14. A Light Du Feu
At our first session, when Doctor Fahmy asked why I wanted to quit smoking, I thought she was kidding. I was one of the last smokers left alive. People reviled me on the sidewalks of New York, particularly at a time of heightened attention to healthful living marked by a sudden proliferation of organic food shops and yoga studios in formerly working-class neighbourhoods.
To my mind, Doctor Fahmy’s need to know why I wanted to quit called into question whether hypnosis was a kind of therapy. Otherwise, the why would not have mattered, only my desired outcome. I suppose I feared from the start that hypnotherapy was therapy — It announces itself as such. And like analysis, hypnotherapy is designed to fix problems rooted deeply in the psyche — for money.
I had chosen Doct
