Anyway, the point is that I sort of had a vision of the same system in psychotherapy: local drains going into branch sewers going into community trunk lines treeing out of flesh-and-blood psychiatrists, if you see what I mean. If Sigfrid were a real person, he wouldn't be able to hold all the misery that's poured into him. To begin with, he would have his own problems. He would have mine, because that's how I would get rid of them, by unloading them onto him. He would also have those of all the other unloaders who share the hot couch; and he would unload all that, because he had to, onto the next man up, who shrank him, and so on and so on until they got to -- who? The ghost of Sigmund Freud?

But Sigfrid isn't real. He's a machine. He can't feel pain. So where does all that pain and slime go?

I try to explain all that to him, ending with: "Don't you see, Sigfrid? If I give you my pain and you give it to someone else, it has to end somewhere. It doesn't feel real to me that it just winds up as magnetic bubbles in a piece of quartz that nobody ever feels."

"I don't think it's profitable to discuss the nature of pain with you, Rob."

"Is it profitable to discuss whether you're real or not?"

He almost sighs. "Rob," he says, "I don't think it's profitable to discuss the nature of reality with you, either. I know I'm a…

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It's very healthy that you view your breakup with Drusilla as a learning experience, Rob.

I'm a very healthy person, Sigfrid, that's why I'm here.

Anyway, that's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.

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…machine. You know I'm a machine. What is the purpose in our being here? Are we here to help me?"

"I sometimes wonder," I say, sulking.

"I don't think you actually wonder about that. I think you know that you are here to help you, and the way to do it is by trying to make something happen inside you. What I do with the information may be interesting to your curiosity, and it may also provide you with an excuse to spend these sessions on intellectual conversation instead of therapy--"

"Touche, Sigfrid," I interrupt.

"Yes. But it is what you do with it that makes the difference in how you feel, and whether you function somewhat better or somewhat worse in situations that are important to you. Please concern yourself with the inside of your own head, Rob, not mine."

I say admiringly, "You sure are one fucking intelligent machine, Sigfrid."

He says, "I have the impression that what you're actually saying there is, 'I hate your fucking guts, Sigfrid.'"

I have never heard him say anything like that before, and it takes me aback, until I remember that as a matter of fact I have said exactly that to him, not once but quite a few times. And that it's true.