From: amperage@aol.com (Amperage)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: Evaluation/Therapy (1of 6)
Date: 25 Apr 1995 22:43:46 -0400

Evaluation written by Amperage@AOL.com


DISCLAIMER
No official permission exists for the assessor to use any of the
characters from the X-files in this Assesment. 

REPORT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT
FOR: mental status evaluation and pre-treatment recommendations

    Name:  Fox Mulder (NMN)
Position:  Special Agent, FBI
      SS:  459-33-2909
Assessor:  Emmaline Davis, PhD. Clinical Psychology 
           License #1579564

REASON FOR REFERRAL
Agent Fox Mulder was assigned to case X179915 by Associate Deputy
Director Skinner at the request of the Director.  The granddaughter
of junior senator J. Howell of Missouri was missing and
the mother, currently under psychiatric care, claimed alien
abduction.  Agent Mulder and his partner, Special Agent Dr. Dana
Scully investigated.  Evidence lead the agents to a small cairn of
stones where the child had been buried by the father; the alien
abduction story having been created as a cover.  However, the
child, Anna Lisa Howell-Norgrove, 4 at the time of her
disappearance, was not found in the cairn.  Evidence at the crime
scene suggested that she had pushed her way out, not being dead as
her father had supposed, but merely unconscious.

An extensive search was launched to find the missing child,
culminating in the discovery of Anna Lisa's body in an abandoned
house.  The child had been violently raped and beaten before being
strangled.  Her body was fresh on discovery, no more than 5 or 6
hours old.  Agent Mulder, believing unjustly that he had not done
enough to save Anna Lisa's life, began hitting his hand against a
stone fireplace when Agent Scully attempted discuss his guilt
feelings with him.  Despite her repeated attempts to reason with
him, Agent Mulder would not refrain from his self-destructive act. 
Eventually Agent Scully got two local sheriff's deputies to 
restrained Agent Mulder until he was able to control his behavior.

Agent Scully took her partner to W.A. Jackson Memorial Hospital, in
Albertville, Missouri, for treatment.  Agent Mulder had broken his
smallest finger and lacerated the flesh along the edge of his left
hand, requiring a splint and nine stitches.  Due to the manner in
which the injury occurred, Agent Mulder, along with being given
several pain killers, was also sedated.  He was discharged
into Agent Scully's custody following treatment to his hand.

Agent Scully, working in her capacity as a licensed medical
doctor, requested that this evaluation be performed.  Her
request was joined by Associate Deputy Director Skinner's order
that an evaluation be performed on Agent Mulder and that any
necessary actions be taken as needed to insure Agent Mulder's
mental health.

TESTS ADMINISTERED
No tests were administered.  Due to Agent Mulder's training and
familiarity with psychological tests, it was felt that the normal
battery of tests would provide very little reliable data of a valid
nature.

Agent Mulder has taken the MMPI and MMPI2, as well as the WAIS-R,
WMS-R, and SB:FE at previous times.

PAST PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY
Agent Mulder has been involved in-house therapy three times in the
past, twice under the recommendation of a superior.  The first
instance of mandatory therapy came after the shooting death of
another agent, for which Agent Mulder blamed himself.  This therapy
was short-term and superficial.  

The second time Agent Mulder was involved in a therapeutic process
was also mandatory, when he was working as an Analyst for
Behavioral Sciences, writing profiles.  Agent Mulder experienced
identification with a killer whom the press dubbed the "Prairie
Killer"  that lead to eccentric, maladaptive behavior.

The third case of therapy involving Bureau therapists came three
and a half years ago.  Agent Mulder reported frequent nightmares,
increased irritability, strong feelings of guilt, inability to
experience intimacy--whether with friends or in a romantic
involvement--and phobic behavior.  Agent Mulder was diagnosed with
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and intensive therapy initiated. 
After four months, Agent Mulder transferred to a private therapist,
Dr. Heitz Verber.

The diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was kept by Dr.
Verber, who initiated deep regression hypnosis therapy relating to
the possible abduction of Agent Mulder's sister.  Agent Mulder
admitted psychogenic amnesia concerning his sister's disappearance,
and Dr. Verber's therapy centered around this incident.  In
addition to the original diagnosis Dr. Verber added the diagnosis
"delayed onset."  After nine months of therapy, Agent Mulder was
able to remember the incident concerning his sister's abduction and
terminated therapy with Dr. Verber.  Dr. Verber believed Agent
Mulder's termination of therapy to be premature and noted this in
his report to FBI mental health services.


CURRENT PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS        
Agent Mulder currently suffers from chronic Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, delayed onset.  (DSM-IV code 300.81)

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION RELATING TO POST TRAUMATIC
STRESS DISORDER
Agent Mulder was the first born child.  His mother was a homemaker,
his father a history professor.  According to Agent Mulder he was
not of the sex his parents had desired and when he was four and
allowed to attend the university kindergarten a year early, his
mother had a second child, a girl who was named Samantha Mulder. 
His own name had been "something of a joke:"  his mother had not
planned on giving birth to a son and had no male name prepared. 
His father thought the newborn infant looked somewhat feral and
suggested Fox. The manner in which Mulder explained his sister's
birth and the vignette concerning his naming suggests that Mulder
may have always experienced emotional distancing from both parents,
even prior to the disappearance of his sister.

Agent Mulder's sister disappeared one evening after Agent Mulder
had been assigned babysitting chores while his parents went to a
neighbor's home for an evening of bridge.  Fox Mulder and his
sister were watching television and playing a popular board game
when, according to Agent Mulder, they experienced a power outage. 
A light came into the room and Samantha Mulder was taken from the
room by a force.  Agent Mulder reports seeing an alien figure that
paralyzed him, telling him that everything would be "all right" and
that his sister would be returned.

Agent Mulder was found on the floor of his parents' home, curled on
a rug with his father's gun in his hands.  He was found to be in
shock and selectively mute and was given a sedative.  When he woke
he was unable to remember any of the incidents of his sister's
abduction.

Following this incident Fox Mulder's father became abusive towards
his son, blaming Fox for the disappearance of his sister. 
Eventually the father abused his son in the mother's presence.  She
responded by asking that the father leave the household.  No
divorce was ever filed, however Mulder's parents have not lived
with each other since this period.

FINDINGS
Agent Mulder is currently working in the Violent Crimes Department,
investigating cases involving unexplainable phenomenon.  He came
early to the interview, and was well-groomed, dressing
appropriately to his position.  He was cooperative and soft-spoken
throughout the interview, however, a highly developed sense of
humor appeared early on in the interview and lurked throughout all
of his responses.  He is highly intelligent and possesses an
eidetic memory. (Past tests indicate WAIS-R score of 147 and a
SB:FE score of 150, as well as a perfect score on the WMS-R.) 
While Agent Mulder presented the image of an assertive, confident
individual, questioning revealed a somewhat suspicious, aloof
personality that is also self-depractory and threat sensitive.

We began the interview with a discussion of the events leading to
this evaluation.  Agent Mulder readily admitted that his behavior
had been inappropriate.  "I hared out,"  he told the examiner,
embarrassedly.  When asked why he thought he engaged in the
self-destructive behavior he thought a moment and answered
simply that he felt had felt guilt over the child, Anna Lisa's,
death and had reacted impulsively to his feelings.  He was
extremely uncomfortable discussing his actions.  When asked if any
of the guilt he felt could be related to his sister's disappearance
he leaned his head back, smiled, and commented  "I think anyone
with a mail order PhD could figure out that no-brainer."  This type
of response was typical throughout the interview.  

His affect throughout the interview was appropriate.  His mood was
continually anxious, but he was extremely ruminative.  He answered
several questions with remarks that while humorous were also highly
ironic, sarcastic, and self-condemning.  It is this assessor's
opinion that Agent Mulder suffers from very low self-esteem. When
asked to describe others' opinion of him he stated "I'm the FBI's
most unwanted.  `Good old Spooky Mulder who sees little green men
and went around the bend years ago.  And he finally got caught.'" 
Later in the interview he said that "I don't know how Scully puts
up with my Bulls--- sometimes.  I don't know if I'm worth all the
trouble she goes to."  When I stated that this seemed a very
critical assessment of himself he smiled a moment. "Well, you've
never seen me on a tear.  Obsessive on parade."
 
He displayed avoidant behavior when pressed about areas of his life
outside of his professional work, defending his lifestyle with
explanations that he had "been in a some relationships.  They
just never worked out." His current next of kin is his partner
Dana Scully, rather than either of his parents, with whom he admits
to having only a strained, inadequate relationship. When asked if
he has any friends who are not involved in his work, Agent Mulder
shrugged and did not verbally respond.  When then asked who his
friends were besides Dana Scully he considered the question
carefully.  "The Guys at the Lone Gunmen (A magazine dedicated to
finding the "truth" behind many supposed "conspiracies") umm. .
.there's a few people I know at work who don't think I'm completely
insane. . .I know some people who've helped me with cases. . .I
play pick-up [basketball] games with some guys from Quantico
behavioral.  They think I'm crazy, but I have too good of a jump-
shot."  When asked how much time he spends a week either at work or
working he was unable to respond.  When I suggested hours ("50
hours a week?  60 hours a week?" The normal FBI agent work load.)
he smiled and shrugged again, suggesting to me that almost all of
his time is spent in the pursuit of his work.  While many agents
spend most of their time on the job and many spend most of their
time thinking about the job, I believe Agent Mulder is beyond the
point of mere dedication.  His attitude is obsessive to the point
of being maladaptive.  

Agent Mulder does not find this behavior problematic or distressing
and sees absolutely no need for any change in lifestyle.  He denies
overworking although he admits readily that the sole focus of his
life has always been finding his sister and that all other
involvements or commitments have always been either an accessory to
that or only of a minorly auxillory nature.  When asked if his
relationship to Dana Scully was an accessory to finding his sister
or auxillory to the focus of his life, he frowned, troubled.  "Dana
is the single exception" he finally admitted.  "She is important in
and of herself."  Dana Scully may be the only person to have ever
bridged the gap of intimacy in his life created by his obssession. 
He vehemently denies any sexual relationship with his partner and
I see no reason to doubt him.  At this point my evidence is not
strong enough to fully substantiate this claim, but I believe that
Dana Scully may be a surrogate little sister who at least partially
fills the void created by the disappearance of his sister.

When the issue of Agent Mulder's well-known belief in the existence
of extra-terrestrials and in paranormal phenomenon was discussed,
any proclivitity to trust me was lost.  He behaved in a bitter
manner, answering my questions with short, acidic comments designed
to rebuff the questioner as well as call into play his reputation
as someone with delusional ideation.  

If one accepts that Agent Mulder's convictions are merely a belief
system with the same validity as any belief system that accepts the
possibility of supernatural occurrences, Agent Mulder does not
suffer from any delusions or psychotic features.  Agent Mulder's
reactions to questioning about this issue are entirely predictable
and understandable, given the ridicule, derision, scorn, and
humiliation he has undergone from within and without the Bureau for
holding his belief system.


RECOMMENDATIONS     
>From my interview of Agent Mulder it seems relatively clear that
Agent Mulder is not at risk to incur any other self-injuries. 
However, there are areas of definite concern that must be
acknowledged.  Intensive long-term therapy is crucial.  With this
in mind I make the following recommendations:

1.  Agent Mulder should be placed under the care of a psychiatrist
for chemotherapy.  While I am not qualified to make decisions
concerning this treatment, I recommend an anti-depressant to
alleviate both his moodiness and his symptoms of PTSD as well as
low doses of an anti-anxiety agent.

2.  As his scheduling permits, Agent Mulder should see a therapist
between one and two times a week.  The focus of therapy should be
his low self-esteem, his obsessive behavior, his guilt feelings,
and his inability to trust, as well as other issues as they become
revealed throughout the course of intervention.  

3.  Agent Mulder would benefit most from a therapeutic environment
that includes his partner Dana Scully in as active a role as
she is willing to take and Agent Mulder will accept her taking.

4.  I find nothing to indicate that Agent Mulder is unable to
perform adequately as a Special Agent.  There is no need for
psychiatric leave or any modifications other than allowing him time
for therapeutic sessions.
 
SUMMARY
Agent Mulder was referred following an incident involving self-
destructive behavior.  He was appropriately dressed for his
position in the FBI.  The findings indicate the Fox Mulder suffers
from delayed onset, chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder relating
to his sister's abduction with the specific symptoms of: survivor
guilt, fear of intimacy, general alienation, and obsessive behavior
concerning any situations bearing a resemblance to the original
traumatic situation.  In addition, because of his unpopular belief
orientation, Agent Mulder suffers from low self-esteem and exhibits
defensive behavior.  It is recommended that Agent Mulder receive
chemotherapy and extensive behavioral and cognitive therapy,
preferably with his partner's involvement.










Author's Note:  I relied extensively on a friend to write this, so
many, many thanks and acknowledgments are due Ginni Leiu Russell. 
She made me put the following disclaimers in this note:


1.  When Emmaline, my assessor, refers to "chemotherapy" she is
referring to "chemical therapy,"  i.e. drugs. I know most of you
know that, but Ginni was concerned for those who do not know the
jargon and have only heard of chemotherapy as it relates to people
suffering from leukemia.  

2.  MMPI is Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.  MMPI-2 is
a second version of the test.  Both are still widely used. 

3. WAIS-R is the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised.  
   SB:FE is the Stanford-Binet (another intelligence test): Fourth 
                Edition.
   WMS-R is the Weschler Memory Scale-Revised.  
   And yeah, the scores I gave Mulder pretty much take him off the
scale.  (The scoring on the two intelligence tests is not the same
and as much as a five point difference in scores from different
administrations of the same test is not unheard of.  I varied 7
points from my highest score to my lowest on the SB.)

4.  Different therapists use different assessment forms and
different assessment forms are required by different groups.  I did
mine this way because it worked out the best to describe Mulder. 

5.  I do not have a PhD.  I do not even have my MA.  Any errors in
this are my own.  
6.  If you don't agree with Emmaline--well, she only saw the man
for an hour long interview that was supposed to go ninety minutes. 
7.  There was a problem Ginni and I ran into in the confidentiality
issue.  Normally an assessor would not call Scully by name.  I
think this case is acceptable because Scully initiated the
evaluation process and admitted a personal relationship in her
request, so any one reading this form would probably also have
access to the request and order, and due to that, it was entirely
appropriate to use her name in the Reason for Referral section of
the case.  Having used it there, it would have been silly to call
her "his partner" throughout the Findings section.  If I'm wrong,
please tell me.  I know I need to bone up on that.  Majorly.  

  
8.  *I* added this one.  Thanks for reading it Jenny!

9.  One more bread and butter note--to everyone who has encouraged 
    me in my writings I thank you abundantly!  


===================================================================

From: amperage@aol.com (Amperage)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: Therapy (2 of 6)
Date: 25 Apr 1995 22:44:58 -0400


All the usual disclaimers against lawsuit.  This one has some
disturbing scenes w/Mulder and a lot of foul language.  No sex.

Therapy
by Amperage@AOL.com
 
     "Hi."  Emmaline Harris looked up from a mound of paperwork as
Dana Scully came in.  The dark haired woman pushed closed the file
on top, put down her pencil, rifled through another stack of files
on the corner of her desk.  "Just have a seat wherever you like." 
She indicated the comfortable seating arrangment, and pulled out a
file.  
     Scully sat on a wing chair, moving a child's doll.  Emm waited
a moment, Scully knew she was putting her shoes back on. Emm got up
and took a seat in the wing chair opposite Scully's  "Okay.  Thank
you for coming in."
     "Does Mulder know I'm here?"
     "No."  Emm replied.  "And we both know he signed papers
stating that it was okay for us talk without him, so it's legal and
we're not going behind his back."
     "I still feel. . ."  Scully gazed down at the therapist.  
     "I know."  Emm smiled briefly, glanced around the room at the
toys.  "You know, Mulder's one of my few adult patients."
     "Yeah.  I've been kind of curious why you grabbed the case." 
     "Well, I didn't grab it.  Mulder asked me if I could get it. 
I still do some consulting for ya'll and no one in psych services
was eager to get him on their couch."
     "But you were."
     "Yeah.  I think it was a good thing too."  Em stared from
behind her bifocals.  "Mulder needed someone who could help him
without judgement.  And he needed someone who's done a lot of work
in PTSD, False Memory Syndrome, and other related fields." She
shrugged.  "I fit the bill.  Me and my dolls and and my behavioral
contracts and my abused kids.  Dr. Scully, how much psych training
do you have?"
     "Minimal.  I'm a pathologist."
     Emm nodded.  "Okay.  You do know that Mulder's problems aren't
going to go away with a few months of therapy and some drugs."
     "Mulder's diagnosis is Chronic PTSD.  That means it's been
with him a long time."  Scully replied.  "And I know Mulder.  It's
not going away.  He's based his whole life on his obsession."
     Emmaline nodded.  "How much does that scare you?"
     "A lot."
     "Yeah.  It does me too."  Emm sat silently a moment.  "Well,
so far, a few things that might surprise you.  Fox Mulder would
have problems even if his sister hadn't dissappeared.  He was
beaten since early childhood."
     Scully stared at Em.  "I don't. . .I'd always assumed. . ."
     "I decided to try some regression hypnosis, on a guess."  Emm
nodded towards her desk.  "Just poking around.  You know what
behave-cog things I've got Mulder doing."
     "Yeah.  The contracts I have to sign."
     Em nodded.  "Mulder was severely abused as a small child.  He
would go into trance states every time his father. . .brutalized
him.  That's probably why he was able to repress the incident with
his sister so well, he had practice."
     "What. . .kind of abuse?"  The word "brutalized" had shaken
Scully.
     "Mostly physical, some other stuff, but mostly physical.  He'd
do something stupid--like a little kid, in other words--and upset
his father.  Mulder can't talk about it very much. I've gotten just
enough out of him to know that he was abused.  Broken bones mostly,
but a few burns, a few times the beltings got completely out of
hands.  I got him back to five and I tried like hell to get him to
remove himself emotionally, but. . ."  Emm shook her head.  "He
couldn't tell me anything and when I brought him up I sat with him
about forty minutes, just holding him.  He didn't cry.  He just. .
.sat there.  This is one kid that didn't need to lose his sister
and get blamed for it."  She sighed, tossed her shoulder length bob
back.  
     "What happened?"
     "His sister was born.  The abuse slacked off.  I don't know
how or why.  I think that Samantha was the fair-haired child of the
family.  Mulder wasn't as important.  Which was good, because then
he didn't get beat on as often.  After his sister dissappeared the
abuse escalated. . .I want Mulder to tell you about that himself.
. .he remembers most of it.  He won't talk specifically, but there
were more beltings, Dad got really mean with the belt then.  A good
many cracks to the head--I get the impression he's lucky there
wasn't any nuerological damage.  There were less broken bones, but
his bones weren't as fragile then.  I know of one truely
memorable encounter with a baseball bat."  Emm shook her head
disgusted.  "He handled your dissappearance better than anyone's
given him credit for, you know.  He didn't kill himself or even
think about it.  That's better than what I would have expected."
     Scully stared quietly at Emm.  "Okay.  So what now?"  She
finally asked.
     "So, now, I continue with therapy.  Knowing about the abuse
explains some of why Mulder's so self-critical."
     "Some?"
     "Well, Mulder knows his behavior is obsessive.  He revels in
it.  But he also knows that obsessive behavior is maladaptive." 
Emm got up, went to her closet.  "He knows that he's thrown away
his reputation and his possibilities for advancement with the X-
files.  Dealing with the scorn of everyone doesn't help him at all.
But, the fact that he got so interested in the X-files when he was
shooting so far, so fast is also revealing--he probably couldn't
handle success.  He probably feels more comfortable being the butt
of everyone's jokes."  
     She opened up the white-washed chifforobe, poked around
through games and Barbies and Power Rangers, knelt, dug through
some costume outfits.  "I do a lot of drawings with my children. 
It's a good safe way for them to express things their parents may
have told them never to talk about.  She pulled out a pad of paper.
"I ran a big risk and got really, really lucky.  I asked Mulder to
do some drawing for me.  He could have been upset that I was asking
a grown-up to do a child's therapy method.  He could have played
head games with me.  I think, because of you, that *this* time,
Mulder wants to resolve some of his problems.
     She flipped through a couple of pages of art paper.  "So last
session, Mulder and I sat on the floor like two five year olds and
we both drew with crayons.
     Emm laid the pad on her coffee table.   "We did the old draw-a
person test first.  Mulder drew this."  
     Scully considered the drawing.  A small, simple sketch, a few
lines to suggest a face.  "That's not the Draw-a-person."
     "That's what Mulder gave me.  It's not you and it's not his
sister, but from the photos. . ."
     "I know.  Am I replacement for Samantha?"
     "I don't think so.  But I do think you're like a little
sister.  Mulder probably decided to draw a girl."
     Emm flipped to the next page.  A nice little overview of a
room, with black streaks and lines over it.  "I asked Mulder to
draw a his room when he was four.  He did the nice little
architextural drawing, then went over it with the black marks and
told me this was stupid.  He said he knew I was probably going to
use this to say all kinds of things, but all that it meant was that
he thought this was stupid."
     Scully frowned.
     "Last ditch efforts to protect the known."  Emm replied. 
"People aren't always logical when they're defending the status-quo
their mind has always known."
     "What do you see?"  Scully asked, curiously.
     "I see a lot of rage."  Emm was quiet in this remark.  "He was
just going to leave it as a drawing.  I thought he was.  Then he
made the marks, hard.  Look at how hard they are."  She got up,
went to her desk, retrieved something. "This is what he did to the
crayon."  She told Scully, dumping the broken, smushed item onto
her coffee table.  "He knew he was telling me something with those
marks and he really wanted to leave the drawing the way it was, but
he was so mad he didn't have a choice.  His hurt took over."  She
took a deep breath.  
     "Adolescents are the most likely age group of children to get
abused--emotionally, physically, or sexually.  Unfortunately,
adolscents are the least likely to be removed from the situation,
or have any adults do anything.  They're big, we think they should
be able to help themselves.  They're annoying, maybe it was partly
their fault.  They don't want to admit it, because it makes them
vulnerable and a lot of adults don't want to worry with them
because of all the children we're backlogging.  Adolescents will
get out of the situation sooner.  
     "I think a lot of people knew that Fox Mulder was being
abused as an adolescent.  I think they did absoltely nothing." 
Emm's voice was quiet in its recrimination.  "Mulder probably
thought along similar lines as the adults. . .he was almost grown,
so it wasn't abuse.  He lost his sister so he deserved it.  In a
couple of years he would be an adult, and it would be over.  It's
embarrassing admitting that your dad still spanks you. . ." Em
trailed.  "He understands that the abuse he suffered as a child
that none of that was his fault.  But the abuse from adolescence.
. ."  She spread her hands.  "I don't know."  She flipped over a
page.  "I decided just to do something fun.  I asked him to draw a
field or something. . ."
     It was a winter field, very quiet, half-done.  
     "Did you run out of time?"  Scully asked.
     "No.  Mulder stopped drawing."  Emm looked at Scully.  "He
stopped drawing and he just sat there, quietly, holding onto a grey
crayon.  I don't know what it means.  I do know that there's a lot
going on inside him that he's not talking about."  She shrugged. 
"So.  We're going to start some real therapy in the next few weeks,
some stuff to change behaviors.  He's not going to like it and
neither will you after a while."
     "What kinds of things?"
     "More contracts.  More modelling and reinforced practice."
     Scully nodded.  


===================================================================

From: amperage@aol.com (Amperage)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: Therapy (3 of 6)
Date: 25 Apr 1995 22:45:01 -0400

All usual disclaimers indicating that certain characters contained
in this text were created and are copyrighted by Chris Carter.

Therapy
by Amperage@AOL.com
     "Hi."  Emm smiled as she came out into the crowded waiting
room.  Mulder was the only adult patient waiting.  A rotund woman
sitting next to him, one whose two children played on the floor
with VR Troopers toys, frowned at him as he picked his way across
the toy-filled space space.  He tried to ignore the woman's
reaction, followed Emm down the hallway.  "I tell myself you're a
nationally recognized expert on memory and the problems associated
with it."  Mulder said.  "But every time I come here I feel like
I'm in a pediatrician's office."
     Emm shrugged; it was a true enough statement.  She opened the
door to her office, let them both take seats. "How are you doing?"
     "I'm okay.  Scully said you showed her the drawings."
     "Guilty as charged."
     "Why?"
     "You didn't bullshit me.  You showed me what was going on in
your mind and it was the farthest in you've let me come, really."
     Mulder took a deep breath, looked at Em.  "All right.  That's
fair."
     "I don't think it's intentional.  I think you come into this
room with every intention of working hard."
     "Scully would kill me if I didn't."  Mulder replied. "I did
everything I was supposed to in my contracts."
     Emm nodded.  "If you have to break them, it's okay.  It just
shows me that's one area we have to work on and you have to
practice more."
     Mulder sighed.
     "Sorry."  Emm apologized.  "You're not a child or an idiot. 
You work with seven year olds all day, sometimes you get stuck in
that type of phrasing."
     "Thank you."  Mulder looked at the coffee table, considered a
rag doll in its white pinafore and calico dress.  Brown yarn hair
and bright painted eyes.   
     "Who made it?"  He asked.
     Emm considered the doll.  "A lady in my neighborhood.  She
makes all my rag dolls."
     Mulder nodded.  
     "I give them away mostly." Emm said softly.  "I get kids in
here who don't know how to trust anyone.  The doll--they can trust
a doll.  It won't yell or scream or hurt them or turn away when
someone else is hurting them."  She stopped herself.  "I'm sorry."
     Mulder considered Em with veiled eyes, then suddenly relaxed. 
"That wasn't deliberate, was it?"
     Emm nodded.  "No.  I give them away for the reason I told you.
The doll's out because I'm messy.  I said what I said because it's
important to me, with the kids I work with, to let them have
something safe.  I didn't think about how it might effect you." 
She sighed, took the doll in her hands.  "If someone had given you
a little bunny farmer boy when you were four or five, what would
you have done?"
     Mulder frowned.  "Loved on it until my father tore it up
because it was a sissy fag thing to do."
     "If your father couldn't have taken it away?"
     Mulder thought a long time.  "I would have loved on it and put
it in a far corner of my room at night."
     "Things get worse at night?"
     He nodded.  "Even things you can trust in the daytime. . .you
can't trust at night."
     Emm let this sink into her thoughts a moment.  "Not even a
doll?"
     Mulder shrugged. 
     "Is that a no, a yes, or an I don't know?"  
     "It's a No."  Mulder said sharply.  
     Emm stared at the rag doll in her lap.  "Can you trust
anything at night now?"
     Mulder frowned.  "Yeah."
     "But when you're lying there in the dark, trying to sleep,
what are you thinking?"
     "I don't.  Not voluntarily."
     "How do you sleep most of the time?"
     "On my couch.  Mostly I leave the t.v. on.  The bed's for when
I have company."
     "What about when you're on a case and in a hotel?"
     "I leave the t.v. on."  His voice sounded edgy.  A voice that
told her there were a lot of things he would change to make the
people around him happy, a lot of things he would do, but turning
out all the lights and lying in his bed, alone in his apartment?
That was completely out of the question.  
     "Tell me all the reasons why you do this?"
     Mulder frowned.  "I have bad nightmares.  It's better when I
wake up, if there's something on or if I'm at least not in bed." He
paused.  "I don't sleep very much.  I watch t.v. all night
sometimes."  That was two.  "I don't like thinking about being
alone at night." That was three.

     "Because Sam dissappeared at night."
     "Mhm."  
     Emm nodded, grabbed Mulder's file off the coffee table, opened
it, took a couple of rapid notes.  "What do you dream about?"
     "Samantha."
     "Is there one specific dream or several or do they change?"
     "All three."  Mulder replied.   "I dream about her abduction,
and sometimes I flashback in that dream."
     "Are the details straight or do they change?"
     "They change.  But the details from my hypnosis changed too."
     "That's common, you know that."
     Mulder nodded.  "I've tried to piece it together as closely as
I can.  And I don't know. . .Sometimes we're playing Stratego and
watching Watergate hearings.  Sometimes she's curled up on my bed. 
Sometimes I've gone into her room because she had a nightmare. 
Sometimes I make it to the top of the wardrobe for Daddy's gun. 
Sometimes I get to the gun only after she's gone."
     "What do you think happened?"
     Mulder frowned.  "I don't know.  But the one unvariable
constant in all this is that the Aliens came and took her and I saw
it.  I tried to fight, but I wasn't strong enough.  I wasn't. .
.fast enough or anything.  I just couldn't move.  I was. . .I
couldn't move.  They wouldn't let me move."  
     He waited for the invariable response.  If they couldn't let
you move, how was it your fault?   It would put Mulder back where
he knew his footing.  He already had a script for that
conversation.  Already knew what to say. 
     But Emmaline Harris, PhD, frequent expert witness in court,
stared at him.  She knew several things and the first thing was
that to respond logically wouldn't work.  She would be fighting
belts and blows and cuffs upside the head.  She would be fighting
pain and terror and the desire of a 12 year old to say anything to
make his father stop hurting him.  She would also fall into
comfortable patterns for which Mulder already had a defense, they
would accomplish nothing except put Mulder into control and Emm out
of control.
     "When you told your father that, what did he say?"  She asked.
     "I didn't remember anything."  Mulder replied.  
     "But when he asked why you didn't do anything, what did you
say?"
     "I said I didn't know.  I didn't remember."
     "And then he hit you?"
     Mulder nodded, caught himself.  
     "When would it stop, when he hit you?"
     "When he was tired."
     "Any time else?"
     "If I said it was my fault he would get mad, but I knew it
would end, I knew he wouldn't just keep on hurting me.  And it was
true."
     "Do you think you deserved the beatings?"
     Mulder shook his head.  Of course not.
     "But it was true that it was your fault?"
     "I was her big brother, I was supposed to protect her."
     "So you did something wrong?"
     "I. . ." He was aware of the feeling in his stomach, the
tightness in his chest.
     "So how was it your fault?  What made it your fault?" Emm
pressed.  She wasn't about to let him back down off this one.  
     Mulder was staring glittery-eyed at the wing chair across from
him.  His right arm was drawn over his torso, his fingers were
clutching and unclutching the material of his jacket sleeve.  
     "What did you do that made it your fault?"  Emm asked yet
again. 
     Mulder was taking painful shallow breaths now.  He couldn't
trust himself to speak and Emm suspected he was being innundated
with memories, with words, with emotions.  He was jerking at the
material of his jacket now, and Emm wasn't at all sure Mulder knew
that he was even doing it.  His eyes were unfocused, looking
straight ahead.
    "Mulder.  I need you to tell me what you're thinking.  I need
to know.  You can tell me.  It's all right.  It's safe to tell
here.  It's safe, no matter what it is.  It's okay.  Tell me." 
     Her words released a torrent from inside him.  "They said she
was coming back. They said she was coming back!"  He exploded,
shouting, taking no notice of Emm's sudden flinching. "They said
they wouldn't hurt her and that they would bring her back!  And I
let them take her!  I let them do that to her!  I let them take my
sister!"  
     He paused, hands clutching into hard tight fists.  Tears began
to trickle down the sides of the sides of his face.  "Doesn't
anyone understand?  Nobody understands it, ever.  They say they do.
. .but.  I let my sister be abducted and. . ."
     Mulder trailed, then decided he didn't care right now what the
consequences would be, what anyone would say.  "I wish he hadn't
beaten me, but it was my fault.  If I hadn't lost her he wouldn't
have beaten me.  And if I'd done something she wouldn't have been
gone and Dad mostly stopped hurting me after Sam was born.  We were
a family."  A sob, painful and drawn out, burst through.  "It was
my fault he beat me like that: I lost Sam."
     Emm swallowed, felt her gut turn and twist.  Unsolicited, he
had said the one thing she feared he thought, the one thing that
she had hoped with all her being wasn't true, the thing that made
her job and Mulder's job so much harder, so much more difficult. 
  

     It took some time, but he stopped crying eventually.  Emm got
him a bottle of Evian from the fridge in the practice's workroom. 
Mulder wiped his eyes with a cool washcloth she'd also liberated,
drank the water.  She didn't do much work with adults, because if
you got to a case like this and the child had become an adult it
was so much harder.  Children you could teach to think differently,
could reshape their patterns.  Adults, especially well-educated,
pleasant, successful adults like Fox Mulder, were the pits.  Even
after they knew what was wrong, it was hard for them to change: the
patterns, their ways of dealing, were all intertwined.   Emm's
introduction of new ways of dealing was hard for them, because
sometimes, at first, the new ways didn't get the results the old
ways did.  The old ways worked very well.  The new way was hard,
hard, hard.
     Mulder was sitting quietly on the couch; he looked better, but
not good.  Emm took a deep breath, tried to decide where to go. 
She wasn't going to change his belief that he had to find his
sister.  She wasn't going to crack that obsession, get over it now
and move on or their therapy sessions would become nothing but tug
of wars.  "Was your father right for beating you?"  She asked
quietly, hoping for the answer she expected, not sure what she was
going to do if he answered yes.
     "No."  It was a standard, practiced response.  The one he had
learned as an adult, not the one he had learned as a child.
     "Why not?"
     "It's not. . .right to treat a child that way."
     "Before Dr. Verber, what did you think about the abuse?"
     Mulder shrugged.  "I remembered that it was my fault."
     Emm nodded, it wasn't an answer, but it was enough.  "What did
remembering do?"
     "I. . .understood what had gone on.  I had somewhere to
start."
     "That's not what Verber wanted you to see."
     "It's what was important to me."
     "You left therapy with him.  Cut and run on a friend.  Why?"
     Mulder smiled.  "He. . .I told him I just wanted to find out
what happened to her.  He knew that from the start."
     Emm decided she was beating a dead horse.  Time to move on. 
She shifted in her chair, slid her flats off, tucked her feet under
her. "Beating a child is never justified, is it?"  She asked in a
careful, neutral tone. 
     "No."  Mulder replied without affect,  he swallowed.  "But
even things that aren't justified. . . there are reasons why they
happen."
     Emm frowned, decided to see if she could bring some focus to
what he was saying.  Okay.  FBI.   "All those serial killers you
profiled.  You know that if someone does this or does that it means
that they're a certain age or that this happened to them as a child
or that happened to them.  Those are reasons.  But you still
testified against them, still tried to bring them down.  Because
you knew they were evil."
     Mulder frowned, stared hard at Emm.
     "So I don't get it."  Emm frowned back.  "It sounds from your
work that you don't think that a reason is an excuse."
     A deep breath, Mulder knew exactly where this was going.
"But I could have avoided it."  He offered up.
     "How?"
     Mulder opened his mouth, closed it.
     "Go ahead.  Say it."  Emm told him.  Mulder shook his head.
     Emm took a deep breath. began.  "`Em, if I hadn't lost my
sister Dad wouldn't have beaten me.  It was my fault I lost my
sister.  Ergo, it was my fault my dad beat me.  I was guilty as
charged, even if the sentence was too severe.'"  She finished. 
"Did I miss anything?"  
     Mulder took a deep exasperated breath, frowned at Em.  
     "It wasn't like that."  He muttered through clenched teeth.
     "Okay. What was it like?"
     They stared at each other.  
     Em gave in first.  "Okay.  Let's work out this week's
contract.  Then we'll do something else."
     Mulder gave a short nod.  

     The contract was simply a list of things Mulder had to do each
week.  Behaviors he had to engage in.  Last week they were all
small things.  Make up a list of positive-self statements and let
Scully read it.  If she thought the list wasn't good enough he had
to redo it.  Emm noted, flipping through the small notebook she'd
given Mulder, that he'd had to redo this week's list three times
before Scully signed it.  
     "Okay.  This week." Emm sat on the floor, using the coffee
table as a desk.  "I want you to write a page explaining why your
father shouldn't have beaten you."  She wrote down the reasons and
explanations for this paragraph.
     "And Scully has to sign it."  Mulder moaned, sliding from the
couch to the floor across from her.
     "And Scully has to sign it."  Emm agreed.  "Now you have your
choice, you can rewrite this list you made of self statements or
you can say it aloud to Scully.  I don't care which."
     "Once?"
     "No.  Four times, spread out over the next week--not just four
times fast right before you come to my office."
     "This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever done.  Em, I'm
not a child."
     "I know."  Em stared at Mulder.  "I help them write their
statements and give them stickers.  You want a sticker?"
     Mulder smiled briefly.  "Only if they feature the Barbi
Twins."
     "Sorry, Got some hot ones of the babes from Power Rangers
though."
     "I don't want to do this."
     "Don't want to or won't?"  Em asked.
     Mulder took a deep breath.  "Em please.  It's. .
.embarrassing.  And degrading."
     "To whom?  Scully doesn't think it's degrading to you."
     "I'm not. . .a victim.  I don't want her thinking of me as a
victim."
     Emm closed her eyes, opened them, took a deep breath. 
"Mulder, Scully had two big burly sheriff's deputies pinning you
down because you hit your hand against a stone fireplace hard
enough to break a finger and cause severe lacerations.  She didn't
stop trusting you or stop thinking of you as her friend then. 
That's why you're here. If she can deal with that and deal with it
very well too, I might add, then what makes you think she's going
to start pitying you now?"
     Mulder swallowed.   
     "Scully sees a very close friend, her closest friend, with a
problem and part of the problem is his self-image.  She doesn't
feel sorry for you."  Emm swallowed.  "Okay.  I want you to talk to
Scully about your embarrasment this week."  She wrote something in
the book.  "You've got to write a page explaining why you're scared
and why you don't want to do the self-statements. Scully's got to
write a page explaining what she thinks about your being in
therapy."  Emm wrote this down in her quick handwriting.  "I'll
call Scully and we'll talk about the self-statements."
     Mulder gave an exasperated sigh.  "I'll do it, damn it.  Don't
call Scully."
     Emm frowned.  "Why not?"
     "I already know what she'll say and I'll wind up doing the
damn things."  He grumbled.

     

     When the book was done, Mulder put it back into his trenchcoat
and Emm got out her cards.  They played poker for the rest of their
ninety minute session.  Mulder won, as usual.


===================================================================

From: amperage@aol.com (Amperage)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: Therapy (4 of 6)
Date: 25 Apr 1995 22:45:00 -0400

Usual Disclaimers.

Therapy
by Amperage@AOL.com

     "Dr. Harris?"  The voice was cool, professional.  Emm had
decided several months ago that she did not like the new office
manager.  The other counselors thought she was wonderful--
efficient, quick, good at getting things done.  But the woman was.
. .well, she and Emm had sized each other up immediatly.  Emm was
the kind of person who hadn't gotten invited to the prom and this
woman was the kind of person who had made fun of women like Emm in
high school for not getting invited to the prom. 
     It was silly.  Emm was a professional.  She had boyfriends
when she wanted them, watched her figure and had a hair
dresser/make-up artist named Claude who made her look pretty.  And
this woman was over 40, wore entirely too much make up and made
less than one fifth of Emm's salary.  Still.  Emm knew enough to
know that learned responses are hard to break.  To their credit,
most of the other partners knew Emm's feelings and made sure one of
the other office girls took care of Emm's appointments, Emm's
reports, Emm's needs.  
     "Yes May."  Emm responded, thumb on the phone's intercom
button.
     "There's a Dr. Scully on the line.  I tried to get her to take
a message, but. . ."
     Emm sighed, rubbed the bridge of her eye.  "I thought I said
the Dr. Scully and Dr. Mulder were on my list of calls to put
through unless I'm in session."
     "Well, they were, but now that you've got Dr. Mulder in
therapy."  Her voice was slightly scandalized.  Oh fuck off, 
Emm thought, just because a collegue needs to go into therapy, it
doesn't nessisarily follow that he's unstable and . . ."What line?"
Emm replied, looking at the row of amber lights.
     "Line 5."  May replied.
     "Thanks."  Emm picked up the handset and depressed the clear
button for line five.  "Scully?"
     "Emm.  God, what a bitch."
     Emm surprised herself by laughing.  "What, didn't you go to
the prom either.?
     "One of my brother's friends squired me,"  she heard Scully
say with a chuckle.  "Listen.  We're in Minnesota right now."
     "Yeah.  Mulder called up and rescheduled, so I knew you
weren't underfoot.  What's wrong?"
     "I'm being overprotective but. . ."  Emm heard Scully sigh. 
"How good is this for him?  I mean we're on a UFO abduction case
right now."
     "Well he's probably playingm out the classic symptoms of
someone with PTSD, if that's what you wanted to hear."  Emm
replied.  "What's going on?"
     "A little girl got mad at her friends and ran out of a slumber
party, decided to walk back home."
     "Wonderful."
     "Wait.  There's more.  The mother of the little girl hosting
the party finds out a few minutes after the other little girl
leaves.  Decides it isn't safe for a little girl to be out on the
road at three in the morning. So she goes after her in the minivan.
She says she saw the little girl and then there was a bright
light."
     "And that's all she remembers, no doubt."
     "Exactly."  
     "How's Mulder doing?"
     "He's doing his usual obsessive thing.  This has always scared
me, but this is the first time I've ever known there was someone I
could talk to."  Emm heard the desperation in Scully's voice.  "He
goes off into his own little world on cases like this.  The
abductee is the only thing that matters, his vision narrows.  He
pisses everyone off."
     "Including you?"
     "No.  Generally I don't get the full Mulder treatment.  He
doesn't see me as impeding his search."  
     It sounded like Scully could use some time just for
supportive therapy to vent her fears, her anger.  Emm frowned.  
     "If I called him, could I help?"
     "No.  I just. . .wanted someone to talk to.  Fuck, Emm, he's
going to go out on that limb someday and it's going to break off
with him on it."
     Now what did Scully mean by that?  Emm puzzled for a moment. 
"I don't get it."  She said, doing a very credible imitation of
the girl on the Showtime commercial.
     She heard Scully's snort of laughter.  "I. . .Mulder's focus
is so limited. . ."
     "He won't go crazy from this.  I promise."
     "Intellectually I knew that."  She heard Scully's sigh.  "I
think I needed to hear it from you."
     "Well, there it is.  He's just going to be a pain in the butt
to live with and he'll need some major support if the little girl
isn't found, but this won't send him around the bend unless he does
a depression thing, which I doubt.  Has he done his contract work?"
     "Bitching and moaning the whole time.  I didn't know."  
     "That Mulder blames himself for the beatings?"
     "Yes."  Scully's voice was barely more than a breath.  
     "It's fairly common in abuse victims."  Emm replied.  "But
that doesn't make it any less. . ."  She struggled for the right
words.  ". . .easy to accept."
     "Yeah."  Scully paused.  "Why does he think that I'm going to
feel sorry for him?"
     "Because he doesn't want you to.  It's a big issue with
Mulder.  He's got to be the big brother.  Don't underplay this
Dana.  Intellectually he's your partner, but at some level, he's
your big brother."
     She heard an exasperated sigh.  "Thanks Emm."
     "No problem.  Listen, if you need anything, any hour, call the
office.  If you give the answering service Mulder's social security
number they'll find me--home, cellular or pager, and if they can't
find me they'll take a message, knowing that I'll check with them
before I check anything else.  If you want my numbers I'll give 'em
to you, but it's cheaper for you if you just call them.  Hell,
that's what I pay 'em for."
     "Thanks."
     "I'm glad to help.  He's trying really hard."
     "I know.  I'm proud of him."  The phone clicked.  Emm sat
handset in her palm, smiling for just a moment.


===================================================================

From: amperage@aol.com (Amperage)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: Therapy 5 of 6
Date: 25 Apr 1995 22:45:10 -0400

Usual Disclaimers

Therapy
by Amperage@AOL.com


     There were no children when Mulder stepped into the waiting
room late Thursday evening.  A young woman was putting toys away. 
Mulder picked up a couple of Dr. Seuss books for her.  "You're Dr.
Mulder?"  The girl said when he handed the books to her.  
     "Yeah."
     "Dr. Harris is back in her office.  If you want me to, I'll
show you where."
     "I can find it."  He promised.
     The girl smiled gratefully. "Once I get this put up, I go
home."
     Mulder smiled back.


     Em was at her desk, going over an incredibly thick file.  When
Mulder opened her door, she looked up.  
     "I'm sorry Scully made such a fuss."  He apologized.  "I could
have waited until regular hours."
     Emm flashed him a smile.  "She's worried about you."
     Mulder made a small grimmace.  "She's overprotective."
     "Really?  She seems to feel that *you're* overprotective."
     A slight smile this time.  "Well, you know, kill your partner
and its hard to find another. . .if I lose Scully, no one will want
to work with me.  If I go crazy, no one will want to work with
*her*."  He took a seat on the sofa, where he was comfortable.  Emm
decided to fuck her shoes, her feet hurt, and walked barefoot to
her usual spot in the armchair.
     "When your partner called me this afternoon, she sounded
pretty worried.  What happened?"
     Mulder frowned.  "Nothing really.  We didn't find the little
girl."
     "That must be really hard.  How old was she?"
     "Nine."  Mulder swallowed reflexively.
     "What do you think happened to her?"
     "I don't. . .know.  We have no specific evidence for alien
abduction.  But we have no other specific evidence.  She was
walking home and then . . ."
     "There's usually some UFO activity before an abduction."
     "There wasn't with my sister."  Mulder looked up.  
     Emm stared at him levelly.  "There wasn't?"
     "No."  He replied in a voice that was extremely cool and
guarded.  "There was some evidence in this case.  Not a lot, but a
little."
     "Any evidence of anything else?"
     "No."  Mulder spread his hands as though letting something
through them.  "Nothing.  She's gone."  He looked up from his hands
suddenly looking very tired, very fragile.  "She was the oldest. 
She has a little sister who's three, named Tameris.  Tam's never
going to know her big sister, except as a ghost that haunts the
memories of her parents."
     "You sound upset."
     "There's a little girl who's never going to come home."
     "What was the little girl's name?"
     "Elizabeth.  Everyone called her Beth."
     "What did she look like?"
     "She had long blonde hair and green eyes.  She was in 4th
grade accelerated program. . ." Mulder trailed.  "I wanted to find
her so bad.  I remembered, this time, to make sure I looked at
every angle so there wouldn't be any more Anna-Lisas.  It didn't
matter.  I didn't find her.  There was this. . .look in the
parents' faces when I told them we were leaving.  I just wanted to.
. ." He trailed.  "It's not fair.  It's not fucking fair!  They,
whatever, whoever they are, they come in and they take and they lie
and they *don't care* what it feels like for the rest of us."  He
sat, brooding.  Emm decided against pushing.  
     "If I hear this New Age crap any more I think I'm going to
scream.  `The aliens are here to show us the way to
enlightenment'." He mimicked, wrapping his arms around his body,
staring at a far point.  "I don't know why they're here, but they
kidnap children.  That's not enlightened, it's. . .horrific."
     "Why do you think they take children?"
     Mulder shook his head.  "I don't. . .expiraments."  He said
softly.  "All the abductees talk of expiraments.  I guess sometimes
the children don't make it, or they're in long term projects so
they don't return them.  My sister is alive."
     Emm frowned.  She hadn't suspected that Mulder engaged in
magical thinking.  Oh shit.  "How do you know that?"  She asked
carefully.
     Mulder looked up, smiled ironically.  "No.  Don't worry, I'm
not. . .in the opening stages of a delusion.  I was nearly killed
by. . ."  He shrugged.  "I guess the term `Alien mercenary' fits
the bill, pretty much.  But it didn't kill me and it told me, as a
pacifier, that my sister was still alive. I assume he. . .it. .
.was telling the truth.  It had no reason to lie."
     Emm nodded, planning to check the story with Scully, for the
moment accepting Mulder's version.  "Right now our focus is going
to be changing the usual pattern you've got for dealing with the
days after a case like this."  She got up, found some blank paper,
a good pen.  "All right.  You give me your notebook to go through
and you right down what your schedule will be for the next few
days."
     "God, I love Cognitive-Behavorial therapy."
     "It beats ECT."  Emm surprised herself by saying.  Mulder
grinned, shook his head, dug out the little notebook.


     It was common in the early 70's for parents to
spank.  Teachers had paddles and used them liberally. 
Everyone thought that spanking and paddling and belting
was acceptable practice.  When Samantha was alive I got
belted once or twice a month, but it was not horrific. 
Six or seven licks in the garage and it was over.  After
Samantha disappeared, things changed.  
     I walked home from school, or I rode my bike.  I was
ahead two grades from where my age dictated I should have
been, but I had friends: I was tall and mature for my
age, so it never seemed to make much difference.  We
would joke around, invite each other over to our
respective houses. After Sam, I did not participate in
this ritual of laughter.  To their great credit, my
friends were quiet, respectful of the odor of mourning
and fear that emenated from my home and from its
denizens.  
     I would get in promptly at 3:30 and change clothes. 
Mom was always quiet, always too gentle for the outside
world.  I believe that was why my father married her--she
must have seemed a benevolent visitor from some foreign
land who never got angry.  She stilled the turbulent
waters of his soul with the soft coolness of her gentle
spirit.  Following my sister's abduction, Mom was
quieter.  She did less.  She slept a great deal. 
Technically she was clinically depressed.  I took up the
slack for her.  I would cook supper, have it ready.  I
took care of the house, did the laundry, vacuumed.  
     If my father was not in by 6 p.m. I knew something
was wrong.  If he was not in by 7, I was vomitting, I was
curled up in a corner of my room.  I was trying to do my
homework, but my hands shook too badly.  I was trying not
to cry.  
     Mom took a heavy dose of Valium at 9 and went to her
bed.  
     I waited.  If he came in and found me in bed, he
would be enraged, so I waited.  Eventually, some time
late in the evening my father would come in.  He would
yell for me. I would come out and he would, sometimes
drunkenly, sometimes not, ask me why I had lost her.  He
would have been crying a long time.  His eyes hurt.  I
could see he hurt.  His little girl was gone and his wife
was retreating inward and his son was silent and had let
her go.  
 

Emm looked up from the carefully printed words.  Mulder was on the
floor, legs under the coffee table.  He was carefully scribing his
schedule.  She felt as though she had burst through  the surface of
a murky, algae ridden lake, and was taking painful bursts of
burning air.  Emm's eyes flipped back to the page before her. 

     We would talk a few minutes.  His voice was always
clear and cold.  Eventually, different ways, different
times, I would wind up being hurt.  When he was enough in
control I wouuld pull down my Levis, pull down my BVD's,
lean over the dining room table and his belt would begin
strapping me.  Each stroke felt like liquid fire.  I
would count the strokes silently.  He would ask me: why? 
Why?  Why did I let her go?  I would cry and cry and each
stroke came down and burned and hurt and exploded into me
with agony.  There are no scars on my backside.  He was
very careful about scars.  If he ever cut my flesh he
would grab me, hold me close to him for a moment and then
find some new way to hurt me.  
     When he came in and he was not in control, he would
hit me.  I would huddle into some small ball and listen
to his acquistations.  I would do whatever he said
to do.  If I did not need to go to the emergency room
when he was done, when he had exhausted his supply of
anger for the evening, I would be allowed to go to bed.
     His anger, when it was out of control, terrified me.
He could not control it.  One time I was being kicked,
over and over and over agin, in the ribs.  I was trying
to gasp through the pain, and I knew that we would be
going to the emergency room this evening, that they would
again keep me overnight.  I looked up and I saw that my
father was not present.  I was staring at a demon of
anger who had come and taken possession of Dad. 
Sometimes, now, I feel the same demon in me, and it
terrifies me.  I want to kill, I want to hurt.  I do not
care, in those moments, what is right or wrong.  I just
want to hurt something.  

Emm wasn't sure she could read much more of this.  The rage.  She'd
seen that once.  She knew Mulder very rarely expressed any rage. 
He was known for his gentleness.  Yet, he had beaten his hand
against a wall and it had taken three people to restrain him, to
contain the anger.  Skinner had said that once he nearly choked
someone.  She remembered Scully's crack.  "I don't get the Mulder
treatment."  Oh God, what had she, Emmaline Harris, gotten herself
into.  She dealt with children.  She played with dolls and had her
crayons and board games.  She went into the FBI and counselled
people who had mild symptoms of PTSD.  This man, he needed. . .she
trailed.  He needed someone he could trust someone who would not
say he was crazy for believing in UFO's.  


     I never remember thinking that the pain was
unjustified.  My friends showed me the marks on their
bottoms for losing their lunch money or forgetting to
clean up their rooms.  Their fathers had belts too.  What
was the proper punishment for losing your sister?  What
pain could atone for that sin?
     When he came in on time, we would sit at the dinner
table, my father and I.  My mother excused herself
quickly, she did not want to see, to acknowledge.  He
would question me.  Did I remember anything today?  Had
anything of my memories come back?  Did I remember what
we had been doing?  How had I lost her?  Whose fault was
it?  Did I remember doing anything?  The questions were
relentless, piercing.  He would ask and ask and ask. 
Occasionally an answer of mine would enrage him and his
hand would snake out and hit me upside my head.  These
cuffs were hard.  I had headaches, tinitus, and
occasional blurred vision until I was two years into my
studies at Oxford.  Sometimes, if he had cuffed me
several times, blood would come out of my ear.  I would
think to myself, good.  Good. I couldn't remember, so my
dad hit me.  
     Emmaline, you asked me to write a page on the
reasons why it was not my fault and I have written you a
page describing the beatings instead.  Do you understand
now?  In that house in Chillmark Massachusetts, our pains
fed off of each other, were intertwined.  It was not my
father's fault exclusively.


There was no scrawl at the end.  He had not shown it to Scully. 
Mulder looked up, saw her pale face.  He put the pen down.  Emm
swallowed, regained her composure.  "Why did you show me this?"
     "I can't. . .Em, I tried so hard to write what you wanted." 
He looked at the pen.  "It felt like a lie.  It was a lie.  It made
my father into a villian."
     Emm barely restrained herself from saying the first thing that
popped into her mind: Your father was a villian.  Your father was
a monster.  You did not create the monster.  She had to change
Mulder's thinking, there was no way around that.  She had to
convince him that he had had no choice, that he had been,
essentially, helpless in the situation.  All the workshops and all
the articles about empowering people.  All the lectures about how
to make abused children feel as though they were in control of
their lives.  All the BS about raising self-esteem and then the
survivor would have the stength and self-image to admit, to admit
the rage and the pain, to take control.  But Mulder had admitted it
to Emm and admitted that he believed he had deserved it.  Heart and
soul he'd believed, even as he trembled with fear, even as he
retched out his stomach, that it was his fault the family'd gone to
hell.  That he deserved every lick, every cuff to the head. If he
hadn't thought he deserved it he never would have told her.   
     He'd not admitted this much to Scully.  He'd let her read
something--she'd told Emm that it was hard for her to accept, that
somehow he'd caused the abuse.  But now.  Now.  His obsessions made
such perfect sense.  
     She considered her options carefully.  He'd laid a stick of
dynamite into her lap and she needed time to deal with the
explosion.  Somehow, she had to make him see his helplessness, his
blamelessness.  She was kicking a brick wall, but what progress
were they going to fucking make if he couldn't relearn that one
pattern?
     "Where's Scully?"  Emm asked softly.  
     "I don't want her to read that.  I wrote that for you."
     "You don't trust her?"
     Mulder frowned.  "You know I trust her."
     "But not this much?"
     He took a deep breath.  "It's not that.  Please, Emm."
     "All right."  Emm swallowed again.  "Here's what we're going
to do.  I'm giving you your notebook.  I want you to put everything
in third person.  No motivations, no leaps or conclusions. I want
you to write, in summation, the events of your sister's abduction
and the aftermath.  Pretend you're writing about someone else, not
about you.  Lay out the entire story in third person and use proper
psychological terms."
     Mulder nodded silently.  
     "Now you give me the pages of your schedule and I'll make some
adjustments.  I'm going to call Scully.  I won't tell her about
these pages, since you don't want me too.  I am asking her to come
over and we'll work out your daily schedule.  I don't want you to
have any down time."
     "I'll be fine."
     Yeah.  He'd be the same Mulder, blaming himself for not
finding her, inventing reasons.  Emm remembered reading about the
case in Oklahoma, about Mulder's problems, how he'd identified with
the killer, had "seen" things.  The therapist hadn't caught wind of
anything terrifying, although reading it when preparing for
Mulder's evaluation had sent warning signals from her inner radar. 
But the radar hadn't given her a size or a shape, just a general
definition of fear.  
     She rifled through her electronic rolodex, found Scully's home
and cellular.  
     Not at home, but accessible on the cellular.
     "Scully, this is Emm."
     "Hi.  Didn't Mulder show?"
     "He did.  I'd really like him to stay with you for a couple of
nights."  Already, Em was calming down.  He'd lived with this 20
years.  He was living with it.  He'd developed coping stratagies or
he wouldn't be here, looking like a poster child for Beefcake's
Anonymous.
     She heard the phone being moved.  "Emm, can I call you back?"
     "Umm. . ."  Emm gave out another number.  "You'll get the
answering service if you use the regular number.  I'd really like
you to come down here."
     "What's wrong?"  Suddenly the easiness was gone from Scully's
voice.  
     "Nothing.  I just think Mulder needs to feel. . .safe.  We
need to go over a schedule for his next few days."
     Scully knew she was lying.  "I'm at my Godson's house.  Let me
say my goodbyes.  I'll be there in 30 minutes."


===================================================================

From: amperage@aol.com (Amperage)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative
Subject: therapy 6 of 6

Sorry--I thought I had posted all 6, and then my online service was way
behind and. . .anyway.  Here it is.

All usual disclaimers.

Therapy
by Amperage@AOL.com
   Emm and Mulder were sitting at two different office computers,
DOOMing over the LANs system, when Scully showed up.  Scully stood
a moment behind Mulder's back, watching as he gleefully ambushed
Emm's character.  The little green character grasped its throat and
went down with a scream.  Scully looked around the office--
cluttered, messy, papers and post-its strewn everywhere.  Too many
people, too little space, Scully theorized, noting that three
different personalities had taken over a counter approximately 7
feet in length.  Mulder typed "She's here" and exited program.
"Hi."  He smiled easily.  "I'm sorry Emm interupted.  You don't
have much time with your. . ."
     "Eh. . ."  Scully dismissed.  "He's six.  It was past his
bedtime and he was was crankier than hell."  Someone padded down
the hall.  Emm.  "I made coffee."  She held up her mug.  "You want
any?"
     "Not right now.  I've just had three cups."  Scully replied,
letting herself be led into Emm's office.  There were several
papers on the coffee table, along with a daily planner.  
     Emm rifled through the papers, got out three xeroxed copies. 
"Scully, do you understand why I'm doing this?"
     "Not really. . ." Scully trailed.
     Emm looked at Mulder.  He sighed, rubbed his face.  "It's a
cognitive-behavioral technique used mostly with depressed
patients."  Mulder told his partner.  "I have to schedule my days
precisely.  The main goal is to keep the patient doing, without
long pauses or breaks--no time to sit around feeling sorry for
himself.  It also forces the patient into doing activities they may
have given up as the depression grew worse."
     "In most adults we rely on honor to make sure the schedule is
followed."  Emm added.  "I trust Mulder, but. . .I want some
backup.  This is a lot to ask of you, Dana."
     Scully frowned, shrugged.  "I don't think it's a lot."  She
said quietly.  "What am I responsible for?"
     "Okay.  We've worked out Mulder's schedule for tomorrow.  This
is flexible, but pretty much, on this paper, we've got what Mulder
needs to be doing and when he needs to be doing it.  There aren't
a lot of breaks, except in the evening when he gets to choose some
recreational activity."
     Scully flipped through the pages.  "I don't think this is a
problem.  If he doesn't keep to schedule, what do I do?"
     "You call me."  Emm replied smoothly.
     Scully nodded.  "What's going on?"  She said calmly.  "Why
don't you trust Mulder to keep to this schedule on his own?"
     "Because it's a hard thing.  He's going to need help."  Stupid
answer, but what answer could she give?  Mulder had told her he
didn't want Scully reading it and unless the time ever came when
Mulder was judged incompetent, Emm had to keep his confidences.
     Scully was staring hard at her partner.  "So it's okay to just
rely on me to be there, but not to tell me why?  This,"  she shook
the paper, "isn't supposed to make me feel sorry for you, but the
reason why is?"
     Mulder frowned, stared at his partner, closed his eyes,
swallowed clumsily. His hands were clutching at the edge of Emm's
couch, clutching and releasing, and it really made Emm glad she
hadn't invested much money in her furniture, because he was going
to rip a hole in the upholstery in a minute.  "I can't."  He
said and the voice was soft, was anguished.  "I just can't.  I
don't understand."  He told Emm.  "I'm the same person.  Why don't
I. . ." And he trailed.  He knew that Emm had her justifications. 
If you identify a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that the
President is really Beelzebub, you take immediate steps for
comittal, whether he's been running around in public with that
idea for years or not.
     "Fuck it."  The words were unexpected.  Mulder got his file
from the coffee table, found the copy of the notebook entry that
had so frigtened Emm ,and handed it to his partner.
    

     As she read it, Dana Scully's expression changed subtly. 
Her mouth tightened slightly.  Her body tensed.  When she looked
up, she was silent.  She took off her reading glasses, set the
paper down on the coffee table.  "I didn't know."  She said softly.
"God, Mulder, how could you walk around with this inside you and
not ever tell anyone?"
     Mulder stared at his partner.  "It wasn't important."
     Scully nodded, not an accepting nod, just an "oh I see,
*that's* what you thought" nod.  She stared at her lap.  "I
remember when I first walked into your office. . .everyone
thought you were crazy, but nobody thought you weren't brilliant. 
I knocked on the door and you'd made all these assumptions. . .I
remember when I figured it out that you'd been abused as a child
and I thought.  `Oh.  So that's why he acts so obsessed.'. .
.When they shut down the X-files, and you started to get. .
.depressed. . .I remember you started to think maybe your belief
in your sister's abduction might be misplaced, might not be true. 
And I knew that if you did that you wouldn't have any focus left,
you'd have nothing.  There'd be this gaping pit of hurt in you
and nothing, no one would be able to fill it."  She paused,
stared at Mulder.  "You never talk about it."
     "No."  He agreed.  
     "You had a nearly normal family life when she was . . .with
you, didn't you?"
     "Yeah.  I guess so."
     "What are you looking for?  Is it because everything went to
hell afterwards?  Is it because your father beat the need to know
into you?"
     "I want to find her, because. . ."  Mulder stared at Scully,
wrapped his arms around his chest.  "Because I love her.  Because
then, maybe everything will be all right.  Becaue I lost her. 
She loved me.  I was her big brother and I could do anything." 
He closed his eyes, tried to keep from crying.  "But I couldn't. 
I couldn't save her, I couldn't rescue her, and now I can't find
her."  His mouth was tight and tears trickled down from his
closed eyes.  He held onto the sobs so tightly it was painful for
Scully and Em to watch.  His entire body shook with the force of
the withheld torment he was experiencing.  
     Emm got the sense that when Mulder was beaten, this was how he
cried.  She wanted to touch him, to hold him the way she held the
children she counselled, to draw him into her lap, put her hands
over the tight fists, and rock him while she hummed a wordless,
nearly tuneless lullaby.  She could not do that without alienating
him.  It was Scully, finally, who went to him.  Mulder jerked away.
He did not want to be touched.  Scully persisted, took his wrists
into her hands, pulled his head against her shoulder.  Mulder
accepted for a moment, then suddenly jerked away, stared around the
room and dashed for the trash can.
     He heaved, great choking, hiccuping heaves, painful to listen
to.  The retching went on and on.  He jerked sharply away from
Scully when she tried to put a hand on his back, to help him in any
way.  
     He sat in the corner, staring blankly at a wall until Emm came
over and shooed Scully away.  "What?"  She asked, sitting close,
but not invading his privacy zone.  "Why did you have to vomit? 
It's okay.  Mulder, we need to talk abut what's happening."
     It was the wrong thing to say, apparently.  Mulder stared a
Emm a moment.  Then pushed her from her safe kneeling position onto
her butt.  She sprawled.  Mulder rushed out the door.  Scully was
after him.  
     "Mulder.  Damn it Mulder!"  Emm heard her scream down the
hallway.  "Stop it.  Stop it."  She heard shoving, heard a door
open and then heard the door being shut.  "You'll have to hit me to
get out.  I'm not letting you go.  Damn it Mulder, go back in there
and sit down!"
     "Fuck you!  You don't have to go through this.  It isn't your
memories she's fucking with.  Fuck you, Miss perfect nuclear
family; Fucking Daddy's favorite.  Two brothers to protect you;
older sister to show you beauty secrets and how to suck cock.  Fuck
you to Hell!"  His voice was strangled, raging, and to Emm's ears,
terrifying.  Emm swallowed, picked herself up.  These are the
little joys of working with adults, she reminded herself.  She was
going to watch Fox Mulder hurt his partner.  
     "No.  I'm not letting you go."  Her voice was confident,
unshaken, unnoticing of his fear-borne curses.  "What are you going
to do?  Spend the rest of your life blaming yourself?  The Fucking
Goddamn Federal Government can't keep people from being abducted,
but one twelve year old boy can?  I know you loved her.  I know." 
The voice grew suddenly tender.  Emm stood in the hallway, watching
the pair.  "I see it everyday that you loved her.  You would have
done anything to save her."  Scully's voice cracked.  Emm heard a
sob, though she could not see Scully's face for Mulder's figure,
towering over his partner.  "I know.  But Mulder, it wasn't your
fault.  You are the most important person in my life.  I can't let
you leave.  You can't just walk out.  I can't let you go on
thinking that what happened was your fault.  It isn't true and it
isn't fair and it hurts. . ." a sob. . ."it hurts me to know that
you think that.  Mulder, this isn't just about you or your
stubbornness. Your life affects mine.  If you can't overcome this,
the problem's going to get worse.  I don't know what will happen,
but I. . ." another sob, this one painful,  ". . .I couldn't bear
to lose you.  I just couldn't stand it."  Her voice broke
completely on the last word.  
     Mulder wrapped his arms around his partner tenderly, gently. 
They stood, wrapped in each other's arms, crying.  Emm left them
alone.

     When it was over and the tears were done, Emm entered the
waiting room.  She did not say anything, just sat quietly in a
chair, handed both agents some kleenex, some bottled water.  "What,
do you keep this on stock for crying jags?"  Mulder asked as he
broke the seal.  
     "Crying jags and thirsty psychotherapists."  Emm replied with
a smile.  "And what do you know?"
     "He fits both categories."  Scully said.  "What do we do now?"
     "Well, I was going to suggest that Mulder come in bright and
early Monday morning at 7.  I'm going to rearrange my schedule and
make some time tomorrow for Mulder.  Dana, I'd like you to come
in sometime soon.  We'll find one of my secretly empty slots."
     "Secretly empty slots?"  Scully inquired.
     "Times she's supposed to be doing research or making phone
calls are editing her papers for publication."  Mulder told his
partner, wrily.  "I don't know how she's kept her partners
bamboozled for so long."
     "They're slow."  Emm replied.  "Didn't you know that's how I
chose my partners?"
      "I always wondered why Ethan Daniels got a job here."
     "Well, now you know."  Emm swallowed.  "Mulder and I didn't
make a schedule for this weekend.  We figured you two could make it
out.  You can do it tomorrow and fax it over here during the day."
     Scully nodded.  "What happens if there are any problems?"
     "You call me.  I don't care what time it is.  The answering
service will put you through."  
     Another nod.  "If Mulder. . .if he. . ."
     "If I wig out completly then you call 911 first, Emm next." 
Mulder told her.
     Emm nodded tiredly.  It was the required practice.  
     "Don't you remember anything you learned at Quantico about
dealing with lunatics?"  Mulder ribbed gently.


     
     Em sat a long time in her office, only the lamp over her desk
turned on, reading and rereading Mulder's confession.  She'd worked
with adult survivors of abuse before.  Seen them screw up their
lives, seen them come in because the court mandated it after they'd
beaten their own children.  But it had never frightened her so
much.  Mulder was intelligent, attractive, and professional.  If he
hadn't lost control on one horrific case, Emm wouldn't be here. 
Mulder wouldn't be getting the help he needed so badly.  She
wondered what would be happening if she hadn't interceded after the
evaluation, insisted that the Bureau give *her* this case, not
handed it down to an LPC with a master's in psych or social work. 
It might be working.  He might be talking.  She glanced back at the
old files she'd gotten from his other therapists.  On the other
hand, he knew the game, he knew how to play it so that the
therapist was pleased and let him go.  When Verber hadn't played
the game, Mulder had cut and run.  Verber had been private, not
mandated, so there'd been no repercussions. 
     Emm contemplated her next move.  Mulder did not consciously
remember any of abuse before Sam's birth.  He knew *something* had
happened, but was fuzzy on what.  For a kid who remembered things
that had happened as an infant, that was damned odd.  She took a
deep breath, went back to the earliest records she'd gotten from
the FBI: Mulder's background check and interviews.   No evidence of
abuse.  Mulder had admitted to his sister's dissappearance, to the
fact that his father had hit him.  The interviewer hadn't pressed
too much, and Mulder made it sound minor, just the act of someone
upset, not an act of brutality.
     Background check.  He was clean.  Nothing, not even a speeding
ticket in England.  Professors liked him immensely, brilliant
student, plenty of good friends.  Mother very quiet and shy, but
ameable.  No problems.  Father cold, hadn't seen son in a while,
but no reports of any problems.  High school teachers--brilliant
child, thought he was going to be a great success.  No mention of
any abuse was made.  Of course not.  It might hurt his chances for
a career in the FBI.
     Emm rubbed her eyes under the glasses.  32 and already wearing
bi-focals, she thought wearily.  She flipped a few pages.  There
were a couple of minor citations--he'd done this or that, nothing
that would hurt his chances for advancement.  Then a note of his
transfer to Behavioral Sciences.  Three month later he'd been
writing profiles.  He'd shot so far so fast.  One of the most
glamourous jobs in the FBI.  There were only 10 people assigned to
writing profiles.  3 years out of Quantico, with no prior law
enforcement experience, and he was writing profiles for Behavioral
Sciences.  His profiles were "spooky" too.  Dead-on every time.  A
couple of years in Behavioral and then a citation, then another. 
Assigned to therapy following an incident in Oklahoma.  His
profiles got better, his behavior became eratic.  Then he'd started
digging into the X-files.  He went into therapy again, voluntarily.
Transfered to Verber.  His behavior didn't get any better, but
there weren't many efforts made.  The opinion Emm read was:was: he
was in therapy, what more did anyone ask?
     Transfer back to violent crimes.  No explanation.  A lot of
bad reports--citations, censures, a suspension of two days that was
later rescinded and not supposed to hurt his career.  Yeah right. 
But his efficiency rating on the X-files he'd taken upon himself
was pretty good.  Okay.  Then Scully comes along.  Less bad
reports.  Efficieny rating goes through the roof.  An investigation
to see if they were fudging anywhere only sends the rating higher. 
Without explanation, Mulder is suddenly in surveilance.  Then
without explanation again, he is back in the X-files, only the X-
files are given official status as a division.  Mulder is the
division head, given appropriate salary increase.  
     Which led Emm to where they were.  She noted there were a lot
of hospital bills affixed in a separate file.  More than she'd ever
seen for a single agent.  So he was accident prone.  So are a lot
of abuse survivors.  Was he unconsciously suicidal?
     No.  That implied a need for death.  Mulder just didn't care
about himself enough not to take chances.  When the choice came
between himself and a case, there was no question: he didn't
matter.  The Truth did.
     Emm read the Mulder's page again.  She could not hospitalize
him.  She could not increase his therapy sessions by any great
amount without explaining, without upgrading his DSM-IV diagnosis--
times like this she wished they were back in the old days before
Managed care, before it was dictated clearly how many hours a week
you had before you had to tell the insurance company that the
patient was a lot worse off than you'd thought he was.
     Emm took off her glasses, put her face in her hands, breathed
a few minutes, thought of nothing, then quickly, in her own file on
F. Mulder, wrote her next objective for Mulder's therapy.
     

     Mulder has to understand that he is a worthwhile
individual, that he was helpless in his sister's
abduction, and that he did nothing to deserve or warrant
abuse.  That the abuse was wrong.  I expect to obtain
this objective around the time Hell freezes over. 


She yawned and closed the file.








 Author's note:
There will be more.  I hope.  This is hard stuff to write.