PSYCHOTHERAPY BEYOND THE FRINGE, continued
Living Loving
Frank was a brilliant man of about forty. He found Felicity on his own. See, he was brilliant. He came in to see Felicity for a personal problem about which he was concerned. When he appeared, the man Felicity met was short, soft-spoken, and very gentle. His main concern seemed to be that he was worried about hurting his wife’s feelings when she found out about his current ‘affair’. He had been seeing this other lady for a couple of years, and now he wanted to spend more time with her, including staying over-night. He was worried that his wife might not understand his wishes in this and that she might divorce him or, worse, feel hurt.
Now to the untutored ear, including Felicity’s, this problem might seem a trifle strange. Of course his wife would feel hurt, probably angry, and she might very well leave him. After all, the marriage agreement or promise usually includes some commitment such as ‘… forsaking all others, cling only to her/him as long as you both live’. Did he really think that he could induce his wife to be willing to share him, half and half, with another woman? Thankfully, Frank was a patient man so he took the time to explain the matter to Felicity.
You see, he was not interested in the other woman sexually. For that matter, he was not interested in his wife sexually. Indeed, as his wife knew, it had been such a long time, years in fact, since he had experienced an erection or an ejaculation that his penis had shrunk, atrophied perhaps, to a mere fraction of its former flaccid size. All he wanted to do was to love and to look after both his wife and his other lady.
Felicity would never be able to do justice to the warmth and tenderness of Frank’s words and manner. Affection permeated his whole being as he rhapsodized about his gentle, loving feelings for these two women. His words were sheer poetry, spoken softly and with caressing sibilants throughout. Felicity could feel himself being transported to a world of feeling far removed from the crass and sensory experiences of sex. Felicity could almost grasp that sexual arousal would feel far too impassioned and worldly in the heady mystical elevation, beyond the flesh, that Frank’s spirit had achieved.
Felicity could almost grasp it, but not quite. Felicity’s earthy mind strained to understand what his body could not. He remembered occasions with other patients who were wrestling with changes in their sexual lives and feelings during which, as sexual drive increased the expression of affection decreased. And as they became more affectionate their sexual drives seemed to decrease. Certainly, those people with the strongest sexual drives or preoccupations, namely homosexuals, usually had a hard time expressing affectionate feelings, and tended to have ‘contract sex’ — that is, they would agree to have sexual contact instead of courting one another. But Frank seemed to be the extreme case of non-sexualized affectionateness. Felicity could see no way to understand or help Frank with his dilemma.
Felicity told Frank he did not know what to say or how to help, although he thought he could almost empathize with Frank’s situation. Frank thanked Felicity for his help, saying that all he had wanted was a listening ear so he could think the whole problem out for himself. There was nothing more he wanted. This surprised Felicity. But he expressed his gratitude to Frank for his acceptance of Felicity’s inability to help him. Felicity never had much sensitivity so that he was not even aware that he had just insulted, and perhaps hurt, a gentle and sensitive human being.
Was there something Felicity should have done about Frank’s feelings or his life circumstances? Was there some psychopathology present which Felicity should have tried to treat? The court of last judgement in this is the client. He did not want to change.
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