When I was in high school, I read a Henry James story called “The Beast in the Jungle,” the story of a man who lives his whole life based on a premonition (like a beast in the jungle waiting to jump on him) that he had a unique and terrible destiny awaiting him. He therefore could do nothing ordinary with his time on this planet, since he had to be prepared for the arrival of his destiny. The punchline is that he realizes at the end that the special destiny is to be the one person on the planet that NOTHING ever happens to! He passed up adventure, accomplishments, love just waiting, waiting.
My memory bank recalls this story when I’m faced with certain patients struggling with perfectionism and overly protected childhoods, who put me in an “expert predictor” or “wizard” position. They don’t just want to review the good old “pros and cons” list, they want me to tell them which decision is the correct one: “Doc, should I take this starter job when I’m really manager material? Should I go to Holyoke and get loans or stick with the local community college for now? Roommates or my own place? Is this romance going to work out for me?” Of course, these kinds of dilemmas are the meat and potatoes of therapy; I’m talking about the cohort for whom years pass by without their being able to take the most ordinary risks. A few arrive at therapy already almost defeated by their trauma stories, and we can work on that, but many others have become trapped on a hamster wheel of only a unique and special destiny is acceptable.
How did they get this way? My early training pushes me to come up with a diagnosis, which then becomes an explanation for their struggle, but too often also becomes an excuse that traps them in their cage of specialness forever (“it’s not my fault, it’s the OCD”). As I’ve gained both life and professional experience, I arrive at my own dilemma—for some people, a diagnosis is a suit of clothes they can try on for size and gives them a useful way to “externalize the problem,” while others “weaponize” the idea, and sit down in the driveway, claiming nothing else can happen until a cure or a guaranteed outcome is found.
Despite my best efforts to be tentative and emphasize the “suit of clothes” metaphor, useful if it helps us problem-solve together, some of my patients growl at me when they think I’m labelling them as crazy or defective, while others growl about my evasiveness and refusal to give them a definite, correct answer. Then there’s the group that, no matter which approach I start with, they immediately want the opposite one. Sometimes this is genuine ambivalence, but in the “special destiny” cohort, it is a strategy for avoiding ordinary risk, while they wait for the beast in the jungle to arrive.
