She warned me that this could happen.
“But I take exquisite notes,” she said. “I miss nothing!”
So far I’ve had no reason to doubt her. Last week, she referred to my husband’s second cousin by name. And she mentioned Bunky, my brother’s dog’s one-eyed teddy bear. But there’s a first time for everything—or, as it were, for nothing.
The subject: phantom limbs. I was making an elaborate if not uneducated analogy about how phantom-limb-pain can supposedly be “cured” with mirror-therapy, allowing the brain of the phantom-limb-pained patient to be reprogrammed with new images.
“Brilliant!” Dr. W said.
“Now,” I continued, “if only I could find some emotional equivalent to a lost elbow? And find a way to reconcile it with the reverse image of my good elbow!And maybe re-learn how to see myself /slash/ satisfy my brain in some other capacity, maybe I’d be able to—?”
While I busied myself with arm-flapping and fist-making visualizations I had failed to notice what my therapist could not see: me. Her eyes were defiantly closed. So I tiptoed out of her office. And vowed to keep my myopic self-obsession at a more manageable, Bunkyish level.
Not the dream analysis Freud had in mind.
