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By Root 552 0

them, and some have been among the nuttiest people I’ve ever met. My experience began with the Freudian analyst recommended by Elia Kazan, and continued with several therapists in California, including one in Beverly Hills whom I saw for many years. He was a neurotic, frightened man who wouldn’t admit to having any fears, and who had read everything and knew nothing. He was spooked by anybody and anything, including his own hair; it was tight and curly, and he kept it cut short because he said he didn’t want people to think he had any Negro blood. Once when we were discussing the Vietnam War, I asked, “What if we bomb Haiphong Harbor and China comes into the war on the side of the North Vietnamese?” to which he replied that there was nothing troublesome about the Chinese that couldn’t be taken care of with three atomic bombs. He spent a lot of our sessions asking for money. If my business manager was a day late in paying his bill, the first thing he did was remind me. He made me see him five days a week, and he ended each session by saying, “We have to stop now; I have another customer.” He pried into my brain and made me feel worse than I ever had, and when I needed him most he abandoned me.

This happened a few years ago when I thought I was in love with a Jamaican woman named Diana, who was vivacious and funny but at heart was vulgar and unrefined, a would-be actress with more ambition than talent. In the midst of an extended affair she told me that she had accepted an acting job in England, where she had once lived. When I told her I didn’t want her to take the job, she said, “Oh, I’ll be back.”

“No, you won’t,” I said, “because if you go out that door, you’ll never have a chance to come back through it.”

Diana cried but said she was determined to be in the movie. I took her to the airport and kissed her good-bye, then went home and burned her picture and everything else she had ever given me. After Diana arrived in England, she sent me several telegrams, but I didn’t answer them. I was devastated but couldn’t let her know it.

My psychiatrist had been away on a long vacation when she left, and when he returned I walked into his office and sat down prepared to spill my guts and tell him how miserable I was. But he said, “You know, I don’t think I can help you anymore.” I had been his patient for ten or twelve years, and was desperately in need of assistance, but he rejected me. I had trusted him, but he was just one more analyst who got you hooked, then felt no accountability or responsibility for you. Even most auto mechanics guarantee their work, but not a psychiatrist. I had kept this man in groceries and cars for years, but now he rejected me.

“You can’t turn me away,” I said. “I have no place else to go.” I didn’t have enough sense to realize that I would have been better off never having met him. He got out of his chair, circled the room like an absentminded dog, and put his foot in his wastebasket while gazing out the window. The contents spilled all over the floor, but he was so preoccupied that he didn’t place the basket right side up. It made me realize that he was as nervous and as frightened as I was, so I left in emotional pain.

Diana kept writing from England saying she missed me and wanted to see me, but I didn’t reply. Then I went to London, where I was invited to a party and saw her there. I didn’t look at her, but could see peripherally that she was watching me. I tried to get away before we bumped into each other, but when I got on the elevator, there she was. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this, don’t we?” I said and tried to make jokes. In the lobby I went left and she went right, but feeling guilty, I turned, called to her and said, “Diana, I’m sorry things didn’t go well this evening.” She said something cordial and we each went our own way.

Several months later, when I was making Last Tango in Paris, Diana came to the set with a camera. She was now a photographer, trying on a new career. I said I was glad to see her and gave her a kiss. We were filming a scene at the time, so I suggested