1. On day one I fight. I don’t remember what it was about though it was mere hours ago. After I fight I become despondent about my irredeemably evil nature and decide to punish myself with poison.
2. I watch Netflix’s The Two Popes instead. I am delighted by its representation of weak men who hold each other up through charity, compassion, and humility.
3. I think of Janet Malcolm’s Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, which I have of course not read, but about which S. told me the following: the patient kills the psychoanalyst; the patient needs to kill the psychoanalysis in order to get better. It’s an old book, but I am once again disappointed by the mystique this discipline bestows upon the psychoanalyst and the almost deterministic passivity it bestows on the patient.
I know for a fact that I am capable of infinite agency and, while I may very well “kill my psychoanalyst,” I am also capable of breathing life and love into her, and through her into me, and us, in a limitless bounce of back-and-forth givingness. We, my psychoanalyst and I, kill each other and bring each other to life again and again. We are both patients and healers. We are both fully rounded people capable of great passion and emotions.
4. I forgive myself. I forgive everyone.
inside(r) psychoanalysis 