Psychoanalysis - a few sessions on

 There have only been two sessions with the psychoanalyst but things in my mind are moving quite fast. I happened to meet a man - I am actually dating him - who had hundreds of sessions with a psychoanalyst, seeing her three times a week, and I just can't understand this from a practical perspective. I need the week to process what I said in the session, to let it brew. He assures me there was no other way for him and of course I take him at his word. At the time, he feels there was no other way.

Anyways, I wanted to talk about my fantasy life. When B sits down, she just stares at me, or she might move her hand slightly, to gesture "go".

I want to talk about my fantasy life, I began and I launched in. She listens brilliantly and if I say something that she wants to pick me up on she will say, "This is different". I can't remember all the subject matter, but at one point I think I said,

"Anyway, that's over now."

"It's not over," she said.

"Well, he died."

"This is different."

"Right, it's different."

Get the drift?

I mentioned a harsh fantasy, where the men are intolerant, strict, demanding, unforgiving, usurious, misogynistic, bastards basically. I am always at their mercy and there's not a tender bone in their bodies. I am simply there to be trained to understand that there's no way out. It has to be obedience at every moment of the day and there's no one who will disagree with them. I have no agency.

Oh, her ears pricked up with that. "No agency?"

"Yes, no agency. I have no free Will. I can decide nothing." 

So, then I mentioned the softer fantasy. I am with a man who loves me and I love him, but he is also strict but for our mutual benefit. There's a lot more sitting at his feet style of interaction, not nasty but certainly dominant and there are rules, there are roles, there are consequences and there are expectations.

"This is different," she said.

"Right. This is the relationship of my dreams. This is the one I want. But, to get off fast alone in my bed, I go to the first one," I explained.

Something can stir a curiosity in me, and I found myself researching sexual fantasies and what they might mean. I won't go into that now, but I wasn't surprised to read that fantasies turned against oneself relate to childhood trauma.

On reading this in some detail, I found myself aroused. That's how f**ked this is. I went to the bedroom, and I allowed myself to think about the first fantasy, the one where I am basically abused, let's call it for what it is, and I found very quickly that for the first time in months I was coming hard. As the literature said, the fantasy had ended with an explosive orgasm.

Generally, this would have led to feelings of relaxation and pleasure, but this time I was also noting the fantasy material, watching out for what my mind was producing and I found myself weeping. I even said the words out loud, 'Why do they treat me this way over and over?'

I am fully aware that my little girl brain decades ago fired together thoughts of neglect and abandonment with something kinky. They fired together and they wired together.

The thing is that they are starting to bother me. The fantasies which started at the same time as I was suffering neglect are now reminding me of that start in life and I don't really want to be reminded of that time. I don't really want to be reminded of a childhood where my compliance and lack of agency to speak my opinions or feelings hurt me and led to me repeating that pattern in adulthood. I want to move on. I am happy to hold onto the second fantasy but not the first one.

In a couple of days my job is to tell B. what I find fulfilling about the fantasies. She's given nothing away about this all. I think she can see that I am onto the fact that this all ties together - the neglect and the subservience together with the fantasy life and the orgasmic response which led onto a sound sleep.

It's thought that as you speak your truth these sorts of things - the images in this case - can lose their potency and maybe even start to fade, or at least not bother me.

I'm neither happy nor sad, relaxed nor tight, positive nor negative in mood. I enjoy a lot of time to myself because I know I am going through something big and transformative and I don't have a great desire to be with people. The interactions are daily, to be sure, but I am not seeking out company daily. I am grateful for the silence. 

I minimise the items in the house and garden. I seek simplicity in my habitat and ultimately in my mind. I am coming to terms with a life that was tainted from the beginning with a lack of normal touch and attention and looking ahead to see where life takes me now. I know I cannot and will not repeat from where I have come. This at the least, I know.  

Psychoanalysis

 As the time since my husband's death has rolled on, I have noticed a range of emotions. Sometimes, I am functioning quite well, but other times I notice a cascade of emotions. I wouldn't say that they topple me over. I don't lie in bed or find I can't cope with the many challenges that I have inherited. I get on with it.

Yet, I do notice that I am going through some sort of change, or transformation, or growth, or maybe it's regression. Whatever it is, it's undeniable. 

I found myself tangoing with the hypnotherapist I have used, sort of banging on his door seeing if he had a fix, and he doesn't have a fix. It's far too existential for hypnotherapy. It's not a structural sort of problem - like, add exercise to your life, or find a new man using this particular dating site. That stuff is well intended but it's not for now.

For now, is dealing with big emotions and violent dreams and thoughts that feel very true and unexpressed, and that don't have a loving or accepting component at all.

In fact, I have found myself wrestling with a thought. It's this: I worked ultra hard to give what has happened in my life the nicest packaging in every way. The goal was unconditional love, forgiveness, kindness, good intention. All that. 

However, what is really happening under the hood is much more vehemently judgmental, unforgiving, and carries the sentiment of 'What the f**k just happened?'

In that state, you can only move on so fast. It's not the time to date since I found that I was just so disappointed in the men I was dating. I had so little patience with them. I didn't express that. They didn't know until I said, 'thank you, but no thank you' but under the hood, I was thinking, 'There's no way I am listening to this shit for the rest of my life.' I was and am just so picky about it all, far preferring my own company.

So, hypnotherapy and hypnosis were no good for now. It was too...prescriptive. I don't want a prescription, somebody else's version of the 'solution'. 

I read a bit and located a psychoanalyst. Ahhhh, exactly right. I wanted to talk and I wanted someone to listen as their job. Perfecto. That, I am happy to pay for.

Bring me your dreams, your daydreams, the thoughts you don't speak, she says. Brilliant. That's exactly what I want to do.

I have never felt before in my whole life this urgent need to express myself so freely and I am going to enjoy every second of this process.

The story goes that eventually the patient runs out of things to say and it's what they say after that to fill the silence, something that can't be rehearsed, where the real juice is. Right now, I don't know what that is, but I am sure it is sitting in the subconscious awaiting it's turn.

Oh, thank you Lacan. Thank you for your invention. At last. Let the chips roll where they may.