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“I’ve got this client who thinks he’s famous and that he’s got loads of fans who are after him,” Kat said. “He gets upset if I try to bring up grandiose delusions, though.”
“What if he is actually famous?” Kat’s best friend Amber grinned. “Have you tried looking him up?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t google a client’s name because that would make it harder for me to do my job without bias,” Kat said. “Besides, I know the difference between fact and delusion. He thinks that the whole world knows who he is, and that people touch him because they want to be healed by him. And if he’s that famous and magical, I’d have heard of him, right?”
That afternoon, Kat had a session with that very client. Paul McCartney, his name was. An 83-year-old from Liverpool with a lot of trauma - and delusions - that Kat was trying to work through. She worked with many senior clients with a lot of interesting stories to tell. In fact, many seniors came to her simply because they were lonely and wanted someone to talk to, so they had lots of things to say. But Paul was perhaps the most interesting.
“John was in my dreams again,” Paul murmured at the beginning of their session.
John was Paul’s former boyfriend who had died in the 80s. Paul never wanted to talk about how he had died, so Kat privately assumed it had been AIDS.
“Do you want to tell me what happened in the dream?” Kat asked.
“We were just… having a laugh like the old days, y’know. And it felt so real, I cried when I woke up.”
“That sounds like a nice dream. Do you want to talk me through some of those feelings?”
“I miss him so bad… I don’t know how I’m ever gonna get over it. I should have gotten over it already, right? Why can’t I?”
“Grief doesn’t have a timeline, especially when it comes to someone you cared about so deeply. It sometimes takes even longer if we shame ourselves for it. But that’s what I’m here for - to help you process it.”
Paul, Kat had discovered, had a lot of grief to work through. He had lost many people including his mother when he was only a teenager, and two people he had loved a great deal - John and Linda. John, it seemed, was his most common topic. Typical of closeted queer people because they couldn’t grieve publicly. Fortunately, working with so many seniors, Kat had a lot of experience with grief counselling.
Paul sighed, leaning his cheek on his hand. “I’m making another album, and I’m writing all these songs about John… again…”
There he went with his rockstar delusions again. Though, Kat didn’t doubt he was writing.
“Writing is a great way of processing your feelings,” Kat smiled.
“It’s sort of embarrassing though, y’know? Sometimes I think I’m not very subtle and, y’know, maybe all my fans are picking apart the lyrics and… figuring everything out.”
Kat inhaled as she thought about how to respond to this. With people like Paul, she didn’t want to outright call him delusional if it wasn’t causing him significant distress, but she didn’t want to encourage the delusion either.
“So you want to write openly about John, but you also don’t want anyone to know it’s about John. Is that right?” she asked. “Maybe you don’t have to release those songs. You could keep them for yourself.”
“Bit hard when most of them are about John. And I sort of…” he sighed. “I dunno.”
The rest of the session was spent helping Paul process his grief, and after an hour, they parted ways.
Kat had lunch at Amber’s house again the next week, and Paul seemed to pop up in the conversation again.
“Y’know, my client who thinks he’s famous says people are always coming up with conspiracies about him,” Kat said. “Apparently, some fans think he died in the 60s, and whoever he is now is some replacement for him.”
Amber snorted. “Very complicated delusion this man has.”
“It’s not exactly uncommon that delusions are detailed,” Kat explained. “And he says that everyone was taking acid in the 60s, and that’s why there were so many wild conspiracies about his ‘band’.”
“Oh, so was he taking acid too? Is that why he’s like this now?”
Kat shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”
She cut a slice of the sausage she had been given, and hummed about the taste.
“Veggie sausages?” she asked.
“Yeah, my girlfriend and I have gone veggie now, did I tell you?” Amber said. “I got these Linda McCartney sausages.”
Kat paused. The name sounded familiar. McCartney, like her client? And Linda, like his deceased wife? Kat shook her head in dismissal at her own thoughts. The name was purely coincidental; there were plenty of McCartneys and Lindas in the world.
“You okay, Kat?” Amber asked, tilting her head at her friend.
“Nothing, nothing, in my own world,” Kat laughed it off.
The next day, she had another session with Paul.
“I just miss John so much,” Paul sighed. “I never felt so safe around anybody. He’s so soft… And we actually respect each other, unlike most of the world.”
“It sounds like you had a very special connection,” Kat smiled.
“I feel like I’m not allowed to say no to things ‘cause I feel like my body is public property,” Paul looked at his lap, hands shaking. “But John… He- he understands, y’know.”
“It sounds like you have a complicated relationship with consent, but you felt safe with John, right?”
“Yeah… Y’know, with all the fans who would touch me wherever the fuck they wanted, I just sort of had to accept it, and now it’s sort of hard to unaccept it, y’know. I like being the dominant one ‘cause I can do things to the other person, and I don’t have to have things done to me and be responsible for saying ‘I don’t want that’, y’know.”
He was explaining his trauma through his delusion, but the trauma was most likely genuine. And Kat didn’t necessarily have to find the real cause of his trauma in order to treat his symptoms.
“If people have crossed your boundaries so much, it makes sense that it can seem hard to make new boundaries. It’s alright to prefer being dominant, but we can work on rebuilding a sense of ownership over your body.”
“But I also like being submissive because I like, y’know… I like getting praised?” Paul paused as he thought. “I like knowing I’m doing things right. Y’know, I always cared what people thought of my music; it’s the same sort of thing, y’know. But sex.”
Kat nodded, thinking he might have developed grandiose delusions because of his approval-seeking. If he wasn’t getting enough of it in real life, his brain perhaps invented the idea that everyone loved him.
“Even when you’re being dominant, you can ask your partner to tell you if you’re doing well,” Kat suggested.
For the rest of the session, they spoke all about sex and a bit about building ownership over one’s body; as much as Paul could handle for one session.
Kat got a half-hour break before her next client, which was greatly needed because working through sexual trauma was quite mentally exhausting.
Her next client was an old lady named Margaret, who Kat was seeing for the second time.
“Do you know the Beatles? Or are you too young for that?” Margaret began by saying.
“Everyone knows the Beatles,” Kat chuckled. “I’ve heard some of their songs.”
She didn’t know anything about the Beatles, but she knew of them. This client wasn’t the first to mention them either.
“Well, I was just looking through one of my old scrapbooks yesterday… I was really obsessed with Paul. He was my favourite Beatle. I wanted to marry him. Some nice memories in the scrapbook.”
“Oh yeah? Did you want to talk about that?”
“Well… I can still distinctly remember when I saw Paul one time. It’s a bit naughty, but I sort of stalked him,” Margaret giggled. “And I got to touch him! And I stole some of his hair! And just touching him cured all my ailments. If I could see him again, I wouldn’t need a psychologist.”
Kat smiled in amusement. “In that case, if I run into Paul, I’ll send him your way.”
Something about her saying that touching a Beatle had cured her, made Kat think about Paul McCartney’s delusion that he had fans who would be healed by touching him. Perhaps his brain had gotten the idea from this sort of thing. Perhaps Paul had even been a Beatles fan like Margaret.
“You can’t, Paul died in 1966,” Margaret said sadly.
Kat frowned. “Oh, I didn’t know that. That must have been hard for you.”
“And they replaced him with Billy Shears! A look-alike. They thought we wouldn’t notice, but we figured it out.”
At first, Kat thought that Beatles fans were really unhinged. Or, perhaps, the Beatles were so big that they came with their own folklore that was still ingrained within their fans.
But then her eyes widened in realisation. A musician named Paul who died and was replaced?
“Hey, Margaret…” Kat began slowly. “Can I ask what Paul’s surname was?”
“McCartney, of course.”
Kat blinked, unable to process for a few seconds. Paul McCartney, the Beatle. Of course. How hadn’t she recognised the name? Now the specificities of the delusion made sense. Her Paul didn’t think he was any rockstar; he thought he was a Beatle. And he was so lost in the delusion, he hadn’t even given her his real name.
At Paul’s next session a week later, Kat really wanted to get to the bottom of this.
“I heard Elvis on the radio on the way here, and… all I can think about when I hear Elvis is John,” Paul murmured. “He looked like Elvis when I met him. He's so beautiful…”
Kat knew she should probably dig into Paul’s grief again, but she couldn’t help going, “Paul… Can I ask, is John’s surname Lennon?”
After Kat’s session with Margaret, Kat had looked up the names of the Beatles and had been surprised to see a John. Although, it was a very common name, so it didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Paul looked surprised by the question, then defensive. “When I’m talking about John, it’s usually Lennon, yes… Why?”
So, maybe Paul’s mind had replaced his real deceased boyfriend with John Lennon to fit the rest of the delusion. Perhaps he had done the same with Linda McCartney and his deceased wife. It was certainly a complicated delusion that seemed to affect all areas of his life. Maybe Kat really needed to figure out if the delusion was problematic for Paul and required treatment.
Why Paul had made Lennon his boyfriend, though, Kat was curious about, even if that detail wasn’t really important. As far as she knew, none of the Beatles had dated each other. Not that she really knew anything about the band, so perhaps they had. Or, maybe Paul’s real boyfriend had been named John too.
“Sorry, it doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have asked,” Kat said with a little laugh. “By the way, do you… talk about your fame with anyone else? With your wife Nancy, maybe? Or anyone else?”
“I… guess?” Paul squinted at his psychologist, looking more uncomfortable. “I try not to think of myself as famous, but it’s a big part of my life, so it’s sort of, y’know, hard to not talk about sometimes.”
So he tried to dismiss his own delusion, but it was difficult?
“And what do other people say about it?”
Paul frowned. “Depends on what I say… What’s all this about?”
Shit. She was making Paul uncomfortable and losing his trust. She was trying to assess how much insight Paul had, and the effect his delusion had on other people, but she probably sounded too much like she was interrogating him.
Was it better to say it outright, or try to maneuver away from the topic?
“Paul… I’ve mentioned grandiose delusions before,” she began carefully. “I know you dismissed it, but if you do have a delusion and it’s causing you distress or it’s harming others, then I can help you reduce that harm. So I’m just trying to figure out if… maybe…”
Paul was stunned into silence. Then he laughed.
“You really have no idea who I am, do you?” Paul asked. “I thought maybe you didn’t. But you think I’m delusional about being a rockstar? Oh, John would love this…”
“I know you think you’re Paul McCartney-”
“Think?” Paul cackled. “Don’t tell me you’ve bought into the Billy Shears thing…”
“No, wait, hang on…” Kat shook her head, trying to process what was happening.
Paul had to be delusional. Right? Right? She wasn’t unknowingly treating one of the most famous people in the world, right?
“Is it alright if I google Paul McCartney right now?” Kat asked.
Paul was still smiling in amusement. “Be my guest.”
Kat pulled out her phone, and she gawked at the screen when she saw the recent photographs of Paul McCartney. The man was, in fact, sitting opposite her. Was she really that stupid? Was she a bad psychologist for having assumed he was delusional?
“So now that that’s sorted,” Paul said, “can we go back to you treating me like a normal bloke?”
“Uh, yes,” Kat cleared her throat as she put her phone away. “I… yes.”
She tried to separate the client in front of her from megafamous rockstar, whilst also understanding that he wasn’t delusional. It took a bit for her to mentally integrate that.
“So, John-” Paul began.
“John Lennon,” Kat repeated. “Wow…”
“Yeah, so-”
“Hold on, one second.”
Kat couldn’t help pulling out her phone again and looking up John Lennon. So this was the man Paul was always going on about… He had in fact died in 1980, and- Oh.
“He didn’t die of AIDS,” Kat said slowly as she tucked her phone away.
Paul blinked. “What? Who are we talking about?”
“John. Your- your boyfriend… I sort of assumed he, um…”
“What?” Paul laughed in a way that seemed both amused and pained. “No, he didn’t- What? He’s not Freddie Mercury, christ…”
The very fact that Lennon died in that way instead of a death that was expected reframed some of Paul’s grief. Certainly, it was harder to process grief when someone was lost like that. Paul hadn’t wanted to mention how he had died, which meant it wasn’t any of Kat’s business. But on the other hand, now that she knew, it would help her in some ways to help him…
But why in the world had she just assumed that in the first place?
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have been making those assumptions, and I shouldn’t have looked him up either, I’m such a bad psychologist…” Kat buried her hands in her hair.
Great. Now she was offloading her insecurities onto her client. How much worse could she get?
“I’m so sorry. You can go on. I’m sorry,” Kat said quickly.
“Maybe… we can continue this next week,” Paul suggested, clearly wary of his psychologist’s mental state.
A relieving idea.
“Maybe. I’m sorry,” Kat sat up straight again. “I’ll sort myself out. You are my client and I will treat you as I would any other client. We will continue to work through your grief and help you reestablish ownership over your body, if you want.”
Paul nodded. “Thank you.”
If Paul were to come back, Kat would do her best to be a better psychologist and take Paul’s word firsthand. But she would certainly be lucky if he came back after that fumble.