"Raymond F. Nelson - Then Beggar's Could Ride" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nelson Raymond F)

"No, no, that won't be necessary. I see that, like so many people who
come to a therapist for the first time, you have a lot of false notions about
us. This is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. I don't believe
there's a single couch in this whole building."

"If you haven't got a couch, where am I going to lie down while you ask
me about my childhood?"

"I'm not going to ask you about your childhood."

"What about my dreams?"
 "I'm not going to ask you about your dreams, either."

A faint smile played about his lips as he seated himself behind his light
elegant flexible-wood desk. "All those things have to do with your past. It's
all here." He tapped my dossier with his finger. "But since your past has
led you to attempt to kill yourself, you couldn't say it's been exactly good
for you. No, we won't talk much about your past. It's your future that
interests me, Jack."

"My name isn't Jack," I objected.

"I call all my male clients Jack, and all my female clients Jill. Later on
you'llтАФ"

"Just a minute there! I'm an individual! I demandтАФ"

His sparse eyebrows shot up. "You demand your identity? It seems to
me your identity was the very thing you wanted to be rid of when you took
the pills."

"Touch├й," I said morosely. I didn't care all that much. "So my name is
Jack. What's yours?"

"You can call me Doc." He stood up, leaned over the desk, and shook
hands with me. As he sat down again, he went on, "As I was about to say,
you won't be Jack forever. Someday, when you're ready, I'll hand you a list
of names and say 'Pick one.'"

"What if I don't like any of them?"

"Then you can make up one. You can have any name you like with one
exception."

"The name I was born with?"

"Exactly."

"Show me the list, Doc."