I realize that it is probably wrong to write a letter to one’s girlfriend’s shrink but there are several things going on here that I think ought to be pointed out to you; I thought of making a personal visit but the situation then, as I’m sure you understand, would be completely untenable – I would be visiting a psychiatrist. I also understand that in writing to you I am in some sense interfering with the process but you don’t have to discuss with Susan what I have said. Please consider this an “eyes only” letter. Please think of it as personal and confidential.
You must be aware, first, that because Susan is my girlfriend pretty much everything she discusses with you she also discusses with me. She tells me what she said and what you said. We have been seeing each other for about six months now and I am pretty familiar with her story, or stories. Similarly, with your responses, or at least the general pattern. I know, for example, that my habit of referring to you as “the sandman” annoys you but let me assure you that I mean nothing unpleasant by it. It is simply a nickname. The reference is to the old rhyme: “Sea-sand does the sandman bring/Sleep to end the day/He dusts the children’s eyes with sand/And steals their dreams away.” (This is a variant; there are other versions, but this is the one I prefer.) I also understand that you are a little bit shaky because the prestige of analysis is now, as I’m sure you know far better than I, at a nadir. This must tend to make you nervous and who can blame you? One always tends to get a little bit shook when one’s methodology is in question. Of course! (By the bye, let me say that I am very pleased that you are one of the ones that talk, instead of just sitting there. I think that’s a good thing, an excellent thing, I congratulate you.)
To the point. I fully understand that Susan’s wish to terminate with you and buy a piano instead has disturbed you. You have every right to be disturbed and to say that she is not electing the proper course, that what she says conceals something else, that she is evading reality, etc., etc. Go ahead. But there is one possibility here that you might be, just might be, missing. Which is that she means it.
Susan says: “I want to buy a piano.”
You think: She wishes to terminate the analysis and escape into the piano.
Or: Yes, it is true that her father wanted her to be a concert pianist and that she studied for twelve years with Goetzmann. But she does not really want to reopen that can of maggots. She wants me to disapprove.
Or: Having failed to achieve a career as a concert pianist, she wishes to fail again. She is now too old to achieve the original objective. The spontaneaous organization of defeat!
Or: She is flirting again.
Or:
Or:
Or:
Or:
The one thing you cannot consider, by the nature of your training and of the discipline itself, is that she really might want to terminate the analysis and buy a piano.
The sandman [fragment]
uit: Sixty stories - Donald Barthelme
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