Viewpoint : ‘For me, watching the snail-like movements of postal workers was almost hypnotic.’ : The Strange and Macabre Case of W

Postal Officials Urging Rate Hike;First-Class Stamp Could Go to 25

--The Los Angeles Times

As a practicing psychoanalyst for 22 years, I have mutely withstood all manner of tortured ravings with the same cryptic impassivity.

But this new patient, this W, was different. This one described a pathology so bizarre, so macabre, that I could barely confine myself to the noncommittal grunt that is all we analysts are ever supposed to permit ourselves.

“Ahem. Tell me again, please. How do you satisfy these . . . these longings you describe?”

“As I said, doctor, I . . . I go to the post office. In Chatsworth, in Studio City, wherever.”

“How often do you do that, would you say?”

“Oh, not often. Six, maybe seven times a day. I try not to let it get out of hand.”

“And how do you feel when you make these visits?”

“I feel agony, humiliation, and . . . and also ecstasy!”

I stared in disbelief. Never had I observed such extreme masochism in a patient. What kind of tortured soul would punish itself again and again with the interminable lines, the surly employees, and the depressing decor of the Postal Service, all with such remorseless and compulsive self-loathing?

My curiosity was almost morbid. I began taking careful notes in order to publish a thorough account in the journals.

“It started some years ago,” the patient related. “My wife noticed that I was going to the post office a lot. We started to have lots of stamps around the house--22s at first, but then 17s, 39s, 44s. Even international reply coupons.

“Soon all the drawers were bursting with them. Rolls of stamps streamed down from the cupboards. Loose commemoratives stuck to the teacups. I knew I had a problem, but whenever I thought I could control it, I’d get irritable, distracted, until finally I would dash out and . . . and go there . I even rented a postal box.

“It seemed harmless. But the post office wasn’t open often enough for me. I started going during the workday. Soon I was neglecting my job. I even embezzled to buy money orders. Before long I was spending most of my day on line.

“For me, watching the snail-like movements of postal workers was almost hypnotic. I loved the linoleum floors, the buzzing fluorescence. Best of all were the lines. But I always dreaded the moment when that delicious waiting would end, and my visit would be over.

“There was no satisfying me. I took to mailing things--empty envelopes, letters to myself--and asking when they might arrive. This always brought a torrent of abuse from the clerk, and I would feel better . . . for a while.

“Like any addict, I needed more and more stimulation to achieve satisfaction. I began timing my visits to arrive just at 5 p.m., maybe a minute after. The frustration was exquisite! No amount of pounding or pleading would get me inside. What a rush I got from that! I practically wept with joy.”

Meanwhile, as the man’s analyst, I practically wept with terror. Never had I seen such a case. I was determined to effect a cure.

During the course of our analysis, I learned that W had been drummed out of the Postal Service training program, in which prospective employees are flogged for showing courtesy or imagination. After much travail, he was summarily dismissed for delivering first-class mail that was less than three days old.

W’s lifelong desire to work for the Postal Service, coupled with his humiliation at having failed, seemed to account for his strange love-hate relationship with the mails. But curing the disease was something else again. W insisted on mailing my fees, and even tried to pay my bill in stamps until finally I put my foot down.

I tried Freudian analysis, Jungian analysis, even aversion therapy: at my urging, W began to wear a large commemorative stuck in the center of his forehead. But this only intensified the postal nature of his self-abnegation.

Finally I hit on the solution: hypnosis. Using it, I tricked W into believing that all post offices are actually auto repair shops. This so filled him with unmitigated revulsion that he never went near one again.

Best of all, he stopped mailing my fees. The treatment is now over, but given the state of the mails, I expect payment to continue dribbling in for years.

Doug Smith is on vacation. This fictive guest column is by Times staff writer Daniel Akst , who reports that postal officials say there will be no rate hike this year, but that one is likely in 1988.