SEVEN PAPERS ON EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS ... - Wagner College

containing recordings of performances of his songs. Will said he had deep “philosophical
questions” that distracted and sometimes agitated him. These “thoughts about thoughts” often
kept him awake at night.
He expressed disappointment in a professional father who, he felt, had never had much
interest in him, his mother or his three older brothers. He recognized that his mother’s own
problems were substantial and had long since dismissed her as a source of support. Neither
parent had been informed about his academic problems. Easing into retirement, “Billy’s”
parents were now distancing themselves from him even further as he continued his second year
away at college.
What did he want from me? I asked him. “Nothing, really,” he said. What did he expect
from talking with me? He didn’t know. Why had he decided to come to see me in the first
place? He had heard I was “talkable.”
I could have easily grouped Will among those late teenage males who are in a period of
protracted or prolonged adolescence and diagnosed a developmental disorder. I could have
identified his use of intellectualization and reaction formation as major ego defenses and
produced a psychodynamic diagnose of incipient personality disorder with features of a
monopolar mood disorder. I could have related his extended ruminations and monologues to a
thought disorder and diagnosed schizophreniform psychopathology.
In elementary school he had been identified as learning disabled (“Attention Deficit
Disorder”). At college, he was officially on the dean’s list of academically “at risk” students.
According to the rules of the college, if his academic work did not improve, he would have to
withdraw at the end of the semester (his third on campus) when he first came to see me. Will
observed, however, that since his parents were wealthy and could therefore continue to pay
tuition fees, short of offensive behavior on campus, he “knew” he would always be permitted to
return to college, no matter how poorly he did in his classes once again during the current
semester. He asserted that he understood “the system” and how to manipulate it. This view did
not derive from a cynical outlook, however. In fact, he genuinely valued and respectfully
appreciated faculty and others who had supported and encouraged him in high school and
now in college, even given his ongoing academic underachieving and “failures.” He expressed
feelings of guilt about the support adults in school had given him and how he had chronically
“disappointed” them.
“Billy’s” nihilism was enervating. He drank alcohol every day in large quantities. In classes
that “interested” him, he sometimes did moderately well. In the ones he deemed unimportant
or uninteresting, his performance was below average or poor.
Will reported that his relationships with his peers were unsatisfying. He did not feel able to
meet the sexual expectations of girls who were attracted to him. He did not feel “at home” in
his body. He enjoyed unstructured, ad hoc homosocial groups of boys who, like him, were
disaffected and did not fit one of the basic roles of an American middle-class male his age:
athlete or “jock,” scholar or “nerd,” successful heterosexual or “player.” A small group of
“counterculture” types had found each other on campus, however, and he felt loosely affiliated
with them.
At first, Will returned to see me fairly often, usually to excitedly review a recent event that
had captured his interest. He would say he had “something important” to tell me, but soon
digressed to such an extent that the narrative thread was lost. In these ruminative monologues,
the point of focus on the event—Will himself—slowly but surely slipped away behind the words.
He was not there in the narrative. It seemed as though he was telling a story in the third person.
The first time Will mentioned that “something important” had motivated him to come to
see me, I conjectured it was one of those moments of existential change I assume is the source
of any psychotherapeutic venture. Since his appearances were not based on a regular
appointment schedule and Will arranged to see me only when “something important” had
occurred, it seemed reasonable, given my theoretical orientation, to assume that something
had changed when he called to say he wanted to meet and talk. Over a period of months, the