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I have a friend who is apparently pee shy. She says she has "congenital
pee fright". I call her "vaginally retentive". When we go out together and she
needs to use the restroom she invariably begins to hiss in order to coax the urine
out of her. It's terribly funny, but at the same time kind of pathetic. When my
mother was toilet training my brother, she used to do this looping whistle every
time she took him to the toilet, thereby conditioning him to urinate at the sound.
I offer this as a possible explanation for needing the hissing sound, but we've
both taken enough psychology classes to be predisposed to think she suffers
mental infirmity, most likely relating to issues with her mother. I am not without my own mental disorders. In college I took a lot of psych classes, so I know all about these things. I took a class on abnormal psychology and became convinced that I had certain mental disorders and behavioral deviancies that we had studied. Ironically, there's a term for just such a phenomenon. So I suffered from that and hypochondria to boot. If I wasn't such an underachiever (and I'm sure there are all sorts of underlying reasons for that), I would have minored in psych. Then, as a literature major, I could have had loads of fun performing feminist-deconstructionist psychoanalytical profiles on creepy characters like Lady Macbeth! Sometimes I think I'm jinxed. I then have to perform rituals to cancel out the jinx. Example: I used to think that if I didn't say to my parents, "I'll see you tomorrow" every night before I went to bed, that I wouldn't. If I failed to utter these words, somehow a cosmic conspiracy between Murphy's Law and neglect would cause me to die in my sleep. So no matter what the circumstances, I had to say this phrase at the end of the day or I wouldn't see the next. I'll give you another example. If I was watching a sports game on television, I had to openly root for the team that I earnestly did not want to win, because I knew that whatever team I cheered for would inevitably lose. It had nothing to do with the players' skill. No, it was just one bad luck fan out there screwing it up for the whole team. My entire life and the decisions I make are based upon superstition, omens, and carefully thought out plans of counter-balance. I think before I speak, because words carry heavy weight and often have the opposite effect from what I intend. I realize that these thoughts are ridiculous notions born of a mind that is at once indecisive and unconfident, but rational thinking doesn't play a real big part in neurosis. But the truth is I think psychoanalysis and theorists like Freud are not only absurd, but wicked, plugging themselves in like a mental blender to the slightly imbalanced. I will never see a therapist, no matter how out of hand my superstitions get, no matter how severe my OCD or SAD become (that's obsessive compulsive disorder and seasonal affect disorder, respectively, for you mentally stable readers). I have a natural distrust for practicing psychologists. You know, the kind that charge you over $100 for a 45-minute hour to do what any good friend might - listen to your problems and give you advice. I've had two experiences with psychologists, both of them negative. The first was when I was 13 and arrested for shoplifting. The shoplifting isn't important here, it's no longer an issue. (I've since turned to vandalism and burglary.) When my parents and I went down to the station to talk to the police, I began to sob hysterically. I was terrified and anguished at so upsetting my parents. I felt the pain of their bitter disappointment more sharply than any lashing I might get from the law. But the cop thought I was a troubled kid in a troubled family. He "strongly recommended" that we all go see a "counselor". So we went to see this psychologist and he asked not about my crime or my motives but rather personal questions about our home life. He asked leading questions that I felt, even to my young but perceptive mind, were designed to get me to admit that my parents beat me every night or neglected me or some such nonsense. After my parents defiantly complained that the psychologist was in fact causing all the problems for us, they let us leave. My second experience with a psychologist was when my brother was in drug rehab. (And now you are perhaps thinking I was raised in a troubled family!) Having himself taken a few psych classes and being much too intelligent for their 12 step bullshit to work, he knew precisely the right things to say and do in order to get himself out as soon as possible. But the "counselors" there felt a session with his sibling was a necessary part of his recovery. I was reluctant, given my first experience with a psychologist, but I agreed. I remained aloof during our meeting, which of course led the psychologist to believe that my brother was reared in an environment of non-communication and stoicism, and that the family was the cause of all his problems. In my parents' defense, I want to say that they raised us well and that any downfall we might have experienced has been of our own doing. I don't blame my problems, mental or otherwise, on my parents' divorce or the fact that I was a latch key kid from the age of 14. There is a reluctance on the part of our society to take ownership of our actions. Take a look at criminal defense tactics. They blame all manner of heinous crimes on their upbringing, their environment, society, television, satanic lyrics, mental disorders. Psychologists don't help the situation. They lead us to believe that there are all kinds of things wrong with us, and that they stem from deeply rooted psychological problems which may take months or even years of costly 45-minute sessions to uncover and deal with. They are apt to twist things until the truth becomes clouded in covert action and misdeed. It's funny, though, because psychologists would probably diagnose my hostility and cynicism towards them as some kind of unhealthy disdain for authority figures and displaced anger towards my parents. It's so convenient, isn't it? I think we've all got to realize that our little mental quirks are normal and don't necessarily bear any deeper meaning. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that are pee shy. I know I'm not the only one who practices counter-balancing measures. Just take responsibility for the important things you do that impact others and then be careful about overanalyzing the little unimportant things. And remember, if you deconstruct the word "therapist", it becomes "the rapist". Copyright 1998 Jennifer Chung. You know the spiel. |