I don’t know how to react, whether to pretend I’m not paying attention, or…I see how the flicker of suspicion in my eyes hurts him, and that…makes me sad. A few weeks ago—you went to lecture in Eilat—he didn’t say anything all weekend, and only when I pleaded with him to tell me why he wasn’t speaking to me, did he say…in a small voice…that he was afraid…that if he opened his mouth…lies would come out.
You didn’t tell me that, Dikla.
What do you want, you weren’t home.
Why didn’t you tell me that?
I would like to suggest something. Let’s conduct an experiment that may or may not succeed. But let’s try, in the coming weeks, to reduce the number of stories you tell Yanai from seven to…let’s say three. And report to me whether it has an effect. Again, this is an experiment. I’m not promising that it will succeed. Certainly not right away. But…do you think you can manage it?
I don’t know…
I understand.
I’m not really sure you do.
Then explain it to me.
I don’t know anymore…how to be with him. Not only with him. In general, I don’t know how to be in the world anymore. With Dikla too. Instead of telling her that I feel her slipping away from me, I made up a story I thought would bring her back to me. But it pushed her even farther away.
I understand.
Do you have a tissue? Isn’t a psychologist supposed to have a box of tissues on her desk?
I have one.
Thank you, Dikla.
Thanks, Dikla. Sorry I’m like this, Ms. Psychologist.
It’s all right. And my name is Ayala.
It’s that kind of time.
I understand.
No, you don’t.
Then explain it to me.
Everything…everything’s falling apart. Tell me, am I the only one that saxophone is driving crazy? Sorry for nagging, but it sounds really close…is someone in the house playing the saxophone now?
To be honest, yes. My son. He’s practicing.
To tell the truth, he’s not bad at all.
Thank you.
It’s not a compliment for you, it’s a compliment for him.
I’ll pass it on to him. Can I ask how old you are?
Me? Forty-two. Ah…three.
That’s…age-appropriate.
What is?
That feeling that everything is destabilizing. Many people suffer from it at your age.
You know, that’s exactly why I stopped studying psychology. What you just did is inexcusable.
What did I do?
You put my personal experience into a paradigm. It’s offensive. It makes me feel like a statistic.
I’m sorry you feel that way. It wasn’t intentional.
So what was your intention?
I believe that—
Tell me, can your son hear our conversation?
Of course not, he has no way of—
Because when I started to get angry at you, his playing got livelier. As if he were creating a suitable soundtrack.
It’s purely accidental.
Let’s say.
In any case, what I wanted to say is that the realization that we are not as unique as we think we are, that other people experience similar difficulties—similar, not identical—to ours, that realization can be liberating. Can perhaps even inspire us to change.
Inspire us? In what way?
I would like to remind you how we ended up having this discussion. I asked you whether you could change your routine and tell Yanai fewer stories, and you replied that you’re no longer sure you know how to experience the world directly, without the intermediary of stories, right?
More or less.
When I look at the life stories of my patients, I often find that yours is the age when they are at a turning point. Amid the crisis and uncertainty, people begin again. Differently. You can find other ways to reach Yanai. There are other things you can do together as father and son. There is an opportunity here.
I’m crazy about the kid. I want him to be happy. I want him to not be lonely and sad the way I was as a child.
That’s clear to me. It’s clear to all of us here in the room.
Have you noticed that the saxophone sounds melancholy again? I advise you very strongly to check whether your son hasn’t somehow found a way to eavesdrop on what’s going on in this room.
I suggest you concentrate on your son. Both of you. Dikla, you’ve been rather quiet during our conversation, and I ask myself, that is, I wonder where it touches you, this discussion.
In a slightly different place.
Meaning?
Meaning, I’m not sure that the fact that he tells Yanai stories is the source of the boy’s problem. It feels a bit superficial. Even dishonest.
Dishonest?
Patients also lie to their psychologists, don’t they? Tell a story in which they’re the bad guy to hide a story in which they’re even worse.
I understand.
No you don’t. Our daughter has already run away from us to a boarding school. And with the situation at home this last year…it’s no wonder that another child of ours runs away into his imagination. How did you put it? That he uses “age-appropriate methods to bypass or deny the difficulties that reality poses for him.” It’s exactly that.
Can you give details?
What’s the point? Whatever I tell you will be my manipulative version of reality. That’s why I stopped believing in verbal therapy. I do water therapy. Once every two weeks. Gaia, my therapist, and I barely exchange a word, but my body tells her everything.
So what are you saying, Dikla, that’s the reason you don’t sleep with me?
I don’t think this is the time or the place to—
It never is the time or the place—
I’m stopping you.
Why do you keep stopping us? Shouldn’t it be the opposite, that the psychologist frees us from our inhibitions?
Perhaps, but our time is up, friends. We’ll let the things that have been said here sink in. I would like to remind you that next week, I’m meeting with Yanai. Would you like to pay by check or bank transfer?
—
That’s not what the psychologist said at the end.
Or before the end.
I can’t tell the story of that session—or other events that took place in my life last year—the way they really happened. And yet—
Once out of the psychologist’s building, we stopped for a moment, adjusting to
