The Schopenhauer Cure(8)
Closing the chart, Julius thought: Now, twenty-five years later, Philip is a therapist. Could there be a more unsuitable person in the world for that job? He seems very much the same: still no sense of humor, still hung up about money (maybe I shouldn’t have made that crack about his bill). A therapist without a sense of humor? And so cold. And that edgy request to meet at his office. Julius shivered again.
3
* * *
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
* * *
Union Street was sunny and festive. The clatter of silverware and the buzz of animated luncheon conversation streamed from the packed sidewalk tables at Prego, Beetlenut, Exotic Pizza, and Perry’s. Aqua-marine and magenta balloons tethered to parking meters advertised a weekend sidewalk sale. But as Julius strolled toward Philip’s office he barely glanced at the diners or the outdoor stalls heaped with the leftover designer clothes from the summer season. Nor did he linger at any of his favorite shop windows, not at Morita’s antique Japanese furniture shop, the Tibetan shop, or even Asian Treasures with the gaily colored eighteenth-century roof tile of a fantastical woman warrior that he rarely passed without admiring.
Nor was dying in his mind. The riddles connected with Philip Slate offered diversion from those disquieting thoughts. First there was the riddle of memory and why he could so easily conjure up Philip’s image with such eerie clarity. Where had Philip’s face, name, story been lurking all these years? Hard to get his mind around the fact that the memory of his whole experience with Philip was contained neurochemically somewhere in the cortex of his brain. Most likely Philip dwelled in an intricate “Philip” network of connected neurons that, when triggered by the right neurotransmitters, would spring into action and project an image of Philip upon a ghostly screen in his visual cortex. He found it chilling to think of harboring a microscopic robotic projectionist in his brain.
But even more intriguing was the riddle of why he chose to revisit Philip. Of all his old patients, why choose Philip to lift out of deep memory storage? Was it simply because his therapy had been so dismally unsuccessful? Surely there was more to it than that. After all, there were many other patients he had not helped. But most of the faces and names of the failures had vanished without a trace. Maybe it was because most of his failures had dropped out of therapy quickly; Philip was an unusual failure in that he had continued to come. God, how he continued! For three frustrating years he never a missed session. Never late, not one minute—too cheap to waste any paid time. And then one day, without warning, a simple and irrevocable announcement at the end of an hour that this was his last session.
Even when Philip terminated, Julius had still regarded him as treatable; but then, he always erred in the direction of thinking everyone was treatable. Why did he fail? Philip was serious about working on his problems; he was challenging, smart, with intelligence to burn. But thoroughly unlikable. Julius rarely accepted a patient he disliked, but he knew there was nothing personal in his dislike of Philip: anyone would dislike him. Consider his lifelong lack of friends.
Though he may have disliked Philip, he loved the intellectual riddle Philip presented. His chief complaint (“Why can’t I do what I really want to do?”) was an enticing example of will-paralysis. Though the therapy may not have been useful for Philip, it was marvelously facilitative for Julius’s writing, and many ideas emerging from the sessions found their way into his celebrated article “The Therapist and the Will” and into his book Wishing, Willing, and Acting. The thought flashed though his mind that perhaps he had exploited Philip. Perhaps now, with his heightened sense of connectivity, he might redeem himself, might yet accomplish what he had failed to do before.
Four-thirty-one Union was a modest stucco two-story corner building. In the vestibule Julius saw on the directory Philip’s name: “Philip Slate Ph.D. Philosophical Counseling.” Philosophical counseling? What the hell is that? Next, Julius snorted, it’ll be barbers offering tonsorial therapy and greengrocers advertising legume counseling. He ascended the stairs and pressed the bell.
A buzz sounded as the door lock clicked open, and Julius entered a tiny bare-walled waiting room furnished only with an uninviting black vinyl loveseat. A few feet away, in the doorway to his office, Philip stood and, without approaching, beckoned Julius to enter. No handshake was offered.
Julius checked Philip’s appearance against his memory. Pretty close match. Not much change in the past twenty-five years except for some soft wrinkles about the eyes and slight flabbiness in the neck. His light brown hair still combed straight back, those green eyes still intense, still averted. Julius recalled how rarely their gaze had met in all their years together. Philip reminded him of one of those supremely self-sufficient kids in class who sat in lectures and never took notes, while he and everyone else hustled to jot down every fact that might make an appearance on an exam.
Entering Philip’s office, Julius considered a wisecrack about the Spartan furnishings—a scuffed cluttered desk, two uncomfortable-looking, nonmatching chairs, and a wall adorned only with a diploma. But he thought better of it, sat in the chair Philip indicated, played it straight, and waited for Philip’s lead.
“Well, it has been a long time. Really long.” Philip spoke in a formal, professional voice and gave no sign of nervousness about taking charge of the interview and thereby switching roles with his old therapist.