my skull. ‘In here I’m screaming. I’ve got a million questions and not one bloody answer …’
I heard the door open behind me and saw Wray lift a hand as if to say, ‘Don’t worry I’m handling it.’ The door closed again.
Somehow the hand seemed to push me away too. I slumped back down into my chair.
‘I feel so guilty,’ I confessed, burying my head in my hands. ‘My brother’s dead, my wife’s locked up and it’s all my fault. They’d never even have met if it wasn’t for me. But I’m the one who’s free. I can’t take it. I’ll go mad if this goes on much longer. I swear I will.’
Wray looked at me again, and now there was kindness, or more accurately, perhaps, compassion in his eyes.
‘Wait,’ he said, ‘maybe I can help you … just a little.’
17
Dr Tony Wray got up, walked over to his desk and scrabbled through the mess until he had found a pen and a ring-bound notepad. Then he came back and pulled his chair next to mine. He drew a small circle near the top of the page. ‘This is a child,’ he said. ‘A very small child, maybe just a baby.’
He drew arrows pointing at the child. ‘These are the hurts inflicted by its parents. Maybe they are absent and don’t give the child enough love and attention. They don’t respond to its need for food or comfort, for example. Maybe they are actively abusive in some way: sexually, emotionally, physically, you know the kind of thing. Or they are inappropriate and make the child feel responsible for their state, like the mother who says, “Now look what you made me do!” or, “You made me cry.” I mean, we all do this to our children to some degree, no matter how hard we try not to.’
‘“They fuck you up, your mum and dad …”’
‘Exactly. So, anyway, the child assumes that if its parent, the most important, powerful person in its life, is behaving towards it in this way, then it must deserve this bad treatment. And it doesn’t have to be a parent: any adult with a close relationship to the child can have the same effect. The point is, the child assumes blame, guilt and, above all, shame. It knows that it’s bad, or dirty in some way. And, ah … it buries this shame deep inside itself, like so …’
Wray drew a dot inside the circle. ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘it’s obviously very important to the child that people should not know about this shame. It has to stay out of sight. So the child creates a shell around itself, like a wall, to keep the shame well hidden.’
This time he drew a black square that enclosed the circle and the dot.
Was he talking about Mariana? He can’t have had time to diagnose her properly yet. But he’d have seen the case notes, maybe talked to the Forensic Medical Examiner. And in a place like this, he’d be used to people who kill.
Wray went on: ‘If the growing child fears that it is not lovable, it may develop incredible charm to compensate. It may be perceived as immensely likable, attractive, even charismatic. But none of the affection that it receives ever changes its deep, inner feeling of self-loathing. The child, or the adult it becomes, simply feels like a fraud. It sincerely believes that it would not be liked or loved if anyone knew its true personality, its actual, hidden self.
‘Now, when a patient goes into therapy, one of the things the therapist will try to do is expose the original shame, to let the light in on it …’
Wray drew lines breaking through the square like shafts of sunlight: ‘You see, once the shame is exposed and admitted to and even shared with other people – a sort of coming-out – then its potency swiftly diminishes. Patients discover, more likely than not, that things aren’t as bad as they feared and people don’t think any the less of them.’
‘I sense a great, big “but” coming on,’ I said.
Wray smiled, ‘Ha! Indeed you do. Let’s go back to the very beginning of the process, to the creation of the shame. Sometimes this
I heard the door open behind me and saw Wray lift a hand as if to say, ‘Don’t worry I’m handling it.’ The door closed again.
Somehow the hand seemed to push me away too. I slumped back down into my chair.
‘I feel so guilty,’ I confessed, burying my head in my hands. ‘My brother’s dead, my wife’s locked up and it’s all my fault. They’d never even have met if it wasn’t for me. But I’m the one who’s free. I can’t take it. I’ll go mad if this goes on much longer. I swear I will.’
Wray looked at me again, and now there was kindness, or more accurately, perhaps, compassion in his eyes.
‘Wait,’ he said, ‘maybe I can help you … just a little.’
17
Dr Tony Wray got up, walked over to his desk and scrabbled through the mess until he had found a pen and a ring-bound notepad. Then he came back and pulled his chair next to mine. He drew a small circle near the top of the page. ‘This is a child,’ he said. ‘A very small child, maybe just a baby.’
He drew arrows pointing at the child. ‘These are the hurts inflicted by its parents. Maybe they are absent and don’t give the child enough love and attention. They don’t respond to its need for food or comfort, for example. Maybe they are actively abusive in some way: sexually, emotionally, physically, you know the kind of thing. Or they are inappropriate and make the child feel responsible for their state, like the mother who says, “Now look what you made me do!” or, “You made me cry.” I mean, we all do this to our children to some degree, no matter how hard we try not to.’
‘“They fuck you up, your mum and dad …”’
‘Exactly. So, anyway, the child assumes that if its parent, the most important, powerful person in its life, is behaving towards it in this way, then it must deserve this bad treatment. And it doesn’t have to be a parent: any adult with a close relationship to the child can have the same effect. The point is, the child assumes blame, guilt and, above all, shame. It knows that it’s bad, or dirty in some way. And, ah … it buries this shame deep inside itself, like so …’
Wray drew a dot inside the circle. ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘it’s obviously very important to the child that people should not know about this shame. It has to stay out of sight. So the child creates a shell around itself, like a wall, to keep the shame well hidden.’
This time he drew a black square that enclosed the circle and the dot.
Was he talking about Mariana? He can’t have had time to diagnose her properly yet. But he’d have seen the case notes, maybe talked to the Forensic Medical Examiner. And in a place like this, he’d be used to people who kill.
Wray went on: ‘If the growing child fears that it is not lovable, it may develop incredible charm to compensate. It may be perceived as immensely likable, attractive, even charismatic. But none of the affection that it receives ever changes its deep, inner feeling of self-loathing. The child, or the adult it becomes, simply feels like a fraud. It sincerely believes that it would not be liked or loved if anyone knew its true personality, its actual, hidden self.
‘Now, when a patient goes into therapy, one of the things the therapist will try to do is expose the original shame, to let the light in on it …’
Wray drew lines breaking through the square like shafts of sunlight: ‘You see, once the shame is exposed and admitted to and even shared with other people – a sort of coming-out – then its potency swiftly diminishes. Patients discover, more likely than not, that things aren’t as bad as they feared and people don’t think any the less of them.’
‘I sense a great, big “but” coming on,’ I said.
Wray smiled, ‘Ha! Indeed you do. Let’s go back to the very beginning of the process, to the creation of the shame. Sometimes this
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