I know I said I wouldn’t be posting anymore, but it turns out this whole exercise may not have been as fruitless as I first thought! I’ve been offered a job in Seattle at a mental health institution to take over the case of a young woman who is obsessed with fictional characters, much as my mystery patient was. This patient did at one point receive therapy, but her self-styled therapist wasn’t properly licensed. Her misjudgment apparently allowed this patient to do a great deal of damage to others. Credentials are there for a reason, folks.

I am grateful now for the experience I had with my patient, despite its irregularities. Before his final session, he insisted on signing a disclosure agreement, releasing some of the bounds of client confidentiality. I told him this was not necessary–he could help others even if he continued to go by B.B. He told me that this was not the case, saying that he wanted people to know who he was and how much my work had helped him. This is why I felt comfortable releasing that recording of our final session. My guess is that Barker is an assumed name in the first place, but now
I will never be sure.

Still, all’s well that ends well. Thanks again for all your support. This wouldn’t be happening without you all!

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write for the past few days, and I decided I should just write something. I hardly know what to say. It seems my whole project has come apart at the seams and I will be discontinuing this blog soon and returning to my normal mode of practice. I have been verbally assaulted, harassed by people with strange accents, contacted by shadowy figures, and haunted by a patient who just refuses to cooperate.

At our last session, I decided that QXZenith’s poem would be the most helpful for my patient at this time. As I was reading through it, I left momentarily to speak with my secretary, and when I came back, he had vanished. I don’t know where he’s gone or what he’s done, but I wash my hands of this case. There appears to be nothing left for me to do, and if he contacts me again, I shall immediately phone the police. I allowed myself to be sidetracked by the intriguing nature of the mystery, but I have certainly learned my lesson!

Those of you who have been helpful, I do thank you for your input. I am posting the recording of our last session and of one of the earlier sessions a courtesy to those of you have taken your time and made a sincere effort to assist me in helping a patient. There seems to be some kind of glitch in the recording of our final session after BB talks… so much for exploring the digital frontier if I can’t even get my voice recorder to work right! I think I’ll be leaving social media to the next generation!

This is Minds and Matters, signing off

Earlier session: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7pzsdcBJdn_b2g5MG03WTdpZFk/edit

Final session: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7pzsdcBJdn_dGU2aktkYXBoa2M/edit

I know I said I have seen many troubled patients through my work in the criminal justice system, but I have to admit that I have never dealt with such a difficult patient or set of circumstances in my entire professional career. Especially with a person who is not currently incarcerated! True, I may have frustrated him by posting online, but sharing patients’ stories (without names) is common practice in psychology, especially when it’s with the intent of finding new treatments to help people. I don’t know how he even found this site! But I think I won’t be trying this again anytime soon.

He did return for his appointment today, but he refused to listen to my advice and kept talking about “refictionalizing” himself into the story of Sweeney Todd. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I plan to give things one more go with him before remanding him to the care of the Boston PD. He does seem to be more stable now that he believes his wife is alive – I’m not sure how you convinced him, but I do think it has helped him focus on getting better instead of on acting out his violent fantasies. He said that he has decided to try to help those he can, regardless of the consequences. I agreed that his obsession with revenge was only likely to further hurt those around him.

Because of his current fixation on the Sweeney Todd narrative, my last proposal is as follows: if some of you could write something – a poem, a short story – that includes key aspects of this Sweeney character, I think reading them or hearing them might be helpful for my patient. Perhaps by rewriting this character’s future, we can show him he has friends to help him and make a difference in a real person’s life.

I intend to discontinue my posts here shortly, but if you wish to respond, post your work in the comments or share a link to a google document and I will sift through them and go through them with my patient. I shall post one final time to let you know the results.