A Look Into The Mind of 29th_Candidate
Jul 22 '01
The Bottom Line If it helps you to express your fears or to face them, a self-help book has done its job.
For this review I shall play a female Dr. Freud (Freudine?) in order to present the benefits and applications of psychological self-help books for my troubled patient, who must remain nameless so I don’t get sued and lose my license, and if you think the title is a dead giveaway, maybe you should come in to see me sometime so I can reassure you that I’m not as stupid as you are. If this isn’t convenient for you, or you’re a cheapskate, consult my preceding review and its comments.
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Nameless strolls into my dimly-lit office and with a sigh at me, starts wagging his right hand’s index finger at me. “Shame, shame, shame on you, Dr. Freudian!”
“Um, it’s Freudine, Nameless..., and what am I to feel guilty for?”
The patient waves his hand at his Freudian slip. “Please, can’t you call me something more…intimate than that? How shall I bare my wicked soul if I remain Nameless?”
I narrow my eyes in deep thought as any decent psychotherapist would. “And what would you suggest since we are being so unintimately listened to? You do realize we are not...alone, do you not?”
“Why, yes indeedy, Doctor. I’m never alone! Isn’t it wonderful? People just love me like crazy and come from all over the world to party with me. Someday Daisy will hear about me and...”
“You’re Jay Gatsby again.”
“Well, it’s easier to talk to you if I feel like somebody, a person of honor.”
“Why do you have a wicked soul? What are you covering up by calling me shameful?” I twirl my pen as he squirms without looking at me, then scribble in my casebook.
“I think I’ll lie down...now...” Jay proceeds to the plum-colored psychiatrist’s couch.
“Are you feeling better or do you need some water?”
'Jay' grunts, closing his long-lashed eyelids. “I feel like that Greek God Sisyphus, constantly rolling a stone up the blasted hill. You exhaust me!”
“Tell me more about this feeling. You wanted to be Jay Gatsby and now you don’t?”
“Gatsby only thought he was a man of honor, but he really wasn’t. No one went to his funeral...except a drunk by mistake. I don’t want a wicked soul...and I don’t want to be Sisyphus, either. Sure, he had his individuality and strength of character, but he just kept rebelling and rebelling against society. I want to make a difference.”
“So you reject the myth of the American Dream, which Gatsby pursued, and the myth of Rugged Individualism, which Sisyphus represented?”
“Hmm? I guess so. Maybe I could be Captain Ahab and fight evil with every breath in my body..., but he dies and Moby Dick kills them all but one. Or that guy Henry Fonda played who tried to keep his family from starving in the Depression. He had honor.”
I smile. “You remind me more of Ibsen's Peer Gynt.”
“Peer Gynt!” His ice blue eyes shock me. “Just because I can’t make up my mind, Doctor?”
“Yes, his whole structure of myth collapsed so he lost his identity. Like Gatsby your life has been a lie as you deny who you really are to yourself and those who love you. Unlike Gatsby, you run away from “intimate” relationships, but not because you don’t want them. You do. The problem is you don’t know how to love. You feel you’re being stalked.”
The patient glares at me, pouting. “Whatever gave you that silly idea?”
“Then prove me wrong.”
“Okay, I think you’re the devil and I’m an angel you’re trying to convince to your side.”
I lean back in my chair, stretching my arms and locking hands behind my head. “I was wrong. You’re Marlowe’s Faustus who couldn’t accept he was only a man.”
“But I was right. You’re his Mephistopheles who loves humanity better than heaven.”
“I like Goethe’s devil more. He said he ‘does evil out of which there comes good.’ Goethe wrote during the period of the Enlightenment when the Declaration of Independence was written and men believed in God’s goodness.”
What’s-his-name laughs. “You’re the one wanting nobility now. I should be Thomas Mann’s devil in his Dr. Faustus who ridicules the role of a psychologist. You don’t know me, Faustus!”
“Mann called him Adrian.”
“Whatever. You signed a contract between us in blood and now you’re the one who can’t love…anyone! Ha, ha!”
I sigh, noting the time and just watching him.
“What? Why are just staring at me? What?”
“I just realized something. If you’re the devil and I can’t love, I must be Briar Rose who was cursed to sleep for a hundred years. Now I must wait for my loving prince to come at the appointed time, no earlier. See you next week, devil.”
The lanky patient uncoils from the couch, face turning red. “That’s just a fairy tale! Like the Garden of Eden before they “sinned.” You can’t handle the truth.”
“Which is...?”
“I’m not the one unable to love or else you’d love me!” With a flourish of his hand, bowing like a Shakespearean actor, he strides out the door and is gone. I curl my lips, making a note in the book.
The myth of Jay Gatsby always prevails in this insecure, narcissistic patient.
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Obviously, a self help book that shines a little light into the ruins of 29…, I mean a psychotic man’s mind, is a very good book indeed.
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Member: Jan Peregrine
Location: Lincoln, NE
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Farrah, I'm stunned. Play with the other angels, love.
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