Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [35]
Before long, Susan grew to dread the appointments, but she claims she never really understood why. There is little question that Susan and Felix engaged in a sexual relationship during their time as patient and therapist. What remains unclear is how that relationship began. According to Susan, all she knew was that the panic—the pounding in her chest, the struggle to catch her breath—never subsided. In fact, it grew worse.
Often, therapists who transgress and have a relationship with a patient are depressed. Rather than predators, they are more often broken in some way. Such was the case with Felix Polk. Susan Bolling was fifteen and needed him. The idea of being needed made Felix feel powerful and sexually charged. In his mind, he and Susan were spiritual comrades, connected by their shared abandonment by their fathers. Susan’s father had left the family when she was six, just like Felix’s father had done—although his action was not by choice, but at the behest of the Nazis.
By falling in love with Susan, he was becoming her father, and Susan hated her father. Susan felt that Theodore Bolling had abandoned the family, and had hurt her mom. Susan recalled a memory in which she walked in on her parents one afternoon at the age of six to find them engaged in a heated argument. Helen Bolling was petite, nearly a foot smaller than her husband, and the impression of her mother dwarfed by her father’s six-foot framed stayed with her.
Unbeknownst to little Susan, Theodore Bolling was angry that his wife was refusing to sign the divorce papers. Helen later recalled how she had known for some time that her husband was having an affair. The “other” woman had been at a New Year’s Eve party that Helen and her husband attended, and Helen immediately knew who she was by the way the woman stared at Theodore. Despite his transgression, Helen was deeply in love with the intelligent, dark-haired man and was unwilling to let him go.
Her refusal infuriated Theodore. Helen recalled it was a horrifying exchange, one that persuaded her to release him from the marriage. Unfortunately for Susan, she was never able to let go of that image.
For some time after that, her allegiance remained with Helen, as evidenced in a letter she wrote to her mother in the summer of 1967. Susan and her brother, David, had been sent to stay with her father and his new family for a time. By then, Theodore Bolling was on his third wife. After leaving Helen, he was briefly married to Rita, the woman who had been the cause of his divorce from Helen. Theodore would remarry once again before settling down and practicing law in Sacramento.
While Susan was enjoying her time with her father, her letter indicates a desperate need to be in contact with her mother:
Dear Momma,
I miss you so much already. Tears are streaming down my cheeks already at night. I don’t want to leave yet, but I sure do miss you. Oh please write me. Oh please. I love you so much….
By fifteen, Susan was on the brink of an emotional collapse. Even under Felix’s care, she continued to feel as if everything was closing in on her. She wanted the claustrophobic sensation to stop. If she could only go to sleep, maybe it would go away.
One evening, Susan’s mother returned home to find her daughter sprawled on the bed. Music was blaring from the stereo, and an open bottle of pills lay by her side. Helen Bolling immediately called for help and alerted Dr. Polk to her daughter’s near-fatal suicide attempt. The psychologist briefly considered placing Susan in a facility for disturbed children at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco. After careful consideration, he decided instead to put her under the care of a colleague and friend who worked at the Kaiser Mental Facility for Adults in Oakland.
At fifteen, Susan awoke to find herself the only minor in the institution. Much worse than juvenile hall, now she was among truly crazy people. In addition,