The rhythms of baseball are the rhythms of analytic therapy are the rhythms of life. While baseball has been described as the perfect game with perfect distances (90 feet, 60 feet, six inches), no clock (timeless) and the constant possibility of wonder, I reflect on my own experience of a game that captured my imagination as a young child and that welcomed me back as an adult willing to be transported to that childhood place of hope and possibility. In baseball the action stops for a moment before the pitch comes in, the batter swings and all the fielders are in motion. This momentary stop in the action allows for reflection, the build-up of tension and, subsequently, the release into jubilation or despair. There is always hope until the last out, and then there is always tomorrow, next week, next year. Like with therapy, the highs and lows are part of a process that goes on for some time. Just as we know and value the good therapeutic hour, so we can appreciate the string of improbable hits, the sense that our team has found the zone where nothing goes wrong, the sense of invincibility. In contrast, there are those times when it feels nothing goes right, the team can’t make a play. As fans we get the opportunity to master the feelings that inhabit our lives, and over time, we are the better for it.
Shortcut
I live in the city and often walk to my preferred destinations. Sometimes my walks include shortcuts when going to familiar places. One common shortcut was an alley which contained rats.
While the rats were disturbing and seemingly everywhere, I continued using my shortcut. At some point an intervention occurred – poison. I began to experience the mixed blessing of dying rats instead of living rats. While I hesitated to look at the dead and decaying rats, they were in my path and I couldn’t ignore them. In time, the living rats disappeared. But at the end of my alley shortcut, “my inner rats” remained alive in the office of my psychoanalyst.
