tête-à-tête. Volition effect, you see? It’s when the patient tells the doctor what they think the parent wants to hear, instead of telling the truth. Messes up”—he waved his hands fussily, as if he were shaking drops of water from his fingertips—”the whole diagnostic procedure. You understand.” He led her to the door, and I thought he might pat her on the ass. “Go get yourself some coffee. I bought some donuts for the staff. Help yourself. I’ll send the nurse for you the minute we’re finished in here.”
I suddenly felt exhausted. The deflowering-by-speculum had depleted what sparse reserves I had. Outwitting a smooth psychiatrist was outside my range. So instead I just went silent, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know” or “No” to his myriad questions. Had I seen the man before? Had I ever had a blackout? Did the man speak? Had I heard voices before? Where was my father? I had no idea what his questions were driving at. But I must have said enough to fit some profile as a paranoid schizophrenic.
He took another tack with Mother.
Chapter 9
Further back story
A mid-twentieth-century Heroine’s
philosophical crisis Mother tries to
indoctrinate Franny Franny afoot
M other had little experience with the psychiatric world. Her parents subscribed to the “unexamined life is worth living” philosophy. When Mother got pregnant, they would never have allowed her to discuss her private problems with a psychiatrist. At that time, only complete neurotics and lunatics needed psychiatric help. The Entwhistles were above that sort of thing, though Mother later told me she wished she’d received some psychological support during her pregnancy. Ever the autodidact, and disparaging her parents’ approach, she’d read profusely in the pop psychology of the day when she had to figure out how to raise me. Thanks to Dr. Benjamin Spock, I was cuddled whenever I cried, toilet-trained with patience, encouraged to become an “individual.” With the Heroines, however, Mother stuck to the bromides of their own eras; she treated the Heroines’ nervous breakdowns with bed rest and broth.
The most contemporary “unhinged” Heroine who’d visited was Franny Glass, Salinger’s depressed waif who’d taken to the couch with The Way of the Pilgrim, a book about a pilgrim who’d learned to pray incessantly. Mother, like any literate girl of the fifties, had read every letter of Salinger’s work. She was delighted to see Franny at the Homestead, who’d arrived in 1972 when I was eleven. Mother relished the fact that Franny wasn’t in a romantic funk, pining for some man, but instead in the midst of a philosophical crisis. She didn’t see Franny’s problems as psychological, but sociological. The feminist in Mother was troubled by Franny, who had remained passive, prostrate on the couch, while Zooey tried to bully her into sanity. Franny never took any decisive action. In Salinger’s other book, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Franny recounts a tale of her flying around the living room. She remained “otherized, objectified,” obviously an adored child who’d morphed into a problematic woman. What really struck Mother was that Franny’s story had no ending. She never got out of the cluttered Glass family’s Upper West Side apartment. At the Homestead, Franny was full of invectives for Zooey, so it appeared that rather than arriving in the middle of her narrative, she’d arrived at the end of it.
I had read the Salinger classics with nominal comprehension the summer before Franny showed up ( Seymour: An Introduction had especially bored me). I didn’t really understand what she was depressed about, and I enjoyed the beginning best, when she and Lane went to the restaurant to eat escargots and he weirdly sniffed her raccoon coat. It all seemed oddly sophisticated.
Mother was more forceful with Franny than she’d ever been with other Heroines. Maybe it was the newly minted copies of Ms. scattered
I suddenly felt exhausted. The deflowering-by-speculum had depleted what sparse reserves I had. Outwitting a smooth psychiatrist was outside my range. So instead I just went silent, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know” or “No” to his myriad questions. Had I seen the man before? Had I ever had a blackout? Did the man speak? Had I heard voices before? Where was my father? I had no idea what his questions were driving at. But I must have said enough to fit some profile as a paranoid schizophrenic.
He took another tack with Mother.
Chapter 9
Further back story
A mid-twentieth-century Heroine’s
philosophical crisis Mother tries to
indoctrinate Franny Franny afoot
M other had little experience with the psychiatric world. Her parents subscribed to the “unexamined life is worth living” philosophy. When Mother got pregnant, they would never have allowed her to discuss her private problems with a psychiatrist. At that time, only complete neurotics and lunatics needed psychiatric help. The Entwhistles were above that sort of thing, though Mother later told me she wished she’d received some psychological support during her pregnancy. Ever the autodidact, and disparaging her parents’ approach, she’d read profusely in the pop psychology of the day when she had to figure out how to raise me. Thanks to Dr. Benjamin Spock, I was cuddled whenever I cried, toilet-trained with patience, encouraged to become an “individual.” With the Heroines, however, Mother stuck to the bromides of their own eras; she treated the Heroines’ nervous breakdowns with bed rest and broth.
The most contemporary “unhinged” Heroine who’d visited was Franny Glass, Salinger’s depressed waif who’d taken to the couch with The Way of the Pilgrim, a book about a pilgrim who’d learned to pray incessantly. Mother, like any literate girl of the fifties, had read every letter of Salinger’s work. She was delighted to see Franny at the Homestead, who’d arrived in 1972 when I was eleven. Mother relished the fact that Franny wasn’t in a romantic funk, pining for some man, but instead in the midst of a philosophical crisis. She didn’t see Franny’s problems as psychological, but sociological. The feminist in Mother was troubled by Franny, who had remained passive, prostrate on the couch, while Zooey tried to bully her into sanity. Franny never took any decisive action. In Salinger’s other book, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Franny recounts a tale of her flying around the living room. She remained “otherized, objectified,” obviously an adored child who’d morphed into a problematic woman. What really struck Mother was that Franny’s story had no ending. She never got out of the cluttered Glass family’s Upper West Side apartment. At the Homestead, Franny was full of invectives for Zooey, so it appeared that rather than arriving in the middle of her narrative, she’d arrived at the end of it.
I had read the Salinger classics with nominal comprehension the summer before Franny showed up ( Seymour: An Introduction had especially bored me). I didn’t really understand what she was depressed about, and I enjoyed the beginning best, when she and Lane went to the restaurant to eat escargots and he weirdly sniffed her raccoon coat. It all seemed oddly sophisticated.
Mother was more forceful with Franny than she’d ever been with other Heroines. Maybe it was the newly minted copies of Ms. scattered
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