"It is early December, and I am sitting in a psychoanalyst's office in central London, about to do 60 minutes of pre-Christmas family therapy. Outside, the Christmas lights are twinkling. I can hear a drunk person literally shouting for joy on the street beneath the window. But inside the consulting room, it is eerily silent. My mother, my sister and I sit in squishy armchairs and pretend to admire the art, but really we are eyeballing one another like prizefighters, looking for weak spots."
"I also remember throwing a potato. Then my mother brandished a carving knife at me and said: I would like to run you through with this knife. We didn't eat Christmas dinner at all that year. My mother wandered the streets alone, smoking fags, while the rest of us sat on the sofa and watched Elf. When we started therapy, the dream was that we would be able to Christmas-proof our family dynamic."
A family convenes for an annual pre-Christmas therapy session in an elderly psychoanalyst's central London consulting room, attempting to manage recurring holiday conflict. The scene contrasts twinkling street lights and an outside reveler with an interior of tense silence and careful posturing, while a father joins by Zoom. A past Christmas escalated to violence and disruption, prompting the family to seek professional intervention. The therapy ritual attempts to assign roles and air grievances in advance, yet the hour often surfaces longstanding grudges, theatrical politeness, and the difficulty of truly resolving entrenched family dynamics.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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