On the Couch

As usual, I am early for my 9:00 AM appointment with Dr Levitt, so I stop and pick up a bagel and chocolate milk at the corner deli. I'm sitting in his waiting room staring at a horrifying piece of art hanging on the wall - a black-and-white abstract image that looks like an anorexic's severed arms folded. The print is slipping down into the matt. I want to mention it to him, but keep it to myself. The waiting room is furnished with "contemporary" pieces from the seventies: a brown knotty couch, a chrome-arched lamp, glass-and-chrome end table, and two wooden chairs with cushions. Nothing matches. I'm not comfortable here. It isn't clean enough for me. I have to work out my issues in a clean environment. I don't understand what's causing how I feel every day I wake up, whether it's anxiety or depression, and I feel they need to operate on me. I don't want to open myself up and get infected by his psychoanalysis in this shabby office and die on his fake Oriental rug. I'd prefer to be lying naked, covered by just a sheet, on a steel table in a big white room with a white ceramic floor and bright lights.

The door to his office opens. "Come in," says Dr Levitt. I sit in my assigned seat, the tanned leather-and-chrome couch, in my customary position - my legs spread-eagle, leaning forward. I'm still drinking my chocolate milk. Dr Levitt sits about five feet away from me, notebook in hand. He smiles, remains silent, and looks at me to begin the session. It's a contest between psychiatrist and patient. I stare blankly at him, but after about thirty seconds I start laughing. Patient loses. Dr Levitt doesn't laugh. He doesn't laugh because he doesn't know what's so funny and because he had no sense of humor. Then another silence. To ease the tension, I give in quickly and tell him I have nothing new to talk about and that I'm just as anxious and depressed as I was the week before. His therapy obviously isn't working. Or I'm not working at my therapy. As I speak, he looks down at his pad, takes notes, and mumbles, which annoys me because I'm not sure he's really listening or that what he's writing on that pad is even about me.

Then he looks up, leans forward, and asks me, "Andy, how do you feel today?"

I pull my legs together, sit up straight, clasp my hands, and think about this one. I'm insulted because he knows the answer, but I give him a response, anyway. "Like the fucking pressure is building up in my head and is going to explode any minute," I tell him.

He presses me further. "And how exactly does that feel like?"

I refuse to answer and slump into my original spread-eagle position. He takes a sip of coffee and waits for my response. This session is never going to end. He attempts to bring our focus back to issues we've discussed over the past few weeks. "Is your relationship with Allison in any way like your relationship with your mother or sister?" he asks me.

"Sometimes," I say. "But I don't want to talk about that right now."

He wants me to update him on my financial problems and career plans. But to me this is missing the point; I'm not seeing him to problem-solve. I'm suffering and I'm withholding information and am not being very open about the derailment that is really going on in my daily life. I've lost my golden boy self-image, and I'm not about to admit it with this simpleton. And more important, I'm not about to articulate the intensity of what's going on in my brain anyway. So I just sit on the tan couch starting at the ugly brown and blue rug hoping he will magically help me understand the pressure I'm feeling. I take a tissue from the table in front of me and pretend to blow my nose; I try to throw it in the garbage can but miss, so I have to go pick it up. I look at my watch.

"You have more time," Dr Levitt says. The next thing I know he's talking to me about narcissistic personality disorder.

"Can we save that for next week?" I ask him.

"Fine, it's your time," he responds in an easy manner, which makes me feel rather guilty. I stand up and walk out of his office, passing by his next patient, a frightened-looking girl in her mid twenties and a woman I would take to be a mother, anxiously awaiting their appointment.

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The above is excerpted from Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania (Random House) and is published here by kind permission of the author. Purchase Electroboy from Amazon.com. (now in paperback) You can email him by clicking here. You can check out his website by clicking here.

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