Couch is a series about psychotherapy.
When George Nowicki, a prospective therapy patient, called for an appointment, it wasn’t just the name but the heavy accent that identified him as Polish. The accent was familiar to me: I, too, was born in Poland, in a region that is now a part of Ukraine. In anticipation of working with him, I felt both excitement and a sense of foreboding.
Our first session was a brief phone conversation to negotiate scheduling and for me to answer questions about my qualifications, fees and any other matters important to George. He was precise and articulate. He explained that his wife had just left him, unexpectedly, after 30 years of marriage. I sensed that he was cooperative and eager to talk to someone.
At 6 o’clock on a Wednesday, George entered my office in a slow, deliberate manner, as if walking into a headwind. He was graceful in his posture — was he a dancer? I wondered. He was six feet tall, handsome, with blue eyes and short, grayish hair. He had a confident demeanor. He sat down opposite me and searched for the cigarettes in his pocket. I told him there was no smoking in my office. He easily obliged.
George began. He told me that he was born in 1928 in Poland. He was now a physicist and a nonpracticing Catholic. “My parents were of the aristocracy,” he said. “They were proud of their Polish heritage and they were devoted to their church.”
“How was it for you as a child in that house?” I asked.
He paused, but looked as if he welcomed my question. “It felt normal,” he said. “They were religious and quite opinionated. They demanded that I be a good and obedient child. They took care of me but they didn’t express their feelings or thoughts very much.”
He described his experiences as if he was an observer, rather than a participant, but I sensed a warmth and kindness beneath his formal manner. I liked him.
George was 11 when Hitler invaded Poland, in 1939. I couldn’t help thinking that at that time I, too, was living in Poland, a 2-year-old Jewish child.
He explained that during the war, the Nazis, wary of potential enemy fighters, rounded up Polish teenagers and placed them in internment camps. George, as a young adolescent, was taken from his family and placed in such a camp. It was not a concentration camp but a holding pen, similar to the camps Japanese-Americans were forced into following Pearl Harbor.
I expressed sympathy, saying how frightening it must have been for him. Still, I thought what a contrast it was to my father’s experience: In his 20s, he was dragged by the Nazis into a cattle car destined for the Belzec concentration camp, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. My father and a friend managed to break out of the moving train and jump to safety. Desperate to find a hiding place, my father ran to a Polish Catholic friend’s house for refuge. But the family betrayed him, and the Gestapo sent him back to Belzec — where the detainees, including my father, were ordered to clean themselves in a shower that was steaming with gas, not water.
These were the images in my head as I listened to my bright and interesting new patient.
In the internment camp, George said, he missed his parents. Even though they were wealthy and upper class, they could not help him avoid imprisonment. I recalled my own anguish at being separated from my mother. When I was 6, she hid me with nuns and a priest in a convent on the outskirts of Warsaw. For two years I wondered if she was alive and if I would ever see her again. My mother, who survived by working as a “Christian” nanny to a Gestapo family (she was Jewish but had Christian papers), reclaimed me in 1945.
“What was it like for you in that camp without your family?” I asked him.
“It was all right,” George said. “I remember being scared, but I didn’t feel threatened for my life. I didn’t think they were going to kill us. We were all Christian.”
“Did you have food and water?” I asked.
“Yes, we did, though not much,” he replied. “Most of all, I missed my family and friends. I was not allowed any communication with anyone on the outside. My family did write letters that were smuggled in, but I never got them.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, the letters were smuggled to the camp and placed under the roof of the outhouse,” he explained. “But the Jewish guards” — that is, those working against their will under German command — “found them and brought them to the commandant. So I never got them.”
The room filled with a pregnant silence.
“I hate Jews,” George said suddenly. He stared into my eyes and waited for my reaction.
My body stiffened. I tried to keep my feelings in the background.
“Do you know I am Jewish?” I asked.
“Yes, of course, I looked you up,” he answered.
Seconds passed. The tension between us was palpable. Eventually, he broke the silence by asking, “In therapy, aren’t I supposed to say what’s on my mind?”
“Well,” I replied, “that is totally true. You need to speak freely about whatever is on your mind. But I have to say that as a therapist, I, too, need to feel safe with you. So I have to tell you that given my background, I have some feelings, too.”
“What are those?” he asked.
I might have spoken of discomfort or fear but I didn’t.
“I don’t like Poles,” I said.
The words flew out of my mouth, and I immediately felt bad. Out of anger, or perhaps a misplaced attempt at self-defense, I had insulted George. I had also betrayed the memory of the brave and loving Polish nuns and priests who protected me and saved my life.
The space between us widened. I watched him, and he watched me. I didn’t know what was to come, or what to say. This was my first such encounter in all my years of practice. I expected him to walk out.
It was George who made the first move. He got up and reached out to shake my hand. Was he saying goodbye?
I stood up and took his hand.
“I like you,” he said. “I like that we have everything out on the table. No secrets. I think this will work well for me.”
We sat back down.
I exhaled, feeling relieved. I think he felt the same. Having expressed our prejudices, we both seemed more comfortable.
In that first session, George and I established a trust that often takes considerable time to develop. Therapy is about the safety and freedom to express deep and often forbidden feelings, the understanding that whatever primitive feelings are expressed will be received and processed without judgment.
We worked together productively, twice a week, for more than three years. In these sessions we spoke of his marriage, his family, his life since the war. We also addressed the nuances and origins of our negative feelings toward those who had wronged us. (He did not dislike all Jews any more than I disliked all Poles — just the ones in the camp who had confiscated his letters.) In those moments, we were not just patient and therapist, but two men who had lived through unspeakable times.
But we spoke of them. And we thrived.
Clemens Loew, a psychoanalyst in New York, is the author of “When the Birds Stopped Singing: Living With the Wounds of War: Personal Essays.”
Details have been altered to protect patient privacy.