The ideas whirled and spiraled in intensity despite my conscious effort to control them.

Just before I went to sleep

A run of associations - large breasts, conflicts at home, worried my teeth will fall out, upset by Praeger’s analysis of me - You are a brother, not a lover, a fear I’ll be impotent, a fear I am unconsciously homosexual, and a realization that I fluctuate between extremes.

I want to be the hero that Joseph Campbell describes in his book - The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell says - The hero’s act is to delve into the unconscious mind, bring it up, and make it one with the conscious mind.

I read John Knights’ - The Story of My Psychoanalysis. He says - Every man carries in himself the germs of every human quality and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.

Thomas Wolfe said - Which of us has not remained forever prison pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? He also said - In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into…the prison of this earth.

I feel guilty about wanting to neck with my date last night. She signaled she didn’t want to, so I stopped trying. But I felt guilty about trying. Cy said - "American culture is such that a girl is looked upon as an instrument to be played with, used, and laid aside when [the man] is satiated. The dating system is neurotic and phony. The aim is for the man to sink his penis into her vagina. The result is nothingness. A real love affair must be more."

My life so far has been one of extremes and excesses. I want people to like me. I [initially] burst into flame [like an exploding firecracker] but just as quickly burn myself out. Intense elation inevitably turns into depression. I quickly fall from the heights of ecstasy into the depths of gloom.

Mark Twain said - After the civil war, something had gone out of American life, some simplicity, some innocence, and some peace. Where formerly the people had desired money, now they fall and worship it. The new gospel was to get money. Get it quickly. Get it in abundance. Get it in prodigious abundance. Get it dishonestly if you can, honestly if you must.

Freud says - If a regression does not call forth a prohibition on the part of the ego, no neurosis result; the libido succeeds in obtaining a real, although not a normal satisfaction. But if the ego…is not in agreement with these regressions, conflict ensues.

September 23

I saw Cy again today. I have the feeling that this meeting will perhaps have started me on a path that will change the entire course of my life. We discussed the possibility of my going into psychoanalysis. I agree with him that the money, time, and effort would probably be worth it.

Slowly but surely, I am beginning to see the insides that are really me. My skin feels stripped off and underneath lays my real self, naked and exposed. Association upon association focuses my mind’s eye seeing through the barriers of frustration, hatred, and guilt which have nearly paralyzed me with increasing frequency. I welcome Cy’s proposal and await the opportunity to discover my real self.

Orestes and Hamlet - "The hate gains intensity from the strength of the original love [mother love] when that love has been stopped or rejected."

September 24 – Start of my sophomore year at Columbia College – I am overwhelmed by seemingly contradictory ideas (psychological overload] I am feeling confused by confusion – A crisis of doubt in a bookstore - I quit the crew and begin a process of self-imposed isolation - I experience a major dissociative symptom scaring me enough to arrange a consultation with a psychoanalytic psychotherapist -

All is confusion. [I must find some order out of this basic confusion] Plato is right! - The good life is a sound mind in a sound body. Aristotle is right! - The good life is finding your own golden mean. Spinoza is right! - The good life is the intellectual union with all things. Each of these three perspectives seems right but how can this be possible? How can each of them be right at the same time?

I went into Salters’ book shop on Broadway across the street from the Columbia campus as I habitually do every Saturday looking for something meaningful to read. [In retrospect I was searching for some book that would synthesize the core ideas I had been impressed with within my studies for the preceding week.] My eye immediately went to the philosophy and psychology sections as it always does. I picked up first one book, then another, and another uncharacteristically discarding all of them as each lacked whatever content I was searching for. Frustrated and disappointed I stood in the middle of the bookstore frozen - shocked that I was unable to make a satisfactory choice.

Depressed I went back to my dorm room in John Jay Hall, listened to the plaintive sounds of Wagner’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’, laid down on my cot, and fell into a deep sleep.

Upon Waking Up

I am an outsider, although I have been intellectually and physically liberated from the invisible chains of my parents’ reality and from my external society, I still feel bound to my psychological umbilical cord. [A deepening realization I have failed to separate from my parents].

A Summary of My Freshman Year

My freshman year was a depressing haze. I am isolated and lonely. At the start of my freshman year I felt as if I could do anything and everything I wanted to do. Now I have discovered that emotionally doing everything equals doing nothing. With this realization, I have arrived at an emotional and spiritual impasse – a crisis of severe importance. My father’s pathetic confession [insight] haunts me: - We are two little arrogant cynical wise guys.

I must quit the Columbia crew as a coxswain. I will quit being free. Free of what? I hated sitting on the Hudson River at the front of the shell struggling to invent some aesthetic justification for my being there. I tried visualizing the harmonious rhythm of my fellow teammates all working together in unison as the boat glided down the river with me perceiving the subtle interplay of the shell and the water, while all the time I was actually painfully aware of wearing out my voice screaming commands at a bunch of sweaty pigs, experiencing myself freezing to death – yelling at their closed ears to stop floundering around and work in unison, so they could build up their muscles, to impress their girlfriends with the appearances of their manliness.

In fact, the rhythm was chaotic most of the time. The guys never seemed to be able to row together. The truth is I never experienced a comfortable day in the shell. [Remarkably we, unfortunately, won a race, and adhering to tradition I, the coxswain was thrown into the Harlem River. I emerged from the water with a used condom in my hair. I concluded quite accurately I was never made to be a proficient coxswain.] I quit the next day.

September 26 - A Trigger Event Propels Me to go for a Psychotherapy Consultation

– I Enter Psychotherapy with N.S

I woke today with a deep depression I couldn’t shake. Once out of bed, looking at Amsterdam Avenue through an open window there seemed to be a thin sheet of clear glass between myself and external reality. [This unexpected perception scared me.] I realized that the window was open with no actual glass blocking my view of the outside. Soon after this event, I called a psychotherapist that Cy recommended for a consultation.

September 27

The world lies outside my seventh-floor window. I desire to be at one with it. I need to take hold of myself and put myself in order. To do this I have to find my lost self.

September 28

I started psychotherapy. I made a purposeful choice. I feel the need to analyze everything around me. But I am aware, that at the same time I am analyzing it feels as if this is the opposite direction of what I really want which is to be spontaneous. What is going to happen to my need to be analytic? Will this need be able to coexist with the need to be spontaneous or will it be completely lost? This remains to be seen.

Kierkegaard seems to provide me with an answer. In Fear and Trembling Kierkegaard - said - To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…And to venture in the highest sense precisely to become conscious of oneself.

September 29

There is so much to be done, but so little time to do it.

September 30

I spent another traumatic evening with my lawyer father who came to New York on a case. I walked into his hotel room nervous but hopeful that this meeting might be productive. My hope was soon squashed as I told him I went into psychoanalysis. Reacting as poorly as I thought he might, he asked me why I hadn’t consulted him first. Clearly, upset he asked - What made me do it?

Continuing to bombard me with questions he finally got around to the one I think was the most important to him - Do you expect me to pay? Not waiting for my answer, he said - Well forget it. I tried to explain that the major reason I started treatment was my conflict with him. He said – That is what he thought. He [quickly] changed the subject as we went out to dinner.

I asked him to describe his relationship with my mother. He detailed more family history in the next few hours than I had ever heard in twenty years. It was love at first sight with your mother – but hate at first sight with her mother – followed by difficulties about sex, fidelity, and roles.

My father said the zenith of his life was in nineteen forty-six when I was nine years old. This peak was soon followed by a rash of sudden traumatic and tragic events - Mother’s cancer broke me. I was ready to retire. I had $ one hundred thousand dollars. I interrupted him asking can cancer be caused by tension. Am I prone to getting it? Clearly frightened by my words he repeated over and over for me, not to ever mention this thought again. He went on - "Your mother’s sickness, her death, my father’s marriage to ‘S’ my stepmother six months later; his subsequent heart attack and near-death; his near disbarment by a vindictive judge for his taking quickie divorce cases; his sister Florence, my aunt, meeting a tragic death in an airplane crash in the Gulf of Mexico on the way to see her daughter (my cousin Arlene) who subsequently died in childbirth; coupled by Uncle Frank’s refusal to lend my father desperately needed money - all coming at nearly the same time with ‘no logical explanation’ was almost too much to bear for all surviving family members [including me.]

Later alone

I am convinced that my decision to be in therapy is the most crucial one of my lives so far. I am experiencing more peace of mind in the last day than I have experienced in the last six years.

October 3 - My First Psychotherapy Session

I feel as if this was my first major therapy session. Dr. James my psychotherapist suggested I read Fromm and Sullivan. He raised many questions about my history. He asked – What was my real relationship between my father and me, and between both of my parents?

I asked Dr. James why he suggested I read Fromm and Sullivan and not Peale or Overstreet? He answered - The approach of Peale or Overstreet would be ideal if only the present was involved in my problems. However, there are unconscious blocks and traps created way back in childhood which many times chain us to despair no matter what present approach we use to try to free ourselves. These blocks must be discovered, probed, and destroyed. He requested that I write my autobiography and bring it to the next session. He then defined psychoanalysis as A theory of interpersonal relationships.

October 7

I feel as if I have started on a new path – the true path to true personal freedom. It is difficult for me to contain my excitement. At the very minute, I am filled to the brim with positive expectations and genuine hope for a satisfactory future. I have plunged into reading Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. I want to send copies of this book to everyone I know.

October 9

Last night I felt as if I had finally found my true profession. I want to be like Fromm. The idea came to me in the form of a sudden, gleaming, bright white light. All the major forces of my life have converged and have been illuminated into one flash of intense wholeness and rightness.

Later – My First Two Dreams in Therapy

I told Dr. James about my illumination. We discussed my first dream - my teeth falling out of my mouth. He analyzed my second dream saying - The key to it is a fear of exposing my true feelings. When I get anxious it leads to my method of defense which is intellectualizing. Anxiety is caused by a fear of intimacy. To compensate for my isolation, I overwork and need to be perfect. I call all relationships sexual thereby eliminating any possibility of closeness. In summary - patterns can be seen to be forming.

Dr. James thinks I am warm which contradicts my perception that I am cold. Obviously, I can’t be both at the same time. I am trying to diagram these ideas but to no use as I am confused.

How amazing is my perception of how the slightest gestures of acceptance can radically change the whole mentality of a man in the throes of love; inflection of the voice, a gentle movement of the body, a knowing glance through the slightest trifles somehow has the power of shifting bitterness into happiness, despair into hope, being stuck into this daunting challenge.

A woman’s control over a man is real and unbreakable. Man is nothing without female recognition [validation] particularly issuing from a ‘special’ woman. The game of love is devoid of rules – it has no order and no boundaries. It is one thing to view an idea objectively but quite another to accept [experience/] the same idea subjectively – to become submerged in its fluidity, to become at-one -with its life spirit.

October 13

All we really know is the present moment. All knowledge, perspective, is unified and focused through the filter of the present.

October 16

I told Dr. James I am concerned about my staying up late and my exuberant eagerness and insatiable hunger to read and record my history as if I were somehow able