532
PARTISAN REVIEW
behind the high, unbreachable walls of a lcss-than-good-enough
childhood? "Everyone wants everything," the doctor behind his desk says
solemnly. "The wish to murder can make one despair. It's hard to be
good, to love. Rousseau was wrong." And what about those who
are
motivated to seek therapy, what lies in wait for them? Is there any
alchemy - any far-off horizon of self-transformation - at the other side
of the couch? From behind his desk, the analyst suddenly strikes me as
sphinx-like, almost oracular: "As an adult," he allows, "you're no longer
helpless. The fullness of the culture can rescue us from the damage of
early life." As our session winds up Shengold holds out disconcertingly
modest prospects, for both doctor and patient: "It's a long, slow battle,
and some people can't bear to face up . All the doctor can do ," he adds,
"is suspend disbelief"
I make my way out of the lobby, past the doormen, on to Park
Avenue in the '90s. It is a gray day, and the few people who are out in
the street rush by under the shelter of their umbrellas. After so much
speculation about interiority - conflicts that can't be seen so much as
intuited, drives that are adduced by way of behavior - I am struck anew
by the immutable
externalness
of the world, even at its dingiest. The sky
hangs up above, as it always has, and the ground lies beneath my feet. As
I walk along the avenue, past the whir and hum of traffic, I try and
shake off a heavy feeling, a lingering sense of claustrophobia. And then I
am suddenly taken by an irrepressible urge to run in the rain - that wily
Id acting up, no doubt - and I go bounding down the block, away
from intrapsychic shadows into the grainy light of the morning.
