Factoring Humanity

Heather was quiet.

Gurdjieff lowered her voice. “It’s more common than you think,” she said. “It happened to me, too.”

“Really?”

The therapist nodded. “From when I was six or so until when I was fourteen. Not every night, but often.”

“That’s — that’s terrible. I’m so sorry for you.”

Gurdjieff held up her left hand. “Don’t feel sorry for me — or for yourself. We have to take strength from this.”

“What did you do?”

“It’s too bad your father is dead; you can’t confront him. That’s the best thing, you know: confronting your abuser. It’s enormously empowering. It’s not for everyone, of course. Some women are afraid to do it, afraid that they will end up being disinherited, or cut off from the rest of their family. But when it works, it’s terrific.”

“Oh?” said Heather. “You’ve had other patients go through this?”

“Many.”

Heather wasn’t sure how hard to push it. “Anyone recently?”

“Well, I can’t really talk about other patients…”

“Of course not. Of course not. Just in general terms, I mean. What happens? An average case.”

“Well, one of my patients did confront her abuser just last week.”

Heather felt her heart begin to race. She tried to be very careful. “Did it help him?”

“Her, actually. Yes.”

“In what way? I mean, is she free of whatever was bothering her?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know? I mean, how can you tell it made a difference?”

“Well, this woman — I guess it won’t hurt to tell you she had an eating disorder. That’s common in cases like this; the other common symptom is trouble sleeping, like what you’re having. Anyway she was bulimic — but she hasn’t had to purge since then. See, what she really wanted to purge, what she really wanted to get out of her system, is out now.”

“But I don’t think I was abused. Was she like me, unsure?”

“At first, yes. It was only later that it all came out. It’ll come out for you, too. We’ll find the truth and we’ll face it together.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think this happened. And — and — I mean, come on. Incest — sexual abuse. That’s the stuff of tabloids, no? I mean, it’s practically a cliché.”

“You’re so wrong, it’s staggering,” said Gurdjieff sharply “And it’s not just you — it’s society in general. You know, in the nineteen-eighties, when we really started talking about sexual abuse and incest, the topic did get a great deal of exposure. And for people like me — people who had been abused — it was a breath of fresh air. We weren’t a dirty little secret anymore; the horrible things that had been done to us were out in the open, and we finally understood that it wasn’t our fault. But it’s an unpleasant truth, and people like you — people who saw their neighbors and their fathers and their churches in a whole new light — were uncomfortable with it. You liked it better when it was hidden away, something you didn’t have to deal with. You want to force it into the background, marginalize it, remove it from the agenda, prevent it from being discussed.”

Heather thought about this. Incest, pedophilia, child abuse — they were all things that might naturally come up in psychology classes. But how often did she mention them? A passing reference here, a brief aside there — and then moving on quickly before it got too unpleasant, to Maslow’s drive for self-actualization, to Adler’s introverts and extroverts, to Skinner’s operant conditioning. “Perhaps,” she said.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Gurdjieff, apparently willing to concede a little if Heather was also willing to do so. “Maybe nothing did happen in your past — but why don’t we find out for sure?”

“But I don’t remember any abuse.”

“Surely you have some anger toward your father?”

Heather felt it hitting home again. “Of course. But there’s no way he could have done anything to me.”

“It’s natural that you don’t remember it,” said Gurdjieff. “Almost no one does. But it’s there, hidden beneath the surface. Repressed.” She paused again. “You know, my own memories weren’t repressed — for whatever reason, they weren’t. But my sister Daphne — she’s two years younger than me — hers were repressed. I tried to talk about this with her a dozen times, and she said I was nuts — and then one day out of the blue, when we were both in our twenties, she phoned me. It had come back to her — at last the memories, which she’d suppressed for fifteen years, had come back. We confronted our father together.” A pause. “As I said, it’s too bad you can’t confront your father. But you will need to deal with this, to get it out into the open. Eulogies are one way.”

“Eulogies?”

“You write out what you would have said to your father had you confronted him while he was still alive. Then you present it at his graveside.” Gurdjieff held up a hand, as if she realized how macabre this sounded. “Don’t worry — we’d do it during the daytime. It’s a wonderful way to bring closure.”

“I’m not sure,” said Heather. “I’m not sure about any of this.”

“Of course you’re not. That’s perfectly normal. But, trust me, I’ve seen lots of cases like yours. Most women have been abused, you know.”