Anyway. Tony doesn't really want to go there. Dr. Melfi says that maybe he should go there, that it could be therapeutic. She starts to prod him to think it's a little strange that he was dreaming about Isabella, the idealized sweet protective mother, the day before he was shot. His subconscious was telling him something. Yeah, something like "dial down the dosage." Dr. Melfi says that, normally, a patient is guided to make his own conclusions about people and relationships, but since Tony's life is at stake, she's going to drop-kick him down the yellow brick road. She points out that, the day before he was shot, his mother was telling stories about infanticide, that those are her favorite topics of dinner conversation. She points out that, in his worst dreams, a duck flies off with his penis, and that while his mother never touched him below the beltway, a fear of castration still exists.

Tony wants Melfi to lay all her cards on the table. Does she really think that his mother, his *ahem* dear, sweet mother tried to have him whacked for putting her in a nursing home? Dr. Melfi knocks him upside the head with the DSM IV. She thinks Livia has all the high-tech features and functions of a borderline personality disorder: joyless, intense anxiety, internal phobias, no love or compassion, creating bitterness and conflict among family and friends. What I want to know is, what's so borderline about it? If anyone has an all-out personality disorder, it's Livia. Dr. Melfi describes the effect that borderline personality disorders have on the near and dear, without noticing the effect the description is having on Tony. Well, not until he knocks the glass top off her table with his fist and launches himself well into her personal space to point out, with his finger in her face, "That's my mother you're talking about and you're lucky if I don't break your face into fifty thousand pieces." I think she noticed that. As he storms out, Melfi rushes to lock and barricade her office door.