Shuhak: “Ok, I’ll start from the beginning. You see, it’s all because of Randy D . . . you remember I’ve spoken about Randy D in previous sessions, don’t you?”

  Psychoanalyst: “Randy D is your cat, right?”

  Shuhak: “NO! He’s a guy!”

  Psychoanalyst: “Your cat is a guy? You mean that you have a male cat, is that it?”

  Shuhak: “No, my cat is not a guy, I’m not talking about a male cat.”

  Psychoanalyst (begins scribbling feverishly in your chart: “I see. So you have a female cat that you’ve named Randy D. Why do you think you did that?”

  Shuhak: “I didn’t do that. My cat is male, not female. We are not talking about a female cat.”

Psychoanalyst: “You do not want to talk about your female cat because that’s painful for you. Why is that painful for you?”

  Shuhak: “It’s neither painful for me nor not painful for me because it doesn’t exist! There is no female cat named Randy D anywhere on this story!”

  Psychoanalyst: “Repressed emotions of connecting with yet alternatively denying a figment of your imagination. Interesting.” (More feverish scribbling in your chart.)

  Shuhak: “Who said anything about a . . . this is ridiculous. I’m talking about a real-live guy, a human, not a feline.”

  Psychoanalyst: “Fine, fine. You have a male cat, you did not name him Randy D, so he must have already had that name when you first acquired him, something like that?”

  Shuhak: “My cat has never been named Randy D, neither by other people before I got him nor by me once I got him.”

  Psychoanalyst: “Hmmm, and yet you call him Randy D even though it’s not his name. Why do you feel that you selected your cat to represent this fictional character you’ve invented to keep you calm?”

  Shuhak: “He’s not fictional, he’s real!”

  Psychoanalyst: “Of course your cat is real, were you hallucinating that he is not?”

  Shuhak: “And we’re back to the cat again, even though I’ve said this is about a guy.”

  Psychoanalyst: “Sure, we’ll go with that.  So you and this so-called ‘guy’, the two of you have met in person, I take it.”

  Shuhak: “Well, no . . .”

  Psychoanalyst: “Then the two of you have videochatted?”

  Shuhak: “No, never . . . “

  Psychoanalyst: “You two just speak with each other on regular phone calls perhaps.”

  Shuhak: “Not even that.”

  Psychoanalyst: “So how do you know he’s real?”

  Shuhak: “Randy D is a guy who posts on this quirky, obscure website all the time, I’m a regular member there, and so is he. In fact, he’s logged onto it more than I am, in fact, he’s there every day, several times a day. I doubt he has a real life. I’m not on there as much as he is, I always read a lot of his posts, and he reads many of mine. We answer each other’s questions, we have banter, sometimes we even clash, but it’s good natured clashing.”

  Psychoanalyst: “So your fictional friend knows how to use the internet and how to type. How many others do you have hanging around in there?”

  Shuhak: “I do not have split personalities, and Randy D is a real person, I keep telling you that.”

  Psychoanalyst: “Of course he is. Can other people see him?”

  Shuhak: “Sure they can, he has a wife and adult kids, lots of people must know him.”

  Psychoanalyst: “What are their names, his wife and children?”

  Shuhak: “How should I know? I don’t know anything about them, I just know about Randy D.”

  Psychoanalyst: “Peculiar. You obsess about him yet don’t even humanize his family, you don’t give them names. Is it because they’re cats?”

  Shuhak: “We’re getting nowhere. How much am I paying you per hour for this?”

   Psychoanalyst: “You keep jumping around here from one subtopic to another. That’s what we in my line of work call avoidance strategy, which is used to hide things. Why not stick with your original train of thought?”

  Shuhak: “Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to do! This was supposed to be about Randy D baiting me into a mathematics war! Grrrrrrr.”

  Psychoanalyst: “Very well. I am strangely reminded of your transference of your cat to personify Randy D, do you believe the cat is the one typing on the internet every day?”

~

  To which “he” are you referring? The psychoanalyst is a woman. 

~