Yes, You With The Oedipus Complex At The Back

Stanley unbuttoned his double-breasted suit
jacket and looked around at the minimal yet
elegant office of Dr Melanie Parore, his
recently acquired therapist. "Do you mind if I
slip my shoes off?" Stanley made eye contact
with her for the first time. Hers were deep,
brown and welcoming, his felt raw and
gritted. He hadn't slept for days.

"Not at all Stanley," Parore looked up and
smiled, "Take a seat and make yourself
comfortable." Dr Parore's face was a gentle
one and Stanley could tell at a glance that he could be comfortable
with her. The dampened light accented her auburn hair, which seemed to
sculpt itself around her rounded chin. Her appeal was more motherly
than overtly sexual but nonetheless Stanley was immediately attracted
to her and it oddly excited him to think that he would be telling this
beautiful stranger some of his innermost thoughts. May be he would even
make some things up. It did not matter. He took the large comfortable
seat facing Parore's.
"Stanley, why don't you begin with why you think you are here?"

He took a deep breath, his ribcage rising visibly. "Lately I have felt
as if I'm waiting for something to happen. Something is going to
happen."

"To you?" Parore dipped her head and raised her eyebrows.

"No, yes, I'm not sure. I just know that something is about to happen."
Parore noted that Stanley was immediately frustrated.
"Is anything due to happen in your life?"

"How do you mean due? You mean am I getting married, or such like? In
that case no." Stanley shook his head and raised his brow.

"Well, if you are not due a birth, a new job or a new partner, there
could be another theory. Some believe that some big events in our lives
are triggered by the accumulation or a chain of others. What was the
last big emotional event in your life?" Her gentleness deepened with
every word.

Stanley shuffled awkwardly in his chair. "A relationship ended three
years ago. She died."

"And before that?"

"My mother, two years previous, then my father's death, three years
before." Stanley appeared humble in the face of the apparent litany of
suffering.

"My you have been through it, and I can help you Stanley, but as I tell
all my patients on their first visit, it's a two way thing, not quid
pro quo, but you must want to help yourself. Do you want to help
yourself Stanley?"

He threw his hands out open "I'm here aren't I, nobody made me come,
just me."

"I just wanted to hear you say it." Parore smiled, "Let's move on. Now,
it may not be that something will necessarily happen, but it may be
that you just expect it to because bad things have happened to you,"
she paused cautiously, "on a seemingly regular basis. Have you had
these feelings before?"

Stanley coughing nervously interrupted a notable silence and then he
quietly replied that he had.

"When?"

"Each time someone died." Stanley owned up.

"So now you think someone is going to die and you dreamt about them
dying?" Parore was sympathetic but to the point.

"Not exactly." Stanley heaved and sighed, "look this isn't easy."

"I know Stanley, these things aren't easy."

"I had what you might call lucid waking
dreams. Dreams where I was a walking, talking participant, I could
smell, I could touch but I couldn't stop a single thing, not a single
thing. You know how that feels?" Stanley was feeling a similar
frustration now.

"I understand Stanley, dreams can be frightening."

"Dreams yes, but waking living nightmares?" Stanley

"You were awake when these episodes happened?" Parore scribbled
possible post traumatic stress disorder on her notepad.

Stanley seemed broken and when he replied it was the faintest of
murmurs "Yes."

"Would you like a drink Stanley? No? Ok, if you like we can talk about
that first event. Your father?"

Stanley gathered himself, sniffed and shook his head as if waking up
from a short nap. "Yes my father."

"What kind of man was he?"

"He was my father. A man can never truly know his father." Stanley said
this matter of factly.

"Do you really believe that?"
"Was it Freud who once said that the most important relationship that a
man has in his entire life is with his father?" Stanley surprised
Parore with the paraphrase.

"Yes I believe he did?" Parore concurred.
"Well doctor, I was invisible to my father, there was nothing between
us." His bitterness was strong and his jaw stiffened.

"It doesn't make that relationship any less important to you."

"But there was nothing."

"Nothing but&;#8230;" Parore led him on gesturing with her
hand.
"Nothing but silence and ignorance. I was nothing to him and in time he
was nothing to me."

"Did you make any efforts to get his attention?"

"I never stopped trying to get his attention, award after award after
achievement after prize in school, it was never ending and still
nothing. I made him things, I played for him, I prayed for him,
but&;#8230;nothing." Stanley threw up his hands speechless.

"Did you get his attention before he died?" Parore continued with her
pressing style.

"No doctor and that really is the point." Stanley relaxed, "I was 19
and recently returned home from university for the summer. I'd locked
myself in my room in disgust, I think after he had indifferently
reacted to my almost perfect term papers and then it happened. My
bedroom window looked out over the back garden and I remember looking
out across the other gardens, wondering if I shouldn't just pack up and
leave right there and then. I looked back down at our own back garden
and then it happened."

"Your father?" Parore listened intently.

"No the waking dream. As I looked back at the garden, there was my
father tending a huge bonfire at the back of the garden. He had cleared
and weeded for the first time that summer and the flames were so high
they almost licked the telephone wires; everything was so dry. It was
then I saw myself. Some yards from the bonfire, there grew an apple
tree; I used to climb it as a child and look into all the surrounding
gardens. I looked down and I could see myself chopping at the tree so
vigorously I was wet through from the sweat. The tree was rotten, top
heavy, clearly unstable and as events went on, I could foresee even in
my dream what was to happen. The tree snapped and fell with a sickening
crunch, pinning my father to the enormous fire. I watched myself watch
my father burn to death in that fire." Stanley could feel the dryness
in his mouth as he said the final word.

Parore had put her hand to her mouth briefly as she calculated her
response. "What happened next?"

"My sense of protection must have kicked in I suppose and I snapped out
of the dream and dashed down the stairs to find my father watching the
women's semi-final at Wimbledon on the television. He was safe, it
hadn't happened. That afternoon, I chopped the tree down as he slept on
the sofa and stacked the wood in the shed."

"So you saved your father." Parore ventured, still a little
confused.

"Only temporarily, the following day he burnt to death in a car crash
on his way to work."
Parore blew hard. "That's tough Stanley, for anyone."

"Well I used to tell that story a lot and it never made a whole lot of
sense, not then."

"Well Stanley, we just need more facts, in time you'll come to see
things a little differently, I promise. Let's leave your father for a
moment and move on to your mother. I need to build a bigger picture.
What happened to your mother after your father died."

"My mother took another husband not long after he died, and she was
happy in the short time that she had."

"Did you blame her for this?" Parore hated asking these basic sounding
questions to an obviously intelligent man.

"No I don't blame her now anymore than I did then and if I'm honest,
then she was honest with me all the way. Not to mention hardworking,
caring, actually quite the model mother. It is hard to imagine someone
growing up in the same mould today." Stanley seemed sincere, if not
overly so and the doctor made more notes.

"Tell me about the lucid dream you had on this occasion." Parore wanted
to jump ahead.

"Shortly after I had finished university I returned to my mother's home
as all middle class students do and began to look for work. Soon I
found a bad job in a good bar, but it was fun and there was free drink
and plenty things to keep me there. I would return home late from work,
sometimes to find my mother and her new husband watching the end of
some TV movie or on their way to bed. I was fine with them, he was a
genuinely pleasant man with his own income and certainly a lot more
interested in me than my own father was. After a few nights of coming
home late, I realised it was prudent to peek through the curtains of
the lounge window as I returned just to check that they had gone to
bed, so as not to disturb them. This went on for a few a weeks until I
had the dream. It had been a particularly busy night at the bar, I was
later than usual, I was tired and I fully expected them to be asleep.
As I peeked through the window, it was strange, but I felt the wind
pick up around me and I found my eyes frozen on the sofa. My mother was
in a state of undress on the sofa. She was being fucked vigorously from
behind by her new husband. There was a look of determination on both
their faces and strangely, I felt neither disgusted nor ashamed for
watching. In fact, I felt frightened. As I watched, the lounge door
flew open and would have bounced back on itself but for a hooded
character that filled the frame. As my mother's new husband turned his
head towards the door, a shot rang out and he collapsed across my
mother's back. The figure strode across the lounge toward the sofa and
my mother whom he grabbed by the hair and lifted her head up toward me
like a trophy. With his other hand, he casually rested a gun against
her temple. I heard myself screaming and banging relentlessly on the
window, but I was powerless. He pulled the trigger and let her head
fall back into the arm of the sofa. He then removed the hood, for me to
see his face."

Parore was gripped surely as Stanley had been that night. "Who was
it?"

"It was me doctor. I had just witnessed myself killing my own mother
and her lover." Stanley let it sink in.

Parore paused and then began again. "I take it you snapped out of this
dream at this point."

"I believe a car drove by and leant on its horn, I came round and sat
in the dirt for a few minutes. Somehow, I just knew it wasn't real and
I went inside to find them watching an old episode of MASH and drinking
hot chocolate. They asked me why I was shaking and whether I had banged
on the window. I replied that I must be coming down with something and
went straight to bed. I was terrified."

"Did you try to warn them? Had you told your mother of your previous
dream?" Parore sounded concerned.

"No, no, she'd have told me to stop being so stupid. She was a very
grounded lady Doctor."

"And later what happened?"

"I moved out the next day; to a friends and resolved never to live
there again. I sensed that some conflict could arise, not only could I
see myself doing it, I had seen myself do it. I had no choice, at least
I thought I didn't. No good could come of me living there. Two nights
later as my mother and her husband were walking back from their
anniversary dinner they were mugged at gunpoint. The husband was shot
instantly when he resisted, my mother was dragged off, raped then shot
a point blank range. They never caught the man. I myself was questioned
for 16 hours on end." Stanley was extremely agitated now. His hands
were clammy, he had never got this far in the telling of his tale.
Beyond this point was all new material, he had no idea which words or
emotions were coming next. Parore had got up, unnoticed by Stanley, and
had poured herself and Stanley a glass of water which she handed to him
unexpectedly over his shoulder. He turned his head toward her and
noticed how uncomfortable she was being close to him. He should not of
mentioned the police questioning. She went and sat back in her
chair.

"Stanley. What I'm trying to do today, and you'll have to bear with me,
is to establish your big picture. Now obviously there is a lot of
detail here and potentially you may or may not have many different
issues we need to deal with, but I want you to go on. I know this is
very hard for you but I want you to go on to the third event, the
relationship."

"You do want it all don't you Dr Parore?"

Stanley was letting off steam through nervous humour.

"You'll sleep well tonight Stanley, I assure you, just through
exhaustion! You've done well so far." Parore's pearl soft nature shone
through once more.

"Ok you asked for it," Stanley took a deep breath. "I met Elizabeth
some years later. I had to get away. I sold my mother's house and I
took a job on a cruise ship, just waiting tables and general kitchen
duties, you know the sort of thing. Lousy pay but all the sun and booze
you can soak up. Elizabeth was a dancer, a fine dancer. She'd give
lessons nightly in the stage in the ship's ballroom to the old folks
and I'd sneak out of the kitchen, which I was supposed to be cleaning,
just to watch her. After a while she'd twigged that I'd come out every
night right on cue for her big number with one of the crew and
eventually she approached me and asked me if I would like to dance with
her. I was shy and awkward like a school kid but managed to admit that
I would and that she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Afterwards we had a drink and took it from there." Stanley opened his
palm. "We returned after the next season and after we'd both got more
stable jobs, we bought a small apartment and settled down."

"You didn't marry?" Parore interrupted.

"No, we discussed it a few times. Elizabeth had been on the end of some
unpleasant family disputes so I don't think she was that keen, besides
we were unmistakably happy. Happy ticking along, me an insurance
salesman, she a dance instructor, her, and me doing our thing. Then
after four months of living together, in the spring, Elizabeth got
pregnant. This posed no problems in itself apart from the fact that we
were somewhat reliant on two incomes and Elizabeth's was derived from
dancing, which she wouldn't be able to do for long. Somehow we got by
and things were looking like they would work themselves out. I'd got a
promotion at work and the bills were finally getting paid. Then in
November, I had an accident. Quite silly really. One evening preparing
a late night snack, opening a can of spaghetti of all things, I cut my
hand wide open like a gill. I needed stitches and I went to the
hospital alone, my hand bound up in a dozen kitchen towels. After an
hour I was treated and was making my way down the hospital corridor
back to the car park when I remember looking down at my feet. I had
blood all over my shoes. As I looked back up I realised I had stopped
moving and I was looking through the glass over an operating theatre.
In that instant, I realised where I was, mentally. I was right back
there in a lucid waking dream but for what seemed like minutes, nothing
happened. There was silence, and all I could sense was emptiness.
Bursting through the doors of the theatre came a trolley with what
seemed like a swarm of medical staff who parked it next to the surgical
tools, and left as quickly as they had arrived. I looked down into the
theatre at the patient half knowing what to expect. Elizabeth lay on
the table, her stomach fully distended, barely capable of movement.
Someone came charging through the theatre doors and to my disbelief,
once more I was seeing myself in Technicolor. I heard myself shouting
"No, no." and banging on the glass. Next I remember looking behind me
looking for something to shatter the glass but there was nothing to
hand. It was clear that Elizabeth was struggling with the labour. The
baby was stuck, that was obvious. Her face was now purple with effort
and she was screaming in sublime agony. I was throwing myself against
the glass, but I could do nothing. My attention turned again to the
theatre. I was down there trying to help her, telling her to push, she
was screaming uncontrollably, I could see I was helpless. In one swift
movement, Elizabeth's arm shot out and reached for a scalpel that she
raised aloft before plunging it into her belly and slicing it clean
open. With her free hand, she reached inside herself, pulled the baby
free, and clasped it to her breast. My alter ego seemed as startled as
I was but I sighed a momentary breath of relief before I realised that
the moment was not yet over. The baby turned its head round to face me
looking down at the three of them and revealed a double set of what I
can only describe as shark's teeth. Without warning the child bit
deeply in Elizabeth's neck causing her to convulse and struggle as if
she had been electrocuted. I began to throw myself at the glass once
more, but stopped when I saw the other me, rip the baby from it's
mother and hold it at arms length as it spat and snapped like a demon.
Grabbing the baby by the ankles, I could only look on in astonishment
he dashed the baby against the theatre wall, spraying the glass in
front of me with the child's blood until it was lifeless."

Parore sat there horrified, despite her years of training and hours of
professional practice, she began to feel vaguely repulsed, when she
reminded herself that she must be objective. She noted that Stanley had
seemed quite objective himself as he told the story, this was clearly
in itself a defence mechanism. He could not even begin to deal with
this part of his life yet and she regretted pushing him on the matter
so early in his treatment. "Stanley, have you ever told anyone
this?"

"Never, it would upset too many people, Elizabeth's family mainly, so I
could only ever tell this much of my story in total confidence, and
this is my first ever therapy session. I apologise that you have to
hear all this doctor, it's not pleasant." He felt like he was poisoning
her with every word and it made him feel bad.

"This is my job Stanley. I get paid, very well paid to hear this sort
of thing and help people like you. Don't worry about it, please go
on."
Stanley nodded with resignation and continued.

"Anyway, I found myself standing in the hospital corridor,
shell-shocked, not being a big enough word to describe how I was
feeling. I called Elizabeth immediately. She was fine, but I raced home
anyway and insisted we go back to the hospital immediately for a check
up. I was quite ruthless with her; there was no other way of making her
go. Sure enough, the doctors found that baby had breached and within
the hour, Elizabeth had gone in to labour. Eight hours later the
doctors told me that Elizabeth's aorta had ruptured through the sheer
exertion of the birth, the weakness in her heart had never been
detected."

"And the baby?"

"Louis? He now lives with Elizabeth's parents. I've never been in a
position to look after him full time, but may be someday."

"Finally Stanley, is there one sentence that would sum up your
experiences?" Her pen was poised and ready.

"I don't know what I keep seeing but I know one thing you can't cheat
fate Doctor Parore, it can't be done."

"Good" said Parore as she made her final notes and stood up. "Well
Stanley. Your time is up unfortunately for today. You've helped me get
a really good picture of what's been happening in your life up until
this point and by the time you come back next week, we'll be in a
position to start working in a lot more detail." Inside Parore was
partly still reeling from the dictionary definition of grief and horror
that had been this man's life.

"Thank you doctor, I certainly feel good about getting some of that off
my chest." Stanley stood up and slipped on his shoes.

"That's alright, that's why you're here."
Parore found Stanley's strangely positive attitude make her feel more
comfortable about listening to it.

It was only now that it crossed her mind that Stanley might make an
excellent paper for the Psychological Review. She looked up at Stanley
who was part way through putting on his jacket, he was motionless.
"Stanley? Stanley are you alright?" He snapped out of his state and was
immediately disorientated by his surroundings. Parore urged him gently
into the chair that he had been sat in.
"It's Ok Stanley. You're in Doctor Parore's office, you are quite safe,
don't worry."

Stanley refocused and reached out to hold her shoulders squarely. "It's
not me I'm worried for Doctor. As you can probably see I've had another
dream and possibly the worst one yet." Stanley was sweating all over
whilst the Doctor's thoughts turned to the baby.

"Louis?"

"No, not Louis thank God." Stanley swallowed hard. "You do have life
insurance don't you Doctor?"