Sue suggested that it is only a part of me that has these fantasies, that they are not representative of me as a total adult. I agreed. She said that the part of me that runs the revenge fantasies was formed at a much earlier age in response to a set of difficult circumstances with which, given the limited repertoire of youth, I could not otherwise deal. "The point is," she said, "the Part will once have had some positive function. Until we negotiate some alternative behaviour, it will keep going in the same way."

I think she is right. My revenge fantasies, so fresh and exciting when first formed in my teens, now seem stale and stuck. I imagine that those habituated to pulp fiction, or junk food, or pornography, or other juvenile tastes, might feel the same way. "As far as the Part knows," Sue emphasised, "it has been sticking up for you and getting no thanks. Unless it believes we understand it, it won't play. It sounds weird saying, 'Oooo, thank you' to your Part, but that's how it works."

Sue told me to close my eyes and begin to welcome the Part. Instantly, I saw an elderly man coming up some steps, a sort of faithful old retainer emerging blinking into the light after years of solitary, subterranean living. He stood there, head bowed, silent. "Is the Part willing to communicate?" asked Sue. He seems submissive, I said. I realised that the Part was a film projectionist. Down in his cellar-cinema, in response to my command, it was his job to put the old revenge fantasy reels up on the screen.

"Ask the Part," said Sue, "if it's willing to let me know what it's been trying to do for you all this time." The projectionist looked at the ground, wringing his hands. He's been doing his duty, I told Sue: what he was told to do 25 years ago when he first came to work here. "Does the Part know the purpose of what it does?" asked Sue. The old servant continued to stare mutely at the ground. No, he doesn't know, I told Sue. It's blind obedience. "Has he forgotten?" This time, the projectionist managed a small, embarrassed nod. Yeah, I said, he's forgotten. "Thank the Part for communicating," said Sue, "and I'd like to thank the Part as well." Er, thank you, Part, I said -though not out loud. The projectionist bobbed his head.

"Am I right in thinking," Sue went on, "that you've got a creative part in there as well? A part that comes up with ideas?" Immediately, a man who looked like me drifted into my mind. He -I -was wearing, to my surprise and shame, a tight black polo-neck jumper -not a garment I have ever, obviously, had any truck with in real life. "I want the revenge fantasy Part to go to the creative Part," said Sue, "and explain the current situation. I want him to ask the Creative Part to come up with new ideas: suitable substitutes that will satisfy, if it still exists, his original purpose."

There followed a very long silence. I tried to conjure up a conversation between a tight-lipped superannuated presumably psychotic cellar-dwelling slasher-movie projectionist and a smooth polo-necked Channel 4 executive type I instinctively disliked. It wasn't easy. But after a while, and for the first time in my life, I understood what novelists mean when they say their characters start to take on lives of their own. Against all odds, the two parts got on well. The creative -never judge a book by its cover - turned out to be an all right kind of guy. He offered the projectionist a new job helping to make other sorts of films.

The projectionist was thrilled. A revelation! I told Sue that he had a particular hankering for comedy. He wants to make funny films, I said. "Sounds good," she said, and asked me to check that the projectionist was willing to take responsibility for this new approach for a trial period of one month. He's raring to go, I assured her. "Can you now ask," she said, "if there are any other Parts who have any objections to these negotiations taking place?"

Several angry men stomped in. "We're the Violence Department," they said, "and we're not happy." I said, come on chaps, it's not as if you get anything out of the status quo. I might have lots of violent thoughts, but we don't actually go around being violent, do we? They grunted, unsure. So I promised them that if this new, comic response to the memory of my enemies works, I will get my punchbag out, hang it up again like the old days, and make time for some genuine violence. That did the trick.

I reported all this to Sue. "Can you just check that the Violence Department are OK to observe the new behaviour over the next month?" she asked. Yeah, it's fine, I said, the Violence Department are cool with the month's trial. So: we're all of us good to go. Let's see what happens.