Michelle Anderson

I’ve never had therapy.

The closest I’ve come to a psychologist poking around in my psyche was when I was 18 or so and I took a personality test. After filling in all the little circles with a pencil I was ushered into the psychologist’s office. He was sitting behind his desk peering at my test results. I think he was wearing something striped, though that could be a false memory; at any rate he was a pin-stripey sort of character. He looked up at me and said, “The only problem I see here is a remarkably strong interest in boys.” He had a stern and disapproving look on his face which I rather enjoyed. I’d like to think I said something like, “And the problem with that is — ?” Probably I just said something like, “Ok, thanks for letting me know.”

Not that his assessment was anodyne. Though at the time I thought my passionate interest in the opposite sex was a laudable sign of my lack of puritanical social conditioning and an unbridled natural lustiness, over the years I have come to see that in fact my remarkable interest in boys has led me into all sorts of calamitous destinies. Certainly stuff with which a good therapist could have a field day. Kudos for noticing that, Mr. Pinstripe. Really.

So anyway, I’ve never had therapy, but I’ve had plenty of conversations about therapy with people who have had therapy, which I figure counts for something. Here in France, where I live, it seems that all bourgeois intellectual women of a certain age have been in years of psychoanalysis, mostly Freudian but some Jungian. They also have masseurs, mediums and magnetiseurs. Many also have aestheticians and cosmetic surgeons along with the usual hairdresser. This highly engaged personal support system carries them through crises in career, neurotic phases, scandals of the heart, and the rest. Of course, American women of this demographic seem to employ a similar array of helpers, with the exception of the Freudian psychoanalyst. That seems particularly European. Whatever the case, at its core this whole thing seems to be based on the idea that the self is a mystery waiting to be solved, a mystery leading us over and over into traps of our own making even as we are trying to figure it out. It’s a kind of race, a fascinating race. While doing this inward-gazing detective work and hopefully avoiding new traps, it’s good to look one’s utter best and to be prepared for the equally mysterious twists and turns of fate for which our more mystical helpers serve as guides. Perhaps it’s a desire to have a sort of synopsis or loose itinerary, a little Playbill for one’s life complete with bios for the main characters and a reassuring sense of the overall narrative.

And as for that one curt assessment offered by Mr. Pinstripe, now that I see how right he was and understand there might indeed have been some cause for concern, I recognise it as a delightfully simple therapeutic relationship characterised by spectacular resonance and stunning brevity. With that one prescient line, he gave me my entire story arc.