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Who is it that can tell me who I am?

unwilling children of an awesome coupling between fate and mother nature which can shatter dreams and lives. When the reader comes to the end of Part 1 they will find a chapter called 'The Erotic Transference', which will provide them with a theoretical exploration of the erotic transference which has troubled and tantalised both analyst and patient since Freud first coined his 'talking cure'. This chapter may also help the reader who is less initiated in the strange mysteries and esoteric rituals of psychoanalysis to understand more about the nature of my own intense dependence on my analyst.

I remember the first time I dreamt about you, after our initial consultation, and just before I passed my driving test and we began the analysis. I dreamt that you lived in a beautiful and ancient house that had many entrances into large and perfectly proportioned rooms; its design resembling a Neo-Paladin villa. There were many long corridors; utility rooms such as laundries and larders, which contained preservatives, occupied some; others were dignified and luxurious. Your dream wife was scuttling about like a very busy bird preparing to nest and you introduced us formally. (It used to annoy me that during my sessions with you I heard her moving around your house, carrying out domestic tasks whose sounds intruded into the inner sanctum. I never told you, but my nickname for her was Little Trotty Wagtail.) In this dream, you invited me to move my family into your home; you said that there were ample rooms for all of us. I went home and informed my family that we were to move house imminently. I became immersed in the activity of packing up my linen cupboard, folding my white sheets and towels and carrying them to your house. I emptied all my cupboards and rearranged the objects, including my children's toys; in the accommodation you gave me in your house. Your wife pointed the way.

To begin with I managed a precarious balancing act between the roles of wife, mother, postgraduate student, teacher and your patient. As I became more submerged in the analysis so did it become harder to concentrate on my research. I used to lose myself for hours in reverie, in the British Library reading room, with unopened texts in front of me. Instead of consulting my Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare I consulted those journals that contained papers that you had written. Instead of consulting Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity , I roamed in a dictionary of names in the Bible , and discovered that yours translated as "kin of the desert of sin". I couldn't have dreamt up anything that seemed more appropriate for a Jungian analyst. To begin with you didn't speak very often and spent most of the time listening to my story.

When I was about one year old my mother wheeled me to the department store John Barnes, in the Finchley Road . In those days, I am told, John Barnes and Partners provided a pram-park that was presided over by a harridan that I can, from a later sight, still remember. Then it operated on the same ticketed principle as Left Luggage. My mother finished her shopping and took the bus home. At closing time she was contacted by the outraged pram-minder. I cannot remember details but my mother later told me that the memory haunted her. This was to be the first of many such experiences. I am also told that as a child I had an appealing expression and my pale face and brooding dark eyes managed to attract attention. Strangers would stop by my pram and talk to me. This was fortunate because I came to depend on strangers. As an adult, a friend presented me with an alternative explanation. He thought I had been born under a lucky star and compared me to Shakespeare's Beatrice: 'But then there was a star danced, and under that I was born.' Most of my experiences of misfortune have been tempered by human goodness.