My Life As A Man

from the bus stop in front of Doubleday’s on Fifth Avenue and saw Spielvogel, in a rainhat and a raincoat, looking out from a seat near the front of the No. 5 bus and wearing a decidedly dismal expression on his face. Of course years before I had seen him in his yachting cap sipping a drink at a summer party, so I knew for a fact that he did not really cease to exist when he was not practicing psychoanalysis on me; I happened too to have been acquainted with several young training analysts during my year of graduate work at Chicago, people with whom I’d gotten along easily enough during evenings in the local student bar. But then Spielvogel was no casual beer-drinking acquaintance: he was the repository of my intimate history, he was to be the instrument of my psychic-my spiritual-recovery, and that a person entrusted with that responsibility should actually go out into the street and board a public vehicle such as carried the common herd from point A to point B-well, it was beyond my comprehension. How could I have been so stupid as to confide my darkest secrets to a person who went out in public and took a bus? How could I ever have believed that this gaunt, middle-aged man, looking so done in and defenseless beneath his olive-green rainhat, this unimpressive stranger on a bus, could possibly free me from my woes? And just what in God’s name was I expected to do now-climb aboard, pay my fare, proceed down the aisle, tap him on the shoulder, and say-say what? “Good day, Dr. Spielvogel, it’s me-you remember, the man in his wife’s underwear.”

I turned and walked rapidly away. When he saw me move off, the bus driver, who had been waiting patiently for me to rise from my reverie and enter the door he held open, called out, in a voice weary of ministering to the citizenry of Manhattan, “Another screwball,” and drove off, bearing through an orange light my shaman and savior, bound (I later learned, incredulously) for an appointment with his dentist.

It was in September of 1964, at the beginning of my third year of analysis, that I had a serious falling out with Dr. Spielvogel. I considered discontinuing the therapy with him, and even after I decided to stay on, found it impossible to invest in him and the process anything like the belief and hope with which I had begun. I could never actually divest myself of the idea that I had been ill-used by him, though I knew that the worst thing I could do in my “condition” was nurse feelings of victimization and betrayal. Six months ago, when I left New York, it was largely because I was so disheartened and confounded by what Susan had done; but also it was because my dispute with Dr. Spielvogel, which never really had been settled to my satisfaction, had become again a volatile issue between us-revived, to be sure, by Susan’s suicide attempt, which I had been fearing for years, but which Spielvogel had generally contended was a fear having more to do with my neurotic personality than with “reality.” That I should think that Susan might try to kill herself if and when I should ever leave her, Spielvogel had chalked up to narcissistic self-dramatization. So too did he explain my demoralization after the fear had been substantiated by fact.

“I am not a fortune-teller,” he said, “and neither are you. There was as much reason, if not more, to believe she would not do it as that she would. You know yourself-she knew herself-that this affair of yours was the most satisfying thing to happen to her in years. She had, literally, the time of her life. She began at last to become a full-grown woman. She bloomed, from all reports-correct? If when you left her, she did not have enough support from her doctor, from her family, from wherever, well, that is unfortunate. But what can you do? She did at least have what she had with you. And she could not have had it without you. To regret now having stayed with her all those years, because of this-well, that is not to look very carefully at the credit side of the ledger. Especially, Mr. Tarnopol, as she did not commit suicide. You act here, you know, as though that is what has happened, as though there has been a funeral, and so on. But she only attempted suicide, after all. And, I would think, with little intention of succeeding. The fact is that her cleaning woman was to arrive early the very next morning, and that the woman had a key with which to let herself into Susan’s apartment. She knew then that she would be found in only a few hours. Correct? Of course, Susan took something of a risk to get what she wanted, but as we see, she pulled it off quite well. She did not die. You did come running. And you are running yet. Maybe only in circles, but that for her is still better than out of her life completely. It is you, you see, who is blowing this up out of all proportion. Your narcissism again, if I may say so. Much too much overestimation of-well, of practically everything. And to use this incident, which has not ended so tragically, you know-to use this incident to break off therapy and go off into isolation again, once more the defeated man, well, I think you are making a serious mistake.”

If so, I went ahead and made it. I could not continue to confide in him or to take myself seriously as his patient, and I left. The last of my attachments had been severed: no more Susan, no more Spielvogel, no more Maureen. No longer in the path of love, hate, or measured professional concern-by accident or design, for good or bad, I am not there.

Note: A letter from Spielvogel arrived here at the Colony just this week, expressing thanks for the copies of “Salad Days” and

“Courting Disaster” that I mailed to him earlier in the month. I had written:

For some time now I’ve been debating whether to send on to you these two (postanalytic) stories I wrote during my first months here in Vermont. I do now, not because I wish to open my case up to a renewed investigation in your office (though I see how you might interpret these manuscripts in that way), but because of your interest in the processes of art (and because lately you have been on my mind). I know that your familiarity with the biographical and psychological data that furnished the raw material for such flights of fancy might give rise to theoretical speculation, and the theoretical speculation give rise in turn to the itch to communicate your findings to your fellows. Your eminent colleague Ernst Kris has noted that “the psychology of artistic style is unwritten,” and my suspicion (aroused by past experience) is that you might be interested in taking a crack at it. Feel free to speculate all you want, of course, but please, nothing in print without my permission. Yes, that is still a sore subject, but not so sore (I’ve concluded) as to outweigh this considered impulse to pass on for your professional scrutiny these waking dreams whose “unconscious” origins (I must warn you) may not be so unconscious as a professional might like to conclude at first glance. Yours, Peter Tarnopol.

Spielvogel’s reply:

It was thoughtful of you to send on to me your two new stories. I read them with great interest and enjoyment, and as ever, admiration for your skills and understanding. The two stories are so different and yet so expertly done, and to my mind balance each other perfectly. The scenes with Sharon in the first I found especially funny, and in the second the fastidious attention that the narrating voice pays to itself struck me as absolutely right, given his concerns (or “human concerns” as the Zuckerman of “Salad Days” would have said in his undergraduate seminar). What a sad and painful story it is. Moral, too, in the best, most serious way. You appear to be doing very well. I wish you continued success with your work. Sincerely, Otto Spielvogel.

This is the doctor whose ministrations I have renounced? Even if the letter is just a contrivance to woo me back onto his couch, what a lovely and clever contrivance! I wonder whom he has been seeing about his prose style. Now why couldn’t he write about me like that? (Or wasn’t that piece he wrote about me really as bad as I thought? Or was it even worse? And did it matter either way? Surely I know what it’s like having trouble writing up my case in English sentences. I’ve been trying to do it now for years. Then, was ridding myself of him wrong too? Or am I just succumbing-like a narcissist! Oh, he knows his patient, this conjurer…Or am I being too suspicious?)

So: shall I go ahead now and confuse myself further by sending copies of the stories to Susan? to my mother and father? to Dina Dornbusch? to Maureen’s Group? How about to Maureen herself?

Dear Departed: It may cheer you up some to read the enclosed. Little did you know how persuasive you were. Actually had you played your cards right and been just a little less nuts we’d be miserably married yet. Even as it is, your widower thinks practically only of you. Do you think of him in Heaven, or (as I fear) have you set your sights on some big strapping neurotic angel ambivalent about his sexual role? These two stories owe much to your sense of things-you might have conceived of the self-intoxicated princeling of “Salad Days” yourself and called him me; and, allowing for artistic license of course, isn’t Lydia pretty much how you saw yourself (if, that is, you could have seen yourself as you would have had others see you)? How is Eternity, by the way? In the hope that these two stories help to pass the time a little more quickly, I am, your bereaved, Peter.

Out of the whirlwind, a reply:

Dear Peter: I’ve read the stories and found them most amusing, particularly the one that isn’t supposed to be. Your spiritual exertions (m your own behalf) are very touching. I took the liberty (I didn’t imagine you would mind) of passing them on to the Lord. You will be pleased to know that “Courting Disaster” brought a smile to His lips as well. No wrath whatsoever, I’m happy to report, though He did remark (not without a touch of astonishment), “It