That train has left the station

Maintaining unhealthy patterns that jeopardize people’s ability to function in various areas of life is understood in this chapter as one of many examples of the unique language of the human psyche and its layers – the verbal, more conscious layer, often regarded as “reason,” and the more primary unconscious layer, often manifesting itself through apparently bizarre, maladaptive behaviors. The possible meaning conveyed by these seemingly strange, detached symptoms is a major question with which we have been engaged in therapy. This chapter illustrates a case study of a patient who is chronically late. This chapter illustrates a case study of a patient who is chronically late. His behavior is understood to be unconsciously enacting and reviving the idiomatic expression “that train has left the station.” In Hebrew, this expression is slightly different; we say “to be late for the train” – a real event that actually saved his mother during WWII when they “missed” the train for Auschwitz. This case study presents an individual, who is a Jewish Hebrew-speaker, a son of Holocaust survivors. His mother escaped the concentration camps because she literally missed the train that transferred Jews to those camps. For this patient, missing trains means surviving.