Free In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross Page A

an immense importance of its own. Kate, have you ever tried to explain
Ulysses
to a self-satisfied person whose idea of a great novelist was Lloyd Douglas?”
    “All right, all right, I see your point, really I do. But letme go on being a nuisance, will you? I never knew, for example, why she thought she needed an analyst. What did she say the first time she came to see you?”
    “The beginning is always rather routine. I ask, of course, what the trouble is. Her answer was not unusual. She slept badly, had a work problem, was unable to read for more than a short period, and had difficulty, as she put it in regrettable social-worker jargon, in relating to people. Her use of that term was the most significant thing she said that day; it indicated how the problem was intellectualized, to what degree emotion had unconsciously been withdrawn from it. Most of this policemen could discover; the rest they would find useless to their purpose. I asked her to tell me something about herself; that’s routine also. The facts are usually not important, but the omissions may be greatly so. She was the only child of strict, compulsive parents, both now dead. They were quite old when she was born—if you want the details I can look them up. She neglected to mention at that time any love affairs, even of the most casual nature, though it emerged later that she had had one love affair in which she was deeply involved. Occasionally associations would bring her to this, break through her resistance, but she always immediately moved away from the subject. We had just begun to touch on some real material when this happened.”
    “Emanuel, don’t you see how important that is? By the way, had she—was she a virgin?” He turned to her with surprise, at the question, at Kate’s asking it. Kate shrugged. “Possibly my salacious mind, but I have an odd feeling it may be important.”
    “I don’t know the answer, as a fact, for certain. If you want my professional guess, I would say that the love affair had been consummated. But it’s a guess.”
    “Do patients in the beginning talk mostly about the past or present?”
    “About the present; the past of course comes in, more and more as you continue. I had a hunch—though do try not to overestimate its importance—that there was something in the present she was
not
mentioning, something connected, though perhaps only in the sense of the same guilt, with the love affair. Ah, I particularly admire you when you get that gleam in your eye like a hawk about to dive. Do you think she was a key figure in a drug ring?”
    “You can laugh later; one other question. You mentioned the other evening that she had become angry, that transference had begun. What is transference when it’s at home, as Molly Bloom would say?”
    “I loathe simplified explanations of psychiatry. Let’s say merely that the anger inherent in some situation becomes directed at the analyst, who becomes the object of those emotions.”
    “Don’t you see, Emanuel? That’s good enough. Put together two things you’ve casually told me. One, possibly connected with her past, which she was hiding. Two, emotion had begun to be generated in her relationship with you. Conclusion: she might have told you, or might have revealed to your sensitive professional ear something which someone didn’t want anyone to know. Perhaps there was someone to whom she talked
—she
thought casually—about her analysis—people do talk
somewhat
about their analyses; I know, I’ve heard them—and whoever that person was knew she had to die. It was easy enough to discover from her the routine around here, and he came in and killed her, leaving you with the body. Q.E.D.”
    “Kate, Kate, I have never heard such drastic oversimplification.”
    “Nonsense, Emanuel. What you lack, what all psychiatrists lack, if you’ll forgive my saying so, is a firm grip on the obvious. Well, I won’t keep you. But promise me, at any rate, that you’ll answer