I can see a woman’s face. She’s lying with her head tilted to one side. Her face is very white. It cannot be my mother, because she’s dark.

“She’s lying on the floor.  Her eyes are open, her face is white.  A man is sitting on top of her.

“I keep seeing the woman’s face.  She’s staring at me.  Her face is very white and her head is tilted to one side.  There are tears coming out of her eyes.  I’m very frightened.

“She isn’t moving.  The man is moving, but she isn’t.  She is lying very still.  I know I am there because she is looking at me….  I am standing in the doorway, in the dark.

“There’s a pain in my neck …. I’m screaming very loud! Oh God, I’m screaming very loud but nobody hears me!  He has his hands stretched out towards her head.  He’s hurting her! I want him to stop…. And I’m just standing there screaming, but nobody hears me.”

* * * *

Ruth has spent 11 weeks in psychotherapy with psychoanalyst Mike Whitenburgh.  She has a history of anxiety and nervous disorder.

Her mother died when she was 7, her father re-married and she has loathed him for as long as she can remember.

She had a miserable, loveless childhood and a marriage to a violent man which ended seven years ago.  She is Indian, but the family moved to Britain 12 years ago.

Maybe her father had sexually assaulted her when she was young, she rationalised after reading about sexual abuse of children in the Echo.  Maybe that was why she hated him and that could be the cause of her neuroses, her fears and strange dreams.

Mike began work on her troubled psyche back in March.

His aim was to leaf through the photograph album of her mind and release the “timeless, formless, nameless something” inside her, bringing her peace.

Ruth re-lived the therapy sessions for me.  She holds little back as we sit in the bright lounge of her terraced house, where she has brought up her two sons, aged 10 and 8, since her divorce.

Mike took her through imaginary scenes: descending a staircase, floating into space, walking in a lovely valley, sleeping in a golden bed in a golden room where a soft breeze from the window tinkled through a crystal chandelier.

“The one I hated was going into a dark tunnel with a pin- hole at the other end.  I had to walk into darkness and the pin-hole of light went above my head.

“Mike would say, “Tell me the first thing that comes into you mind;” but my mind was a blank.  I was frightened of being in the tunnel.  I had pains- contraction-type pains in my stomach.

“Mike kept saying “What are you frightened of? What can you see? But all I could see was blackness.”

During the sessions, many things came back to her.

Inconsequential things such as the colour of her cloths in certain situations, or intricate descriptions of rooms where she had lived as a child.

Other things vanished during the course of therapy.  The weird experiences stopped and the dreams I had were happy ones.”

Ruth is sitting, curled up in the corner of the settee, the sadness showing in her black eyes.  By this stage in the therapy, she says, she believed that she and Mike had uncovered the root of the problem.

“I thought that my idea about the sexual thing with my father was out of the question, because the only time he ever touched me was to push me away, never to cuddle or love me.

“I thought it was the violent things-the beatings that had resulted in my mother’s death.  But Mike said I would know when we had reached the end.

And know she did. When what turned out to be the final session came, she felt relaxed and happy.

Mike went through the paces-the valley, the golden room.  I knew it by now.  I got there before him.  Then it was the tunnel, the bloody tunnel again!  All of a sudden I started feeling frightened again and the pains began.

“At first it was blank, Mike kept saying “Come on, what can you see?” I was waiting in the tunnel, then suddenly I could see flashes.  It was a woman’s head.  Her head was tilted to one side.  Her face was white.  Her eyes were open.

I didn’t know who she was.  In my mind my mother was darker than me, but the woman had a white face.

“Then I saw a man on top of her. I was trying to see, but it was like fighting through a wind.  I felt I had to break through, but I didn’t want to.

“I thought they were making love, but I didn’t want to tell Mike that.  I was getting worked up.  I kept seeing the woman’s face, staring at me.

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