I had to stop therapy to finally be ready

I came to therapy like most people do: out of desperation. After a sexual assault triggered my latent depression, I dropped out of college a semester before graduating. Over the next year, I struggled to get the degree. I knew I was not well, but I still wanted to exercise some leeway in my choice of treatment: psychoanalysis seemed smart, flattering my vanity, and the institutes had lower fees for patients wanting to undergo what they called a "full analysis". The phrase shares a certain boastful intensity with 'full throttle' and 'full frontal', and the program – four sessions per week laid on the sofa – was indeed demanding. If I was going to admit that I needed therapy, the more rigorous version was probably best. So I signed up. Dr. S was beautiful, warm and almost confrontational in her candor. I felt an immediate attachment.

On the one hand, seeing a psychoanalyst was a form of nice girl rebellion. Throughout my life, both of my parents have been involved in spiritual communities that emphasize collective devotion and mystical experience beyond self-examination. The ego was something to be transcended rather than satisfied. By choosing analysis, I doubled my position as an atheist; I affirmed my own sensibility. I liked that Freud didn't promise more than I thought a man or a god could deliver; instead, we were in the territory of cure without cure, revolution without utopia. I liked the permission to play between dreams, desires and accidents of language. But I also liked — and this was more difficult to admit — feeling that this kind of special help showed me to be a sophisticated and creative person; that it kind of honored the mess I dragged from door to door.

I should have recognized that feeling as a telltale symptom. Even though I had been careful to choose the medication myself, I still related to my treatment as if it were a professional development program. I wanted to prove that I could pull off the transformation; which, of course, implied that it was possible to fail. When Dr. S wanted to talk about why I was late or why I skipped a session two weeks in a row, I couldn't help but feel like I was being scolded by an authority figure and that no track record of commitment could outweigh my slippages and shortcomings. Yes, I had other priorities, and they sometimes took precedence, but was it necessary to pathologize any desire that went beyond the analytic situation? Couldn't she see that I was already giving so much?

I knew the "transfer" was working - that I was putting her in the role of my mother, teacher, supervisor – but, as Freud warned, “giving resistance a name could not lead to its immediate cessation”. I had promised myself to stay two years in analysis; after that, I was free to go if I wanted to. As the secret deadline approached, I became increasingly irritated with the frequent meetings, becoming jealous of my time. Was I changing enough to make the therapy “worth” the hours I “spent” in the room with Dr. S? Or was this logic a capitalist illusion that I had to deconstruct? If so, it felt like Dr. S was stuck there with me, urging maximum fidelity to the maximum number of sessions, as if the more hours I spent in the office, the "better" I became.

Dr. S and I tried to overcome the conflict. For me, she knew, addiction involved obligation and control — so I wouldn't let her, or let me, be close. I didn't disagree, but how was I supposed to save my desire to be held from my fear of being crushed, my desire for love from my desire to please? How was I supposed to find a way that didn't come out? I lived my imminent departure as a fact in my body, and any effort to explain it further filled me with overwhelming boredom. Dr. S wasn't a boring person, and I didn't think I was either, so boredom caused our mutual suspicion. Yet I felt loyal to my discomfort, like the child who refuses every doll, game or excursion—stubborn in the unhappy dignity of his disinterest.

Dr. S knew not to rush me to stay, but she didn't fulfill my fantasy of one last restorative session. I thought I wanted her to bless my leaving. Instead, she spoke wistfully of all the work we could do if I kept coming back, as if the work we had already done wasn't enough. When I left his office, tears blurred my vision and the clouds over Central Park looked like faces pushing against fabric. I had been afraid of disappointing Dr. S - and then I did. But the disappointment I perceived in her was different from the disappointment I was so chronically trying to avoid with...