Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“The Strange Case of the Moth Woman”

The saga of Spider Man has nothing on me. I have witnessed the epic tale of the Moth Woman. This is the name I have given to the drama of one of my patients who came to my office one day. I should say she "fluttered" in from the waiting room, befitting the hesitant story she brought with her about her tragic love life. She was lovely enough, a kind of fragile beauty with the sort of aura about her, like the dreamy haze you might see around a neon light on a rainy night. My intuition told me this was no ordinary patient.

As the facts unfolded in the first counseling session, she seemed to be apologizing. She had become enamored with an older man, a man of power and position. She first pictured him to me as muscular and handsome, despite his age, a man who worked out a lot in front of full-length mirrors. She used adoring words for him. I thought to myself Giant Ego. Indeed, she was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and, as the story of their relationship unwound, seemed headed for emotional ruin. A part of her knew the direction things were going, and this was why she had come. There were laments and tears to match. One of those fifteen Kleenex stories.

The problem seemed to be that she was so blinded by him that she couldn't absorb the warnings her own antennae were sensing about him. There was this startling combination of insight and entrancement. Was I going to be able to help her? Could I divert the spiraling "flight path" that was taking her toward emotional meltdown? I saw my job as de-mystifying the infatuation, and, at the same time, building her self-respect. I was up against no ordinary powers of the myths of love and attraction. It was a strange case because she was drawn to what would be self-destructive.

Her lover had apparently given her some encouragement, with flattery and attention, just enough to attract her, just enough to say "Look at me". Her rational mind told her that she was starving for him to share something personal and intimate, but he seemed incapable of giving. He mostly told her about his accomplishments, his famous friends, how great he was. I observed that he seemed to me to be less than the sum of his parts.

He never asked her about herself. His ego, for all its size, always needed more strokes. It was all very frustrating for her, but still she thought she loved him. Just to be around him made her feel important, as if she were vicariously benefiting from his (superficial) virtues. She knew this, yet she could not free herself from the spell that had fallen over her, like an evil magnetism.

I told her what I suspected: underneath his smooth and grandiose exterior was a very insecure guy. The candle's flame, at its heart was a vacuum of near nothingness that would suck her in and burn her up. I cautiously predicted that he would probably collapse under the weight of his own self-importance. Because, to the Big Ego, there is no need for a true long-term relationship. His so-called love life is just a series of short-term admirers. What she wanted from him could not be. She half-knew it: the affair could not, would not, last. It shook her up. I could only hope that she would eventually find the strength in her own wings to fly away, head in the opposite direction, and not look back.

________________________________________________