Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  You bastard! . . .’ A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins, shouted: ‘Have a run for your money! I’ve taken ’em to the psychics before!’ Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov’s the unfortunate Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin. CHAPTER 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 6 Schizophrenia, As Was Said It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there. The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been tied up lay in a pile on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich’s arms and legs were free. Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said timidly: ‘Hello, Doctor.’ The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor’s entrance. ‘Here, Doctor,’ Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, ‘is the renowned poet Ivan Homeless . . . well, you see . . . we’re afraid it might be delirium tremens . . .’ ‘Was he drinking hard?’ the doctor said through his teeth. ‘No, he drank, but not really so . . .’ ‘Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking dogs?’ ‘No,’ Riukhin replied with a shudder, ‘I saw him yesterday and this morning . . . he was perfectly well.’ ‘And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?’ ‘No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way . . .’ ‘Aha, aha,’ the doctor said with great satisfaction, ‘and why the scratches? Did he have a fight?’ ‘He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody . . . and then somebody else . . .’ ‘So, so, so,’ the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: ‘Hello there!’ ‘Greetings, saboteur!’ 1 Ivan replied spitefully and loudly. Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan: ‘How old are you?’ ‘You can all go to the devil!’ Ivan shouted rudely and turned away. ‘But why are you angry?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Through ignorance and the love of money the pope may err, and has erred, and to rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ.664 There have been depraved and heretical popes. Such was Joan, whose case Huss dwelt upon at length and refers to at least three times. Such was also the case of Liberius, who is also treated at length. Joan had a son and Liberius was an Arian.665 In the second part of the De ecclesia, Huss pronounced the bulls of Alexander and John XXIII. anti-christian, and therefore not to be obeyed. Alexander’s bull, prohibiting preaching in Bohemia except in the cathedral, parish and monastic churches was against the Gospel, for Christ preached in houses, on the seaside, and in synagogues, and bade his disciples to go into all the world and preach. No papal excommunication may be an impediment to doing what Christ did and taught to be done.666 Turning to the pope’s right to issue indulgences, the Reformer went over the ground he had already traversed in his replies to John’s two bulls calling for a crusade against Ladislaus. He denied the pope’s right to go to war or to make appeal to the secular sword. If John was minded to follow Christ, he should pray for his enemies and say, "My kingdom is not of this world." Then the promised wisdom would be given which no enemies would be able to gainsay. The power to forgive sins belongs to no mortal man anymore than it belonged to the priest to whom Christ sent the lepers. The lepers were cleansed before they reached the priest. Indeed, many popes who conceded the most ample indulgences were themselves damned.667 Confession of the heart alone is sufficient for the soul’s salvation where the applicant is truly penitent. In denying the infallibility of the pope and of the Church visible, and in setting aside the sacerdotal power of the priesthood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, Huss broke with the accepted theory of Western Christendom; he committed the unpardonable sin of the Middle Ages. These fundamental ideas, however, were not original with the Bohemian Reformer. He took them out of Wyclif’s writings, and he also incorporated whole paragraphs of those writings in his pages. Teacher never had a more devoted pupil than the English Reformer had in Huss. The first three chapters of De ecclesia are little more than a series of extracts from Wyclif’s treatise on the Church. What is true of this work is also true of most of Huss’ other Latin writings.668 Huss, however, was not a mere copyist. The ideas he got from Wyclif he made thoroughly his own. When he quoted Augustine, Bernard, Jerome and other writers, he mentioned them by name. If he did not mention Wyclif, when he took from him arguments and entire paragraphs, a good reason can be assigned for his silence.

• From Trash (1988)

  Like some goddamned crazy religion. Get your mother a grandchild and solve all her problems. Get yourself a baby and forget everything else. It’s what you were born for, the one thing you can do with no thinking about it at all. Only I can’t. To get her a grandchild, I’d have to steal one!” I was wringing my own hands, twisting them together and pulling them apart. Now I swung them open and slapped down at my belly, making my own hollow noise in the room. “No babies in there, aunt of mine, and never going to be. I’m sterile as a clean tin can. That’s what I told Mama, and not to hurt her. I told her because she wouldn’t leave me alone about it. Like you, like all of you, always talking about children, never able to leave it alone.” I was walking back and forth now, unable to stop myself from talking. “Never able to hear me when I warned her to leave it be. Going on and on till I thought I’d lose my mind.” I looked her in the eye, loving her and hating her, and not wanting to speak, but hearing the words come out anyway. “Some people never do have babies, you know. Some people get raped at eleven by a stepfather their mama half hates but can’t afford to leave. Some people then have to lie and hide it ’cause it would make so much trouble. So nobody will know, not the law and not the rest of the family. Nobody but the women supposed to be the ones who take care of everything, who know what to do and how to do it, the women who make children who believe in them and trust in them, and sometimes die for it. Some people never go to a doctor and don’t find out for ten years that the son of a bitch gave them some goddamned disease.” I looked away, unable to stand how gray her face had gone. “You know what it does to you when the people you love most in the world, the people you believe in—cannot survive without believing in—when those people do nothing, don’t even know something needs to be done? When you cannot hate them but cannot help yourself? The hatred grows. It just takes over everything, eats you up and makes you somebody full of hate.” I stopped. The roar that had been all around me stopped, too. The cold was all through me now. I felt like it would never leave me. I heard her move. I heard her hip bump the pool table and make the balls rock. I heard her turn and gather up her purse. I opened my eyes to see her moving toward the front door.

• From Trash (1988)

  I wanted her to go away, disappear out of my life the way I’d run out of hers. Go away, old woman. Leave me alone. Don’t talk to me. Don’t tell me your stories. I an’t a baby in a basket, and I can’t lie still for it. “You know. You know what it is. The way she is about you. I know it has to be you—something about you. I want to know what it is, and you’re going to tell me. Then you’re going to come home with me and straighten this out. There’s a lot I an’t never been able to fix, but this time, this thing, I’m going to see it out. I’m going to see it fixed.” I opened my eyes and she was still standing there, the cue stick shiny in her hand, her face all flushed and tight. “Go,” I said and heard my voice, a scratchy, strangling cry in the big room. “Get out of here.” “What did you tell her? What did you say to your mama?” “Ask her. Don’t ask me. I don’t have nothing to say to you.” The pool cue rose slowly, slowly till it touched the right cheek, the fine lines of broken blood vessels, freckles, and patchy skin. She shook her head slowly. My throat pulled tighter and tighter until it drew my mouth down and open. Like a shot the cue swung. The table vibrated with the blow. Her cheeks pulled tight, the teeth all a grimace. The cue split and broke. White dust rose in a cloud. The echo hurt my ears while her hands rose up as fists, the broken cue in her right hand as jagged as the pain in her face. “Don’t you say that to me. Don’t you treat me like that. Don’t you know who I am, what I am to you? I didn’t have to come up here after you. I could have let it run itself out, let it rest on your head the rest of your life, just let you carry it—your mama’s life. YOUR MAMA’S LIFE, GIRL. Don’t you understand me? I’m talking about your mama’s life.” She threw the stick down, turned away from me, her shoulders heaving and shaking, her hands clutching nothing. “I an’t talking about your stepfather. I an’t talking about no man at all. I’m talking about your mama sitting at her kitchen table, won’t talk to nobody, won’t eat, and won’t listen to nothing. What’d she ever ask from you? Nothing. Just gave you your life and everything she had. Worked herself ugly for you and your sister. Only thing she ever hoped for was to do the same for your children, someday to sit herself back and hold her grandchildren on her lap. . . .” It was too much. I couldn’t stand it. “GODDAMN YOU!” I was shaking all over. “CHILDREN!

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, the king, who had at first sight been greatly taken with the damsel, calling her to mind and feeling himself well of body, determined, albeit it was nigh upon day, to go and abide with her awhile. Accordingly, he betook himself privily to La Cuba with certain of his servants and entering the pavilion, caused softly open the chamber wherein he knew the girl slept. Then, with a great lighted flambeau before him, he entered therein and looking upon the bed, saw her and Gianni lying asleep and naked in each other's arms; whereas he was of a sudden furiously incensed and flamed up into such a passion of wrath that it lacked of little but he had, without saying a word, slain them both then and there with a dagger he had by his side. However, esteeming it a very base thing of any man, much more a king, to slay two naked folk in their sleep, he contained himself and determined to put them to death in public and by fire; wherefore, turning to one only companion he had with him, he said to him, 'How deemest thou of this vile woman, on whom I had set my hope?' And after he asked him if he knew the young man who had dared enter his house to do him such an affront and such an outrage; but he answered that he remembered not ever to have seen him. The king then departed the chamber, full of rage, and commanded that the two lovers should be taken and bound, naked as they were, and that, as soon as it was broad day, they should be carried to Palermo and there bound to a stake, back to back, in the public place, where they should be kept till the hour of tierce, so they might be seen of all, and after burnt, even as they had deserved; and this said, he returned to his palace at Palermo, exceeding wroth.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I was wondering how the hell we’d ever get out of the place without a fight. Fillmore, by this time, was as silent as a clam. Ginette was bolting it through the door, leaving us to face the music. As she sailed out she turned back with fist upraised and shouted; “I’ll pay you back for this, you brute! You’ll see! No foreigner can treat a decent Frenchwoman like that! Ah, no! Not like that!” Hearing this the patron , who had now been paid for his drinks and his broken glasses, felt it incumbent to show his gallantry toward a splendid representative of French motherhood such as Ginette, and so, without more ado, he spat at our feet and shoved us out of the door. “Shit on you, you dirty loafers!” he said, or some such pleasantry. Once in the street and nobody throwing things after us, I began to see the funny side of it. It would be an excellent idea, I thought to myself, if the whole thing were properly aired in court. The whole thing! With Yvette’s little stories as a side dish. After all, the French have a sense of humor. Perhaps the judge, when he heard Fillmore’s side of the story, would absolve him from marriage. Meanwhile Ginette was standing across the street brandishing her fist and yelling at the top of her lungs. People were stopping to listen in, to take sides, as they do in street brawls. Fillmore didn’t know what to do—whether to walk away from her, or to go over to her and try to pacify her. He was standing in the middle of the street with his arms outstretched, trying to get a word in edgewise. And Ginette still yelling: “Gangster! Brute! Tu verras, salaud!” and other complimentary things. Finally Fillmore made a move toward her and she, probably thinking that he was going to give her another good cuff, took it on a trot down the street. Fillmore came back to where I was standing and said: “Come on, let’s follow her quietly.” We started off with a thin crowd of stragglers behind us. Every once in a while she turned back toward us and brandished her fist. We made no attempt to catch up with her, just followed her leisurely down the street to see what she would do. Finally she slowed up her pace and we crossed over to the other side of the street. She was quiet now. We kept walking behind her, getting closer and closer. There were only about a dozen people behind us now—the others had lost interest. When we got near the corner she suddenly stopped and waited for us to approach. “Let me do the talking,” said Fillmore, “I know how to handle her.”

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  One night, in desperation, I dragged my friend Joe to a synagogue, during the service. It was a Reformed congregation, and the rabbi impressed me rather favorably. The music got me too—that piercing lamentation of the Jews. As soon as the service was over I marched to the rabbi’s study and requested an interview with him. He received me decently enough—until I made clear my mission. Then he grew absolutely frightened. I had only asked him for a handout on behalf of my friend Joe and myself. You would have thought, from the way he looked at me, that I had asked to rent the synagogue as a bowling alley. To cap it all, he suddenly asked me point-blank if I was a Jew or not. When I answered no, he seemed perfectly outraged. Why, pray, had I come to a Jewish pastor for aid? I told him naively that I had always had more faith in the Jews than in the Gentiles. I said it modestly, as if it were one of my peculiar defects. It was the truth too. But he wasn’t a bit flattered. No, siree. He was horrified. To get rid of me he wrote out a note to the Salvation Army people. “That’s the place for you to address yourself,” he said, and brusquely turned away to tend his flock. The Salvation Army, of course, had nothing to offer us. If we had had a quarter apiece we might have rented a mattress on the floor. But we hadn’t a nickel between us. We went to the park and stretched ourselves out on a bench. It was raining and so we covered ourselves with newspapers. Weren’t there more than a half hour, I imagine, when a cop came along and, without a word of warning, gave us such a sound fanning that we were up and on our feet in a jiffy, and dancing a bit too, though we weren’t in any mood for dancing. I felt so goddamned sore and miserable, so dejected, so lousy, after being whacked over the ass by that half-witted bastard, that I could have blown up the City Hall. The next morning, in order to get even with these hospitable sons of bitches, we presented ourselves bright and early at the door of a Catholic priest. This time I let Joe do the talking. He was Irish and he had a bit of a brogue. He had very soft, blue eyes, too, and he could make them water a bit when he wanted to. A sister in black opened the door for us; she didn’t ask us inside, however. We were to wait in the vestibule until she went and called for the good father. In a few minutes he came, the good father, puffing like a locomotive. And what was it we wanted disturbing his likes at that hour of the morning? Something to eat and a place to flop, we answered innocently.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  About six o’clock Collins stuck his head in the door. His face was all plastered and one arm was stuck in a sling. He had a big grin on his face. “Just as I told you,” he said. “She broke loose last night. Suppose you heard the racket?” We got dressed quickly and went downstairs to say good-bye to Jimmie. The place was completely demolished, not a bottle left standing, not a chair that wasn’t broken. The mirror and the show window were smashed to bits. Jimmie was making himself an eggnog. On the way to the station we pieced the story together. The Russian girl had dropped in after we toddled off to bed and Yvette had insulted her promptly, without even waiting for an excuse. They had commenced to pull each other’s hair and in the midst of it a big Swede had stepped in and given the Russian girl a sound slap in the jaw—to bring her to her senses. That started the fireworks. Collins wanted to know what right this big stiff had to interfere in a private quarrel. He got a poke in the jaw for an answer, a good one that sent him flying to the other end of the bar. “Serves you right!” screamed Yvette, taking advantage of the occasion to swing a bottle at the Russian girl’s head. And at that moment the thunderstorm broke loose. For a while there was a regular pandemonium, the women all hysterical and hungry to seize the opportunity to pay off private grudges. Nothing like a nice barroom brawl ... so easy to stick a knife in a man’s back or club him with a bottle when he’s lying under a table. The poor Swede found himself in a hornet’s nest; everyone in the place hated him, particularly his shipmates. They wanted to see him done in. And so they locked the door and pushing the tables aside they made a little space in front of the bar where the two of them could have it out. And they had it out! They had to carry the poor devil to the hospital when it was over. Collins had come off rather lucky—nothing more than a sprained wrist and a couple of fingers out of joint, a bloody nose and a black eye. Just a few scratches, as he put it. But if he ever signed up with that Swede he was going to murder him. It wasn’t finished yet. He promised us that. And that wasn’t the end of the fracas either. After that Yvette had to go out and get liquored up at another bar. She had been insulted and she was going to put an end to things. And so she hires a taxi and orders the driver to ride out to the edge of the cliff overlooking the water. She was going to kill herself, that’s what she was going to do.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  One could also speculate on what unconscious thoughts (and images) were stirred when the master provoked the swordsman’s ire. Perhaps the samurai was startled and at first even agreed with the characterization that he was ugly and untalented. This strong reaction to this insult (we might hypothesize) derived from his parents, teachers and others who humiliated him as a child. Perhaps he had a mental picture of being shamed in front of his school classmates. And then the other micro-fleeting “counter thought”—that no one would dare to call him that again and make him feel small and worthless. This thought and associated (internal) picture, coupled with a momentary physical sensation of startle, triggered the rage that led him down the compulsive, driven road to perdition. That was, at least, until his “Zen therapist,” precisely at the peak of rage, kept him from habitually expressing this “protective” emotion (really a defense against his feelings of smallness and helplessness) and forced him to the ownership of his real power and peaceful surrender. In the examples of Pouncer and the Zen master, choice occurred at the critical moment before executing attack. With the Zen master’s critical intervention, the samurai held back and felt the preparation to strike with his sword. In this highly charged state he paused and was able to restrain and transmute his violent rage into intense energy and a state of clarity, gratefulness, presence and grace. It is the ability to hold back, restrain and contain a powerful emotion that allows a person to creatively channel that energy. Containment (a somatic rooting of Freud’s “sublimation”) buys us time and, with self-awareness, enables us to separate out what we are imagining and thinking from our physical sensations. And this fraction of a second of restraint, as we just saw, is the difference between heaven and hell. When we can maintain this “creative neutrality,” we begin to dissolve the emotional compulsion to react as though our life depends on responses that are largely inappropriate. The uncoupling of sensation from image and thought is what diffuses the highly charged emotions and allows them to transform fluidly into sensation-based gradations of feelings. This is not at all the same as suppressing or repressing them. For all of us, and particularly for the traumatized individual, the capacity to transform the “negative” emotions of fear and rage is the difference between heaven and hell.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And I told you that I would be engaged with you, and that much of our task here would be to study that engagement? And you said you welcomed that?” “This is not making sense. You think I’m deliberately opposing you. Tell me, why would I come week after week, on a long drive and blowing one- fifty an hour? One hundred fifty dollars—maybe small change for you but not for me.” “On one level it doesn’t make sense, Myrna, yet on another it does. Here’s the way I see it. You’re unhappy with your life, you’re lonely, you feel unloved and unlovable. You come to me for help—at great effort—it is a long drive. And expensive too—I do hear you, Myrna. But something strange happens here—I think it’s fear. I think getting close makes you uncomfortable, and then you back off, close down, find fault with me, ridicule what we’re doing. I’m not saying you do it deliberately.” “If you understand me so well, why the T-shirt comment? You still haven’t answered that question.” “I was addressing that when I mentioned that I felt impatient.” “That doesn’t really feel like an answer.” Ernest took another long look at his patient and thought, Do I really know her? Whence this blast of directness? But it’s a welcome, bracing wind—and anything’s better than what we’ve been doing. I’ll try to sail with it as far as possible. “Your point is well taken, Myrna. The T-shirt crack doesn’t fit in anywhere. A stupid comment. And a hurtful one. I’m sorry about it. Not sure where it came from. I wish I could recapture what prompted it.” “I remember from the tape—” “I thought you didn’t listen to the tape.” “I didn’t say that. I said I forgot to bring the tape, but I listened to it at home. The T-shirt comment came right after I said you could introduce me to one of your rich single patients.” “Right, right, I remember. I’m impressed, Myrna. Somehow I had the feeling that our sessions didn’t mean enough for you to remember them so well. Let me go back into my feelings in that last hour. One thing I remember for sure—that very comment about introducing you to one of my rich patients really bugged me. Just prior to that, I think I had asked what I could offer you, and that was your answer. I felt put down: your comment hurt me. I should be above that, but I’ve got my sore spots—and my blind spots too.” “Hurt? Aren’t we being a bit touchy? Just a joke.” “Maybe. But maybe more than a joke. Maybe you were giving voice to your sense that I have little of value to offer you—at best, an introduction to another man. So I felt invisible. Devalued. And I guess that’s why I lashed out at you.” “Poor thing!” Myrna muttered. “What?” “Nothing, nothing—another joke.” “I’m not going to let you drive me away with that kind of comment.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  There’s no excuse for getting dry-gulched.” He started pacing the room. “I can show you a couple of moves that’ll leave little lord Gayle wondering what month he’s in.” At dinner that night Dwight had me repeat the story to Skipper and Norma, and then he told a story of his own. “When I was your age,” he said, “there was a kid who used to sit behind me in school and lip off all the time. He had what I call diarrhea of the mouth. Well, he lipped off just once too often and I told him to shut up. Oh yeah? he says. Who’s gonna make me? I am, I tell him. Oh yeah? he says. You and who else’s army? Just the three of us, I say. Me, myself, and I. “Well, after school that day he waits across the street with this friend of his and as soon as I come out of the building he yells something. I guess he thought I was just going to go home and forget about it. But I’ll tell you something. With people like that, you’ve got to hurt them, you’ve got to inflict pain. It’s the only thing they understand. Otherwise you’ve got them on your back for good. Believe me, I’m speaking from experience. “Okay. It was really cold out, really freezing. There were these frozen horse turds lying all over the place—road apples, we called them. So I picked one up and went over to this guy, but not acting tough, okay? Not acting tough. Acting more like, Oh gee, I’m so scared, please don’t hurt me. Sort of like this.” Dwight slumped his shoulders and dropped his chin and simpered up from beneath his eyebrows. “So I came over to him and in this little scaredy-cat voice I say, Excuse me, what’s the problem? He of course starts in on me again, blah blah blah, and while he’s got his mouth open I jam a road apple into it! You should’ve seen the look on his face. Then I hit the sucker in the breadbasket, and down he goes. I sit on him for a while and hold my hand over his mouth until the road apple starts melting, then I get up and leave him there. I caught holy hell for it later on, but so what.” After dinner Dwight took me into the utility room and showed me some moves. He taught me how to stand and shuffle my feet and guard myself. He showed me how to throw a punch from the shoulder instead of winding up and leaving myself open. Then he showed me how to dry-gulch somebody. It wasn’t a thing I should do casually, Dwight said, but only if I had good reason to think that the other fellow might dry-gulch me. There were many techniques but Dwight didn’t want to confuse me, so he showed me two of the best. It was simple, really. You just walked up to someone and acted friendly or

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  I was inclined to let it go. But I didn’t like being laughed at, and I didn’t like comments about my hands. Arthur had made other such comments. He was bigger than me, especially around the middle, but I factored out this weight as blubber. I could take him, I felt sure. I had provocation, and I had witnesses to carry the news. It seemed like a good time to make a point. I started things off by calling him Fatso. Arthur continued to smile at me. “Excuse me,” he said, “but has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like a pile of wet vomit?” We went on like this, and then I called him a sissy. The smile left his face. And at that moment it came to me that although everyone referred to Arthur as a sissy, I had never heard anyone actually use the word in front of him. And in the same moment, seeing how everything about him changed after the word was spoken, how suddenly red and awful his face became, I understood that there must be a reason for this. A crucial bit of history I should have known about, and didn’t. His first swing caught me dead on the ear. There was an explosion inside my head, then a continuous rustling sound as of someone crumpling paper. It lasted for days. When he swung again I turned away and took his fist on the back of my head. He threw punches the way he threw balls, sidearm, with a lot of wrist, but he somehow got his weight behind them before they landed. This one knocked me to my knees. He drew back his foot and kicked me in the stomach. The papers in my bag deadened the blow but I was stunned by the fact that he had kicked me at all. I saw that his commitment to this fight was absolute. His dog barked in my face. When I got up Arthur rushed me, arms flailing, fists raining on my shoulders. He almost knocked me down again but I surprised us both by landing one on his eye. He stopped and roared. The eye was already closing up, his face gone scarlet, his nostrils streaming gouts of snot. When I saw his eye I got worried. I was ready to stop, but he wasn’t. He flew at me again. I closed with him and got him in a hug to keep his arms still. We staggered over the road like drunken dancers, and then he hooked my leg and tripped me and we rolled off the shoulder and down the long muddy embankment, both of us flailing and kicking with our knees and screaming gibberish in each other’s ears. He had gone insane, I could see that, and it seemed to me that my only chance was to go insane too.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  For the most part she was contemptuous of the men she met and angry at me for suggesting she examine her judgmentalism. Any practical suggestion I offered ignited a major eruption. “If I want to date,” she said furiously, “I can figure out how to do it! Why pay you good money for dating advice when my friends can give me the same thing?” She grew angry if I offered concrete suggestions about anything: “Stop trying to ‘fix’ things!” she said. “That’s what my father tried to do my whole life.” She was angry at my impatience with her slow progress and at my failing to acknowledge the efforts she had made to help herself (but never mentioned to me). Irene wanted me strong and healthy. Any infirmity—a sprained back, a knee injury requiring meniscus surgery, a cold, a case of flu—elicited much annoyance. I knew that she was apprehensive as well, but she kept that well concealed. Most of all, she was angry at my being alive when Jack was dead. None of this was easy for me. I have never relished angry confrontations and, in my personal life, generally avoid angry people. Because I am a deliberate thinker and writer, and confrontation tends to slow my thoughts, I have throughout my career declined public debate and discouraged all inquiries about my becoming a departmental chairman. So how did I cope with Irene’s anger? For one thing, I leaned on the old therapy adage that one must separate role and person. Often much of a patient’s anger toward a therapist is related to his or her role, not person. “Don’t take it personally,” young therapists are taught. Or at least, don’t take everything personally. Make an attempt to discriminate between what belongs to your person and what to your role. It seemed self-evident that much of Irene’s anger belonged elsewhere—life, destiny, God, cosmic indifference—but she simply discharged it upon her nearest target: me, her therapist. Irene knew that her anger oppressed me and let me know in many ways. One day, for example, when my secretary called her to reschedule an appointment because I had to see the dentist, Irene replied, “Oh, well, seeing the dentist is probably a pleasure for him compared to seeing me.” But perhaps the main reason I was not ground down by Irene’s rage was that I always knew that it masked her profound sadness, despair, and fear. When she expressed anger toward me, I sometimes responded with reflexive irritation and impatience, but more often with compassion. Many of Irene’s images or phrases haunted me. One, in particular, set up housekeeping in my mind and never failed to soften my experience of her grief rage. It was in one of her airport dreams (during the first two years after her husband’s death, she often wandered through airports in her dreams). I am dashing through a terminal. Looking for Jack. I don’t know the airline.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She pulled into a side street, parked, rewound, and listened: “. . . I feel demeaned. She is a vulgar lady. Does everything possible to eliminate any shred of closeness between us. Nothing I do is good enough for her. Presses so many of my buttons that there’s got to be something of my mother in this. Every time I ask her about our therapy relationship, she gives me that wary look as though I’m coming on to her. Am I? Not a whisper of it when I check into my feelings. Would I if she weren’t my patient? Not a bad-looking woman—I like her hair, gleaming—carries herself well—great-looking chest, popping those buttons— that’s definitely a plus. I worry about staring at those breasts but don’t think I do—thanks to Alice! In high school once, I was talking to a girl named Alice and hadn’t any idea that I was staring at her tits until she put her hand under my chin and tilted my face up and said, ‘Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo, I’m up here!’ I never forgot. That Alice did me a big favor. “Myrna’s hands are too big; that’s a turnoff. But I do like that great slick, sexy swish of her stockings as she crosses her legs. Yeah, I guess there are some sexual feelings there. If I had run into her when I was still single, would I have hit on her? Probably yes, I’d be attracted to her physically, until she opened her mouth and started whining or demanding. Then I’d want to get away fast. There’s no tenderness, no softness to her. She’s too self-focused, all sharp angles—elbows, knees, ungiving—” [A click as the tape came to an end.] In a daze, Myrna started the car, drove a few minutes, and turned right on Sacramento Street. Only a few blocks now to Dr. Lash’s office. She noticed, with surprise, that she was trembling. What to do? What to say to him? Quickly, quickly—only a few minutes until his goddamn clock started ticking off that $150 hour. One thing for sure, she told herself, there is no way I’m going to give back the tape as I usually do. I’ve got to hear it again. I’ll lie, say I forgot it, left it at home. Then I can rerecord his comments onto another tape and bring back the original next week. Or maybe I’ll just say I lost the tape. If he doesn’t like it—tough shit! The more she thought about it, the more sure she was that she would not tell him she’d heard his dictation. Why give away her hand? Maybe she’d tell him some time in the future. Maybe never. The bastard! She pulled up to his office. Four o’clock. Talking time. “Myrna, come in, please.” Ernest always called her Myrna, and she called him Dr. Lash, even though he had often pointed out the asymmetry and invited her to call him by his first name.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Instead he responded, “But keep in mind, I was not critical of Dr. Lash’s feelings about Ms. Myrna. What therapist who has ever lived has not had such thoughts about an irritating patient? No, I do not criticize his thought. I criticize only his incontinence, his inability to keep his feelings to himself.” That triggered another round of protests. Some defended Ernest’s decision to express his feelings openly. Others criticized Dr. Werner for not building a trusting environment in the seminar. They wanted to feel safe there. They most definitely did not want to dodge broadsides about their therapeutic technique, especially when the critique was based on a traditional analytic approach inappropriate to their current clinical setting. Finally Ernest himself suggested that the discussion was no longer productive and urged the group to return to the topic of his countertransference. A few members then spoke of similar patients who had drained and bored them, but Barbara’s comment most piqued Ernest’s interest. “This is not like any other resistant patient,” she said. “You say she gets to you like no one else and that you’ve never been so disrespectful to a patient before.” “It’s true, and I’m not sure why,” Ernest responded. “Several things about her tick me off. I get infuriated at her persistent reminders of the money she’s paying me. She is constantly turning this process into a commercial transaction.” “It’s not a commercial transaction?” interposed Dr. Werner. “Since when? You give her a service, and in return she gives you a check. Looks like commerce to me.” “Well, parishioners tithe, but that doesn’t make a church service an act of commerce,” said Ernest. “Oh, yes, it does!” insisted Dr. Werner. “The circumstances are just more refined and concealed. Read the genteel fine print at the end of a prayer book: no tithing, eventually no service.” “Typical analytic reductionism, everything reduced to its basest level,” said Ernest. “I’m not buying it. Therapy is not commerce, nor am I a merchant. That’s not why I’m in the field. If money were uppermost, I’d have gone into something else—law, investment banking, even one of the rich medical specialties like ophthalmology or radiology. I see therapy as something else—call it an act of caritas. I signed up for a life of service. For which I also, incidentally, happen to get paid. But this patient keeps slapping me in the face with the money.” “You give and give,” Dr. Werner purred in his most professional sonorous voice, appearing to relent. “But she gives nothing back.” Ernest nodded. “Right! She gives nothing back.” “You give and give,” repeated Dr. Werner. “You give her your best stuff and she keeps saying, ‘Give me something worthwhile.’” “That’s exactly the way it feels,” said Ernest more softly.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  He’s a novice at this kind of assertiveness. Choosing a restaurant or a movie is hard for him; telling her he wants to stay in New York for Thanksgiving (and not see her entire extended family, as they do every year) is almost impossible. I never suggest to Jed that he needs to reconfigure his sexuality. But I do urge him to learn to wield power in other areas of his life as well. It’s important for Jed to know that his wants will be honored outside the rituals of S-M. By the same token, he wouldn’t mind it if Coral transferred some of her directorial boldness from the editing room to their four-poster bed. Jed makes the point that Coral, too, could bring some assertiveness to their sex life. “When you finish brushing your teeth and putting on your pajamas, and then you ask me if we’re going to have sex tonight in this matter-of-fact, nudg ing way, it just doesn’t do anything for me. I need more of a charge. Tell me you want me, unzip my pants, walk naked into the room. Something, anything, besides, ‘Are we going to have sex tonight?’ I do it for you. I light the candles, create the mood you like, make love to you slowly. I do the vanilla for you. I try; you don’t.” For Coral’s part, she may never like Jed’s sexual kinks, but I encourage her to be open to understanding them. By holding court, judging him, and failing to grasp his red-light tastes, she’s condemned to feeling demeaned. Sadly, she fails to see that Jed is actually taking a big risk by trusting her to enter the primal bog of his erotic self. Rebalancing the “Dominant” Culture Most fans of kinky sex, at least those I’ve encountered, are drawn by the erotics of power and not, as it may appear to an outsider, by violence or pain. In fact, the carefully negotiated contracts, which specify what can and cannot be done, by whom, to whom, and for how long, are meant to guarantee both pleasure and safety. You submit only as much as you’re willing; you dominate only as far as you’re allowed. In the parallel universe of sex, power bids become a plaything, an experiment, a way to temporarily experience relations we’re loath to inhabit in real life. If, in our daily life, we shun dependence, in our erotic life we might welcome it. If it is our aggression that makes us twitch with discomfort, sexual enactments can permit a safe experience of power. Whether our real-life aversion is to submission, as it is for Elizabeth, or to autonomy, as it is for Jed, the sexual drama can offer catharsis.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  They most definitely did not want to dodge broadsides about their therapeutic technique, especially when the critique was based on a traditional analytic approach inappropriate to their current clinical setting. Finally Ernest himself suggested that the discussion was no longer productive and urged the group to return to the topic of his countertransference. A few members then spoke of similar patients who had drained and bored them, but Barbara’s comment most piqued Ernest’s interest. “This is not like any other resistant patient,” she said. “You say she gets to you like no one else and that you’ve never been so disrespectful to a patient before.” “It’s true, and I’m not sure why,” Ernest responded. “Several things about her tick me off. I get infuriated at her persistent reminders of the money she’s paying me. She is constantly turning this process into a commercial transaction.” “It’s not a commercial transaction?” interposed Dr. Werner. “Since when? You give her a service, and in return she gives you a check. Looks like commerce to me.” “Well, parishioners tithe, but that doesn’t make a church service an act of commerce,” said Ernest. “Oh, yes, it does!” insisted Dr. Werner. “The circumstances are just more refined and concealed. Read the genteel fine print at the end of a prayer book: no tithing, eventually no service.” “Typical analytic reductionism, everything reduced to its basest level,” said Ernest. “I’m not buying it. Therapy is not commerce, nor am I a merchant. That’s not why I’m in the field. If money were uppermost, I’d have gone into something else—law, investment banking, even one of the rich medical specialties like ophthalmology or radiology. I see therapy as something else—call it an act of caritas. I signed up for a life of service. For which I also, incidentally, happen to get paid. But this patient keeps slapping me in the face with the money.” “You give and give,” Dr. Werner purred in his most professional sonorous voice, appearing to relent. “But she gives nothing back.” Ernest nodded. “Right! She gives nothing back.” “You give and give,” repeated Dr. Werner. “You give her your best stuff and she keeps saying, ‘Give me something worthwhile.’” “That’s exactly the way it feels,” said Ernest more softly. This exchange happened so smoothly that none of the seminar members, perhaps not even Dr. Werner himself, was conscious of his switch into his seductive professional voice—or, it seemed, of Ernest’s eagerness to snuggle into the warmth of the therapeutic comforter. “You said there’s something of your mother in it,” remarked Barbara. “I never got much good stuff from her either.” “Does her ghost influence your feelings toward Myrna?” “It was different with my mother. I was the one who kept pulling away.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  My calf muscles tensed—I believe I was preparing myself to tackle her if she bolted for the door. “Oh, no, you’re not. Not after that. You’re staying right here and talking this out.” “I can’t. Can’t work, can’t stay here with you. Not fit to be with anyone.” “There’s only one rule here in this office: that you say exactly what’s on your mind. You’re doing your job. You’ve never done it better.” Dropping her purse on the floor, Irene slumped back in her chair. “I told you that after my brother died I always ended my relationships with men the same way.” “How? Tell me again.” “They’d have some mishap, some problem, maybe get sick, and I’d get nasty and cut them out of my life. A quick surgical incision! I cut clean. And I cut sharp. ” “Because you’d compare their problem to the immensity of losing Allen? That would make you bitter?” She nodded her appreciation. “That was most of it, I’m pretty sure. Also that I just didn’t want them to matter to me. I didn’t want to hear about their puny problems.” “And with me today?” “Color it red! Rage! I wanted to throw something at you!” “Because it felt like I was comparing my loss with yours?” “Yes. And then I thought that when we finish our session, you’ll take your loss up your little garden path to your wife, who’ll be there waiting with the rest of your tidy, cozy life. That’s when it turns red.” My office, only a couple hundred feet from my house, is a comfortable red-tile-roofed cottage enveloped in the lush greens and violets of lupine, wisteria, frangipani, and Spanish lavender. Though Irene loved the serenity of my office, she often made sarcastic comments about my picture-book life. “It’s not just you I feel angry at,” she continued. “It’s everyone whose life is intact. You’ve told me about widows who hate being without a role, who hate being the fifth wheel at dinner parties. But it’s not the role or being the fifth wheel that matters: it’s hating everyone else for having a life; it’s envy; it’s being filled with bitterness. Do you think I like feeling this way?” “A little while ago when you were preparing to walk out of here, you said you weren’t fit to be with anyone.” “Well, am I? Do you want to be with someone who hates you because your wife is alive? Does anyone want that kind of person around? The black ooze—remember? No one wants to be tarred, do they?” “I stopped you from leaving, didn’t I?” No answer. “I’m thinking of how dizzy you must feel to be so angry at me and yet so close, so grateful.” She nodded. “A little louder, Irene. Can’t quite hear you.” “Well, I got dizzy thinking about why you told me about your brother-in-law today.” “You seem suspicious.” “Very.” “You have a hunch?” “More than a hunch.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “This is Dr. Lash dictating notes for countertransference seminar. Notes on Myrna, Thursday, 28 March. Typical, predictable, frustrating hour. She spent most of the session whining as usual about the lack of single available men. I get more and more impatient . . . irritable—lost it for a moment and made an inappropriate remark: ‘Do you see “Dating Bureau” on my T-shirt?’ Really hostile thing for me to do—very unlike me—can’t remember last time I’ve been so disrespectful to a patient. Am I trying to drive her away? I never say anything supportive or positive to her. I try, but she makes it hard. She gets to me . . . so boring, rasping, crass, narrow. All she ever thinks about is making her two million in stock options and finding a man. Nothing else . . . narrow, narrow, narrow . . . no dreams, no fantasies, no imagination. No depth. Has she ever read a good novel? Ever said something beautiful? Or interesting . . . just one interesting thought? God, I’d love to see her write a poem—or try to write a poem. Now, that would be therapeutic change. She drains me. I feel like a big tit. Over and over the same material. Over and over hitting me over the head about my fee. Week after week I end up doing the same thing—I bore myself. “Today, as usual, I urged her to examine her role in her predicament, how she contributes to her own isolation. It’s not such a difficult concept, but I might as well be speaking Aramaic. She just can’t get it. Instead she accuses me of not believing that the singles scene is bad for women. And then, as she often does, she threw in a crack about wishing she could date me. But when I try to focus on that, on how she feels toward me or how she makes herself lonely right here in this room with me, things get even worse. She refuses to get it; she will not relate to me, and she will not acknowledge that she doesn’t—and insists it’s not relevant anyway. She can’t be stupid. Wellesley graduate—high-level graphics work—huge salary, hell of a lot bigger than mine—half the software companies in Silicon Valley competing for her—but I feel I’m talking to a dumb person. How many goddamn times do I have to explain why it’s important to look at our relationship? And all those cracks about not getting her money’s worth—I feel demeaned. She is a vulgar lady. Does everything possible to eliminate any shred of closeness between us. Nothing I do is good enough for her. Presses so many—” A passing car’s honk roused her to the fact that her car was weaving. Myrna’s heart pounded. This was dangerous. She switched off the Walkman and drove the few minutes to her turnoff. She pulled into a side street, parked, rewound, and listened:

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  And spiritual depth?” Deliberately, without speaking, Dr. Lee looked over at her, all the while tossing the chalk into the air and catching it a couple of times. Finally he turned and wrote Paula’s suggestions on the board. Although I thought them not unreasonable, I knew—and knew that everyone else knew—that as Dr. Lee watched the tumbling chalk, he was thinking, Somebody, anybody, please get that old lady out of here! Later, at lunch, he referred to Paula contemptuously as an evangelist. Although Dr. Lee was an eminent oncologist whose support and referrals were essential to the project, I risked antagonizing him and defended her staunchly by emphasizing her critical importance in the formation and functioning of the groups. Though I failed to alter his impression of her, I felt proud of myself for standing by her. That evening Paula phoned me. She was furious. “All of the medical professionals at the workshop are automatons, inhumane automatons. We patients who struggle with cancer twenty-four hours a day—what are we to them? I’ll tell you: we are nothing more than ‘maladaptive coping strategies.’” I spoke with her for a long time and did all I could to mollify her. I tried to suggest gently that she not stereotype the doctors and urged her to be patient. Affirming my loyalty to the principles with which we had started the group, I concluded, “Remember, Paula, none of this makes any difference because I have my own research plan. I’m not going to be controlled by their mechanistic perspective. Trust me!” But Paula was not to be mollified, nor, as it turned out, would she trust me. The workshop festered in her mind. For weeks she ruminated about it and finally directly accused me of selling out to the bureaucracy. She submitted a minority report of one to the National Cancer Institute, and it did not lack vigor or rancor. Finally, one day Paula came into my office and announced that she had decided to leave the group. “Why? ” “Well, I’m just tired of it.” “Paula, there’s more to it than that. What’s the real reason?” “I told you, I’m tired of it.” No matter how I probed, she continued to insist on that excuse, though we both knew that the real reason was that I had disappointed her. I used all my cunning (and after all my years of practice, I knew a few ways to get around people), but to no avail. Each of my attempts, including some ill-advised bantering and appeals to our long friendship, was greeted by an icy glare. I had no more rapport with her and had to endure the sorrow of a deceptive discussion. “I’m just working too hard. It’s too much for me,” she said. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying for months, Paula? Cut down all your visits and phone calls to the dozens of patients on your roll. Simply come to the group. The group needs you.