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Chapter 7
- University of Wisconsin Press
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7 Iwas finding it harder and harder to force myself out of bed to look for a job, and there was no way I could afford to return to Paris. In 1952, in despair, I started in a form of Freudian-based therapy called Group Analysis that took over my consciousness for several years, and influenced my life for years after that. Various critics have interpreted the title of my first book, Stand Up, Friend, With Me, in different ways, as referring to my mentor Robert Friend, or, as Richard Howard interpreted it in a Freudian manner, the “little friend” as a synonym for my penis. Actually, the “friend” of the title addressed the downtrodden like me, the underdogs , even the exploited Third World countries, inviting them to join me in my new pride in myself, my new-found courage to stand up against all oppressors. This title was taken from a poem I wrote, when, as a result of my therapy, I had a startling experience. I stood up. Though in the long run, Group, as we called the therapy, turned out to be largely destructive, early on in the opening-up process I went through a critical episode, a remarkable, though brief, period of what I can only describe as a state of “expansion,” of wholeness, 58 59 and which perhaps could be clinically labeled as a manic phase of my manic-depressive nature, except that it was like nothing I had ever experienced in mood swings before. What I actually felt was almost Olympian in its openness and calm and I would like to have remained in that euphoric state forever. The title Stand Up, Friend, With Me was the final line of the poem that I wrote after I “stood up” myself, a poem that I’ve never included in any of my books. What happened to me was very much like the plot of Dostoevsky ’s novel A Raw Youth, in which the illegitimate son is recognized by his natural father and experiences a tremendous burst of energy and exhilaration. The plot spins out of control after this early section , but like Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Thus Spake Zarathustra” it just needs its spectacular opening to be forever memorable. In my case, one afternoon, when I was leaving my parents’ house in Lynbrook for a Group meeting in Manhattan, out of the blue my father offered me money. For some reason (money equals love? the love from him I never got?), I walked away from the house toward the Long Island Railroad station in a state of emotional turmoil. I felt I was coming apart, but choked back the sobs heaving in my chest. Somehow, I held myself together, the mile to the station, waiting on the platform for the train, the half-hour ride into the city, and the two changes on the subway, my panic rising the whole time. And I made it without cracking to the analyst’s office for the meeting, when, in the waiting room, I realized I had miscalculated. I was an hour early and the previous group was still going on. I couldn’t hold back any longer, and wedging myself into a corner of the room for support, I let go and started screaming, until he came out and I sobbed out how terrified I was and was able to calm down. An hour later when my own group met, I could barely wait for everyone to sit down in the circle of chairs when I “stood up.” Literally . I was shaking violently as I forced myself to my feet, while the whole group started shouting at me to stop doing that to myself. But even crying and shaking all over, at that moment it was the most important thing for my survival to “stand up.” I can’t remember what I said to the group—perhaps I just shouted back at them to let me do it, that I had to do it. But I stood up, and at the end of that session walked out of there, healed. Whole. As I say in my poem “The Journey,” it was as if a fist inside me had opened. Wonderful to be able to breathe so easily, to feel part of other men, when I had always felt separated from them. Different. I felt sane for the first time in my life. I was perfectly normal! I started writing like mad, composing a...