Free Entanglement by Zygmunt Miloszewski

psychology consultancy. Relationship to parties: none, no criminal record for bearing false witness.
    Cautioned re criminal responsibility under Article 233 of the Penal Code, his statement is as follows:
    “I met Henryk Telak by chance in November last year. I was organizing a psychotherapy conference and was looking for a company to print invitations and posters for it. That was how I came across a firm called Polgrafex, the manager or deputy manager of which was Henryk Telak. I had no contact with him at that point, just with one of the salesmen. A week later I wanted to collect my order, but it wasn’t ready. I insisted on speaking to the manager, and so I met Henryk Telak. He was very nice, he assured me they would deliver my order that very day by courier at their own cost; he apologized and offered me a cup of coffee. Over coffee he started asking about my job, because he was interested in the theme of the invitations and posters. I told him what a therapist does, that I try to help people, and that I often come across people for whom life has lost its meaning. Then he told me about his daughter’s suicide
and his son’s illness, and admitted that he couldn’t live with it all. I asked if he’d like to come and see me. He said he wasn’t sure, but a week later he called and made an appointment. We met once a week on Thursdays, here at my apartment.
    “I did not tape-record the sessions, I just made notes. Mr Telak was silent a lot of the time, and often wept. He had had a difficult life. He had run away from home at the age of sixteen, and not long after his parents had been killed in a car crash. He had never had the chance to say goodbye to them and hadn’t even known about the funeral. As a result, he felt very guilty, and this sense of guilt had placed a heavy burden on his later life. His marriage to Jadwiga Telak - whom in my view he loved very much, and his children too - was not a success, something he talked about with sadness and shame. During his therapy we focused on his family background, to help him to come out of the shadow of his deceased parents. I judged that to be the basis for healing the relationships within his current family. I believed it was producing results, and the Family Constellation Therapy this weekend was supposed to dot the i ’s and cross the t ’s. In this constellation Henryk Telak was actually my main concern. The other people, whom I selected from among my patients, are in a much better psychological state. They are suffering from relatively mild neuroses.”
    To the interrogator’s question whether in the course of his therapy Henryk Telak ever mentioned any enemies or people who were ill-disposed towards him, the witness replies: “Henryk Telak appeared to be such a depressed, introverted person, that he was probably quite unnoticed by those around him. I know nothing about his enemies. I do not think he had any.”
     
    As he wrote it all down, Szacki watched Rudzki closely. The therapist spoke quietly, calmly and confidently. His voice inspired trust, and he must surely have known how to use it to put a patient into a hypnotic trance without much trouble. Szacki
wondered if he could possibly have confided in Rudzki: told him how his stomach ached every time he got home; how he had to drink two beers before bed to get to sleep easily; how the chilly atmosphere between himself and Weronika was doing him in; how the air hung heavy with rancour and disappointment over the Ikea furniture in their flat in a block on Burdziński Street; how sometimes he wondered what they had in common, apart from their child and their bank account; and how sometimes he would stand outside a flower shop - he’d have liked to buy her flowers, and he knew she’d be pleased, but he never did, he always found an excuse instead. Either it was already late, and the flowers weren’t very pretty by now, or he thought it a shame to give his wife flowers from the Praga district florists’ -