THE BULL’S-EYE DOOR
(Therapist and patient face each other. Each is seated on a comfortable chair. A large door with a bull’s-eye painted on it looms in the background.)
Patient: I’m scared to do it because of my dream.
Therapist: Tell me about the dream.
Patient: I’m talking to you, and you tell me I have to leave by the bull’s-eye door. I don’t want to leave by the bull’s-eye door. I never had to leave by the bull’s-eye door before. So, anyway, I go through the bull’s-eye door, and a roaring lion leaps at me. I wake up screaming.
Therapist:Interesting.
Patient: Can’t I leave through the reception room like always?
Therapist: I apologize for my next patient’s early arrival, but I have a strict policy. My patients must not meet. Look at it this way. You’ll go through the bull’s-eye door and down the back stairs and out into the street. You will have faced and defeated a fear. It’s a step. Go ahead. You can do it.
Patient: Could you open the door for me?
Therapist: What do you think?
(Patient rises, reluctantly approaches the bull’s-eye door, gathers courage, rips it open and plunges through. The roar of the lion drowns his shriek. Therapist, chuckling, walks over and closes the bull’s-eye door.)
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