Confession—
that is the only word
that comes to mind
when I hear
the word therapist.
No—wait.
A dark little chamber appears as well:
a priest
and a groaning child.
O spiritual father
in the robes of pseudo-science!
You are not the Christ
of Christ Recrucified1.
You are the cross itself—
to which
the hands of life
are nailed.
You—
remnant of Freud’s complexes2,
beneath the fading shadow
of Jung3.
You have nothing—
except opening the window4,
except forcing in
the foul air—
nothing
but emptiness.
From your nauseating emptiness
I embrace
nihilism—
and for the crime of adultery5
I am flogged.
From your anxious babble
I lie
with silence
and solitude—
and for the crime of orgy
I am imprisoned.
From your childish prescriptions
I flee
to hashish
and LSD—
and for the crime
of godhood
I am executed.
From Poems of Madness
Christ Recrucified is a 1954 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. In the story, a young shepherd chosen to portray Christ in a village Passion play gradually internalizes the role and begins to live as Christ himself, blurring the line between performance and identity. The novel was also among the poet’s formative readings during adolescence.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) introduced the notion of psychological complexes—clusters of unconscious desires, fears, and conflicts that shape human behavior. The line refers critically to therapeutic traditions that trace human suffering primarily to such hidden psychic conflicts.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) developed the concept of the Shadow, referring to the repressed or unacknowledged aspects of the personality that remain outside conscious identity. The poem evokes Jung as a lingering but diminished intellectual influence.
The “opening of the window” alludes to a familiar cliché in popular self-help and therapeutic culture: the advice to “open the windows, breathe fresh air, and greet life positively.” The poet uses the image ironically.