Personal Narrative: The Catalyst For A Cure

The Catalyst for a Cure I, Martin Dysart have taken much time to meet with one of my toughest patients to date; the very interesting Alan Strang. Alan first came to me when I heard that he was having some minor troubles that I could possibly cure. I soon realized that he had no real disease. He was just fascinated with horses. This was not a fascination that I had ever seen before. This was a very deep love and respect for these huge animals and he worshiped them like they were his God. What was so disturbing for me though was how could I really change Alan? The idea of “normal” that I had in my mind would not have been a good place for Alan to go. This normal life for Alan would be one of the hardest things for him because he was never raised to be normal. After taking time to talk with Alan and hear more about his parents, I learned that his life was very protected and he was never really able to explore anything or understand the basic principles of life and the interactions he has with other humans. Because Alan worshiped these horses so much, he almost valued them as humans, giving him a false sense of identity of who he really was. This then meant that when he had encounters with humans like the time he was almost very intimate with Jill, he said he couldn’t stand her

This goes along with Campbell’s theory of when a child turns to an adult in the sense that Alan was not old enough to have true love and thus was not ready to become an adult. Alan had much more of a passion for horses than he had for girls. When he told me about the encounter with Jill and the awkwardness of the situation, it was clearly evident that Alan was not ready to become a man at all. The lack of exposure in his upbringing led to this extreme awkwardness between him and Jill. This failure to proceed in this sexual encounter leads to the conclusion that Alan is not ready to transform into an