Subject: Goren, R.O
Male, 48, b. NYC.
ref: NYPD, MCS
Assessment - (personal notes only) professional supervision
Notes refer Sess. #

These notes are part of an annotated transcript derived from tape recordings of our xxx session together.

NOTE: I'm aware that we have have been skirting around a considerable number of issues concerning Goren's mother and older brother in the last few weeks. I'm looking for a way to broach this with him. He has notes from his time in Narcotics regarding his problem with authority figures. I'd like to know more about what is motivating him at this point, so I ask him:

- What can you tell me about your relationship with your father, Detective Goren?

Goren looks at me in astonishment. It's as though he thought that psychologists didn't really ask those kind of questions - that they were the preserve of day-time television and soap operas. I smile encouragingly at him. He scratches absently at the back of his neck for a moment before responding. I recognise that as a sign of discomfort. He says:

- When I start thinking about my dad I feel like someone is pouring hot tar in my ears, or I'm getting a head-cold, or something. So I try not to think about him much, as everything in my head slows down and I hate that feeling.

- That's a very honest answer. Is it only thoughts of your father that do that to you?

- Only in-depth consideration of him. I can think on a simplistic level about him without it being a problem.

- I wonder what it was about him that causes this?

- Everything.

- Expand on that, please.

Goren rubs his palm all over his face repeatedly, as though trying to rub life into his features. He is heavily bearded this week, though I suspect this may be as the result of neglect as opposed to a deliberate tonsorial statement. His voice is very quiet.

- My mother was over-fond of telling me that my father was a shit. But ... the way she said it, I used to wonder if it was a description of him, or a reflection on me. It doesn't matter who my father was. What matters is who I REMEMBER him as being.

I pick up on his terminlogy and challenge him on it.

- You use an interesting turn of phrase, Detective. I don't think I fully understand you. It sounds almost as though you are saying you do not know who your father was.

Goren's face becomes completely still. I hold his gaze, but as the moments wear on, find it increasingly difficult to do so. After an appreciable pause I clear my throat and try a different question.

- So, how do you remember your father, then?

Goren stands up and moves slowly over to the window, where a mobile of brightly painted wooden fishes, a favourite of some of my younger subjects, hangs. Sure enough, he starts to fiddle with it, untangling it. The activity does not seem to impact on his speech pattern or, presumably, his underlying thought processes in any way. It is unconscious. He can't help it. He is barely aware of what he is doing.

I tampered deliberately with the mobile ten minutes before he arrived, getting it all tangled up. Perhaps he guesses I have done that, and knows I am testing him, but has decided that he doesn't care. Restoration of the mobile to its correct function seems more important.

This is typical of the man.

He says:

- My dad was a man of what my mom euphemistically called 'appetites'. He was a weak man, easily influenced. He had a classic addictive personality

- That's a very old-fashioned expression, Detective. You surprise me.

- Well, OK. Whatever. He was a mixture of 'anti-social' and 'self-punitive', then. He abused himself to help him manage his emotions, especially after mom got sick. Something like 73% of men with sick or disabled wives, leave them. Alcohol and gambling were his ways of leaving. Until he finally did ... leave. He should've had "Everything In Moderation" carved on his grave stone, but with the word "Everything" underlined in red. That was his interpretation of the phrase. He spent most of his adult life on a mission to try out just about every ... thing.

- How did he die?

- Cancer. Bowel. It moved into his liver in the end. What was left of his liver.

Goren comes and sits down again. There is another of those long drawn-out pauses where all I can hear on the digital recorder is Goren's breathing and the sounds of his clothing rubbing as he shifts around trying to get comfortable. After at least 30 seconds he speaks again.

- My rational mind knows that I didn't cause his death, but sometimes I wonder. I might have ... you know, hastened his passing. He got sick when I was still working in Narcotics. We argued badly, a week before he finally passed.

- What happened?

- The pain of it must have been driving him out of his gourd, because he said something to me, something like, "Of all the many things I've achieved in my life son, you being in the NYPD is the one I am most proud of." He looked me right in the eye when he said it, without a trace of irony. Not a hint.

Goren's expression is one of old, half-healed pain, and continued disbelief. He seems to be right back there with his father, in the hospital room. I no longer exist for Goren at this point in the proceedings.

- Looking back on it all, you know - a decade on, I guess he was trying in his half-assed way to make up for the years of bad feeling between us, to try and smooth out the dents in his conscience. He was trying to make amends, trying to square up with me. Maybe.

Another long pause.

- I was younger. Hot-headed ... so I just went crazy. I think I'd been on stake-out for three nights, I'd hardly slept or eaten, and there was this, this vile husk of a man lying on the oncology ward at the Bronx-Lebanon trying to claw up the credit for everything I had managed to achieve in my life. My life. Can we put the AC on, please?

I suspect that, rather than being physically uncomfortable, Goren interrupts himself like this in order to gain a little respite from the intensity of his feelings. The AC hums and whistles a bit and I can hear the newly-freed fish mobile moving in the slight breeze.

- What happened when you lost your temper?

- Oh, I told him a few home truths about me, about him, about Frank, and about Mom. He looked pretty stunned. He never expected me to lay it all at his door while he was on his death bed, I s'pose. It's like I'm the only one who actually understood what is going on for ALL the different members of my family. Everyone else is in their own little circle of lies and half-truths.

- That sounds ... hard work for you. A burden. Is that right?

- I think so, yeah. Maybe that's why I really let rip on my dad. And then, he died. He was dead in a week.

- And you believe that the sudden stark details of his life and his family's is what left him too weak to fight the illness?

- Yeah. I can't shake that feeling.

- Even though there's no real evidence that that is what happened?

- It was the same for my mom. She and I had -

He stop; swallows, not without difficulty.

- Take your time, Detective Goren. These are powerful topics. Was there an argument with your mother? Before she died?

But, he's gone. I've lost him. He clams up and just looks at me, his face impassive again. I resist the urge to sigh in frustration. It must be difficult for him - he is, after all, used to being the one who asks the questions.

On the recording, all I can hear, until I decide to end the session prematurely, is the fish mobile clattering gently in the breeze from the air conditioner. Goren may have freed up its tangled strands and allowed it to function properly again, but if only he could do the same for himself.

What he has told me about his family life suggests that he did not grow up in a supportive, nurturing environment where the sharing of such intimacies was encouraged. It's very hard for Goren to confide in others in matters concerning his personal feelings.

He simply never developed the knack.