CREEK ROAD GANG
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Lessons in Psychology
A Papa and Eva Story
Kate Lydon
copyright 2009
Lessons in Psychology is one of a continuing series of stories by Kate Lydon about
weekend visits with her grandparents, whose shared hobby was arguing.
For prior stories in the series, see "Visiting Papa and Eva" from the September 2009 issue, "Melon, Coffee and Coke" from the October 2009 issue, and Riding in the Car with Papa and Eva from the December 2009 issue.
After I had
started graduate school in counseling psychology, Papa
surprised me during one visit by lugging a large box of books
into the kitchen where we were sitting with our evening coffee. "I
thought you may like to take my psychology books back with you when you
go. I don't use them anymore. I gave some away, but there are a lot
left."
"You have psychology books?" I asked.
"Of course I have psychology books!" Papa said. "Take them all, take none, or take what you want of them."
As I looked through the box, I was surprised to find first editions of some of the texts that were used in my classes, many classics in the psychoanalytic field, a set of Rorschach cards, and books on testing, intelligence, development. It was a treasure trove, and I wanted them all! "Thank you, Papa!" I said. "But why ever do you have so many books on psychology?"
"Why ever do I have so many books on psychology?" he echoed with surprise. "Because I was a psychologist!"
"I didn't know you were a psychologist!" I said.
"Didn't know I was a psychologist!" Papa exclaimed. "What did you think I did for a living?"
"When I was in high school, you worked for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare."
"That's right," Papa said.
"But Mum had never told us anything about you being a psychologist! She always said you were an English professor," I answered. "If I made a grammatical mistake, she'd say, 'I can't believe that you, the granddaughter of an English professor, would say something like that!'"
"Well, I was an English professor for ten years or so when she was little. I suppose that I didn't work as a psychologist while the family was still together. Hmmm. When your mother was born, I was teaching English at Canisius College in Buffalo. Me, who's never had any use for religion! Teaching at a Catholic college!" He shook his head. "I've always hated religion! But I began studying for a doctorate in those days. For over a year, our dining room table was covered with books and papers for my dissertation. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?"
"She did, but I thought your doctorate was in English," I said.
"Hell, no," Papa said. "I wanted to go into psychology, and I began to study at the University of Buffalo. They didn't like that at Canisius! 'Professor Carli,' they said, 'that's a radical place! You don't really want to go there!' They were right that I didn't want to study at Buffalo! I wanted to go to the University of Chicago, which was much more radical! That was the place to be! It was a hotbed of intellectual activity! But, here I was, a married man with a family, two young children, and I was earning a living by teaching at a Catholic college in Buffalo. I was stuck where I was. So I got my doctorate from the University of Buffalo. I used to get practice in administering tests by giving them to your mother and your uncle."
"I didn't know that," I said. "But when you left Canisius, you didn't become a psychologist then."
"No," Papa said. "I thought I'd open a rare books store in the Boston area, but I couldn't make a go of it and I had to look for something else. As a young man, I had wanted to go to Annapolis, but I was too short, so they wouldn't take me. After Pearl Harbor, I thought with such a demand for manpower, I'd surely get around the height requirement this time around. I tried to get a naval commission, but again, I wasn't tall enough. Instead I got a position with the U.S.O. I traveled around the country setting up U.S.O. centers. The whole family came and stayed a year in Indiana at the center I opened in Vincennes, and then they sent me to Brazil for a year. But after that I took a job at the Veterans Administration."
"What did you do there?" I asked.
"I did some testing, and I counseled soldiers who were returning from the war. Ha!" He chuckled, looked down, and folded this arms over his chest. "I applied my psychological knowledge!"
"Yes?" I prompted.
He adjusted his glasses. "Well, one time I was seeing a young fellow. He had been injured in the war and he was recovering, but they were worried about depression. They sent him to me late one afternoon. I had a nice little office, a window over my desk that looked out on the lawn, a comfortable chair opposite the desk for the patient to sit in. I invite the fellow to sit down, and I sit with my back to the desk. I begin the interview, pepper him with questions, but I can't get much from him. Very quiet boy, short answers, even keel no matter what we're talking about. But the strange thing about him was that all the time we're talking, he's holding a thumb up, you know, the way an artist holds a thumb up when he's doing a painting. The whole session, he's got that one thumb in the air. I 'm wondering, what does that mean to him? What's he trying to convey? Is he delusional? Is this a symbol of his unconscious? I'm baffled; I can't get a grasp of what's going on with him. Finally, our time's almost up, and I can't stand it any longer. It goes against all my training, but I just have to say something!
"'Why do you hold your thumb up like that?' I ask.
"'I'm blocking out the sun,' he says. 'It was in my eyes.'
"I turned and looked out the window at the setting sun, and I held up my thumb. He was right! A thumb was the perfect size to block out the sun! Damn fool that I was, I sat for an hour wondering what he meant with that thumb, and all I had to do was ask!"
"You know," Papa told me the next morning as we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee yet again, "I went into therapy myself once."
"Did you, Papa?" I asked.
"Oh, yes." He leaned back and closed his eyes to tell the story. "Back when you were in high school, I don't know if you remember it, but I had gall bladder surgery."
"That's when you stopped smoking, isn't it, Papa?"
"Yep, yep," Papa said. "I wasn't allowed to smoke in the hospital, and when I was finally discharged, I didn't start again. I thought it might help me. The thing is, before the gall bladder problem, I had never been sick a day in my life! Other people got sick, but I never even caught cold! Not a headache, not an upset stomach, nothing! And suddenly, I was in the hospital, feeling absolutely terrible, having surgery! Little by little, I got better, and I came home from the hospital, and I went back to work, but I wasn't the same person. I was depressed. I couldn't accept the idea that I too could get sick. It seemed to me that somehow I had become old, and it would be all downhill from there; I just couldn't get past it. So I ended up seeing an analyst. She had an excellent reputation, quite well known. We knew each other from professional associations we both belonged to. I made an appointment and I went to see her, week after week after week, but I couldn't shake it. I was still depressed.
"Finally, one session, she said to me, 'The problem is this: you're up against a brick wall, and you keep banging your head against that wall, as if you could knock it down. Your head hurts, and still you keep banging it. And you're going to keep banging your head against that brick wall until you finally accept that there's nothing you can do to knock it down.'"
"Did that help?" I asked.
"Hell, no! " Papa said. "I got so angry! I said to her, 'I come in every week, and you're not doing a damn thing to help me! You keep me coming back just for the money I pay you!'" He opened his eyes and tilted his head to the side. "That's what I said. Me, a psychologist; I told her she was keeping me in treatment just for the money!"
"How did she react?" I asked.
"She said to me, well, she always called me by my last name," Papa said. "She said to me, 'Carli, there's not enough money in the whole wide world to get me to keep seeing a mean son of a bitch like you for one minute more than you need it!'" He shook his head and laughed. "'A mean son of a bitch,' she called me, and at that point, I turned a corner. I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel!"
"You have psychology books?" I asked.
"Of course I have psychology books!" Papa said. "Take them all, take none, or take what you want of them."
As I looked through the box, I was surprised to find first editions of some of the texts that were used in my classes, many classics in the psychoanalytic field, a set of Rorschach cards, and books on testing, intelligence, development. It was a treasure trove, and I wanted them all! "Thank you, Papa!" I said. "But why ever do you have so many books on psychology?"
"Why ever do I have so many books on psychology?" he echoed with surprise. "Because I was a psychologist!"
"I didn't know you were a psychologist!" I said.
"Didn't know I was a psychologist!" Papa exclaimed. "What did you think I did for a living?"
"When I was in high school, you worked for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare."
"That's right," Papa said.
"But Mum had never told us anything about you being a psychologist! She always said you were an English professor," I answered. "If I made a grammatical mistake, she'd say, 'I can't believe that you, the granddaughter of an English professor, would say something like that!'"
"Well, I was an English professor for ten years or so when she was little. I suppose that I didn't work as a psychologist while the family was still together. Hmmm. When your mother was born, I was teaching English at Canisius College in Buffalo. Me, who's never had any use for religion! Teaching at a Catholic college!" He shook his head. "I've always hated religion! But I began studying for a doctorate in those days. For over a year, our dining room table was covered with books and papers for my dissertation. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?"
"She did, but I thought your doctorate was in English," I said.
"Hell, no," Papa said. "I wanted to go into psychology, and I began to study at the University of Buffalo. They didn't like that at Canisius! 'Professor Carli,' they said, 'that's a radical place! You don't really want to go there!' They were right that I didn't want to study at Buffalo! I wanted to go to the University of Chicago, which was much more radical! That was the place to be! It was a hotbed of intellectual activity! But, here I was, a married man with a family, two young children, and I was earning a living by teaching at a Catholic college in Buffalo. I was stuck where I was. So I got my doctorate from the University of Buffalo. I used to get practice in administering tests by giving them to your mother and your uncle."
"I didn't know that," I said. "But when you left Canisius, you didn't become a psychologist then."
"No," Papa said. "I thought I'd open a rare books store in the Boston area, but I couldn't make a go of it and I had to look for something else. As a young man, I had wanted to go to Annapolis, but I was too short, so they wouldn't take me. After Pearl Harbor, I thought with such a demand for manpower, I'd surely get around the height requirement this time around. I tried to get a naval commission, but again, I wasn't tall enough. Instead I got a position with the U.S.O. I traveled around the country setting up U.S.O. centers. The whole family came and stayed a year in Indiana at the center I opened in Vincennes, and then they sent me to Brazil for a year. But after that I took a job at the Veterans Administration."
"What did you do there?" I asked.
"I did some testing, and I counseled soldiers who were returning from the war. Ha!" He chuckled, looked down, and folded this arms over his chest. "I applied my psychological knowledge!"
"Yes?" I prompted.
He adjusted his glasses. "Well, one time I was seeing a young fellow. He had been injured in the war and he was recovering, but they were worried about depression. They sent him to me late one afternoon. I had a nice little office, a window over my desk that looked out on the lawn, a comfortable chair opposite the desk for the patient to sit in. I invite the fellow to sit down, and I sit with my back to the desk. I begin the interview, pepper him with questions, but I can't get much from him. Very quiet boy, short answers, even keel no matter what we're talking about. But the strange thing about him was that all the time we're talking, he's holding a thumb up, you know, the way an artist holds a thumb up when he's doing a painting. The whole session, he's got that one thumb in the air. I 'm wondering, what does that mean to him? What's he trying to convey? Is he delusional? Is this a symbol of his unconscious? I'm baffled; I can't get a grasp of what's going on with him. Finally, our time's almost up, and I can't stand it any longer. It goes against all my training, but I just have to say something!
"'Why do you hold your thumb up like that?' I ask.
"'I'm blocking out the sun,' he says. 'It was in my eyes.'
"I turned and looked out the window at the setting sun, and I held up my thumb. He was right! A thumb was the perfect size to block out the sun! Damn fool that I was, I sat for an hour wondering what he meant with that thumb, and all I had to do was ask!"
"You know," Papa told me the next morning as we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee yet again, "I went into therapy myself once."
"Did you, Papa?" I asked.
"Oh, yes." He leaned back and closed his eyes to tell the story. "Back when you were in high school, I don't know if you remember it, but I had gall bladder surgery."
"That's when you stopped smoking, isn't it, Papa?"
"Yep, yep," Papa said. "I wasn't allowed to smoke in the hospital, and when I was finally discharged, I didn't start again. I thought it might help me. The thing is, before the gall bladder problem, I had never been sick a day in my life! Other people got sick, but I never even caught cold! Not a headache, not an upset stomach, nothing! And suddenly, I was in the hospital, feeling absolutely terrible, having surgery! Little by little, I got better, and I came home from the hospital, and I went back to work, but I wasn't the same person. I was depressed. I couldn't accept the idea that I too could get sick. It seemed to me that somehow I had become old, and it would be all downhill from there; I just couldn't get past it. So I ended up seeing an analyst. She had an excellent reputation, quite well known. We knew each other from professional associations we both belonged to. I made an appointment and I went to see her, week after week after week, but I couldn't shake it. I was still depressed.
"Finally, one session, she said to me, 'The problem is this: you're up against a brick wall, and you keep banging your head against that wall, as if you could knock it down. Your head hurts, and still you keep banging it. And you're going to keep banging your head against that brick wall until you finally accept that there's nothing you can do to knock it down.'"
"Did that help?" I asked.
"Hell, no! " Papa said. "I got so angry! I said to her, 'I come in every week, and you're not doing a damn thing to help me! You keep me coming back just for the money I pay you!'" He opened his eyes and tilted his head to the side. "That's what I said. Me, a psychologist; I told her she was keeping me in treatment just for the money!"
"How did she react?" I asked.
"She said to me, well, she always called me by my last name," Papa said. "She said to me, 'Carli, there's not enough money in the whole wide world to get me to keep seeing a mean son of a bitch like you for one minute more than you need it!'" He shook his head and laughed. "'A mean son of a bitch,' she called me, and at that point, I turned a corner. I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel!"
* * *
Biographical Note:
Kate Lydon is a storyteller, writer and editor who also hires out as an
adjunct professor. She grew up along the rocky coast of Massachusetts,
but has lived most of her life amid the trees of Pennsylvania.
Daughter of a man who made the best donuts in the world and a woman who
acted out Macbeth and read poetry for her children, Kate is the oldest
of five, and thus is prone to giving advice. However, her husband, two
children, two cats and one dog, independent souls all, pay scant
attention, and so she writes. She is the author of the novel Off Center. She is currently working on another novel, as well as a book of stories about Papa and Eva. See also Kate's story "You Don't Mean It, Dear!" in the November 2009 issue.
