BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Nineteen

I finished my bottle of water, straightened the knot in my necktie and summoned Duke into the room. He wanted me to take off my suit jacket and tie, but I kept them on. I almost always wore a coat and tie at the office, so I wasn't going to alter that routine now. My providing a consistency helped people who might be doubting their own stability.

Duke entered and was startled by something outside the large mirrored glass window. I thought at first it was my reflection bouncing back at him, but he walked toward it in a daze. We both saw that it was just habitual traffic on the streets and occasional pedestrians on the sidewalks outside, but he was seeing something more. I suspected it was a reaction to his former drug use and subsequent paranoia.

"What is it, Duke?"

"Can anyone see or hear us in here?"

"The window is a one-way mirror and the room is soundproofed. You know that."

"Just like in a police interrogation room and a recording studio."

"Yes."

"I'm familiar with both."

"Are you feeling anxiety, Duke? Did you want to tell me something? Did you write a new song? We discussed that possibility last time."

"I don't remember last time."

"We discussed you putting your thoughts to verse and from there to lyrics."

"That was your idea. Are you sure no one knows what goes on in here but us?"

"We don't have to talk about your worries if you don't want to."

Duke didn't have to tell me about his anxiety; he exhibited it by taking almost half the session trying to decide where he wanted to be in the office. Would he stand? If so, where? Would he sit? If so, where? He double- and triple-thought every movement.

I had often reminded him that anxiety wasn't fear but anticipating what he feared. I told him that fear was an instinctive method to keep him safe; however, anxiety wasn't as purposeful and thus could prove harmful because it was based in his imagination and not in reality.

At the end of our last session, Duke had obsessed over a womb-to-tomb prognosis of his life. Creation took time but could be destroyed in an instant. He insisted, "All we are is a quick flash of white light going from one blackness to another. Sperm to worm. All done in the dark. If we experience love in that glimpse of the eternal and infinite, then our lives are complete and all the rest is waiting for the final, perpetual, shadowless dark to descend and then absorb our souls."

He begged me for an answer: was he right? I couldn't answer him but I had suggested that he put those thoughts into lyrics. He said he'd think about it and we'd discuss it at this session. But we first had to start the session with him finding where he wanted to be in the room.

I narrowed his options by telling him that he could not sit at my desk and pretend to be me. I told him I was going to sit in a wingback chair and from there, he could be either on the carpet or the couch or the other wingback chair. He could even lie down on the couch if he wanted, but he balked, saying he didn't want to be a cartoon figure or cliché of a reclining psychiatric patient.

Duke opted to sit in the middle of the couch and I took the wingback chair to his left. Duke suddenly stood up in front of the couch. "Say, speaking of cartoons, did you hear the one about the busy psychiatrist?"

"Duke, you're avoiding the issue."

"His receptionist comes into his office and says, 'Your next patient is here. He says he's invisible.' And the busy psychiatrist says, 'Tell him I can't see him just now.'"