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In the middle of the unevenly cobbled courtyard stands a tall tree. No one has ever quite determined its species; some people in the building see a wild cherry, others an oak, though it has never produced an acorn. To stand beneath its branches, you must enter the courtyard from the south, through the round arch used by horse-drawn carriages long ago. Staircases rise all around – one is of cream-coloured stone, supporting the delicate twists of its wrought-iron railing, but the rest are wooden. Those serving the east wing are permanently dark. The building as a whole – the hallway, staircases and ceilings – is in need of renovation, but no one here seems in any hurry to live with the smell of fresh plaster and paint, let alone to put up scaffolding.
Shadows can be seen passing behind the windows that look down from all sides. One window closes, another is set slightly ajar, filtering sounds from the world within: a song, the TV news, the spatter of a shower, the ring of a mobile phone.
The carriage door closes heavily at your back, and you stand for a few seconds in the gloom, feeling for the once-illuminated switch whose tiny bulb has long since fizzled out. Yellow light spills over the stonework and cobbles from the dusty, opalescent glass lantern. You make for the tree and take out your keys, which jingle faintly as you walk up to your floor by the stone or wooden staircase.
You’re inside, you’re home. You pour yourself a drink and, as if by instinct, you cross to the window.
She sits herself on the couch and then, very slowly and carefully, she lies down. She must be about thirty. Her pale complexion contrasts with the ink-black hair that falls around her shoulders. I think her eyes are blue. I’ve never been very good at determining the colour of people’s eyes. Just recently, my wife pointed out that my best friend has dark blue eyes, which is quite unusual. I’ve known him for thirty-three years. If anyone had asked me the colour of his eyes I would have answered: Brown?
Physical details such as this escape me. I see the whole person, nothing else. For Nathalia Guitry, I’d say: a young woman of about thirty, attractive, dark hair, pale eyes. That’s all.
Neither of us has spoken for about a minute. I always wait for the patient to break the silence, but in this instance nothing happens. Time passes. You can let the entire hour allotted for the session slip by without anyone saying a word: there’s no rule that says the silence must be broken. On the contrary, it can be seen as an introduction, an overture. Silence is not a void.
Nathalia Guitry has never been here before. Indeed, it seems this is her first-ever therapy session. I could ask her how she found my address, but that has never seemed to me to be of the slightest importance. The patient would very likely give me the name of their doctor, or a friend who comes to see me or has come in the past. But to my mind, this conjuring of other individuals dilutes that initial moment of contact. There should be two people here in the room, the patient and me. No one else. Two is enough. Quite enough.
It is winter. Outside, a fine sleet is falling. As usual, I have drawn the red curtains. The weather has an impact on people with depression; sun, snow, rain, wind, cold, heat, all affect their state of mind in the moment. Here, everything is neutral. Neutrality is essential. My consulting room is conceived as a sort of anti-space, geographically speaking. The patient must forget about their city, their country, their smartphone, their Facebook and their Instagram. The office – I prefer to call it the ‘office’, it implies the notion of work, which I hold dear – is an Everywhere. An island adrift from one continent to the next, from neurosis to psychosis, melancholy to suffering, dreams to fantasies. The office is a lightship, transmitting its signal. No one is ever caught in its beam by chance. They have sought that guiding light, sometimes without knowing it. And I am the captain of that ship.
‘Doctor Faber…?’
‘I’m listening,’ I say, from the trough between two fifty- metre waves. Sometimes the line of communication crackles with interference: silence, anxiety, fear, slips of the tongue. It doesn’t matter. The office remains afloat through bad weather of every kind. Unsinkable, and silent.
‘I feel as if I’m in a submarine, you know? One of those immense submarines that runs silently under the thickest ice, in utter secrecy.’ A patient told me that once, and I smiled. I should have picked up on the idea of secrecy, of the ice as a symptom of oppression, but in the moment, I was charmed by the seductive image of black metal gliding unseen through icy waters, and all I said in reply was:
‘Yes, it’s a little like that.’ He was happy with this. Reassured.
Which was the main thing.
She hasn’t said anything further about herself, or the weather, or the person who directed her to me, so I shall break the silence. We’ll see.
‘Your family name is Guitry. Are you any relation to Sacha Guitry?’
She smiles. One point to me. A slightly bitter smile, but a smile all the same.
‘None whatsoever… And anyway, Sacha Guitry never had children.’
Silence again. It must not be allowed to take hold. I’d like to go further with Sacha Guitry; she seems to know her subject. Of course, Guitry may not be her real name – I never check my patients’ identities. It doesn’t matter who they are. I keep to the basic principles of traditional psychoanalysis – payment for each session in cash, for example. No cheques, no cards, no clues to the individual’s identity. I’m a qualified medical doctor, and as such, I must have filled out any number of forms that my patients have never sent off for their treatment to be reimbursed. I keep to the basics of traditional psychoanalytical practice, too: Freudian slips or ‘misperformances’, for example. I use them sparingly but they’re there, like an old set of tools at the bottom of the cupboard. They can prove useful. Sometimes very useful.
‘What can I do for you, Nathalia?’ ‘I think my I’ve screwed up my life.’
A phrase I hear often within these walls. There are several variations: ‘I’ve screwed up my life’ is a definitive statement, presaging a long, often very long, stint of hard work. ‘I think I’ve screwed up my life’ hints at the element of doubt. Things are not quite so serious. The patient’s life is screwed up, but not explicitly the patient themselves. The life is a thing apart. Like a pet one has had since childhood, but which has always proved unsatisfactory. You live with a fox-terrier, but you realise that what you truly desire is a Bengal cat.
In the case of Nathalia Guitry – who showed no reaction when I addressed her informally, by her first name – what interests me is her use of the word ‘think’.
‘And what makes you think that?’
‘I feel as if I’m not fully alive. My professional life is a failure.’
‘And what is it you do?’
She hesitates for just a few too many seconds before answering.
‘I’m a photographer.’ She smiles apologetically. ‘Why do you smile?’
‘I’m a photographer who doesn’t take photographs.’ ‘Tell me about that.’
Now, at this precise moment, we are in analysis. That harmless-sounding phrase marks the first real contact with the patient.
Tell me about that. We’re going to talk about them, about their problem, or what they believe is their problem. Unless it proves to be a trap, concealing deeper, far more damaging fault lines.
‘I’ve run out of work,’ she tells me. ‘And why do you think that is?’ ‘I’ve lost my talent.’
Her words have a romantic, disenchanted quality that is not lost on me. But she speaks in a firm, assertive tone that puts me on my guard, more than is usual.
I ask the straightforward, unavoidable question: ‘You’ve lost your love of photography?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why is that?’
‘When you can no longer do the job you love, you lose interest, and you don’t love it any more.’
I turn the phrase over in my mind, searching for the fault line, but she goes on:
‘It’s like with actors. If an actor can’t act, they die.’ Fault line. Response:
‘Those are someone else’s words.’
‘You’re right. I was photographing a famous actor a few years ago. It’s what he told me.’
‘So you were getting paid work, before.’ ‘Yes.’
‘And now you’re experiencing a lull, and you can’t bear it.’ She says nothing. I was expecting another ‘Yes.’ Nathalia seems to like answering in the affirmative, which suggests a determined character, perhaps excessively so, but very much alive. So many patients – men and women alike – lie on my couch, moaning endlessly: ‘I don’t know…’, ‘Perhaps…’, ‘Yeahhhh…’, ‘Hmmmm…’, ‘Pffffft.’ Seconds pass, during which I try to categorise Nathalia’s case, however vaguely. For now, I’ll put her with the Melancholic Depressives.
‘Can you remember the last photograph you took?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was it of?’
‘A murder.’
