Denise Bryant
Mother and Daughter
Chapter One
WHERE DID IT ALL START?
The question posed by the title of this chapter is the same one that confronts almost any emotionally disturbed person under therapy. But it is a question that the patient must “discover” for himself with, of course, the professionally expert guidance of the psychiatrist or psychologist.
This was the vital question that faced Denise Bryant, a very attractive and personable 37 year old high school drama teacher the first day she sat down in my office. The story of Denise and how she found the answer to that question is presented here in approximately her own words:
He stayed locked in the bedroom with her all night long. My 45-year-old boyfriend, Bob, was dressed only in a thin pair of summer pajamas. My lovely 14-year-old daughter, Kathy, had on a pair of sheer blue baby-dolls. How could I, an intelligent woman with over five years of college education, believe that nothing happened?
It seems incredible when I look back on that night over four years ago, that I could have been so completely mesmerized, hypnotically influenced to such an extent by a man so profoundly evil as Bob. Yet Bob was neither the first nor last use at his will and for whatever perverted desires he wanted. My life story is one of strange passions. I say that I have been used by others- both male and female-to satisfy their evil lusts. But my own twisted needs of the flesh are equally to blame.
Where did it all start? Where did it begin? Why?
These are questions that have yet to be completely answered. And only recently have I begun to realize, through analysis, the important parts that my early environment and childhood relationships played in all of this. I have always been a strange person in many ways, a moody and emotional individual of changing moods. Deep involvement in sex has offered me an escape from responsibilities, escape from problems, an escape from life. That is why I have frequently shown all the outward indications of being a true nymphomaniac, insatiable while making love to several people, both at the same time and in turn.
When I first married at the age of 19, it was to flee from something I could not understand, the smothering love and overpowering influence of my dominating and beautiful mother. I was not pregnant when I was married. That happened sometime during the first week. I think I must have driven my husband crazy with my demands. He lost over ten pounds.