The Jigsaw Man Read Online Free PDF

the quality of people’s lives and can destroy relationships and families. I remember an eight-year-old boy coming to my office one day and giving me a pen that he’d obviously bought with his pocket money.
    ‘This is for helping my mum,’ he said nervously and dashed back to her side. For the previous six years his mum had not been able to leave her house to go to the shops or take him to the park. It had taken months of work but now she was free of her agoraphobia.
    In another case a young woman in her mid-twenties was referred to me by her doctor. Martha suffered from anxiety-related problems that were putting great pressure on her marriage. She and her husband desperately wanted a baby but she hadn’t been able to fall pregnant and had never actually menstruated. Coupled with this, she had quite serious hearing difficulties and these embarrassed her.
    Although I tried to make Martha feel less nervous, every ounce of her being seemed to advertise her poor self-esteem and lack of confidence. Similarly, the very normal history she related was inconsistent with everything else I could hear in her voice and see in her mannerisms. Her words were telling me one story but her body couldn’t maintain the deception.
    I began telling her a story about how sometimes people came to me for the first time, anxious and upset, and they had notions of what might happen that were based on what they’d seen on television and at the cinema.
    ‘They spend days beforehand preparing themselves, trying to plan exactly what they’ll say, but when they step into the room they can’t remember any of this and they feel stupid,’ I said. ‘And then, when we begin to talk about parts of their lives that are very uncomfortable, they get nervous and embarrassed. After all, I’m a perfect stranger. I know it’s hard but it’s like skydiving; you get to the door of the aeroplane and have to make that last step.’
    I went on to explain that very often in these circumstances it turns out that their problem has taken place a long while ago when they were much younger. Perhaps an adult made them do something which upset them a great deal and they don’t know how to talk about it. Sometimes they feel, quite wrongly, that they are somehow to blame.
    As I continued talking, Martha began crying and eventually collapsed in tears. She described a childhood hampered by hearing problems which eventually led her to be enrolled in a school for the deaf. While at the school she was systematically sexually abused by a member of staff. The attacks started before puberty and went on for a number of years.
    Unable to make herself understood and painfully shy, Martha internalized the brutality and felt it must somehow have been her own fault. I took her through the painful memories, explaining where the blame really lay. As I spoke, I could see the guilt falling away in front of me and a different person emerging.
    Before Martha left the outpatients clinic she agreed to come and see me again. That evening she menstruated for the first time and became pregnant within weeks with the first of three children.
    This is why I chose to become a clinical psychologist -to help people like Martha. Everything I had worked towards and dreamed about had become a reality and there was no sense of anticlimax or what happens next? I had a career that would challenge and motivate me, one that could provide for my family’s future and also repair people’s lives.

Chapter 3
    Early in 1984 when a telephone call came from Detective Superintendent David Baker, my first reaction was that one of my patients was in trouble. The head of Leicestershire CID politely introduced himself and said that my name had been mentioned to him by a colleague.
    I racked my brain.
    ‘You helped us out once before,’ he prompted, mentioning the officer.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ I said, remembering the case which involved a young woman who had become dangerously infatuated with a policeman.
    ‘To be honest