Getting It Right - Page 3


In Paul's renewed supervision with Gina, the show shifts away from offering the foxy charms of melodrama into something edgier and more complicated. He admits that he's lost patience with his patients, that he's tired, that he often has to restrain himself from having an outburst. He comes across not as the preternaturally Wise Therapist, the comic Boob Therapist, or the autocratic Wicked Therapist, but as someone else: a person struggling with the same issues his clients present to him. As a matter of fact, as he describes the dismaying fights he's having with his wife, Kate, he uses some of the same language Jake used: My wife, he laments to Gina, makes decisions without consulting me.

Oh, I think, this could be interesting. Paul, we now observe, is at this moment no more open, no more capable of introspection, than his clients.

One problem Paul wants to discuss in supervision, it seems, is Laura, the client who just that Monday confessed her love for him. It's no big deal, he says; happens to therapists all the time. Against his increasing stubbornness, Gina makes the connection between handling an erotic transference from a patient with the problems in a therapist's marriage. Like your father, she says, implying that the story of Paul's unfaithful father has influenced his vulnerability to this seductive patient.

You, you . . . fiction-writer! Paul says angrily. You're shoving all this into one of your preconceived narratives. Oh, you should see how much you're enjoying yourself.

So it goes, as they feint and punch.

I made a mistake coming here, Paul says. You're an old, sleepy spider; you're waiting to strike. Look how you wake up, how full of life you are now.

You're angry with me, Gina declares.

Me? Paul says, dialing it down. No, I'm not angry.

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