Nat was totally unimpressed, as though he had envisaged something altogether more grand. I told him that nothing unusual had happened during his birth according to my senior colleague, the doctor in charge at Nat’s birth. What he remembered mostly was “that ghostly house” into which the Snoxells had then only fairly recently installed themselves, and that Nat had been born on the stroke of midnight; notes made at the time confirmed this.

The doctor is a practitioner of the old school and had never fully considered, until I questioned him, the effects birth has on a person’s character. Surprisingly enough, it was his experience that the more difficult the birth the more well-balanced the person seemed to become. “Blue babies”, who only just survived, went on to become active and respected members of the community, whereas those with “easy” births lived dull lives. I didn’t like what he was inferring here; had he forgotten I was born by caesarean section? And yet he concluded by stating that he saw all this as purely coincidental, the character being decided before birth. Problems don’t count per se. What is essential is the individual’s ability and willingness to overcome them.

Nat was more than a little stunned by this somewhat brusque analysis. He had clearly fantasised an alternative birth scenario for himself, which he would not divulge. It was not just his rejection of my theory, or the look on his face, but I intuitively feel that Nat has some “unfinished business”. Perhaps I was asking a little much by requiring Nat to rationalise his feelings so as to fit neatly into the water-tight compartment of my theory. He did concede that my “explanation” was logical and agreed to contemplate it more seriously. I never really expected Nat to go waltzing out of the surgery, a happy man. I had however predicted that some glimmer of recognition might light up his face, however temporarily.

WED APR 2

Nat remains unmoved by my theory. Still, it is only a theory. I told him of my latest musings regarding his drawings: that they could be expressions of his experience of birth. The grotesque, warped distorted heads: surely how most babies perceive what is happening to them when they are being born, what with their own skulls still malleable. And yet Nat had drawn these pictures before I had ever mentioned primal therapy. Had they been a premonition of my diagnosis?

When I saw them I was left with the very powerful impression that Nat has a far greater insight into what he was doing than is granted to most artists. Enragingly, he refused to speak, but by the angle at which he held his head, I could tell he was feeling decidedly smug.

What was he doing here? The philosophy currently being popularised in contemporary fiction, that psychoanalysis, whilst often “curing” a patient of antisocial behaviour, also strips away individuality and visionary insight, suddenly struck me as utterly nonsensical. The patient gets what the patient wants.