I dimmed the lights. He blinked his relief, standing there and waiting for me to confide in him.
Third gambit, now.
I reached into the desk recess and drew out the typed notes. I held them out to him.
“Here, Mr. Caldwell—I’m going to ask you a small favor before we go any further. Will you please verify the accuracy of these statements?”
He took the cards and I watched them disappear in the red folds of his huge hands. I watched him read, watched his eyes dilate, watched the eyebrows as they tried to climb his forehead and hide in his hair.
“What the—where the devil did you get all this dope?”
Smile. Let it hit him, let it sink in. Wait until he’s sold.
“I could make it sound mysterious, Mr. Caldwell, but the whole thing is really quite simple. I have a trained research staff, you know. The moment your name was announced, they went to work in the files. Naturally, a man in your position has left his mark in many places: newspapers, trade publications, directories. Our references yielded this preliminary data. Undoubtedly a more comprehensive checkup would afford us much more information on your background and position.
“Now the reason for all this is obvious to you, Mr. Cald-well. I am a professional psychological consultant, and as such I am a businessman. I conduct my affairs on a business basis, just as you do. Naturally, it is helpful for me to know as much as possible about a client before I see him, just as you try to find out what you can about a prospect. I’m sure that you also have your sources, Mr. Caldwell.”
Watch him grin. He isn’t frightened now. He thinks you’re taking him into your confidence. He’s flattered. You wouldn’t pull any tricks on him. He can see that because you’ve sized him up as an equal. In a word, the poor fish is hooked.
“I might as well be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Caldwell. Our relationship to come will demand such frankness, mutual frankness. Don’t you agree?”
He nodded. I wanted to keep him nodding from now on.
Build up a dependency. The patient and analyst relationship. Keep it in that stage. Flatter him with questions, inquire after every detail, endlessly. Everyone wants to talk about himself. That’s Y-O-U, the whole secret of it. Complete catharsis.
“And now, Mr. Caldwell, let’s talk about you and your problems. You have a problem, don’t you, Mr. Caldwell?”
He had a problem, all right. And now, he was ready to tell me. I listened, but I thought of other things. Problems. They all have problems. Every one is different, and they’re all the same. Always a common denominator—the basic fear.
The rabbity little man, Mason, who came on Thursday afternoons. He was afraid of his homosexuality. Mrs. Finch, Mondays and Fridays by appointment in her home, feared what happened to her when she tried stopping or cutting down on her dosage of luminol. Maxwell Solomon, very confidential (“apt to call you anytime I need you”), attempted to conceal in pyrophobia his dread of divine retribution for saving himself rather than his wife and child in the crash of their private plane. Miss Eudalie Vinyer was afraid of me because I was all men and all men were her father and at thirteen she had been too young to understand what her father was doing with that colored woman. Baker feared his boss, Klotscher feared God, Mrs. Annixter feared cancer, which was a polite term for syphilis, which was a polite term for intercourse, which was a polite term for the Sin Against the Holy Ghost, which was a polite term for the fact that she really enjoyed it. By a strange coincidence, Mr. Annixter was a patient too, and he feared—Mrs. Annixter.
It was all very simple, and all very complicated. Some of them knew and some of them didn’t know what was wrong. Some of them could be told and some of them didn’t want to be told. Some of them needed a doctor, some a psychiatrist, some a lawyer, some a priest, some an executioner. But all of them needed me. They needed an audience, a father confessor, a child, a mother, a lover, to listen and understand and flatter and cajole and condone.
They needed Y-O-U.
Detail. Endless detail. They wanted to tell everything. They wanted every test I could give them—coordination, color determination, mnemonics, word-association and free-fantasy sessions, work with charts, slides, ink blots and anything else I could think up. I would send them to a pal of ours, Dr. Sylvestro, for a complete preliminary physical checkup, and they loved that too.
That was the answer. They feared and they wanted love. Love in the form of interest, attention, an affirmation of their own self-importance. Y-O-U gave it to them. For Y-O-U, with all the metaphysical and practical psychology hokum boiled away, was simply an extension of the old bromides, “Know thyself” and “Be yourself.” The whole routine was built up to flatter the individual, make him think about himself. There were touches of the “charm school” and “expand your personality” routines here: we sent people to beauty parlors and plastic surgeons and dress designers and dancing schools. But in the end, we took them—to the cleaners.
It was fascinating to watch the spectacle. There was only one difficulty: I kept wanting to go outside and vomit.
Now here was Mr. Caldwell and his problem. Edgar Clinton Caldwell, 54. Wealthy. A “successful businessman.” A typical example of middle-class respectability and sublimated anal eroticism.
Doctor Sylvestro had referred him to me. “Nerves.” Also hemorrhoids and constipation.
“But there are some things you can’t even tell a doctor—you understand that, Roberts. Like the string. Sounds silly, and I wouldn’t even mention it to Mrs. Caldwell. But I save string. Every bit. I have boxes full of it down in the office. In the safe. It’s just a habit. I know it’s nothing serious. But why do I do such a thing?”
I knew why. But I didn’t tell him. I let him do the talking during this first session and at the next. I booked him for twice a week and let him gabble for a while before I took over. First with a routine probing. Then with a gradual, almost imperceptible hypnotic technique. That’s something I was picking up from Professor Hermann. I suspected he used it on Miss Bauer and that he’d always tried it with me.
It worked with Caldwell. He grew to depend on our sittings. And I kept taking notes. Notes about him. Notes about his business dealings. I wasn’t quite sure what angle we’d use for the payoff yet. That I’d leave to the Professor.
When I thought I had enough, I took my material to him and asked his opinion.
Professor Hermann read, listened, twirled his monocle. Then:
“Get him to retire. Liquidate his holdings. We’ll need cash for this.”
“Retire? But he loves his business—I can’t take that away from him. Oh, I can probably force the issue, but the results will be bad. He’ll just go to pieces. Inside of six months, he’ll be a wreck.”
“And we’ll be rolling in his money.” The bald head bobbed, the monocle twirled. “Get him to retire.”
So I went back to Caldwell and approached the subject. He listened, then exploded.
“But I don’t want to retire, man! It isn’t that I don’t place any faith in you, Roberts. You know better than that. But here I am, in the prime of life—with a fine position—I own better than fifteen percent of the airline stock. I’ve worked years to get where I am, and now you advise me to get out. Why?”
“Because you’re not happy.”
“Damn it, man, who says I’m not happy? I’ve got a net worth of upwards of two hundred thousand, and no debts. Got a house here in town and one at the beach. Marge and I get along great. The sex part doesn’t bother me. You know, I told you about Eve—”
“You’re not happy.”
“Don’t keep saying that! Just because of those goddamn piles and a few dreams—”