A Patient Analysis
The case history of patient M or Ron T. Beck
Background
I have had a good lunch, for I ate two soft-boiled eggs and fried potatoes and beans. I like beans, only they are dry. I do not like dry beans, because there is no life in them. Switzerland is sick because it is full of mountains. In Switzerland people are dry because there is no life in them. I have a dry maid because she does not feel. She thinks a lot because she has been dried out in another job that she had for a long time...I do not like dry people, and therefore I do not like business people.
The opening of the diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, 1919.
At the outset of his madness, Vaslav Nijinsky, arguably the most celebrated male dancer in the Western world at that time, recognised as the initiator of Modernism in classical dance, was twenty nine years old, and living in Switzerland. His diary, written over 6 and a half weeks from January 19 to March 4, 1919, became a unique written account (by an artist) of their own decent into madness.
2 years ago
Approximately 2 years ago I encountered a patient, who I will from now on refer to as M, with a rather strange dilemma. He was generally fine, and could operate more or less normally on a day to day basis. He had a job, a wife, two children, and functioned in his various roles as father, son and professional. He explained that in spite of this, a series of coincidences had led to him beginning to question whether he was in fact himself, or rather another character called Ron Beck. I have recorded here part of his initial dialogue:
I am not Ronbeck. A lot of people say I look like Ronbeck. But, I’m not. I might look like Ronbeck, or occasionally even sound like him, but that doesn’t mean I’m Ronbeck. I can’t be Ronbeck because I’m me… It’s like Ronbeck has become this wedge in my head. And I can’t escape. Sometimes when I’m in a dark mood and someone says, ‘hey there’s Ronbeck, I feel tempted to say I’m Ronbeck… Perhaps there is a little bit of Ronbeck in all of us.
I agreed to begin the process of analysis, provided he agreed to record each instance of the recurrence of this obsessional neurosis. I suspected that the source of his obsession may lie in something from his past, his childhood, his early work.
Case notes
Obsessional ideas usually appear to be without a motive and this causes problems in attributing sense to them as well as their status in the subjects mental life. The solution to obsessional neurosis may be effected by "bringing the obsessional ideas into temporal relationship with the patient's experiences."--i.e., finding out where and when they first occurred and what kinds of circumstances are apt to cause a recurrence.
Two months later
M arrived with a gift, a video he had made. He did not seem to be himself. He said he had seen some things, but he could not talk about them. I should watch alone. It had to do with me, with all of us. He mumbled something about the Cuban question. He said we could no longer meet here, it was unsafe. They knew. It was bigger than him and I, bigger than all of us. There was no escaping it, we were already in the thick of it. In future we should only meet in public places. When things had ‘cooled down’ he would tell me where. He shook my hand and left. We were only 5 minutes into the session. I wondered whether during this interaction I was in fact dealing with Ron Beck and not M.
18 months ago Sunday, May 23, 2004
Words alter, words add, words subtract…To refuse to call what took place in Abu Ghraib - and what has taken place elsewhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay - by its true name, torture, is as outrageous as the refusal to call the Rwandan genocide a genocide. Here is one of the definitions of torture contained in a convention to which the United States is a signatory: '' any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession. '' …And all covenants on torture specify that it includes treatment intended to humiliate the victim, like leaving prisoners naked in cells and corridors.
Wednesday
Whack! It’s a sex attack! She loves sex…but does not like her lover any more. In fact she attacked him in a rage-as you can see. She stays in Bloemfontein where she’s a domestic worker. It’s been almost two weeks since the two met last for…
General characteristics of obsessional neurosis
Obsessional neurosis is depicted as being based upon transformed self-reproaches which have emerged from repression and which always relate to some sexual act that was performed with pleasure in childhood.
Be(c)k
Over time M’s obsession with Ronbeck had developed. In fact, the fantasy of Ronbeck had achieved a lexical and semantic materiality, moving from internalised fantasy to mythical character. The first sign was the separation of the name into first name and surname, Ronbeck became Ron Beck. And then Ron T. Beck. An image was downloaded off the internet, and worked to lend the construction further authenticity. Ron soon had a career as a military agent, and was inserted into various situations. Via media such as face book and twitter he assumed an entirely plausible, if hyperreal existence. So much so, that at some point I began to doubt his fictionality myself. I began to think about the etmology of the word, ronbeck. I realised that it was a close enough anagram to ‘broken’, minus the c. The early manifestations of ronbeck suggested a kind of ‘break’ or lack in subjectivity, a series of subjective confessions that failed to cohere into any narrative or single point of view. The ego itself appeared to be cut up, edited together from other images and selves, post-produced. Finally the signifier itself was split up, into the proper name and the word ‘beck’, interestingly phonetically identical to the Afrikaans ‘mouth’, the additional ‘c’ conjoined with the more official sounding ‘t’, suggesting yet another undisclosed ‘signifier’ within the chain.
Water
M had arrived 30 minutes late. I had written this down. Next to this I noted that he wore a blue shirt. It was a Tuesday, an unusual day for us to meet. M related a dream he had had the previous Thursday. I noted this as well.
I was drowning. Two people came towards me in a motorboat. It was an icy ocean, colder, darker than anything I have ever known. There was a bay, jagged, claw-toothed outcrops of rock. In the distance snow capped mountains, like pyramids. I would surface for an instant, see the boat and be dragged down again into the freezing water. I knew the cold would be the thing that would eventually kill me.
This dream structure was a recurring one. I noted several elements I had come across before. The repeated motion of surfacing and sinking, the snow capped mountains obviously located in foreign destinations. The possibility of rescue, an approach by outsiders, who never intervene, but remain observers of his plight. There was always this amazing rhythm to the images, the repeating sequence symptomatic of M’s desire for pattern: drowning, escape, arrival, drowning, escape, arrival. I noted that he sat to a little to the left.
Roniger 885
Ron Trevor Agencies, Ronaasen DA P, Ronald Davids Arbeids Dienste, Ronald Dr, Ronaldson John, Ronan A, Ronan JM, Ronander OR, Ronartick W, Ronbeck M, Ronbeck PJ, Rondawel Kaolien BPK.
Solution to the Rat Man
Rats were given a symbolic meaning by the obsessions. The Rat torture stirred up his suspended anal eroticism (due to a bout with worms) Rats also, due to the second of the three means of father identifications in this case, became associated with money (German: "Ratten" = rats; "Raten" = installments).
Cars, horses, planes, mountains
When asked about his childhood M refused to speak directly. He said that if you’d edited the character ET out of the film, it would just become a film about a lonely boy, with an imaginary friend. There were other films he looked at in the same way. If you watched anything carefully you could edit your own storyline from it, he continued. He saw the way that musical star Julie Andrews led the children in the family favourite, Sound of Music, as militaristic, not unlike the marching of the Nazi soldiers they would later flee from. He saw the late Western, Unforgiven, as an allegory for the tale of the four horsemen: the slow circling of the outsider, separated from the three insiders. When he watched action films or thrillers, he said the cars and the planes were the real protaganists. He said the narratives were driven along by the rhythms of their movement. He said I distrust landscapes, exactly because people project meaning onto nature. I distrust landscapes because I distrust the narratives of landscape.
18 June 2009
I received a hand-written note under my door. It was signed Bek. It requested a meeting on the library steps, 2 minutes before 12. I went, following his instructions to bring nothing with me. What followed was possibly the most bizarre encounter of my career as an analyst. It was not M who I met there, but Bek, in the flesh it seemed, as if I was the obsessional neurotic convinced of my own fantasy. He said only one thing to me, right there in the small square above the steps.
The twin towers were not destroyed by terrorists. They imploded themselves. It was suicide. He turned and disappeared into the crowd. Suddenly the buildings had seemed much taller.
Loaded
In one of our earliest sessions, M explained to me he felt that it was no longer necessary to make anything new, that there were already enough images out there to work with, that you could just download them off the internet. And the same was true for phrases and words, there was an entire stock of them already in circulation. Nothing could really emerge out of the present moment, nothing was ever immediate. He took this point further, and said to me, how did I know I was myself at every single moment which I acted, or talked or simply existed as myself. What was it that made me so sure of the co-ordinates of my position as analyst. He had said nothing further. We both waited uncomfortably for the session to end. I noted that he wore a red shirt, and moved during the session from one end of the couch to the other.
19 June 2009
I have had a good lunch, two boiled eggs, some feta cheese, no bread. The coffee I bought on the way to my studio was weak, too milky. I hate being put on hold when I make phonecalls. I often fight with librarians. My feet are cold, almost blue. Its that fucking water. I can’t get it out of my head. Why was wearing the blue shirt? Why then, why now. I watched the people jumping out of the towers. It was sort of sublime. I remember reading how Robespierre used to walk around Paris clenching and unclenching his fists during the reign of terror. I should finish what I started. Knitting is incredibly tedious, too careful. I hate blue. No, I’m sick of blue. I looked on the internet. They had covered their heads. The soldiers were always gesturing with their hands, like ringmasters. A thumbs up, a smile, a two-shot. There are days when I don’t recognise anyone. They all seem to know me, but I feel like I’ve never seen any of them before. Sometimes they join together, like two halves of the same face. The one man was wearing an orange shirt. I could never get the image out of my head.
