I needed “help,” and I wanted it.

The few available psychiatrists were classic Freudians; the more eclectic therapies had not yet appeared, at least not in the Midwest. East Lansing, Michigan, the home of MSU, had few mental health resources, so in the end I had to commute to Detroit for therapy.

I don’t recall who recommended Dr. Maynard Razard, but his office was in a glass solarium off his home in a wealthy Detroit suburb. At exactly the appointed time I anxiously knocked on his door. Dr. Razard greeted me in a blue silk suit with excessive sheen for a psychotherapist—an issue he addressed by wearing a muted ivory shirt and a pale blue tie. He allowed an inch and a half of stiffly starched cuff to extend from his sleeve, just enough to admire his pearl cufflinks in their thick gold setting. Gray, sweptback hair completed his disciplined appearance. Every strand of
hair lay in its well greased track as if a coach had blown a whistle and the stands hustled into place.

Naturally, I was nervous at my first session. I found it of little comfort that Dr. Razard turned to study me through his narrow silver bifocals. It brought an unpleasant recollection of the way Dr. Cronick had similarly dissected me with her piercing stare. Dr.
Razard motioned me to a black leather couch, placing his chair behind my head where it was impossible for me to see him. He told me that after medical school he’d trained as a classic Freudian analyst. After that brief introduction, he rarely ever spoke again.

Sessions started with a command to “Begin” and ended when he closed his leather notebook to said, “That’s it for today.”

My job was to talk for precisely fifty minutes. He told me to say whatever came to mind, so I talked about
Mom and Dad, about how sad I was living in St. Louis, and of my persistent vise attacks.

From behind I could hear Dr. Razard
scratching mysterious notes with his black-and-gold Mont Blanc pen. He rarely commented on anything I said, so the only drama in our sessions occurred when his pen stopped scratching and he asked me to repeat something. I never knew if it was because I’d said something really important, or if Dr. Razard doubted me or was simply hard of hearing.

You wouldn’t typically think of therapy as a lonely hour, but I never felt more alone than in my sessions with Dr. Razard. Years later, when I gained perspective on him, I decided he wasn’t the first therapist to be drawn to the profession by his own needs. I think what attracted him was his lack of the very thing psychiatry purported to develop—a capacity for intimacy.

Had Dr. Razard chosen the corporate world, he’d have been one of those executives who position themselves behind an ornate, mahogany desk, commanding from a high-back leather seat while a secretary guides visitors to strategically smaller chairs. Had he chosen academia, he’d have been a professor who lectures to a class of four from behind an elevated podium. His choice to be a classical Freudian
analyst was no accident. He’d found a modality that feigned intimacy but shielded him from involvement.

Still I was desperate for help—any help at all. So twice a week I made the four-hour round-trip drive between East Lansing and Detroit. I drove rain or shine. I drove the day Michigan had a historic blizzard, somehow managing to keep my green Ford pointed
forward on the windblown expressway. I couldn’t see much through the heavy snow, and the road was sheer ice. But every time the Ford started to rotate sideways, I was able to gently nudge the hood back into center lane. Halfway to Detroit, the state police
closed the expressway. I took an exit and found a phone booth.

“They closed the roads,” I explained to Dr. Razard. “The entire expressway.”

“Don’t worry Michael,” he said, “I can mail your bill.”

BUY SHRINKWRAPPED

As the weeks passed, every group member exposed his or her dark side, and seeing their anger made it easier to accept my own. Every member had a secret monster like mine—the raging beast I‘d exposed. Seeing theirs, mine didn’t seem so awful, and I no longer felt that I was irreparably broken. I was human, which meant that I had anger. But it wasn’t my only emotion. I was also capable of a deep and gentle caring for the members of the group.

The angriest group member, Pamela, had an emotional range with two options. Either she smiled unctuously or she flew into an unprovoked tantrum. She’d flip from grin to scowl following the beat of her own unfathomable rhythm.

Pamela toyed with her anger in therapy for years, but she kept it in tight rein and never showed anything deeper than a tantrum, the way a singer gives
voice from the throat but not from deep within the belly. Then one night in group, Pamela let her monster loose. She sprang at us with nails extended, dying to claw our eyes out. As she circled us, she let out a piercing shriek that stung my ears. My breath seized,
her rage was so terrifying. Her energy was demonic and endless, and I was afraid this would end only when Pamela was dragged off to a hospital. But Sarah calmly worked with her, patiently telling her to keep breathing while she gently massaged her forehead.
Somehow Sarah kept Pamela from going over the edge until finally the high-pitched shrieking dropped to an anguished moan and then to choking sobs as tears came in waves and rode the rhythm of her breath.

We took turns rocking Pamela in our arms like a baby until finally she lay on the floor exhausted and the room fell silent. What bravery Pamela showed us.

As Pamela worked, the world outside the loft window had transitioned through sunset to a black evening bright with polar stars. When Pamela arose, she was calmer than I’d ever seen her. Her face was open, and her eyes were radiant. “Thank god,” someone said.

In time we saw that we’d hidden our anger because getting angry at another involved the terrifying possibility that a parent—our critical caregiver—might be unworthy and might actually deserve our fury. It was less threatening to idealize the parent and turn our anger inward against our self, to assume we
were the problem. But by getting angry in the safe environment of the group, we chipped away at an awful secret, our closely held belief that anyone so angry must be unimaginably horrible.

Exposing our monsters—safely showing our rage to people who understood—enabled each of us to accept what we most feared. One by one we tore off our monster masks, only to find there was no phantom too awful to behold. We were people, just people,
flawed as humans are, struggling with the universal difficulty we all have—to love ourselves.

BUY SHRINKWRAPPED