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this one wouldn't go away. There was something more compelling, more ominous in her manner. And more persistent. She wouldn't let go of it. I couldn't move her off it. When I told her it was out of the question. Belle started negotiating: she raised the good-behavior period to a year and a half, changed Hawaii to San Francisco, and cut the week first to five and then to four days.
    "Between sessions, despite myself, I found myself thinking about Belle's proposition. I couldn't help it. I toyed with it in my mind. A year and a half— eighteen months —of good behavior? Impossible. Absurd. She could never do it. Why were we wasting our time even talking about it?
    "But suppose —just a thought experiment, I told myself—suppose that she were really able to change her behavior for eighteen months? Try out the idea, Ernest. Think about it. Consider the possibility. Wouldn't you agree that if this impulsive, acting-out woman were to develop controls, behave more ego-syntonically for eighteen months, off drugs, off cutting, off all forms of self-destruction, she'd no longer be the same person}
    "What? 'Borderline patients play games'? That what you said? Ernest, you'll never be a real therapist if you think like that. That's exactly what I meant earlier when I talked about the dangers of diagnosis. There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can't treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. So again, Ernest, I ask you: Wouldn't you agree that this person, not this label, but this Belle, this flesh and blood person, would be intrinsically, radically changed, if she behaved in a fundamentally different fashion for eighteen months?
    "You won't commit yourself? I can't blame you—considering

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    your position today. And the tape recorder. Well, just answer silently, to yourself. No, let me answer for you: I don't believe there's a therapist alive who wouldn't agree that Belle would be a vastly different person if she were no longer governed by her impulse disorder. She'd develop different values, different priorities, a different vision. She'd wake up, open her eyes, see reality, maybe see her own beauty and worth. And she'd see me differently, see me as you see me: a tottering, moldering, old man. Once reality intrudes, then her erotic transference, her necrophilia, would simply fade away and with it, of course, all interest in the Hawaiian incentive.
    "What's that, Ernest? Would I miss the erotic transference? Would that sadden me? Of course! Of course! I love being adored. Who doesn't? Don't you?
    "Come on, Ernest. Don't youf Don't you love the applause when you finish giving grand rounds? Don't you love the people, especially the women, crowding around?
    "Good! I appreciate your honesty. Nothing to be ashamed of. Who doesn't? Just the way we're built. So to go on, I'd miss her adoration, I'd feel bereft: but that goes with the territory. That's my job: to introduce her to reality, to help her grow away from me. Even, God save us, to forget me.
    "Well, as the days and the weeks went on, I grew more and more intrigued with Belle's wager. Eighteen months of being clean, she offered. And remember that was still an early offer. I'm a good negotiator and was sure I could probably get more, increase the odds, provide even more room. Really cement the change. I thought about other conditions I could insist upon: some group therapy for her, perhaps, and a more strenuous attempt to get her husband into couples therapy.
    "I thought about Belle's proposition day and night. Couldn't get it out of my mind. I'm a betting man, and the odds in my favor looked fantastic. If Belle lost the bet, if she slipped—by taking drugs, purging, cruising bars, or cutting her wrists— nothing would be lost. We'd merely be back to where we were before. Even if I got only a few weeks or months of abstinence, I could build on that. And if Belle won, she'd be so changed that she