Adolescent Psychoanalysis

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Psycho-Analysts Ask—Conjunction Junction What’s Your Function?

Chapter 10

Part 2

 

Next session, one day later. Mary is obsessed, to put it mildly, with Ed. She is sounding more and more manic. Further, she is massively confused about most everything and everybody. This confusion is not seen at all by her. Everything she says, contradictions, confusions, etc, are not that to her. Everything she says is clear to her. As before, she is telling me her ‘truth’, which changes rapidly, which I keep trying to investigate, with questionable success. However, she keeps on talking (free associations) with little or no censorship, is attached to me, and has a very good sense of humor.

“He drives me crazy.” She said.

“Perhaps what your mom says is that we can have another member of the Borderline club. So you have you, your mom, and Ed.” I said

“Ed is not borderline.” She said.

“What is he? Just crazy?” I laughed.

“He’s very hard headed.” She said.

“So that’s really not a mental health diagnosis.” I said.

“That’s just Ed. (pause) I’m real hard-headed too. That’s the problem, we’re both really hard-headed” she said.

“Well that’s even worse, you’re a hard-headed borderline” I said. She laughs. “ Just out of curiosity, your mother the diagnostician, what does she mean by borderline?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I just try to ignore. She talks to Jessica about it. I just think ‘God, what’s Ed doing.’” She said.

“So your mom and the family just talking about how you are a borderline and you keep talking ‘Hard-headed Ed?’” I asked.

“Sometimes. Even in XXX residential treatment program with Mike, they would talk about borderline stuff and then they would say ‘isn’t that right Mary?’ and I’m just like ‘yeah’. They talk on and on and I’m like day-dreaming off. Eventually they be like ‘do you understand?’ I say yeah. ‘Can you explain a little bit?’ and I pick out a few words I picked up in the conversation and try to make some sense out of it” She said.

“So he was basically talking to himself?” I asked.

“I’m not sure if my mom was listening at all. I’ll have to asked her about it.” She said.

I laughed. “I always confuse people. Mike is the the liar who is slow and stupid and the ‘I want to keep you here until you’re 18 guy.” I said.

“Slow and dumb” she said.

I laughingly apologize. “A liar who’s slow and dumb, not stupid, who wants to keep people there until they’re 18”. I said.

“Yeah.” She said.

“Did you ever ask your mother for a diagnosis?” I ask laughing.

“For what? For me?” She asked.

“No, for Mike.” I said.

“No. But my aunt came for my first visit and she met him and he toured us around. When we were done, she said ‘he’s really slow.’ So they must think he’s really slow then.” She said.

“The psychiatrist was the …” I say.

She continues the sentence “the ADHD guy. He’s ADHD and he diagnosed half the school as ADHD. He made me nervous so I’d move around in his office all the time. He’d be like ‘Is your leg shaking? You might have ADHD.’ I’m not joking you. Every time I went into his office, he would diagnose me with ADHD. It’s like he would diagnose so many people with ADHD, that he would forget that he had already diagnosed me with ADHD. Every time I went into his office, I would be twiddling my thumbs, or shaking my legs and he would be like ‘you’re twiddling your thumbs, you’re shaking your legs. You might have ADHD.’ And I’d walk around that room. ‘Do you think you might have ADHD?’ Everytime I’d walk into his room.” She ex-plained.

“Had he already put you on medication?” I asked.

“Yeah. I think he forgot. He put me on Strattera. And then he’d be like “How’s Strattera doing?’ I forgot why he took me off of it. And then I’d come in and walk around and he was say ‘do you think you have ADHD?’ I’d say, yeah you put me on Strattera. He wanted to put me on Ritalin and my mom said no. He wanted to put me on Adderall and my mom said no. “ She said.

“Maybe for those people you don’t really give a diagnosis, unless it’s slow, lying.” I said.

“dumb” she interrupts.

“I thought slow and dumb went together, but not necessarily. “ I said.

Pause.

“Well yeah. He had me on his MySpace page. I don’t know if he took me off be-cause I took him off. He probably took me off too. I was trying to make a joke out of it, I emailed him and said ‘please call me, I promise I won’t hang up on you.” She said.

“And I said lol.” She said.

“’I don’t find any humor in that.’ He (Ed) said.” She said.

“I was like dude, what’s wrong with you?” She said.

“’Nothing. You’re just going to regret what you said later.’ he said.” She said.

He emailed it to me. MySpace email.” She said.

“Can you still MySpace email if you’re not on the friend’s page?” I asked.

“I didn’t take him off my friends list. I just took him off my top 8. He’s still on my 500 list of friends.” She said.

“If you’re on the top 8 list, what privileges do you get that are different than the other 500?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just letting people know that these are my best-friends. And then being #1 is a big deal. I’m his #1. He’s the only one on all of MySpace that has me as his #1, except for my mom. She has made it but she never went on it again.” She said.

“Is she on your top 8?” I asked.

“No” She said.

“Is she on your list of 500?” I asked.

“yeah. She’s on the 500. Who is? My cousin, Ed, was, my best friend Alicia who went to XXXX residential treatment, my friend Ashley, etc. (all friends from XXXX residential treatment) and Trisha who I’ve known since 11 years old” She said.

“So everyone is from XXXXX residential treatment. What happened to Trisha?” I asked.

end