Dreaming for Freud Read online

  She can really see this city in her imagination in the mist and the gray. She has seen it in a postcard her beloved sent her of a city in Hungary. The letter, of course, is a recall of the letter she wrote announcing her own intention to commit suicide, which she knows the doctor will recognize. Now it is her father who is dead in the dream. This will puzzle the doctor, surely, though he may think of this as her revenge on her father. The doctor likes to make analogies and link things together, she has learned, just as one does in a poem.

  Indeed, he interprets the dream with glee, coming up with all sorts of convoluted and complicated reasons for the events, working on it diligently, almost as if she were not there lying before him on his couch, clutching her reticule, with her suffering body, her pains in the legs, her cough coming and going. He asks her for added information, and she speaks of looking up the symptoms of appendicitis in the encyclopedia.

  “I like to look up things in the encyclopedia, to find the causes,” she tells him and thinks she has used his own book rather like an encyclopedia to look up the meaning of dreams. He has never complimented her on her curiosity or her ambition to learn the meaning of things, but surely that is what makes life interesting: the process of learning. She says that she had suffered from an attack of this kind, which several doctors felt might be the cause of her fever, the pains in her abdomen and down her right leg, and so she wanted to find out what it might be.

  “When did this occur?” he naturally wants to know.

  She doesn’t remember exactly but says this happened nine months after the scene at the lake with Herr Z., which makes him talk about an imaginary pregnancy and not the pains in her stomach or legs or an appendicitis.

  “You seem to accuse me of being in love with everyone! So many people: my father, Herr Z., and perhaps even with you! It is very confusing to me. In the meantime I am still suffering from pains in my stomach and my leg, and I keep coughing and feeling as though I will not be able to breathe!” she says, but he doesn’t seem to pay attention to that.

  It is her dreams that interest him above all and not her pains, she thinks, and certainly not her: one suffering girl. It occurs to her that if she were simply to turn into smoke, to rise up on his magic carpet and fly out of the room or become invisible and drift out the window, float out into his courtyard, he might not notice. He might just go on talking, making clever remarks, playing with her words almost as if they were a poem and this a literature class. He is much more interested in this dream, these images she has imagined, than in her real suffering.

  How little sympathy he seems to have for a fellow human being. He is interested in a theory he wishes to prove—an imaginary pregnancy, which will prove her desire for Herr Z., which she has supposedly repressed, or her original desire for her father—much more than he is in the suffering of the dreamer, she realizes, with a little shock. He is looking for added information to prove his theories in the dream book, she supposes. It is an intellectual game for him, where he is on a treasure hunt for the gold he hopes will prove his theories and make him famous. She is not sure that he is particularly interested in making her, just one insignificant girl, well or happy. Perhaps he does not really think it is possible, though he said he did, and perhaps he is right. Perhaps it is impossible to be without pain of some kind, without suffering. But she also feels he is talking more about his own life than hers.

  She wonders how she could get him to concentrate on her and what she is thinking and feeling. How can she reach him? How can she get him to pay attention to her? What weapons does she have at her disposal? She wonders what he would say if she were simply to tell him that she has decided to end the treatment, to leave. Would he then become aware of her suffering presence? Would he say he would miss her? Would he beg her to stay? Or at least advise her to continue her treatment in order to get well? Would he at least miss the money her father is paying him? How can she get a rise out of him, get him to react in some way to her real life, to her, to her?

  Would he even say that he needs more time to cure her of her ills? For a mad moment she imagines the doctor down on his knees, his hands lifted in prayer, his male member thrusting in supplication against his trousers.

  Suddenly she needs to know. She determines to tell him at the start of the next session, at the start of the year, that she is leaving, and to see what happens. Surely then he will pay attention to her, take her words more seriously and beg her to stay. In the meantime she will change the subject slightly and tell him about a painting that intrigued her.

  XX

  * * *

  THE MADONNA

  HE GLANCES AT THE CLOCK, but there are still some minutes left until the end of the session. The girl is talking about something she did recently: sitting for two hours in the art gallery in Dresden looking at a painting of the virgin by Raphael, the Sistine Madonna.

  He remembers the train ride to Dresden and the altercation with a rude Christian who had called him a dirty Jew when he wanted to open a window. The man had insisted he close the window, and now this girl is going on about the Madonna in the museum in Dresden. He remembers the painting, which he saw so long ago—it must be seventeen years, he thinks, the span of this girl’s life. How madly he had been in love with his princess at the time.

  But he asks her, “And why did you sit there so long? Two hours is a long time! What was so interesting about the painting?”

  “I’m not certain,” she says.

  “Which part of the picture interested you particularly?” he asks, thinking of the central figure of the Madonna and the baby and the couple that flank them: on one side an older man, if he remembers correctly, some saint, or pope most probably, who points a finger at the viewer but looks up at the baby, and on the other side a beautiful blond woman with a mysteriously lowered gaze.

  “The Madonna,” she says and adds, “I didn’t understand what Raphael was trying to say in this painting.”

  “You think he was trying to say something?” he asks.

  “The Madonna looks so frightened, as though she has seen something awful. She seemed to me to be trying to escape, to run forward, to run out of the picture, to run away from something.”

  “What made you think she was running, escaping?” the doctor asks.

  “You can see by her skirts moving around her ankles and the position of her feet,” she says. “Also, the baby Jesus seemed so strange to me, not at all the way he is usually portrayed. I was so puzzled by his expression. Have you seen the painting? Do you know what I mean?” she asks.

  He admits that he has seen the painting but it was a long time ago, and adds, “That’s not what I remember,” and thinks that he was more interested in the Madonna. “What was so strange about the Christ child?” he asks.

  “I thought he looked angry, or perhaps afraid, rather the way I have felt at times: his eyes stare so fearfully, and his hair is all in a mess, and his teeth seemed clenched with horror. I thought he looked as if he had seen some dreadful apparition, or anyway the way I felt when I had awoken and found Herr Z. by my bed, and how I felt when he suddenly clattered down the steps at his shop and clutched me to his chest.”

  “I must have missed that during my brief inspection,” he says and remembers that the Madonna had actually reminded him of a young nursemaid and not any heavenly creature at all.

  She says, “I felt the Madonna might be considering what was about to happen in the future to her baby, or perhaps even to all of us, and would have wanted to escape it. Only the beautiful woman on the right who looks down seems not to know or not to want to know what is about to happen to everyone. And the two little adorable angels at the bottom of the painting seem to be looking on ironically or with even a touch of humor. I somehow felt the painting was trying to warn me of something.”

  “And what could that be?” the doctor asks her.

  “I don’t know,” she tells him, shaking her head.r />
  “It is certainly a beautiful painting of the Madonna,” the doctor now admits, though he is thinking of his own increasing isolation within Christian society and how he has been driven back to his own people, joining B’nai B’rith, where he has found some comfort and companionship.

  She tells the doctor that she was drawn to the painting because it seemed directed at her. She felt an intimate part of the family portrayed there. “In a way I felt I was both the Madonna and the baby, and also the little angels watching the scene. It was an awful feeling. I felt the older man was both like my father and Herr Z. and perhaps, come to think of it now, also like you, all of you pointing the way I am supposed to go, urging me to do your bidding, none of you really thinking of what might be best for me in the end. The beautiful woman was both Mother, who refuses to lift her eyes and see how terrible it all is, and the blond, beautiful, and mysterious Pippina, who insists on ignoring the horror of my real situation and her own.”

  “And you felt no longing to be like the Madonna, to one day bear a child, a baby yourself?” he finds himself saying, thinking of his own children and how he loves them, and how much pleasure they have given him with their amusing, charming ways. He thinks of young Martin, who already shows such promise with his imaginative poems; such an intelligent child, a strange bird, sensitive and good natured.

  She says, “I have no wish to marry and bear children. What happiness have men brought me? What have they ever given me? How have they ever helped me?”

  He is not sure how to answer her, taken aback by her bitter words. Has he then brought her nothing at all? Have all his words been in vain? Has she gained nothing from her time with him? He looks at the clock and sees it is time for the end of the session.

  But later, when she is gone, has left him for good, he will think of what she was trying to tell him. He will think of that painting and her words when he hears, two years later, that she has married despite her bitter words, and to a young engineer apparently of not particularly promising qualities, whom her father has been obliged to take into his employ as he has no other work.

  He thinks of the painting again above all, two years after the marriage, when he hears that she and her husband have had a baby boy and have decided to convert to Lutheranism. Like so many in Viennese Jewish society, he presumes, they hope thus to make it easier for their boy to advance in life, to protect him from the dangers around him, from any danger that might arise. A vain hope, as he will eventually find out, as under the Nazi Nuremberg Laws of 1935 one Jewish grandparent is enough to condemn a man or woman to death.

  XXI

  * * *

  THE LAST SESSION

  SHE STARTS THE SESSION BY telling him she has decided this will be the last time she comes to see him. She says she has been determined to stick it out until the end of the year but now she must leave.

  She waits to hear what he will say, expecting him to protest, to tell her she is making a great mistake, that this is not what she really wants, that on the contrary she wants to stay, but to her surprise he says nothing. Why does he not respond to her words as he usually does, telling her she is mistaken, that a desire to leave is really her way of getting him to beg her to stay? Surely he understands that? Is he going to remain silent even under these circumstances? What has she done?

  “For how long have you been considering this seriously?” is all he asks. Again he wants precise numbers. What is this mania for numbers?

  “For two weeks,” she answers, though the truth is probably that she has thought of it from time to time since she first set foot in this room, this ultimate plea, an attempt to get him to react, to notice her, to ask her to stay. As she says these words, she is overcome by a pang of regret. Is he just going to let her go without protest? How could she really leave this man she has been talking to every day except Sundays for the last three months? Her intention was simply to get him to respond to her, to tell her he wanted her to stay.

  At least he has listened to her with much interest. At least he has believed what she had to say with a trustfulness that is touching. What will she do without him? What will become of her without him? How could she live without coming here every day and without him telling her what her thoughts, her feelings, her dreams mean? Who will she be on her own without having him to confirm or deny her thoughts and feelings? How could she walk out of his door and never come back?

  “You are dismissing me like a maid with two weeks’ notice ?” he says.

  There is a moment of stunned silence in the small room that makes her very sad. It is true that this man has listened to her so carefully and paid more attention to her words than anyone else has ever done in her whole life. He has also admitted that what she told him was true, which her father and Herr Z. have not done. It is also true he has bullied her and hectored her and tried to make her admit to his theories and ideas about sexuality. At times she has felt she was under a police investigation, held here under close scrutiny for committing a monstrous crime of some kind. He has accused her of making herself ill by her thumb-sucking and masturbating, of using her illness for her own ends, to manipulate her father, who would do anything for her. He feels the best solution for everyone would be for her to marry Herr Z. What sort of a solution is that?

  She tells him that she is very thankful for his help and admits she has found the analysis interesting, though disturbing.

  “I have discovered a new way to look at the world, and though I don’t always like what I see, I feel more, well, more intelligent, in a way, just from the looking, the possibilities,” she says. She doesn’t feel much better physically, she must admit, and certainly she is still in a rage with her father and Herr Z., but perhaps she will now have the courage to confront the Z.’s.

  The doctor says nothing to all of this. He says nothing about his feelings for her as a human being, as a young girl struggling with what is surely a difficult situation, or even offers any advice about the wisdom of such a decision. He voices not a word of affection or even any interest in the results of her departure. He does not even ask her to stay in touch, to let him know how she is getting on. Instead, he is obviously thinking about himself. He sounds very cross, and repeats something about her treating him like a servant, giving him two weeks’ notice.

  She understands he has taken her decision personally, and now she does not know what to say. She has offended him. Like a rejected lover, like a child, he is hurt and angry with her and is now sulking in his corner in silence. Well, let him sulk. He is taking her decision to leave as her revenge on him. Perhaps he is not entirely wrong. Perhaps leaving him is the best thing she can do.

  Obviously he feels she is rejecting him personally by breaking off the treatment. Perhaps he feels she is breaking off his masculine part which he seems so proud of and of which he speaks so often. She sees the gray stone crumbling. He goes on stubbornly with the analysis of the last dream.

  She tries to change the subject and to talk about something else, hoping he might still ask her to stay. She has a little time left, she realizes, looking at his clock, and at least he won’t make her leave until her time is up today. What can she say? She had so hoped he would try to convince her to stay, that he might at least point out the advantages of his cure.

  When it is time for the end of the session, he simply tells her the time is up. She rises and comes over to him and shakes his hand. She looks into his eyes with real affection and feels the tears rush into her eyes.

  “I am so sorry I have to leave like this, but I feel I have no other choice now. I will be back to see you, one day, I’m sure,” she says, lifting her voice hopefully while he continues to scowl at her. Awkwardly, she pushes her hat back from her forehead and says she is so sorry that they could not have helped each other more. “I tried,” she says. He looks at her and says, coolly, “And can you be so sure we did not?”

  January 1901

  XXII

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sp; * * *

  WRITING IT UP

  HE SITS IN HIS STUDY, writing up the case all through the cold January nights of the new year. He smokes one cigar after another. He cannot work without this aid, which will one day be his undoing. The cancer of the palate, the operations, the prosthesis, and ultimately the morphine-induced death are all years ahead of him. Surrounded by his prized objects and warmed by the fire burning in the stove, he writes fast and furiously until late. He struggles to get the whole thing down but finally decides to curtail his account, leaving out the analytic process.

  For the most part, he follows the slow, uneven process of the girl’s own gradual and reluctant revelations and his own penetrating interpretation of them. He models this account on his patient’s revelations, withholding certain important facts, until toward the end, just as the girl herself has done.

  He realizes that each case presents a mystery story of sorts, perhaps the whole psychoanalytic method is somewhat like a mystery story, a crime novel, a thriller, gradually revealing connections between events and symptoms.

  He has read a great deal of fiction in many languages and knows how to tell a story, hinting from the start at what is up ahead, releasing the information little by little, so as to pique the interest of the reader and catch him in his net, as he had hoped to catch this girl. Now he will pin her down with his pen like a butterfly on the page for posterity. He provides many mysterious footnotes to keep his reader questioning the exact reason for the girl’s symptoms, her distress.

  This will be a necessary compliment to his dream book, supplementing and illustrating his theories with this very real experience. They have criticized him for not providing sufficient clinical illustrations—well, he will provide them with more than they may want.