Enough About Love

ANNA AND THOMAS

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ANNA HAS NEVER KEPT COUNT of her sessions with Le Gall, but Le Gall writes the number 1,000 at the top of the page. That’s a lot. You could have bought yourself a nice Porsche with some optional extras, Yves calculated. He is wrong: Thomas has paid off a small house in an Italian village near La Spezia.

Anna knows what she wants to talk about, Simon’s eyesight problem. The thought that her brother could one day go blind terrifies her. She talks about Simon’s wife, his children. Eventually, she confesses the fear she would feel if the man she loved could no longer capture her with his gaze, if she disappeared from his view, if that mirror she so needs were broken. The selfishness of this narcissism fills her with shame.

She also wants to talk about a Freudian slip she made the day before. She was out for a walk with Karl and Lea, and Yves was with them, they were all going out for lunch together for the first time. When she is with her children, Yves is never a lover, but a “friend.” Anna has not yet resolved to admit the position he holds in her life, Yves often doubts she ever will. She refrains from any affectionate gestures, any attentiveness. Karl ran on ahead, jumping from one paving stone to another, Lea slipped between the two of them, took one of their hands each and started to swing, screeching happily. The spontaneous affection Lea always shows for Yves unsettles Anna every time: her daughter could be consenting to this unavowed, unacknowledged union, granting her mother’s lover a role. Lea suddenly abandoned them to go look in a toy store window.

“We’re late and we’re hungry,” Anna scolded her. “Come on, Nora, hurry up!” Nora? Anna looked away, disconcerted, then pulled herself together: “Quickly, Lea!”

Nora. She cannot get over it. She called her daughter by her younger sister’s name, she was back in her childhood, in the days when she went for walks with her father, her mother, her sister, and her brothers. Lea did not appear to notice and hurried up.

Anna thought about this slip of the tongue all evening. She found an explanation, has already given it to Yves, and now produces it for Le Gall.

“I just can’t be a mother when I’m with Yves.”

“Mmm. But it wasn’t Yves you were talking to.”

“No.”

“It was to Lea, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“So,” he suggests, “it could also be that in front of Lea and Karl, you can’t be a woman. You won’t let yourself.”

Anna stays silent. Le Gall has just inverted her view of the scene, giving the slip the exact opposite meaning. She feels he has pinpointed it.

“Maybe I’m trying to protect them.”

“Or to protect yourself.”

Le Gall rarely intervenes. He does it every time he sees another plausible and equally productive association. He tries to banish the word “because” from his vocabulary. It is not up to him to determine what is cause and what is effect. He limits himself merely to stating facts. Sometimes, all he does is reiterate what has been said. During one session, she blurted, “If I stay with Yves, I’ll have the life I’m dreaming of.”

Thomas repeated this: “Yes. The life you’re dreaming of. You’re dreaming.”

“Stan made me a mother,” she told Le Gall, “Yves made me a woman.”

Le Gall calls this formulization: a technique for turning life into aphorisms, for fixing it in words. It has its uses. Anna so likes “finding the words.” But does finding the words mean understanding? Animals do not need words. Thomas Le Gall sometimes has his doubts about the philosophy of language, but having doubts about philosophy — whether or not it has to do with language — surely that in itself is truly philosophy?