The Silent Patient

by Alex Michaelides

This is going to be a joyful record of ideas and images that inspire me artistically, things that make a creative impact on me. I’m only going to write positive, happy, normal thoughts. No crazy thoughts allowed.

ALCESTIS IS THE HEROINE OF A GREEK MYTH.

MY NAME IS THEO FABER. I’m forty-two years old. And I became a psychotherapist because I was fucked up. That’s the truth—though it’s not what I said during the job interview, when the question was put to me.

“I wanted to help people, I suppose.” I shrugged. “That’s it, really.” Which was bullshit. I mean, of course I wanted to help people. But that was a secondary aim—particularly at the time I started training. The real motivation was purely selfish. I was on a quest to help myself. I believe the same is true for most people who go into mental health. We are drawn to this profession because we are damaged—we study psychology to heal ourselves.

The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.

I asked my mother why my father was always so angry with me, and she gave a despairing shrug and said, “How should I know? Your father’s completely mad.”

Somehow grasping at vanishing snowflakes is like grasping at happiness: an act of possession that instantly gives way to nothing.

It’s odd how quickly one adapts to the strange new world of a psychiatric unit. You become increasingly comfortable with madness—and not just the madness of others, but your own. We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways.

But that’s what Alicia did for you. Her silence was like a mirror—reflecting yourself back at you. And it was often an ugly sight.

“Choosing a lover is a lot like choosing a therapist. We need to ask ourselves, is this someone who will be honest with me, listen to criticism, admit making mistakes, and not promise the impossible?”

“About love. About how we often mistake love for fireworks—for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm—and constant. I imagine you do give Kathy love—in the true sense of the word. Whether or not she is capable of giving it back to you is another question.”

one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren’t loved when we needed it most. It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.”

love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

He’s in bed now, asleep. I had to sneak away and write all this down—I want to remember this day for the rest of my life. Every single second of it. I feel joyous. I feel full of hope.

No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t know her then. She was the most interesting person I’ve ever met. Most people aren’t alive, you know, not really—sleepwalking their way through life. But Alicia was so intensely alive.… It was hard to take your eyes off her.”

I remember thinking, There’s no going back now. We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and patient. Soon it would be impossible to tell who was who.