calling: the search to make meaning in my life by helping others to
make meaning, to heal so that I could heal others, to heal others so
that I could heal myself. It also reinforced my understanding, however
misapplied when I divorced Béla, that I had the power and
opportunity—as well as the responsibility—to choose my own
meaning, my own life.
* * *I had taken my ĕrst conscious step toward ĕnding my own way in the
late 1950s, when I noticed Johnny’s developmental challenges and
needed help in meeting them. A friend recommended a Jungian
analyst who had studied in Switzerland. I knew next to nothing about
clinical psychology in general or Jungian analysis in particular, but
aer looking into the subject a bit, several Jungian ideas appealed to
me. I liked the emphasis on myths and archetypes, which reminded
me of the literature I had loved as a girl. And I was intrigued by the
notion of bringing the conscious and unconscious parts of one’s psyche
together into a balanced whole. I remembered the images of
dissonance between Vicky Page’s inner and outer experience in The
Red Shoes, and of course I was suffering in the grip of my own inner
conĘicts. I wasn’t consciously entering therapy to heal that tension in
myself—I really just wanted to know what to do for my son and how
to heal the ri between Béla and me over what to do. But I also felt
drawn to Carl Jung’s vision of therapeutic analysis: It is a matter of
saying yea to oneself, of taking oneself as the most serious of tasks, of
being conscious of everything one does, and keeping it constantly before
one’s eyes in all its dubious aspects—truly a task that taxes us to the
utmost. “Saying yea” to myself. I wanted to do that. I wanted to
blossom and improve.
My therapist gave me dream homework, and I studiously recorded
my dreams. Almost always, I was Ęying. I could choose how high or