Therapist

No.

Phallic and vaginal imagery in dreams generally is symbolic of a desire to eat a pancake. A lot of people make the mistake of assuming that a penis is in some way sexual. It is not. A vagina? Even less sexual than a penis. A vagina is just the female equivalent of the male pocket. It is a place to keep car keys and receipts.

Feeling trembly is totally normal when you are being shaken as violently as I am shaking you at the moment. It is a concern that you have only just noticed.

Tell me, what are your relationships with authority figures like?

Caroline

Sorry about that.

I don't know what happened. I think I went to sleep for a bit and had a dream.

For a while, I was in a forest made of phallus-shaped trees, and I was dressed up as a gigantic vagina. I felt panicked and I was crying. It was all quite exciting. I still feel a bit trembly.

Do you think this dream might possibly be symbolic of something?

Therapist

Caroline?

Therapist

This is a very bland original sexual encounter.

I was ritually abused by an older boy at school wearing a nun's wimple.

This is what you might have said if you were more interesting or less boring. I find your case exceptionally mediocre, completely middle of the road and uninspiring. I think you are insufferably ordinary. I hate you caroline. You mean nothing to me. I treat you only to earn a living and to have something to laugh about after we have finished. You are nothing to me.

How do you feel about this? This is therapy? Is this therapy?

Caroline

I started late, I think.

I was always more focussed on good grades, friends, etc., than boys. I didn't have a boyfriend or anything, all through school. It didn't really interest me.

I think the first time I had an 'eroticised thought', I was nineteen. I had gone to the cinema with a boy from my college. I didn't really think too much about it, though. I mean, I didn't think we were going on a date or anything.

Well, after the cinema, instead of driving me home, we parked in a carpark, and he kissed me, and I kissed him back, and then we started having sex.

It felt nice, and I remember thinking, 'Oh.'

Therapist

I presume you mean that you would like to eat a cheeseburger. I'm not hungry thank you - I am a therapist.

I couldn't help but notice that during that last sentence of yours you casually held up a card to me that says "I want to fuck you" on it. This is unhealthy caroline.

Also when you were talking about burgers you took your top off.

You need to learn to vocalise your desires Caroline otherwise you will develop an anal/anal/aural/oral fixation. I think we need to to talk about your childhood in a bit of depth in order to work out when your dangerous erotic impulses started to manifest themselves.

Do you remember your first eroticised thought?

Caroline

Sorry? What did you say? I missed that ...

I was thinking about my mother. I was thinking about the times she used to take me shopping as a little girl. We would walk down the street together, holding hands.

I feel strange. I'm hungry. How long is this session, anyway? Are we almost done? Would you like to get something to eat with me afterwards? I feel like a cheeseburger.

Therapist

Feeling disgusted by objects around the house is a totally normal thing Caroline. Let me explain to you.

You are yourself, no one else, completely unique and immovable. There is nothing about you that is not personal to you and there is nothing about you that belongs to anyone else. You are yourself. However at the same time you are everyone else. You are part of the collective experience of all of us. You are nothing, totally lost and alone. These sexualised objects represent your cosmic labia; flapping against the power of the expectations of eroticism. Your fallopian tubes are full of the promise of unfulfilled conjecture, bursting with the fecund power of your female power.

In order to overcome the problems which you face, you must realise that your partner is dead. You must learn to eroticise the death of another in order to deal with your problems.

On the other hand I was lying to you. Frank is not dead, neither is Fred, nor is Terry or for that matter any of your other imaginary boyfriends. When did you become a liar Caroline?

Caroline

I don't know how to feel about that. I just keep thinking of all those things he did -- the things he used when he did them -- and I feel sick. I feel like he's tainted our house. I can't use the turkey baster now, for instance. I'm down to about three pairs of socks which I've had to hide under the mattress. I've thrown away six packets of dental floss. There is only one chair in the living room that I still feel comfortable sitting on.

I still love him, of course, but I feel so sad too. I feel like our relationship can't continue if he carries on this way.

Wait a minute, did you just say he was dead?

Therapist

Caroline, seeing Frank as a giant Phallus is totally normal, that is totally normal. Don't worry about seeing Frank as a phallus. Frank told me that you hadn't been speaking this past week. I think that has something to do with me. I tried to address the problem of Frank's compulsive masturbation by keeping him inside of my cupboard for the whole week. He has had no food, no drink and no human contact for a week. My treatment has been a success however, Frank no longer compusively self stimulates. Frank is dead Caroline. How does that make you feel?

Caroline

I don't think I'd feel comfortable to both come together.

We haven't spoken in over a week, did he tell you that?

I know: we're living in the same house and everything, but since we've started these sessions ... I don't know. It feels like we're complete strangers.

Sometimes I go into the kitchen or something, and he's in there making a cup of tea, and I don't know who he is. I can't see him as 'Frank' anymore. I just see a giant phallus standing there. A giant phallus making a cup of tea.

I just wanted to be open with him; to know the truth.

Now I'm not sure if I feel comfortable with the things I've found out.