The Psychoanalysis of Anse Mattingly
Thursday, October 3rd,
Anse Mattingly, he’s got a lot to say. We worked out the formalities today, a grueling process for both him and I. Him because he just wanted to get his mind out, and I because he had intrigued me, more so than anyone has in a while.
Most people aren’t really sick, they just need to be heard. For $150 an hour, I can do that. And if they need a sugar pill to fell like something wrong is getting fixed, fine. But Anse, he’s different. I can tell I’m in for something big.
Anse is an upper level manager for an automotive manufacturer. He Handles the paperwork, does budgets, timelines, the theoreticals. He works and moves multimillion dollar budgets as fast as his factory workers in China move cars through the assembly line. He’s been doing this for ten years, is on the salary, great benefits, etc. He lives alone in what he calls Levittown, USA. It’s all SUVs and children with helmets and colorful plastic toys and houses made of ‘ticky tacky’ and everything like that. I hate it, but the mortgage is alright." That caught me. I’ve never heard someone reference a Levittown. It just doesn’t happen. It’s in the past, obscured by decades of modern architecture and suburban development. I told him this. "First I have to tell them what a Levittown was," He said, "and then they immediately disagree with me. Just because there’s four house templates instead of one doesn’t make it any less true…" He continued, and I just sat and listened, thinking about his words and trying not to smile. It was more out of my own glee than what he was saying. I have something. I have Anse. Anse is legitimate, and he’s got a lot to say.

Thursday, October 10th,
Anse flatly refused medication. Not that I offered any. Aside from being too early to diagnose, I frankly just want to avoid it. Drugs only suppress symptoms, nothing actually gets solved. Why would I suppress something so beautiful as a man spewing words and frustrations out of his head as he struggles with his own emotional well being?
Today Anse walked in and sat down. I looked at him and said "Go," and he looked at me. And I looked at him. And he said "I don’t want any medication." "That’s fine." "Really, don’t prescribe me any medication." "I wasn’t going to. Now go." "What do you mean?" "Go, speak, talk. That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?" "Yeah, but what about-" "I’m here to listen. I can’t find out what’s wrong with you if you don’t talk. So Go ahead: speak."
He looked at me again, then towards his feet. "I don’t know where to start…" "Okay, well, how about you just tell me what you did today?" He started.
"Okay, well, I went to an electronics store after work, because I needed ink for my printer…Jesus Christ, those places are depressing. I can’t spend more than ten minutes in there. My eyes glaze over and I become listless. Printer ink? Who cares? Everywhere else feels like that too. Department stores, shoe stores, even something as basic as the grocery store blinds me after a while. It’s all the lights, the sterility of the light. Shelves stacked to the ends with the exact same thing in the exact same position. Bright screens, price checks, shoe smell, fish smell, fabric smell. It’s thick in the air, almost like I could get cancer if I stayed there for too long. And the people there that seem excited make me all the more blank and disconnected. I could be an employee at any of the places I go to. Going there is just like work to me. I used to work at a grocery store, and the one thing I remembered was this: everything would be easier for everyone if they would just realize that no one –including the customer- wants to be in that grocery store. It’s just bad luck that you need food to live."
"How often do you go grocery shopping, Anse?
"Maybe three times a week."
The flow of Anse’s monologue quickly receded to a conversation between us on things mostly concerning small talk. In retrospect, I would not have interjected. It was just something that I had let slip to break up his speech into something more easily digestible. But it might be that Anse isn’t something that you can make easily digestible. It might be more like swallowing gum: it could take years to digest as is, and, if you’re not careful, might just attach itself to your pancreas along the way.

Thursday, October 17th,
I've started recording Anse's sessions, not so much because I forget anything about his sessions. On the contrary, I remember almost everything he says verbatim. It's what I was taught to do. But remembering the words and actually hearing him say the words are two completely different things. The voice with which something is said is as important, if not more important than the words that are spoken, kind of like if you cuss out a dog in the voice you would use talking to a baby. The dog doesn't now what the hell you are saying, but it likes the connotation of the words. Anse is that way. He can make the simplest phrase practically drowning with depth and insight.
Like today. He was talking about the phrase "I will." "It's the most powerful and moving thing in the English language. Forget 'cellar door.' That's bullshit compared to 'I will.' " I told him that I did not think it was a complete phrase. "Sure it is. even grammatically, it's subject verb. That's all you need for a sentence. It's a minimalist statement, yet it has such strength behind it. A man that says 'I will" and means it can do anything."
I thought about that for a while. Anse just sat there and waited for me to question him. "If it's that easy, why doesn't anything get done?" "Because no one means it. In order to mean it you have to carry out and do something proactive. Most people can't do that. They don't want to. It's much more comfortable to sit and wait for something to happen." "What about when it doesn't happen?" "Then you're at least comfortable." "What about the impoverished?" "They cannot come to terms with their situation and deem it hopeless. They never say 'I will'." "Do you say 'I will'?" "I used to." "What happened?" "College, work, life. The idea was there, the will was there, but the will wasn’t there. Everything got it the way." "How does this make you feel?" "Disappointed. Helpless. Ashamed. How it should make me feel." "Will you ever try again?" "I don’t think so."
I paused for a second. I had to be sure. I was. I leaned in. "Anse, when we are finished, when I have figured out how to help you and we’ve gone through everything, you will be able to say ‘I will’ again." "Are you saying you will make me better?" "I am saying that I will make you into a person you can be comfortable being." He looked at me. "Do you say ‘I will’?" "Sometimes." "Do you mean it?" "I try to." "Do you mean it this time?" "Yes."
I mean it. I will.

Thursday, October 24th
I know it’s bad practice, but I do talk about my patients to the other people in my office. And I talk about Anse a lot. He’s my pride patient. When most psychologists talk about their patients, they are usually complaining about them, but I always talk about Anse positively. Difficult case though he may be, he’s at least an intelligent person. Thus far he has told me the truth, though it may be a different case when the questions get more difficult.
Today was like it’s been. I asked and he went. "I was in a car accident yesterday." "Oh. Was anyone hurt?" "No, it was just a minor accident." "Your fault?" "That depends on who you ask. Here’s what happened: I was on the expressway, which becomes very ironic during rush hour, but I still pay the tolls. Anyway, it was after the morning rush. I was driving to one of our partner’s buildings for a meeting. I was going along at sixty, maybe sixty-five. This is a fifty, mind you. I’m changing lanes to pass a tractor-trailer. I check my blind spots and all that and it’s clear. In my mirror there is this car behind me coming on quick. I go to pass the truck and so does this guy, but since he’s going twenty or thirty miles an hour faster than me he smacks me right into the divider and we go for a while, and pull off into the shoulder. Somehow the guy says it’s my fault for passing to slowly in the fast lane. Something like that. Insurance automatically places fault on the car in the back, of course, which may not be right in all cases, but was certainly justified in that case. I swear I could be going one hundred and twenty miles and hour and there’d still be that one guy trying to pass me, pulling some quick escape move as if he was thirty seconds away from death."

“How did the car come out?” ”Oh, it’s finished, kaput. The thing was only a few years old too. Now I have to drive around in this rental car until I get money from his insurance for a new car. It’s like staying someone’s house. I’m afraid to touch anything, go over the speed limit, pass someone. It’s debilitating.” “At least you have your health.” “I suppose so.”

“How did the accident make you feel?” ”Close.” “What do you mean?” “Close. Close to flipping over the divider into oncoming traffic. Close to scraping my head against the divider through a smashed window, or cutting my head on the window. Close to being impaled by a metal bar protruding from my car’s chassis. Close to suffocating in my airbag. Close, being hugged by mangled door, airbag and car seat. Close to death. Close to life. Close.”