Therapy

that, but she wouldn’t mind if she did. She would mind if she knew I referred to her as my shrink, though. She doesn’t describe herself as a psychiatrist, you see, but as a cognitive behaviour therapist.
    I have a lot of therapy. On Mondays I see Roland for Physiotherapy, on Tuesdays I see Alexandra for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and on Fridays I have either aromatherapy or acupuncture. Wednesdays and Thursdays I’m usually in London, but then I see Amy, which is a sort of therapy too, I suppose.
     
    What’s the difference between a psychiatrist and a cognitive behaviour therapist? Well, as I understand it, a psychiatrist tries to uncover the hidden cause of your neurosis, whereas the cognitive behaviour therapist treats the symptoms that are making you miserable. For instance, you might suffer from claustrophobia in buses and trains, and a psychiatrist would try to discover some traumatic experience in your previous life that caused it. Say you were sexually assaulted as a child in a train when it went through a tunnel or something like that, by a man who was sitting next to you — say he interfered with you while it was dark in the compartment because of the tunnel and you were terrified and ashamed and didn’t dare accuse the man when the train came out of the tunnel and never even told your parents or anyone about it afterwards but suppressed the memory completely. Then if the psychiatrist could get you to remember that experience and see that it wasn’t your fault, you wouldn’t suffer from the claustrophobia any more. That’s the theory, anyway. The trouble is, as cognitive behaviour therapists point out, it can take for ever to discover the suppressed traumatic experience, even supposing there was one. Take Amy, for instance. She’s been in analysis for three years, and she sees her shrink every day , Monday to Friday, nine to nine-fifty every morning on her way to work. Imagine how much it’s costing her. I asked her once how she would know when she was cured. She said, “When I don’t feel the need to see Karl any more.” Karl is her shrink, Dr Karl Kiss. If you ask me, Karl is on to a good thing.
    So a cognitive behaviour therapist would probably give you a programme for conditioning yourself to travelling by public transport, like going round the Inner Circle on the Tube, travelling for just one stop the first time, then two, then three, and so on, in the off-peak time for starters, then in the rush hour, rewarding yourself each time you increased the length of your journey with some kind of treat, a drink or a meal or a new tie, whatever turns you on — and you’re so pleased with your own achievements and these little presents to yourself that you forget to be frightened and finally wake up to the fact that there is nothing to be frightened of. That’s the theory, anyway. Amy wasn’t impressed when I tried to explain it to her. She said, “But supposing one day you got raped on the Inner Circle?” She’s rather literal-minded, Amy.
    Mind you, people do get raped on the Inner Circle, these days. Even men.
    It was my GP who referred me to Alexandra. “She’s very good,” he assured me. “She’s very practical. Doesn’t waste time poking around in your unconscious, asking you about potty training, or whether you saw your parents having it off together, that sort of thing.” I was relieved to hear that. And Alexandra has certainly been a help. I mean the breathing exercises are quite effective, for about five minutes after I’ve done them. And I always feel calmer after I’ve seen her, for at least a couple of hours. She specializes in something called rational-emotive therapy, RET for short. The idea is to get the patient to see that his fears or phobias are based on an incorrect or unwarranted interpretation of the facts. In a way I know that already, but it helps to have Alexandra spell it out. There are times, though, when I hanker after a bit of old-fashioned Viennese analysis, when I almost envy Amy her daily Kiss. (The guy’s name is actually pronounced “Kish”, he’s Hungarian, but I prefer to call him “Kiss”.) The thing is, I wasn’t always unhappy. I can remember a time when I was happy. Reasonably content anyway. Or at least, a time when I didn’t think I was unhappy, which is perhaps the same thing as being happy. Or reasonably content. But somewhere, sometime, I lost it, the knack of just living, without being anxious and depressed. How? I Don’t