Who's afraid of Alec Shand?

Worm reviews an alarming ABC documentary on Alec and Lorraine Shand's married life ... The top end silk looking for affaction and support ... Mrs Shand should stop complaining ... Making a mess of priorities ... Counselling does wonders ... Or does it? ... From Justinian's Archive, October 2000 

Alec Shand QC: looking for a magnetic germ

On Thursday, October 5, 2000, a 50 minute documentary went to air on ABC TV, where Sydney silk Alec Shand opened his veins and let the grisly details of his married life spill forth.  

Welcome to Intimacy reported on a counselling program designed to address your average married hell.  

The program delves deep into the lives of Lorraine and Alec Shand and with pungent juxtaposition a battling couple from Dubbo who run a petrol station - Laurelle and Steve Frost.  

The big question on many sceptical lips is why an old warhorse from the Sydney bar like Shand agreed to expose to the world, if not around 12 percent of the TV viewing audience, his soul, his desires, and his strangled emotional development?  

He says in the doco that he's convinced of the wonders of this counselling method and wants to share the message. Certainly he seems to be excited about the discovery of self-examination.  

Possibly another explanation is that he wanted to save his 41-year marriage with Lorraine, and he did this for her.  

Sue Flatman, the executive producer of the documentary, suggests the reason could be that at 71, Shand is wiser, has less to prove and is able to take more risks. A younger careerist at the Bar would never venture into these swirling rapids.  

Whatever the reason, it's a brave decision. Truth is on display and there's much with which many will have more than a passing familiarity.  

A camera moving into the crevices of a 40 year marriage, locked together in a tango of anger, resentment, bitterness and love is a distressing experience.  

Lorraine Shand, a beautiful young glamour-puss model, always felt she was "living in a bubble". From "the womb" she did not feel wanted. She loved animals but her mother woke her up one night so that she could see her favourite pet dying from a glass bait. This forever stopped her "reaching out".  

Alec and his family also gave her a rough time. Jack Shand QC confided in her at a dinner just before the wedding that she was from the "sub strata", but if she needed help to come and see him. "The bastard."  

Her own father wouldn't come to the wedding because he was a coalminer and she was marrying into "so-called" society. She soon discovered that the so-called society had fewer principles than those in the world from which she came.

Alec used to be embarrassed if she said to people that she was the daughter of a coalminer. "Don't say that," he would insist. "But it's true," she cried. 

Alec thought his wife had minimal "self-love" and that "reflects itself in demands on other members of the family ... She spends her time setting standards for others which become very, very exacting".  

Lorraine's basic beef was that Alec gave no time to her and the family.   

"His work has been devastating as far as the children are concerned because they haven't had a father. He's taught them nothing. Right from the start Alec would work 20 hours a day."

Lorraine Shand felt that the atmosphere at the South Pacific Private Hospital at Curl Curl provided her with more love than she had ever known.  

The therapy sessions are broken up into confrontations - letting all the resentments pour out; setting of boundaries; and finally, making amends.  

For Alec Shand it boiled down to the fact that he didn't like Lorraine criticising him and he wanted more love and affection. He tells her and the gob-smacked ABC viewers: "When you jumped out of bed each morning to avoid love and affection, I felt sad, lonely and hurt."  

She would have had to have been leaping out of the cot very smartly given that Shand was up at five for the dash to chambers.  

But Alec promises to reform if she can stop the incessant criticism.

"The contrast will be very comforting, almost exciting ... The more the love is present the less attractive the work will be because the germ of what we haven't had for such a long time will be very magnetic."  

This was an elliptical way of saying that Lorraine will become more desirable if she lays off complaining.  

In the end we see Alec coming clean.   

"I make amends for the terrible mess of my priorities and for failing to give quality time and love over many years and for not understanding your problems. My wish is you'll forgive me." 

He says that if he can convince her this declaration is sincere then "we have a fighting chance", which possibly was not the most apt choice of word in the circumstances.  

Lorraine makes amends to Alec for leaping out of bed early and for "putting sadness in your eye".  

What is apparent is that in spite of all the history they do love each other and they are touchingly protective of one another.  

Of course, there is the unavoidable legacy of wretched parents and damaged childhoods. Shand's mother and father split up when he was 10 or 11. His mother never married again and as Alec explains his "mother lent on him as a substitute husband. It made it very difficult for me to give love. I learned not to give love".  

For Lorraine, well, she was marrying her father who rejected her. Poor old Alec - from substitute husband to replacement father. No wonder there were a few identity problems. One of the more curious manifestations of his behavioural problems was a strange little scene which saw him washing empty wine bottles in the kitchen sink.  

In any event Alec says:   

"I'm starting to control the dominance that the law has exercised over me ... I can pick and choose a bit ... Take much more time off and take an interest in what the family is doing." 

The last scene leaves a few questions in suspension. We see Lorraine at their country estate, Lindendale in northern NSW, weeding the mondo grass in the courtyard. She says:   

"I want to simplify my life. Alec needs to keep on accruing and I can't ... I want no more or no less than I deserve. I think I can have that now. If he wants to run around and chase his tail that's him, not me." 

What is she saying? That's she learnt to life without Alec's time and attention? She can now live happily by detaching herself? She is no longer locked into her despair?  

The thought does occur, that it might have been possible to arrive at this point in life without massive doses of psychotherapy conducted before a national TV audience.  

Worm