Pocket holy grail

 

When I was eight years old, 1959, I secretly kept a table knife in my right pants pocket. It was just a generic table knife with a blunt end, from a set of silverware that a lower middle-class home would have. It could cut a cold stick of butter with slight effort, but not a steak. It was a talis­man for me, a feeling of mean­ing. Because at that age I already had lost touch with my feelings and needed mean­ing, which is always a poor substitute for feeling.

And you can see, I was already not good at finding a feeling of substance, worth, iden­tity. A table knife, not even a fancy knife or later a switchblade. Depression and immaturity, even for my age, caused that effete choice.

There is no substitute for a child’s being one with his feelings. That’s to be human, and alive. It pretty much requires a good birth and deeply accepting and loving parents. No one who comes to therapy, or needs therapy, had those gifts. Their feelings were buried by depres­sion, replaced by anxiety. So their curiosities die. That cuts them off from the world. They have to become self-pleas­uring. That will be mastur­bation, video games, manu­fac­tured excite­ment. Some chil­dren will rebel against this loss of the world, others will give in. Some will just be unhappy; others will be angry. Some will be galvan­ized by their birth to do what­ever stim­u­lating thing. Others will sit in their room, like me, folding paper.

This is psychology beneath the labels and the wishful thinking. When my teenage absurdly intel­ligent client tells me she isn’t able to be happy, this is why. In her case and so many others, therapy is the rela­tion­ship, and the relationship is the too-late parent. But some­times not quite too late.