Significant Moments: Part 20

For us, a man is a hero and deserves special interest only if his nature and his education have rendered him able to let his individuality be almost perfectly absorbed in its hierarchic function, without at the same time forfeiting the vigorous, fresh, admirable impetus which make for the savor and worth of the individual. And if conflicts arise between the individual and the hierarchy, we regard these very conflicts as a touchstone for the stature of the personality. We do not approve of the rebel who is driven by his desires and passions to infringements upon law and order; we find all the more worthy of our reverence the memory of those who tragically sacrificed themselves for the greater whole. These latter are the heroes.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game quoted in K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Masson’s . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . firing . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . could also be looked upon as a tactful concession to . . .
Emile Zola, Germinal.
. . . many analysts, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory.
. . . who bitterly hated him.
Emile Zola, Germinal.
"Every day I get many calls, from all over the world about how awful you are. . . ."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
He looked right at me.
Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter.
I keep seeing the look on his face . . . . The repetition of the memory is as insistent as the look itself was.
David Evanier, The Man Who Refused to Watch the Academy Awards.
Eissler's rage knew no bounds. He did not like being harassed by other analysts. "Just today Masud Khan . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . who was a trustee . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 11).
. . . called me from London and asked me to dismiss you from the Archives. The board members, all of them, or at least most of them, are asking for the same."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Political prudence dictated . . .
Emile Zola, Germinal.
—why, I still don’t know—that . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . . this kind of purge. . . .
Emile Zola, Germinal.
. . . be executed.
William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus.
It was a foregone conclusion.
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
Discussing the board meeting at which he was fired, . . .
Amanda Vaill, Seduction on Trial.
. . . Masson said . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . that Eissler pressured him not to retaliate and "poison Anna Freud's last days," but instead to "live with . . .
Amanda Vaill, Seduction on Trial.
. . . the dismissal . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . in silence . . . because it is the honorable thing to do."
Amanda Vaill, Seduction on Trial.
Otherwise . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . said Eissler . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . there would be no end to litigation.
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
At which Masson, according to . . .
Amanda Vaill, Seduction on Trial.
. . . the press . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . commented, "Well, he had the wrong man."
Amanda Vaill, Seduction on Trial.
What arrogance!
Irvin D. Yalom, Love's Executioner.
There seems hardly any doubt that, once . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . the old man . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . had been seriously disappointed by an individual's personal conduct, it was often difficult for him to forgive . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . and Masson . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . must have been . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . .over and over again, . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . a source of disappointment. If actions of the sort . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . I am attempting to describe . . .
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
. . . actually did occur, then I do not see how . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . the doctor could . . .
Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native.
. . . have helped deeply regretting that he had ever accepted . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . a much younger man than his colleagues . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . into the . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . inner circle of psychoanalysis.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
It was a bitter blow . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . an unsettling experience . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . to a man of this sort . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . a man among those who stood at the head of the movement.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Years later he himself commented on this matter:
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
It has not been the first or last experience to reinforce my disgust with . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to James Jackson Putnam.
. . . young men who have nothing but talent.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Rightly, one may say that . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
The entire affair had been a lot of people performing a play . . .
Gilbert J. Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time In the Psychology of Artistic Style.
. . . an absurd . . .
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus.
. . . play and now at last they had all played out the parts which had been allotted them.
Gilbert J. Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time In the Psychology of Artistic Style.
What's past is . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . eternally present, and therefore . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . would seem to present material for an instructive prologue.
Lawrence J. Friedman, Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson.
It was uncanny to observe how the persons drawn into the imbroglio were forced to pursue the acting out, almost as if they were . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . grotesques, moving puppetlike . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . under the dominance of . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . an unseen Player who . . .
Gilbert J. Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time In the Psychology of Artistic Style.
. . . acted through them—
Steven R. Latham, System and Responsibility: Three Readings of the Institute of Medicine Report on Medical Error.
But in the end . . .
Henry James, The American.
. . . dear friends, . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . you know well that life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.

_____________________________________________________________

—At this point I shall not suppress a sigh.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ.
Though it is fashionable these days to . . .
Harold Bloom, Picturing Shakespeare.
. . . question his character . . .
Chris Matthews, Clinton’s Final Campaign: Take the Blame.
These storms over Freud . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . and the whole psychoanalytic establishment . . .
Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives.
. . . seem to me . . .
Mark Twain, Christian Science.
. . . wrong in principle—mere learned idling
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ.
Freud's greatness as a writer is his actual achievement. As a therapy, psychoanalysis is dying, perhaps already dead: its canonical survival must be in what Freud wrote. One could object that Freud is an original thinker as well as a powerful author, to which I would reply that Shakespeare is an even more original thinker.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
Just who does Harold Bloom think he is?
Anthony Lake, Infinite Exercise.
What, if anything, makes Shakespeare so different from—so much better than—everybody else? . . .

He was indeed singular, not because he surpassed all other writers, but simply because he was a unique and unrepeatable individual, living in a unique and unrepeatable time and place. He was no less and no more singular than anyone else. Shakespeare remains, like every other somebody, like us but not us. We are attracted and defeated, educated and mystified, by his strangeness, his otherness, his contradictory incompleteness, his whole, his holes, his permanent personal opacity, his multiplicity. He reinvented himself imaginatively and prolifically, but not infinitely. He, too, was limited, confined by space and time and the boundaries of his own perception. He is not us. But he is like us. The culture that turns him into a god produces a schizophrenic criticism, mixing abasement and appropriation.

Within our culture, Shakespeare is enormously powerful. Power corrupts and disfigures. The power of a politician easily corrupts his entourage, and the power of a poet easily corrupts his apologists. The courtier/critic's "candied tongue," in Hamlet's withering description, will all too readily "licke absurde pompe,/And crooke the pregnant hindges of the knee." But criticism, at its best, struggles to be free; like the press at its best, its function is to doubt what we have been told; it is skeptical; it is suspicious of power. Sycophancy is no more admirable in literature than in politics. . . .

By overestimating Shakespeare's importance and uniqueness, Shakespearian critics insult the truth.
Gary Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History, From The Restoration to The Present.
Is Hamlet understood? Not doubt, certainty is what drives one insane. – But one must be profound, an abyss, a philosopher to feel that way. – We are all afraid of truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.
The truth to which Hamlet comes is one in which all mankind should be passionately interested—namely, the truth about society's foundation. As for Hamlet, however, obtaining this truth was as unfortunate as it is for most others who try to penetrate the matter deeply. For I do not believe that Shakespeare was driven here to say something about a specific society, but about society as he understood it in general. Society can exist, he says, only when the structure of its foundation is denied and woe to him who does not share in this collective denial.
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.

_______________________________________________________________

A Comedy in the Making

The thirteen members of the board of directors of the Sigmund Freud Archives . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . who make themselves even more pompous and ridiculous as their meeting proceeds . . .
David J. Baker, No Laughing Matter: Where is the Comedy in Die Meistersinger?
. . . met in Eissler's apartment in New York on November 14, 1981, just about a year to the day after I had been appointed projects director. I was present to defend myself.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
To my eye, all of them looked better dressed and better educated and altogether more confident than I.
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
Many of them seemed rather vague as to what, precisely, the seduction theory was, and what, precisely, my apostasy was.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
[interrupting furiously].
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Yes, I understood nothing of it!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
How could anyone be quite sure of understanding such a man?
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
BECKMESSER:
No pause anywhere, no coloratura, and not a trace of melody!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
Just listen to him!
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Who calls that singing?
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nòrnberg.
[annoyed].
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
It made one uneasy!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
[angrily].
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Nothing but ear-splitting din!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
[losing patience at last and almost indignant].
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
And nothing behind it!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
That is quite all right. But . . .
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
. . . as it is not given to everyone to discover an out-and-out novelty, in order to make the necessary sensation the man has naturally to resort to representing a forerunner's views as fundamentally false, a course all the more effective in proportion to the significance of the author he is now deriding, and to the plentiful misunderstanding that author has met with.
Richard Wagner, Public and Popularity.
And he even jumped up from the Singer's Chair!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
[The ACTORS look at one another in amazement.]
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
BECKMESSER:
Will you press for proof of his faults?
Or declare outright that he has sung his chance away?
SACHS (who has listened to Walther's trial song from the
first with serious interest):
Stay, Masters! Not so fast!
Not everyone shares your opinion.—
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
You critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, are ashamed or frightened of the momentary and transient extravagances which are to be found in all truly creative minds and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. You complain . . .
Friedrich Schiller, Letter to Karl Korner.
. . . gentlemen, . . .
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
. . . because you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.
Friedrich Schiller, Letter to Karl Korner.
The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die. And to live forever, it does not need to have extraordinary gifts or to be able to work wonders. Who was Sancho Panzo? Who was Don Abbondio? Yet they live eternally because—live germs as they were—they had the fortune to find a fecundating matrix, . . .
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
. . . that is to say, . . .
Luigi Pirandello, Preface to Six Characters in Search of an Author.
. . . creative minds and . . .
Friedrich Schiller, Letter to Karl Korner.
. . . a fantasy which could raise and nourish them: make them live forever!
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
SACHS:
The knight's song and melody
I found new, but not confused;
if he left our paths
he at least strode firmly and surely.
If you wish to measure according to rules,
forget your own ways,
you must first seek its rules!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
Mankind would still be living in caves or lake dwellings, had there not been the few who were able to "unthink" the world as it was and to "think" a new world—that is, to recreate one that is more gratifying, or more illuminating than the one they found.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
I am simply asking that . . .
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
. . . the board of directors . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . do everything possible to give . . .
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
. . . the seduction theory . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . a chance to make a case for itself.
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
BECKMESSER:
Aha! That's right! Now you hear it:
Sachs is opening a loop-hole for bunglers
who come and go as they please
and follow their own frivolous course.
Sing to the people on the market-place and in the streets;
here admittance is only by the rules.
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
That I had no interest whatsoever in . . .
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
. . . an analytic practice . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . seemed to trouble no one. Indeed, more than one person suggested that it was an asset.
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
But with . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . what right did . . .
Jack London, Martin Eden.
. . . I question . . .
Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd.
. . . the major tenets of psychoanalysis . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . someone asked.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker.
After all, my . . .
Henry James, Washington Square.
. . . training as a . . .
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.
. . . psychoanalyst . . .
H.G. Wells, The Secret Places of the Heart.
. . .amounted to little more than an old-fashioned apprenticeship.
Frances Kiernan, Fiction at The New Yorker.


The Grand Finale

The guild . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . with its . . .
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
. . . rigid formulas and prohibitions . . .
David J. Baker, No Laughing Matter: Where is the Comedy in Die Meistersinger?
. . . mattered more than anything else.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
It was not easy for me to remain calm. I succeeded, however . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
I was silent.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
What faces these were around him!
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
Old men with beards!
Arthur Miller, Broken Glass.
For the first time, I’d realized how all these people loathed me.
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
Their little black eyes darted furtively from side to side, their beards were stiff and brittle, and to take hold of them would be like clutching bunches of claws rather than beards.
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
"Did you understand a word of it?" . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . Beckmesser . . .
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
. . . was asking; "surely he can't be trying to make fools of us?"
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
One could almost suppose that the chief clerk . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . Beckmesser, the pedantic and assertive guardian of high standards and judge of talents, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
. . . was deliberately assuming a blank expression, while waiting for the full effect of his words.
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
But there was . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
Silence! silence!
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author.
. . . a monstrous curtain of silence . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
Sometimes I thought . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . the chief clerk's . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . behavior bordered on the comically absurd, though this man, so humorous when it came to the foibles of others, apparently failed to see the humor in his own "craziness."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Every attempt to evoke the scene and give the verbal picture some colour and semblance of life collapses into a Beckmesserish incoherence.
J.P. Stern, Hitler: The Fuhrer and the People.
Meister Sixtus Beckmesser, town-clerk of the free imperial city of Nòremberg at the time of . . .
Paul Rosenfeld, Men Seen: Twenty-Four Modern Authors.
. . . Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, . . .
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg.
. . . is usually represented a malevolent buffoon.
Paul Rosenfeld, Men Seen: Twenty-Four Modern Authors.
Wagner's caricature is cruel but it is funny, and it repossesses the general awareness with every performance of the Meistersinger. To cavil at this breathing statue to stupid self-importance must seem labored, humorless. As usual, the sober and complex truth limps helplessly behind the astute, simplistic libel—astute precisely because it is simplistic. . . .

Even if one corrects for Wagner's malice, it seems plausible to hold that his Beckmesser remains in substance a telling, if heartless, depiction of a pedant in power.
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
But the morality and metaphysics of the clerk are not only, nor indeed primarily, those of pedantic, mandarin abstraction. . . .

A kabbalistic and Hasidic intimation has it that evil seeped into our world through the hair-line crack of a single erroneous letter, that man's suffering, and that of the Jew especially, came of the false transcription of a single letter or word when God dictated the Torah to his elect scribe . . .
George Steiner, No Passion Spent.
—creating an error in the world; unplanned free-flow.
Steven R. Latham, System and Responsibility: Three Readings of the Institute of Medicine Report on Medical Error.
This grim fantastication is utterly expressive of a scholar's code. It points to the definition of a Jew as one who always has a pencil or pen in hand when he reads, of one who will in the death-camps (and this came to pass) correct a printing error, emend a doubtful text, on his way to extinction.
George Steiner, No Passion Spent.
If, in the face of such reservations, I offer a plea for Beckmesser, I do so not to deny or to extenuate his flaws, but to place them in perspective. . . .

Had he been merely ridiculous, Wagner would not have taken the trouble to ridicule him.
Peter Gay, Freud, Jews and Other Germans.
At these words Beckmesser's rage is beyond all bounds.
Albert Lavignac, The Music Dramas of Richard Wagner.
BECKMESSER:
No more! An end!
THE MASTERS:
Enough! An end!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
Eissler could stand it no longer. "Stop it. Of course Masson is right about the aridity of psychoanalysis today." The analysts in the room were so used to agreeing with Eissler automatically that there were murmurs of assent around the room. Eissler went on, "But the point is, who is to blame for this? Masson would blame Freud. That is outrageous." A chorus of "outrageous" came back. Finally Eissler lost his composure and launched into a forty-five-minute passionate denunciation of me—
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
His performance would have bordered on the comical if not for the rage that poured from him.
Jeffrey Toobin, A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President.
BECKMESSER:
Now, Masters, announce your decision!
(Most of them hold up their hands.)
THE MASTERS:
Sung out and undone!
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.

Curtain.

_______________________________________________________________

One must visualize . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: For the Marble Tablet.
. . . Masson’s . . .
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
. . . situation at this moment. He was forty years old, a psychopathologist with towering ambitions, impressive self-confidence, and small income. He had failed, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: For the Marble Tablet
—after all, . . .
David Evanier, The Arrest.
. . . to secure the fame he wanted and thought he deserved. For several years he had been reconnoitering from an exposed outpost, with incredible tenacity, reaching for a general theory of the mind. Now he no longer knew where he stood. He was like a brave officer venturing far into enemy territory only to sense abruptly that his troops have deserted him, and that, in any case, the war may not be worth fighting.
Peter Gay, Freud: For the Marble Tablet
There I stood . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . . in Eissler’s apartment . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . intent on . . .
Jack London, The Valley of the Moon.
. . . playing it to the end.
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
I knew it was really happening. There was no sense of disbelief.
Bob Simon, Forty Days.
Still the atmosphere of unreality, the . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . strangely cinematic . . .
Bob Simon, Forty Days.
. . . quality of the meeting, persisted to the end.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Where were the camera positions? Where was the director?
Bob Simon, Forty Days.
I felt very much like . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . a “subordinate officer” . . .
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg.
. . . charged with treason . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . who was about to be . . .
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.
. . . sentenced to death by hanging.
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg.
The movie sense . . .
Bob Simon, Forty Days.
. . . was a protecting presence:
Bayard Taylor, Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home.
The men facing me were playing their parts as officers and interrogators. Their costumes were good, the accents just right. I was playing mine. We were all aware that these were just the opening scenes, and were anxious not to fluff our lines.
Bob Simon, Forty Days.
I thought it out at the time, feeling the need for vindication and desiring to be at peace with my conscience. But this vindication did not satisfy. Nor to this day can I permit my manhood to look back upon these events and feel entirely exonerated. The situation was something that really exceeded rational formulas for conduct and demanded more than the cold conclusions of reason. When viewed in the light of formal logic, there is not one thing of which to be ashamed; but nevertheless a shame rises within me at the recollection, and in the pride of my manhood I feel that my manhood has in unaccountable ways been smirched and sullied.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
I was frightened, but a corner of my mind was doing a critique. We need a new scriptwriter, I thought. These lines are too hackneyed. If we have to go through all this, does it have to be so unremittingly grade B?
Bob Simon, Forty Days.
Emerging front and center . . .
Matthew Gurewitsch, Risk Taker Supreme: Is Daniel Day Lewis Too Good To Be a Movie Star?
. . . Jeffrey Masson . . .
Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg.
—his proud forehead, nose curved like a scythe, and square jaw now displayed in profile—heard with malevolence, his thin lips pressed tight, his tense brows soaring in open contempt, like a defiant student forced to stand by for an address by the principal. That face would have told in a silent movie.

But then he spoke, and plunged into a concerto. Henceforward the other voices would be the orchestra; . . .
Matthew Gurewitsch, Risk Taker Supreme: Is Daniel Day Lewis Too Good To Be a Movie Star?
. . . Masson’s . . .
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
—deep, rolling, bold, like a cello, splendid in antagonism, yet lyric—the solo. Not bound by the sense of the words, its cantilenas, its roars, its occasional tortured squeaks made incantatory music of their own.
Matthew Gurewitsch, Risk Taker Supreme: Is Daniel Day Lewis Too Good To Be a Movie Star?
"Please tell me why I am being fired from my position. I was a full professor at the University of Toronto when you offered me this job, and I gave up a tenured faculty position to accept it. You and Muriel . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . Muriel Gardiner, a Vienna-trained psychoanalyst . . .
Ralph Blumenthal, Did Freud's Isolation Lead Him to Reverse Theory on Neurosis?
. . . you both . . .
William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
. . . assured me it was for life. I have a . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . wife and daughter . . .
T.S. Eliot, Marina (editor’s note).
. . . a family I must provide for. Had I known this was just a trial period or that I needed to espouse the conventional views I never would have accepted the position."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I am speaking to you now like a man with a rope round his neck. What do you imagine I am? A being in revolt? No.
Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes.
" . . . My name and reputation is involved, the memory I shall leave behind here. . . . I am not here to salvage something for myself, or even to win the Board's approval for my action. I counted on being regarded by my colleagues henceforth as a dubious phenomenon, and am prepared for that. But I don't want to be regarded as a traitor or madman; that is a verdict I cannot accept. I have done something you must disapprove of, but I have done it because I had to, because it was incumbent upon me, because that is my destiny, which I believe in and which I assume with good will. If you cannot concede this much, then I have been defeated and have spoken with you in vain."
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Eissler was calmer now, and he said . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . clearly and to the point . . .
The New Cassell’s German Dictionary (entry for the German word “rein”).
. . . that all that was true, and he would now tell me why I had to be fired. I was being fired for three reasons. "The first is the article that appeared in the New York Times. The second reason is the Zeplichal incident. Do you remember, Professor Masson? In one of the Silberstein letters, Freud told his friend that he was sending him a book by Zeplichal. I asked you to find out who this person was. You looked it up and said apparently he had written a book on geometry. But you were wrong, Professor Masson. The Zeplichal Freud had in mind had written a book on shorthand, not geometry." Here he paused to look up at me. Eissler was serious and apparently considered this almost a sin.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I was too stunned to respond.
George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education.
"The third and last reason you are being fired is that you told Anna Freud that a letter published in German from Freud to Karl Kraus contained nine transcription errors. But in fact you were wrong. There were only six errors, not nine." Again, he looked absolutely indignant.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
The power of . . .
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
. . . Eissler’s . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . presence was such that . . .
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
. . . it was not necessary to demonstrate facts: it was enough . . .
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale.
. . . for him . . .
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
. . . to have said . . .
L. Frank Baum, The Scarecrow of Oz.
. . . something for it to be true, with no proofs other than the power of his talent and the authority of his voice.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale.
At once . . .
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
. . . Dr. Eissler . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . became an enigma.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling you what we said—repeating the phrases we pronounced—but what's the good? They were common everyday words—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Eissler was a quirky man, a strange and finally a lovable man.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
One side or the other of his . . .
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
. . . many-sided . . .
Maynard Barbour, That Mainwaring Affair.
. . . nature was perfectly comprehensible, but . . .
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
. . . the several . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . sides together were bewildering.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
I did not want to push him. I did not want to hurt him. Something terrible was going on inside him; he was not capable of talking about it, but it was real, and I was the source of his pain. I did feel bad for him. But I could not let the others off so lightly.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
He knew some of these men personally, and thought they were a very mediocre lot.
Emile Zola, The Debacle.
I turned to them, and I said, "Well, Dr. Eissler has told you the reasons why I am being fired. I want to ask you, do you all feel so strongly about Zeplichal?" For a moment, they looked confused ("Who??"), then there was murmured assent, "Yes, indeed, you got Zeplichal wrong, terrible, a terrible incident."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
In truth, there was very little reasoning or none at all. Their method was one of assertion, assumption, and denunciation.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
I was stripped of all rank, like a disgraced soldier.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
It should be unnecessary to state, at least to my friends, that I was shocked.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
Dreyfus's astonishment was greater still, for General Boisdesffre was absent. He was received instead by an odd and solemn officer in uniform, who introduced himself as . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . the chief advocate . . .
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg.
. . . "Commandant du Paty de Clam." In the rear of the room there were three men in civilian garb who were unknown to Dreyfus. These were Armand Cochefort, head of Criminal Investigation, his secretary, and Felix Gribelin, archivist of the Section of Statistics.
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
Among the few Jewish officers in the French army was Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had risen to a post on the general staff. . . . On October 15, 1894, Captain Dreyfus was arrested on the charge of selling French military plans to the German government.
Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews.
Du Paty invited Dreyfus to fill in the identificatory section of his inspection form, as his aides looked on. Then du Paty, whose right hand was covered by a black silk glove, said to Dreyfus: "I have a letter to write and present to General Boisdesffre for his signature. I've hurt my finger. Can you write it for me?" Dreyfus agreed to the odd request, and sat down at a small table, ready for the dictation.

It was then that Commandant du Paty, leaning over Dreyfus, dictated to him a meticulously composed text.

Paris, October 15, 1894

Having the most serious reasons, Sir, for temporarily retaking possession of the documents I had passed on to you before taking off on maneuvers, I beseech you to have them brought immediately to me by the bearer of the present letter, who is an individual to be trusted. . . .

Du Paty continued his dictation with deliberate slowness.

"I recall for your benefit that it is a matter of:

1. A note on the hydraulic brake of the 120 cannon on the manner in which. . . ."

At that moment du Paty brutally interrupted the dictation. "What is the matter, Captain? You are trembling!" "My fingers are cold," answered Dreyfus, who continued to write. "My fingers were cold," Dreyfus would later write, "for the temperature was quite chilly outside, and I had been in a heated room for only a few minutes."

Why did Du Paty suddenly challenge Dreyfus? "To unsettle his self-assurance," he would later claim, attributing to Dreyfus alternatively a revealing agitation and the perfect calm of a polished fraud. Dreyfus awaited the rest of the dictation. Du Paty addressed him still more brutally. "Pay attention. This is serious." Dreyfus was offended by the harshness of the bizarre remark, but he continued to write in response to the dictation, attempting to "write better."

"it functioned in maneuvers;

2. A note on covering troops;

3. A note on Madagascar."

"Dreyfus had regained his composure," Du Paty would write. "It was useless to pursue the experiment." Whereupon du Paty rose, solemnly placed his hand on Dreyfus's shoulder, and . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . in a tone of great contempt . . .
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass.
. . . spoke these words: "In the name of the law I arrest you. You are accused of the crime of high treason."
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. One should not be misled by the fantastic conclusions that it is not, so to speak, argued out along factual lines. The very fantastic character of its conclusions leads to heroic strivings for "evidence" to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. . . . But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can be justified to many non-paranoids but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates "evidence."
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
"Why did you say that Freud renounced the seduction theory to line his pockets with money?"
"But I never said any such thing."
"Yes you did, I heard it from a patient who was present when you said it."
"But that's crazy, excuse me, that's absurd."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Where am I? Is this a dream?
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Another analyst told Eissler that he too, had heard the same accusation, but was not free to declare his source.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
"But . . . that's absurd!" he cried.
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
"From that first moment on . . . the phenomenon that would dominate the entire Affair was in operation. It was no longer carefully verified facts and scrupulously examined matters which formed opinion; it was a sovereign, pre-established, and irresistible belief which distorted facts and realities."
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
One of the older analysts present said that the . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . New York Times . . .
Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg.
. . . article had been a personal embarrassment to him as a psychoanalyst. What did I have to say to that? I had nothing to say to that.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
What did I care!
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
I did not want to be discourteous and tell him that I really didn't give a damn what personal discomforts he had suffered on behalf of my views about the seduction theory.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Without replying . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . Jeffrey Masson . . .
Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis.
. . . remained standing where he was for a moment.
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
All at once something startling happened.
Thomas Mann, Tristan.
Enraged by the betrayal involved, . . .
David Tell, Toobin, Too Bad.
. . . the analyst . . .
Lucy Beckett, Richard Wagner: Parsifal quoting Arnold Whittal.
. . . turned on him with extraordinary vehemence and accused him of . . .
Roger Cohen, Kohl Resigns German Party Post After He Is Rebuked for Scandal.
—"[having] abandoned all the major tenets of psychoanalysis." This was probably true, but I was not sure how he knew. "Let me read what you wrote," and he proceeded to read from . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . his copy of . . .
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow.
. . . the New York Times, . . .
Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg.
. . . which he handled as he might have a bottle labeled POISON!
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
But then he did a most astonishing thing—he added the following sentence: "And now I no longer believe in repression or the unconscious." This was as if in a meeting of senior Vatican officials, one of the cardinals were to announce that he no longer believed in the Holy Trinity, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . the Virgin . . .
The New Cassell’s German Dictionary (entry for German word “rein”).
. . . Father and Son . . .
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 8 (Part I: Veni, Creator Spiritus).
. . . or even the existence of God. When there was a murmur of disapproval I had to object. "But I never wrote those lines. They are not in the article at all. You have simply invented them."
"Yes," he said, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . like the Queen in “Alice [in Wonderland]” . . .
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg (quoting Francis Biddle, Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal).
. . . "they are here in black and white."

I leaned over to see what he was quoting, and noted that he had penciled in the lines he was citing. I said so.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
“This is sheer nonsense!”
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
"You have added those lines. They are not part of the article."
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Naturally I . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . protested, grew indignant.
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
At this moment . . .
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
. . . the chief advocate . . .
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg.
. . . who had been for some time busily writing in his notebook, called out “Silence!”, and read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two. . . . ”
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
"Whosoever will have engaged in machinations or shared information with foreign powers . . . will be punished by death."
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . by death?
William Shakespeare, King Lear.
(I’m imagining this)
Don Delillo, The Names.
It was as though I . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . was breaching national security by selling military secrets or something.
Joel Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars.
I felt my heart pounding wildly, like that of a man facing a firing squad . . .
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
True to his temperament, . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August.
. . . the accused . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . persisted in maintaining his innocence, explained incoherently that he . . . loved his homeland, his profession, that he was incapable of betrayal. "A rather theatrical pose," . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . the chief advocate . . .
Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg..
. . . would explain. "I allowed the torrent to die down; it may well have been a set piece prepared in the event of an arrest."
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
There arose a hubbub of talk, arguments, suggestions.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
"You should not have spoken to the New York Times," said one [member of the Freud Archives board], and another added, "You showed poor judgment." "You should have been more discreet," added another.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
It was just one of those overwhelming moments.
Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter.
"I don't think it mattered what the article said—they weren't going to like it. Nobody is allowed to judge them, especially not the press."
Joel Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars.
But I believe that my supposed personality, my supposed motivation, and my supposed hunger for publicity really had little to do with what was bothering these men. I believe that they could not get over the fact that . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . months earlier . . .
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.
. . . pictures of me . . .
Mary Roberts Rinehart, Dangerous Days.
. . . had appeared in the New York Times . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . including one in which . . .
Mary Williams Walsh, David Bloom, 39, Dies in Iraq; Reporter Was With Troops (New York Times, Monday, April 7, 2003).
. . . I was probably not dressed properly.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Come! Come!
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 8 (quoting Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene)).
. . . Dr. Masson: . . .
International Psychoanalytic Association, Letter to J. Moussaieff Masson.
. . . said one of the stiffer analysts there, “you well know that . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . Freud is quite right—
Gustav Mahler, Letter to Alma Mahler (September 4, 1910).
. . . the analyst should be anonymous, unknown.”
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Er ist nicht reinlich
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 8 (quoting Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene)).
. . . said another, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . quoting Freud.
?
That is, it is . . .
Stewart Edward White, The Blazed Trail.
. . . not seemly . . .
Proverbs 19:10.
. . . not pure . . .
Job 25:5.
. . . for an analyst to . . .
Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Counterterrorist Myth.
. . . allow his picture to appear in the paper.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
It was undoubtedly the feeling of . . .
Albert Camus, The Plague.
. . . many analysts that the . . .
Mohamed Moftah, Tea on the Lawn.
. . . analytic space was like an operating theater. It had to be kept . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . free from stain, . . .
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 8 (quoting Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene)).
. . . pure and unsullied as possible. The influence of . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . the outside world . . .
Albert Camus, The Plague.
. . . had to be kept to a minimum. The analytic instrument must be immaculate.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
One of the others spoke up . . .
John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps.
. . . in a menacing tone . . .
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo.
. . . as though it were a Star Chamber, not a group of fellow analysts.
Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis.
This man . . .
Anne Katherine Green, Initials Only.
(meaning me)
Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield.
. . . in violation of all professional ethics . . .
Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Conductors (quoting Cleveland Leader article about Leopold Stokowski, April 28, 1912).
. . . all rules . . .
Anne Katherine Green, Initials Only.
. . . caused his pictures to be published far and wide above the columns of fulsome matter . . .
Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Conductors (quoting Cleveland Leader article about Leopold Stokowski, April 28, 1912).
. . . for all the world to read
Gustav Mahler, Letter to Alma Mahler (September 4, 1910).
Wave upon wave . . .
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 8 (quoting Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene)).
. . . of exclamations followed this statement.
Maynard Barbour, That Mainwaring Affair.
The whole chorus . . .
Gustav Mahler, Letter to Alma Mahler (June 1910).
. . . of analysts . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . it seemed, were now . . .
Fouad Ajami, The Poisoned Well (The New York Times, October 17, 2003).
. . . circling the highest peaks . . .
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 8 (quoting Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene)).
. . . of absurdity.
Joseph Conrad, Chance.
I was with them . . .
Albert Camus, The Plague.
. . . with these men . . .
E.M. Forster, A Room with a View.
. . . and yet I was alone . . .
Albert Camus, The Plague.
. . . alone; his feelings and his happiness were of no account; he was of importance to . . .
Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters.
. . . these others—the . . .
H.G. Wells, When The Sleeper Wakes.
. . . members of the Board of Directors . . .
Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Conductors (Cincinnati Orchestra, letter of termination to Leopold Stokowski, 1912).
. . . only in so far as he reflected credit on themselves.
Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters.
What had happened? Who was to blame?
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
I did not know the rules, and I was playing against enormous odds. Everybody in the room was older than I, and certainly everybody in the room thought of himself as wiser than I. There was some attempt to treat me with fatherly kindness but harshness.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I've never seen anything so unreal in my life.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . it all seemed so ridiculous—
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass.
The pervasive sense of madness is utterly impossible to convey in words.
Sidney H. Phillips, Trauma and War: A Fragment of an Analysis with a Vietnam Veteran.
It was . . . a mind-boggling enigma.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
Like something out of Conrad.
Sidney H. Phillips, Trauma and War: A Fragment of an Analysis with a Vietnam Veteran.
Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very source of dreams.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
____________________________________________________

I am alone, at dawn, on the mountaintop. Below, through the milky mist, I see the bodies of my friends. Some that have rolled down the slopes lie like disjointed red dolls; others are ashen statues surprised by the eternity of death. Stealthy shadows are climbing toward me. Silence. I wait. They approach. I fire against dark silhouettes in black pajamas, faceless ghosts. I feel the recoil of the machine gun; I grip it so tightly my hands burn as incandescent lines of fire cross through the sky, but there is no sound. The attackers have become transparent; they are not stopped by the bullets that pass right through them, they continue their implacable advance. I am surrounded. . . . Silence. . . .

My own scream wakes me, and I keep screaming, screaming. . . .
Isabel Allende, The Infinite Plan.
That is how I felt about it.
Joseph Conrad, The Arrow of Gold.
. . . I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed. I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
_____________________________________________________

To be able to contain all this, . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . he . . .
Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
. . . needed first to establish what was happening to him.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
His face became all at once very sad.

"Listen! I spoke of children only to make my case clearer. Of the other tears of humanity with
which the earth is soaked from its crust to its center, I will say nothing. I have narrowed my subject on purpose. . . ."
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Children have little ability to contain overwhelming stimulation and intense feelings of rage.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
If you cross examine a child of seven or eight on his day's doings (specially when he wants to go to sleep), he will contradict himself very satisfactorily. If each contradiction be set down as a lie and retailed at breakfast, life is not easy. I have known a certain amount of bullying, but this was calculated torture—religious as well as scientific.
Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself.
What else can a child, so completely at the mercy of a regimen like this, do except adapt and suppress his genuine feelings with all his might?
Alice Miller, The Untouched Key.
Let’s go further and suppose that . . .
Douglas R. Hofstadter, and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
. . . the boy was expected to express no feelings or complaints . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
—what then?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
For mysterious reasons Kipling's parents took him and his sister to Southsea in England, and left them both for six years in a dreary boarding-house, with complete strangers who were committed to destroying the creativity of these unusually vivacious and open youngsters. Kipling, in his never-completed autobiography Something of Myself, was to describe it as sheer hell.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Lost Prince.
Since very young children do not find support within their own self or a mirror in the eyes of a witness, they must deny the truth. Later, the patient will repeatedly and unconsciously reenact this reality . . .
Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware.
. . . from the past . . .
Joseph Conrad, The Rescue.
—usually with people not originally involved
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
What happens to the memories of a person who suffers greatly? Are they obliterated? Distorted?
J. Moussaieff Masson, Lost Prince.
One need only look for an instant at . . .
Philip Gourevitch, The Memory Thief.
. . . the scars and distortions produced by terrible childhoods . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . to wonder whether forgetting might not be a kinder curse than remembering.
Philip Gourevitch, The Memory Thief.
Even after past traumata are brought out of repression by hard analytic work, the patient attempts to treat them as never having happened . . . . The great need not to know what has happened is often supplemented by a direct order from . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . the mind’s I, . . .
Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
. . . while the . . .
Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands.
. . . not knowing is accomplished by massive isolation [and] transient ego splits . . . .
These vertical ego splits are often denoted by the patient's switching from the first to the second or third person[.] . . . An example:
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
You may have heard that Anna Freud has given me her father's letters to Fliess, to prepare a new, complete edition. You may well imagine the complicated negotiations that went into this decision, but I for one am very happy that it has been made. Lottie Neuman and I are translating the letters and I am introducing them.

There are so many historical questions that arise, that I thought it would be very helpful for me if I could put in an announcement in the International, letting people know that this edition is now under way, and asking for help. Would it be possible for you to print it? I thought of a text such as the following:

'Professor J. Moussaieff Masson, in co-operation with Sigmund Freud Copyrights, is editing a new unabridged edition of the Freud/Fliess letters. If anybody knows of unpublished material relevant to Wilhelm Fliess or to the relationship between the two men (correspondence etc.), he would appreciate hearing about it. Of particular interest would be any possible letters from Wilhelm Fliess to anybody, about his relationship to Freud. Equally welcome would be any letters from Freud to anybody about Fliess. . . .'
J. Moussaieff Masson, Letter to the Editor--International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
In the course of his last four sentences, the patient's "I" also went away. . . .

Just as he split the images of himself, he needed to split the mental pictures of his parents into good and bad. With intolerable rage against those he loved and needed, he was forced to deny his hatred. The denial, the need not to know, existed alongside his driving curiosity.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
It was Freud's later belief that small children imagined, wished for, desired, and fantasized sexual assaults, and that these fantasies, when remembered in adolescence, caused a neurosis (since one could not acknowledge the desire behind the fantasy).
J. Moussaieff Masson, Lost Prince.
For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I've only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so unanswerably clear. Listen!
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
Contrary to Freudian doctrine . . . I believe that it is not fantasies that make us ill, but memories that cannot or will not be remembered. Sometimes these memories cannot be remembered because they cover deep wounds that still hurt every time they are touched: The mind balks at any attempt to get close to them. On the other hand, I believe Freud was right when he claimed that ghosts can only be laid to rest when they are brought to the light of day. Until we can acknowledge and think about what has happened to us in the past, we cannot deprive the memory of whatever hurting power it still has over us.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Lost Prince.
But the challenge is especially difficult for the victim of soul murder, who has lived out and experienced the feeling that it is impossible to exist without the inner presence of the aggressor, the soul murderer with whom the victim has identified.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
I won't speak of grown-up people . . .
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
. . . because . . .
Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
. . . besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation—they've eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become 'like god.' They go on eating it still. But children haven't eaten anything, and are innocent. Are you fond of children . . . ? I know you are, and will understand why I prefer to speak of them. They, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers' sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple. But that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another's sins, especially such innocents!
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
We find in our patients that they regularly identify with the aggressor. To identify means to be and not to see someone. It follows that when these people find their own victims they do not experience them as separate individuals—they do not empathize with them. The abused child's siblings, already subject to the primal displacement of murderous impulse from the parent to the intruding infant (this is the theme of the story of Cain and Abel), tend to be the first scapegoats of the abused child. Although individual variations may ensue, usually the hostility is eventually displaced onto people outside the family . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.