A man refuses to write because he believes he’s committed a crime and, therefore, is afraid his writing will be his confession.
Mike, in his fifties, was the top salesperson in a men’s clothing shop. Yet, he was plagued by an overwhelming problem. It was a major symptom even though it didn’t prevent him from working. He was a charismatic and charming person, and would be able to create good feelings with his customers. However, when it came time to write sales slips, he would need to ask another salesperson to do it. He simply couldn’t or wouldn’t write. “No writing!” he would say.
He was intelligent, however, and, in fact, could write very well. But, in practice, in reality, he just wouldn’t put anything down in black and white, and there could be no circumstance that he could imagine that would make him do it—make him want to write. And he would actually pay others a percentage of his commission to write sales slips for him.
His wife also was unable to get him to write these sales slips and she was becoming more and more annoyed by his anxiety about such writing. This was her constant complaint to him for the more than fifteen years they were together. As a matter of fact, all through their marriage, he never committed himself to writing anything and she, of course, knew his reason.
The problem was that he would always be tense, either whenever he read in the daily newspaper, or heard on the radio or television, any story about some crime that had been committed. This was the issue—crime! And it didn’t matter if the crime was committed 3,000 miles across the country. It would still bother him and make him feel that others would think he did it, and moreover, even he would confuse himself into believing that perhaps he did do it. He wasn’t sure, but he thought—maybe.
So this was the problem—a clear belief or delusion of self-blame or self-incrimination. It was a delusion and, like any belief or delusion, it defied logic. Even if he were confronted with the impossibility of his participation in a crime that took place five minutes earlier across the continent so that he couldn’t possibly have been there, it did no good. Thus, the problem was not about logic. No. It was only what he felt that persuaded him. And, of course, it was this chronic lifelong problem of being afraid to confess to a crime that had a tight grip on him.
This delusion was so well entrenched that it was considered to be a psychosis or a craziness—one that was isolated from the rest of his personality so that it did not make anything else about him seem crazy. Yet, this delusional self-incrimination symptom of no writing, swallowed his entire personality so that everyone could identify him by the presence of his symptom.
Memories of his childhood were sketchy. He was an only child with parents who were always disciplining him. His mother believed in strict punishment for bad behavior. His father was similarly strict and, in addition, was, according to Mike, always sarcastic. Otherwise his father was a nonpresence in the family and as Mike described it: “My mother ran the show.” He then said that with his parents, “I could never get what I wanted.”
Generally, he expressed negative feelings about his parents and was especially negative about his mother. Once when his parents were in a traffic accident, his daydream was that if they had been killed in the accident, then he would be free.
Other than these memories, everything else about his memories of his parents was vague. The main point, it seems, was that with respect to his early history, Mike reported feeling isolated and deprived of understanding and love, and in addition, he apparently felt angry at one or both of them. Again, his mother would be the best guess as the person toward whom he felt most anger—especially since he specified that it was she who usually made it impossible for him to get what he wanted.
As a young man growing up, he was always somewhat short for his age, but always compact, muscular, and strong. He was quite athletic, but his love of life was playing handball—a game played against a wall where a player hits the ball with the palm of his hand without letting the ball bounce on the pavement. The opposing player does the same until one of them either can’t get to the ball to hit it back, or misses it, or hits it in a way that makes it bounce first before hitting the wall. Real devoted handball players play the game with a high bouncing, very hard, small black ball. It’s the kind of ball that can damage someone’s hand who is not accustomed to playing with it. However, this man had a very powerful and fleshy hand, and hitting that ball was not only unpainful, it was pleasurable.
When discussing his early-in-life experiences of playing handball, Mike remembered that whenever he hit the ball, it relieved his tension. He never figured out why that was. In his psychotherapy session it was suggested that whenever he hit the ball it meant that he was rejecting any accusation of wrongdoing that the world (his mother?) was faulting him for. And whenever he would miss the ball, he simply hated it because it gave him a bad feeling—far worse than a feeling a simple error in a game could ever normally generate. His obsession with handball continued into his adult life and he almost lived for it.
In discussing his parents, his daydream of their car accident was a clue as to how he really felt. From a psychoanalytic point of view, his thinking that they may have died in the car accident and then he could be free was actually his wish for their death. However, this wish was not particularly well-thought-out or a conscious wish, and therefore it was mostly suppressed or repressed.
Mike’s delusion about participating in every crime in existence also reveals that he really had already convicted himself of the most capital crime—that of murder—probably the murder of his mother. Presumably, that’s what he thought—that he murdered his mother. Thus, he refused to write because in his unconscious mind he is certain that the only reason he has not been punished is that he has not incriminated himself by confessing to this crime through the written word.
It should be noted that his mother was eighty-five years old and very much alive when Mike met with me. Yet, in Mike’s mind, because of his ostensible wish for her death, he was compelled more by his feelings and not at all by the reality of what he knew; that is, that his mother was, in fact, alive.
Interestingly enough, when discussing his parents, he could not consciously feel any rage or even strong anger toward them. He did, however, admit to enjoying the feeling of freedom that he got when thinking that they might have been killed in the car accident.
The main point is that Mike was avoiding a great burden of guilt regarding what he may have unconsciously considered to be his responsibility in the murder of his mother. This ostensible wish for the death of a parent was gratified in the symptom of no writing because the no writing meant that the deed had already been accomplished—he had killed her. Thus, his direct wish is to remain guilt free. Therefore he wouldn’t write! His direct wish produced a no writing condition and this no writing reduced his tension. So whenever he’s required to write but doesn’t, he’s really hitting that handball and, in so doing, avoids responsibility for confessing to murder—to matricide.
Therefore, it is likely that the anger and rage toward his mother was so great that its magnitude radiated his entire psyche, its intensity was similarly overpowering to the psyche, the penetration of rage went deeply into the psyche, and the lifelong duration of the symptom meant that his psyche felt it absolutely necessary to eject the symptom from the domain of wishes and into the realm of personality traits. In any event, it can be seen that his personality was swallowed whole by the symptom so that he was known as the guy who wouldn’t write.
Because of his vagueness with respect to his childhood memories the prediction would be that suppression or repression of anger had occurred early on in his life and had since delinked from the memory of the who. This delinking of the anger from the who—perhaps his mother—made the symptom incurable without medication. Without such medication, no amount of psychotherapy could ever touch this symptom. The truth is that this man was so behind the line in a psychological and emotional withdrawal that only medication could address the delusional belief on which the symptom was based. With medication, however, ultimately the symptom code could easily be used to help cure the symptom.