Quotes from tape recordings of four sessions with therapist Pat Allen talking to Monique

Tape One:

PA: Monique, If your father gives you money to come home but won’t give you money to save the relationship what are his real interests? What do you want to do, marry your father?

PA: It’s very dangerous for you [Monique] to go to work. To turn you loose at this point. If we give you too many freedoms we won’t be able to keep you at home. The world of money, power, and prestige will be very exciting to you, just like the world of mothering his children is very loving for him [Christopher].

PA: Maybe you’re still a “puella” a little girl. Maybe you’re really not “married” [in your mind] yet. You’d rather go back to your father. You’re not married yet.

Tape Two:

PA: It’s not appropriate for a women your age to be the male. Your hormones are not built for it, your body’s not built for it. It’s like you’re menopausal very, very young.

PA: You [Monique] have really not decided if you are the female or the male in this relationship because you really want to be both.

PA: You really still belong to that other family [your father]. She’s single in her mind and that means she’s narcissistic.

PA: Usually ladies like you get a couple of sperm, go to a lawyer, get half of the money, go off and have boyfriends.

PA: You want to be you’re father’s daughter and you want to be your husband’s controller. You’ve legally married, you’ve had your babies, now you want to bring them back to your father.

PA: If you wish to be menopausal early your body is fighting it.

PA: Do you [Christopher] understand that she is going to compete with this little girl [Celina]. When this little girl [Celina] gets spoiled by you, she’s [Monique] going to get angry because she didn’t get to do it. When this little girl primps and preens Monique is going to get angry because she didn’t get to do it.

PA: You [Christopher] are facing some bad times. Your little daughter is going to be taught how to be masculine by her mother and it will be very painful to watch.

Tape Three:

PA: When the kids do something that she does not approve of. She goes berserk. She’s a very masculine woman.

PA: For whatever reason when her daddy didn’t cherish her the way he was supposed to. Now she has an exacerbated sense of those four basic phobias [being out of control, unusual noises, rejection, and abandonment]. But she has an adverse reaction. She’s insane, She’s out of her mind [when confronting a phobic situation]

PA: When anything is out of her control, it flips her out.

PA: Her defendedness tells me that she perceives that she has to take care of herself because no man will. Now that came from a long time ago. It has little or nothing to do with you [Christopher] other than you represent one of them. And your promises may no be any more valuable then theirs were. There’s an implied promise from a father to a daughter to make her feel good and when that doesn’t come forth then she lose faith in men providing pleasure for women.

PA: You come from a dysfunctional family or you wouldn’t be where you’re at now.

Tape Four:

PA: I’d like you to write a letter to your dad and read it to me, before you confront him. I’d like to see what’s at the bottom of this whole man-hate thing. Why you don’t want to pleasure the sensuousness in a man. What did your daddy do that men now have to pay for? Especially if you get them trapped in your little spider web where you don’t have to be good to them anymore, they’re stuck with you. They’re married to you. You have two of their kids. So they're stuck helpless like flies in a spider trap....

Monique: Do I get the credit of perhaps not knowing what I was doing?

PA. I fully understand that. I’m bringing you to consciousness as fast as I can. And I want you to write him a letter that you read to me about your whole childhood experience. And if you had other men that may have molested you or not treated you right write letters to them too. I want to know what Chris is paying for from your past cause it obviously isn’t Chris.

Monique: So you are absolutely convinced it’s not him?

PA. I know it’s not him!

Christopher: Her older brother did molest her as a child once.

Monique: Are you referring to this thing I told you once about.

Christopher: Where he threw you down and ripped your clothes off.

PA: Ripping clothes off?

Christopher: The first time you mentioned it you referred to it as rape. Those were your words.

PA: How old was this brother?

Monique: I’d say we were 7 and 9.. I could be wrong.

PA: Very often in homes where fathers don’t protect their daughters or women’s feelings that the males in the family feel intuitively they have the right to do what they want to do. They can abuse women. Up to and including rape where there’s not a protection of women in the family.

[...]

PA: I’m sensing that you don’t want to pleasure men. That they’re on earth for you and you’re not on earth for them anymore.

PA: I’m going to say it’s “men” because right now this one [Christopher] represents men and I sense that this one didn’t cause this reaction. I sense it was caused back [in the past]. Because this one doesn’t have what it takes to cause that reaction.

PA: You must have started taking him for granted.

PA: A man-hater is a woman who hates the sensuous side of a man as if it’s using and abusing her.

[...]

PA: I’m afraid that that’s there because of some things back there [in her past]. That she doesn’t want to give her body to anybody for some reason. Mother? Maybe it’s women.... Maybe somebody ordered you to do things.... May have to do with a teacher... maybe a baby-sitter for all I know. Somebody who went too far controlling you.

PA: So maybe your rebelling against your parents. But you’re rebelling against this dude [Christopher] and I’m not too happy about that.

[...]

PA: The big problem now is that she loses control with the kids.

PA: I have a suspicion there’s stuff that your dad... you mom... your brother... I have a suspicion that there’s a whole bunch of junk inside. Which means that your garbage dump is full. We have to drain it so that there’s room for new garbage to come in. Now the extra lump of garbage spills out on your family.

PA: There’s a little too much uptightness that has nothing to do with him [Christopher]. I want to see what your garbage is because I feel that some of it’s still rotting.