The Interview
I should have known the second she pulled out a du Maurier Special Mild that she was the wrong therapist for me. While I might have been, in those days, a mild cigarette kind of smoker, I needed something much tougher from a therapist – an Export A unfiltered or a Camel Wide, for example. The fact that she lit it only added fuel to the fire.
“Do you mind?” she asked me after her second inhalation, her waist-long hair falling across the corner of her desk, lying carelessly on her notepad.
“Oh, not at all,” I replied. “I quit last week with hypnosis.” (I had – and I haven’t had to since.)
Anyway, for the sake of anonymity (hers, of course, not mine) I shall call her here Dr. Hacker.
Now, I knew all about shopping around for a good therapist. My gp had advised me that this could take weeks, and in fact I had already been to see two counsellors: one, a man who was awaiting trial; the second, a woman who slapped headphones over my ears, turned on a tape machine for an hour and charged me $135.00.
So I figured, third time’s the charm, and anyone with Crystal Gale hair couldn’t be all bad. (Well, I am actually lying about the hair part. Waist-long hair gives me the heebie jeebies, but I figured Dr. Hacker’s hair as a kind of cultural accoutrement and wondered where all this exoticness would lead me.)
Excited about the interview, I barely remember now, or even ten minutes after they were over, most of the interview questions. I was still in the “Pick me! Pick me!” phase and more worried about how I would come off as a prospective patient. I wanted to be off-keel enough to qualify for the job, but not so batty as to suggest that a hospital stay was in order.
Which is probably why it never occurred to me that the interview should have gone the other way around, with me asking her some of the questions...you know, things about her experience, treatment methods, mental competency.
Anyway, after she stubbed out her cigarette and we got down to business, I do recall saying at one point, “Oh! I did take the MBTI test.”
“Pardon me?”
“On my own, as it were. Recommended to me by a writing friend.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Do you know it?”
“Really?”
“Yes – the Jungian test.” I rushed on. “Apparently, I am an INFP.”
“Oh,” she said, sweeping the back of her hand delicately across her cheek. “Is the N for neurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-o-tic?”
I admit jumping back a bit at her reply. After all, her office was no larger than a basement bathroom, and I am more used to hard consonants being held, not soft ones.
“I think it means intuitive,” noting the irony of my words even as I said them aloud.
‘Are you sure?” she asked me in much the way a mother would ask a chocolate-faced child if she had just stolen the last cookie.
Well, I was hooked. After all, who better to offer therapy than a woman who clearly knew nothing of Carl Jung, smoked cigarettes, and had a more fascinating way of speaking than Charles Boyer?
And who better to take it from her than me, a patient (oh, excuse me – a client) ingénue who had only that very week (never discount synchronicity) quit cigarettes, knew nothing of Carl Jung, and boasted a family history of mental illness that could rival the Borgias.
She stared at me over the top of her Calvin Klein bifocal lenses. “How is Tuesday at 4:00?” she asked.
“Perfect!” I replied, my face hotter than a jalapeno pepper.
I grabbed my purse, leapt up from the chaise lounge, and fumbled my way out the door, longing all the way home for a du Maurier Special Mild and humming Jacques Brel show tunes.
