Stories tagged therapy

Diary of an Angry Psychologist: Wednesday’s Appointments

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--New Patient: Pearl, 48, 15:00 PM Pearl is not her real name. Her real name is Stella. Pearl used a fake name to get past the intake screeners. Pearl is my ex-wife.

Oedipus Speaks

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I don’t know what happened. One day I was in her room, groping the various drawers for hidden condoms, glimpses of women’s undergarments and I found a spectacular pair of blue lace panties

Anchovies

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Grandfather was surly. Everything angered him. He’d play solitaire at his table, blow cigarette smoke, eat canned anchovies, complain about grandkids drinking his bottled Coke.

Early Thoughts on the Oedipus Complex

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Conversation becomes Electra, as do her eyes. Electra’s head is grey, like the head of my Frau Freud, Martha. Her intelligent irises are darkly pigmented, and her sclerae are edged with a dramatic, black line of the sort that Cleopatra affected. In ou

Echolalia

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The therapist puts a hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes like a visor, lets out a sigh. Fighting the urge to ask the question. The patient is silent, waiting on her, as he can see that she is fighting her verbal cue.

Worth a Thousand Words

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He was triply satisfied: he’d come twice and he was a damn good-looking man.

Bathtub Cheese

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“I was having a shitty day. Fighting with Alan, my mom was on my ass, and I had just got the call that my freelance gig was ending three months early. I needed a cigarette. I needed more than one. The kids were in the bath, but I had to get to get the

The Danger of Talk Therapy

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Who does she think she is, a cross-dressing, Freudian Maria Callas?

The Weak Force

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So I walk behind Sandra’s desk and I put my radioactive tum-tum right up to her beaded dreadlocks and I tell her about the nuclear energy that is flowing through her right now. She laughs and screams at me the way I am sure her daughter does when someone

Tiger-eyed

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The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known?

Blogging Therapy

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This blog seemed to find me. The post I read couldn't be real. The blogger had a session in his therapist's office without the therapist. He'd already been there once that week and paid his hundred and ten dollars. In thirty …

One Kiss

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"It was one kiss. No tongue. What does that even mean?" Lindley tried to see Leah as any other patient, "What do you want it to mean?" "I don't know," Leah whined, tears welling, "something, maybe. You know I hate surprises." Her sister was not another…