Psychology and Other Stories

Copyright © C.P. Boyko, 2012

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FIRST EDITION

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Boyko, C.P.

Psychology and other stories / C.P. Boyko

Short Stories.

ISBN 978-1-926845-51-7

I. Title.

PS8603.O9962P79 2012       C813'.6       C2012-901701-9

Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

The author would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, which provided financial assistance during the writing of this book.

What we can call by no better name but accident or idiosyncrasy certainly plays a great part in all our neural and mental processes, especially the higher ones. We can never seek amongst these processes for results which shall be invariable. Exceptions remain to every empirical law of our mental life, and can only be treated as so many individual aberrations.

William James

Part I

Reaction-Formation

Part II

Eat the Rich and Shit the Poor

Part III

Paddling an Iceberg

Part IV

Signal to Noise

Part V

The Inner Life

Part VI

The Blood-Brain Barrier

Notes on Sources

for Richard Linklater for Robin, Glen, and Hank, three friends I made in the psychology department and for Hubert T. Ross, my therapist

At first this struck me as ridiculous. But nevertheless, like all the rest, it had to be carefully analyzed. When I came to look at it more closely it seemed to have some sort of meaning after all.

Freud

“
I
HAD A DREAM LAST NIGHT
,”
said the doctor at last, then lapsed again into pointed silence.

Archie shifted uneasily on the couch. “Oh?”

“Yes. I dreamt that I had to go somewhere, somewhere far away from where I felt safe and comfortable and appreciated, and after a long and arduous journey I arrived at the designated place
only to discover
that the person I was supposed to be meeting … was there waiting for me. It was very gratifying, and I did not feel at all foolish or maltreated.”

“I'm sorry I was late,” said Archie for the second time.

“No,” corrected Dr. Pringle. “You're not. If you were sorry to be late you would not
be
late.”

“I guess that's true.” He had hoped the session would not go this way. “I guess I must be resisting something?”

This mollified Pringle, to Archie's relief. His question could just as easily have prompted another of the doctor's transparent wish-fulfillment dreams: one in which, for example, he, the doctor, was skillfully digging a hole or erecting a wall or something
without
any clumsy oaf coming along to take the shovel or the trowel out of his hands.

“I don't have to tell you that you're only harming yourself,” said Pringle. “You need all the time I can give you. You know that I see most of my patients
three
times a week. And they haven't half the complexes you have.”

“What about the Gerbil Man?,” Archie asked, using Dr. Pringle's code name for his prize patient—a fellow psychoanalyst who believed that invisible rodents were nibbling on him at the most inopportune times.

“As a matter of fact,” said the doctor with strained modesty, “I've made rather something of a breakthrough with him.”

Archie let the doctor talk; he had no choice. Most days he was quite content to have Pringle go on about his other patients: it took some of the heat of scrutiny off himself, and occasionally some of what the doctor said was actually interesting. Today, however, Archie felt strangely anxious to speak. He was, he realized, happy.

Archie extended his legs, careful not to appear restless. He was, for once, thankful for the more traditional arrangement of the furniture in this office, which Pringle borrowed from a local colleague for this one hour each week. In Pringle's own office upstate, the couch faced his desk and consequently one had to take care to look interested or attentive when he talked about his colleagues or his other patients. The doctor did not return this courtesy when Archie talked about his own life, preferring to stare out the window or make notes or mutter to himself. Once, waving Archie on, he had even taken a phone call. Apparently, Dr. Pringle did not think that it was important that he see his client, but that his client see him. “It aids the transference,” he had once said. So, to compensate for the unfavorable position of his colleague's couch, instead of simply turning it around, Pringle brought with him a framed photograph of himself, which he hung on the wall opposite Archie at the start of every session and removed at the end. In the picture the doctor looked startled, as if the photographer had snapped it without first explaining to him what photography was.

“And this,” Pringle was saying, “is exactly what one would expect to find in a subject with such a perfect manifestation of castration
anxiety produced by an affection-withholding mother and an emotionally absent father.”

As something seemed to be expected of him, Archie said, with as much thoughtfulness as he could cram into two syllables, “I …
see
.”

“I fully expect to be able to write the case up now in another six months or so.”

“That's … smashing.”

“But enough about him,” said Pringle with sudden violence. “Why are you resisting treatment?”

Archie supposed he did arrive late rather often. Most of the time this was just good sense: the doctor himself was almost never punctual. But perhaps this was, after all, only an excuse. There always remained the remote possibility that, like today, the doctor would be on time; and if he, Archie, nevertheless insisted on coming late, thereby risking Pringle's bitter inquest into his deeper motives, he really must be resisting some facet of what Pringle called the treatment.

He said honestly, “I don't know.”

Dr. Pringle barked with laughter. “Of course you don't. That's what I'm here for. Well,” he sighed. “Tell me about your week.” A glottal film of detachment entered the doctor's voice.

Archie took a quavering breath and said, “Well, you know, it's silly but I think I've finally …” Not wanting to say something as puerile as “made a friend,” he finished: “finally met someone.” But this, he realized with embarrassment, made it sound like he'd met a girl, a potential lover.

“Ah ah ah,” said the doctor. “Dreams first.”

Archie hated Parcliffe at first. Everything was different here.

At Templeton the boarders had outnumbered the day boys by three to one; here, because the nearby town was so much larger, the ratio was inverted, and consequently it was the boarders, not the day
boys, who were the second-class citizens. At Templeton, poverty had been disgraceful; here at Parcliffe, for some reason, it was
chic.
Even the masters dressed shabbily and let their hair grow long, like refugees or filthy beatniks. Here at Parcliffe there were no tennis courts, no swimming pools, and no one played chess. At Parcliffe, instead of a semiprivate room, tenth formers were stuck in dorms; so, instead of the one roommate that his age and status should have entitled him to, Archie had three. And all three were asinine simpletons.

In fact, as Archie told his mother on the phone one week, all the boys at Parcliffe were either stupid or stuck-up. He tried to say this in the same lightly bitchy tone that she and her friends used when complaining about their exes, their analysts, or the filthy beatniks that had moved in next door. But he must have done it wrong.

“Darling, is it really so horrible as all that? Have I done perfectly the wrong thing?”

This should have been his cue to say something stoical, but her sympathy unmanned him. He held his eyes open, so the tears would evaporate.

Parcliffe Academy had been modeled on the English public school, but without any slavish adherence to verisimilitude. Little was known about Henry Parcliff, its founder. There was the rumor that, prior to the more lucrative inception of academies, he had made his living dowsing for water, coal, and gold with a forked stick. Aside from this, one fact could be inferred about Parcliff: he had never been within miles of an English public school. The school that took his name had probably been fashioned from what he remembered of a few English memoirs or Bildungsromans read in his youth. His intent, no doubt, had been to suggest the chilly, aristocratic (and expensive) atmosphere of those schools, but with as few strokes (and at as little cost) as possible. He must have found that the easiest way to do this was to give
things impressively English-sounding names. Thus, Parcliff's school was christened Parcliffe Academy; its teachers were called Masters; its dormitory residences were called Houses; teacher's pets were called Prefects; grades were called forms; final exams were called A-levels; French was called Latin; and baseball was called cricket.