Sample Pages: The Cavern (page 5 of 12)
A major fissure existed in their relationship and the fact that she made no attempt to follow him as their temporary separation, extended first to months and then years, expressed an unspoken desire on her part to be separated from him. His failure to act once he realized that Heike didn’t intend to leave Germany and join him in Paris signaled, both dramatically and psychologically, his acceptance of the situation. It made him as culpable as she in any charge of desertion that might be hurled out by either party on the rare telephone call.
After therapy with a well-known Jungian analyst, Wisent concluded he had a difficult time facing reality and making decisions, especially if the situation concerned his relationship with a woman. He imagined various reasons why he could not bring the separation to an end. In an attempt to cure the pain that living provisionally caused him, plus the added burden of being unable to choose, he searched for various solutions outside his marriage to find completeness rather than divorcing her. In therapy he realized the alternate solutions he employed now were simply old strategies he had devised as a child, to protect himself from the corrosive will of his mother and the absence of his philandering father. Now, under the withering questioning of his therapist and his feeble defense of the aging strategies, he found his diversions were no longer helping him cope with Heike’s absence.
The narrative he constructed with his analyst to explain his current indecision and lack of action could be described quickly by resorting to Freudian and Jungian jargon. Refusing to use the analyst’s terms, Wisent explained it simply by concluding he lived in his imagination. He survived by using the visions he dredged up from the unconscious portion of his psyche. These visions emphasized and supported his myth-making