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10. One day, Nina interrupts Eddie at his study. "Can you please check my breast, dear?" She indicates her left one. "I think I feel a lump."
Eddie is in the midst of a fascinating reading and he replies with a slight edge in his voice, "In a little while, Neen, after I finish here." and she leaves the room to get him a snack.
Later, he gives her breasts a feel and says "It's nothing, Neen; just what we call cystic mastitis. All women have a little. Don't worry."
Six months later she is worried. The lump is larger. She shows it to Eddie again and he is forced to admit it is something. He takes her to the hospital breast surgeon.
"It needs taking out and frozen section biopsy," the surgeon says.
Eddie will do the examination of the frozen section and he knows if it is positive for cancer the surgeon may go ahead with mastectomy that not only removes the breast but takes out all the lymph nodes under the same armpit and that also strips out the surrounding tissue, and is rather mutilating with side effect of chronic arm swelling on the same side. But the week before surgery, a pre-surgical check comes up with an x-ray finding that suggests the cancer has spread to the left lobe of Nina's liver. So when the frozen section biopsy is done and turns out positive for cancer, the surgeon decides not to go ahead because he suspects the liver has already got a metastasis. And a needle biopsy of the liver confirms this. So Nina faces imminent death from metastatic breast cancer.
Eddie realizes he made a big mistake that in its effect will kill his wife.
Nina says nothing but a tension develops. He knows she knows. Loving him so, she represses her feeling but the draw on her energy becomes much and she takes to lying around, not attending to wife duties.
One night he awakens beside her and notes her silent sobbing.
He cannot admit his guilt to her; it is too terrible. Being a pathologist he knows she has not more than a year and that the dying will be bad. The best treatment would have been anti-estrogen hormone but biopsy on tumor showed estrogen hormone receptor test negative, which makes the hormone treatments ineffective. Thus the only treatment is chemotherapy
Eddie thinks At least I shall be faithful to her these last months, I shall be by her side, I shall sit with her to the end.
He goes to Stan and requests short term psychoanalysis.
11. The Psychoanalysis of Wanting to Get Rid of a Wife
Stan at start carries out separate sessions. Nina comes Monday and Eddie, Tuesday. It is short-term because time presses.
His concentration is on Eddie. After one session he is finished interviewing Nina and sees Eddie every day and by Friday it is finished, and Saturday he schedules with Eddie alone.
Stan gives his analysis in one lump because he knows Eddie is knowledgeable in his method and will not react angrily.
"Eddie, you are solipsistic. Subliminally, you do not recognize the existence of your important others. You see us all as extensions of you and it is limiting your life. It originated because you were the last of 3 children and quite typically had an overindulgent mother.
Eddie grimaces in recognition. "In short, you are saying my mom spoiled me terribly."
"Yes, but many of your strong points come from that. It gave you an inner stability and confidence in yourself."
Eddie is quickly coming to realize the problem, which is what psychoanalysis is all about.
"But it made me blind to others who came offering me parts of themselves! Now I see! So many times in my life, others have come offering me good things and I rebuffed them because they seemed to insult my brilliance. For example, Miss Ali tried to teach me how to behave with women and I ended up raping her. Then Missy Prissy tried to show me culture and I ended up deserting her for Japan with no further contact. And the Japanese Ryo placed her body in my hands and I selfishly took, took, took, and gave nothing of myself but money. And now, Nina! Suddenly he stops, realizing the ghastly thing he'd done to Nina in return for all the great gifts she had given. And burying face in hands, in front of Stan he sits sobbing.
Stan is quiet, makes no motion to comfort Eddie, realizing that this is the analytic moment and needs self realization and catharsis. And he knows it is not necessary to explain. In the words of the Billie Holiday song, it is a Hush now, Don't explain moment.
After a minute, when Eddie gets himself together, Stan silently signals the session's end. As Eddie leaves, he says. "Monday all three - you, me and she."
On Monday, he arranges the seating triangularly with himself at apex and the 2 at the feet of the analytic triangle.
Stan, in a case like this, favors analysis whereby he reveals to the parties the reason for the disturbing behavior with the hope each will come to realize a solution without the analyst suggesting it. Already, from Saturday, he knows Eddie has come most of his way.
He starts, looking at Eddie. "As a physician, you are in a position of delivering death. It is a dangerous position for one who is not successfully psychoanalyzed. It is why Freud advised each psychoanalyst to complete his or her own analysis before starting out. I go a step further. I include all physicians whether they think they need an analysis or not. You got to be in control, first of all, of self. And to be in control you must not only know yourself - you must know the human animal; to take a point from Freud’s later apostate disciple, Jung, its racial and animal archetypes.
For example, you Eddie, years ago, killed your father with the morphine injection. You rationalized it as part of treatment for his terminal pulmonary edema and - technically - you are not guilty. But you were acting out what Jung has labeled the collective unconscious in an archetype where the new generation replaces its forbears, in particular the son replaces the Old Man of the tribe."
Eddie interrupts, "Yes, I recall, HG Wells has that in The Outline of History."
"Wells and Jung saw eye to eye there. I am not judging you harmed your dad. Given the data, you carried out his will. But that was not your impulse. Your impulse was to get rid of the weakened Old Man leader of your tribe in order to take over as boss." Stan stops for a transition.
"My point here is, we are all subject to the collective unconscious and it should make for serious-implications of impulses we get.
Eddie interrupts again. "My weakness was, I was unaware of carrying out the impulse. Even though its outcome may have been OK, what I did was done for the wrong reason and could harm as it did. Now I see! We should analyze why we do something before we do it. Especially if it is an important something like doing an act that may limit another person's life."
Nina speaks: "And now I see what Dr. Stan is getting at! Eddie impatiently put me off when I asked him about my breast months ago. One part of him - was responding to what you call collective unconscious archetype - in this case the man throwing away a used-up mate he no longer wants." Nina stops for a moment and grabs Eddie's left hand in her right. "Oh, Eddie forgive me but because I love you so much I am just explaining the realization Dr Stan's words gave me. You were under the control of what I could call a bad genii. It was not you my beloved husband that did that to me it was the archetype Old Man of the tribe throwing away an old mate. Now I understand, I don't blame you, my husband, my Eddie. Also I do not need to forgive because that was not you who did that."
Eddie is crying silently and Nina takes out her handkerchief.
Stan gets up from his chair. "OK, you two. Session over, analysis ended. You shall talk these things out yourselves."
End of Section. To next, click 16.(12-14) Dying of Breast Cancer
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