therapist`s good stuff, took it home, like a bone, to gnaw on later, in private. Julius had

known patients so competitive that they hid their improvement just because they didn`t

want to give the therapist the satisfaction (and the power) of having helped them.

Now that Philip Slate entered his mind, Julius could not get him out. He had

burrowed in and taken root. Just like the melanoma. His failure with Philip became a

symbol embodyingall his failures in therapy. There was something peculiar about the

case of Philip Slate. From where had it drawn all that power? Julius opened his chart and

read his first note written twenty–five years before.

PHILIP SLATE—Dec. 11, 1980

26 yr old single white male chemist working for DuPont—develops new pesticides—

strikingly handsome, carelessly dressed but has a regal air, formal, sits stiffly with little

movement, no expression of feelings, serious, absence of any humor, not a smile or grin,

strictly business, no social skills whatsoever. Referred by his internist, Dr. Wood.

CHIEF COMPLAINT: «I am driven against my will by sexual impulses.»

Why now? «Last straw» episode a week ago which he described as though by rote.

I arrived by plane in Chicago for a professional meeting, got off the plane, and

charged to the nearest phone and went down my list of women in Chicago looking for

a sexual liaison that evening. No luck! They were all busy. Of course they were busy:

it was a Friday evening. I knew I was coming to Chicago; I could have phoned them

days, even weeks earlier. Then, after calling the last number in my book, I hung up

the phone and said to myself, «Thank God, now I can read and get a good night`s

sleep, which is what I really wanted to do all along.»

Patient says that phrase, that paradox—«which is what I really wanted to do