The Cognitive-Mental Gheto

 Freud:

Of course, there's the added difficulty, more ammunition for our enemies, that all of us here in Vienna, in our psychoanalytical circle, are Jews. 

 C.G. Jung

 I don't see what difference that makes. 

 Freud:

 That, if I may say so, is an exquisitely Protestant remark. 

When I left the hospital and moved out here... I was afraid it would take years... to build up a roster of patients, but... I'm already under siege. 

Anyway, I don't see why a little more work... won't make your dissertation eminently publishable. You think we'd be able to work on it together without...? It's always going to be something of a risk, us seeing one another. Yes. But I believe we have the character to be able to deal with the situation, don't you? I hope so. I somehow imagined you'd have found another admirer by now. No. You were the jewel of great price. Shall we say this time next Tuesday? And I'll start gently ripping you to shreds. Explain this analogy you make between the sex instinct and the death instinct. Professor Freud claims that... the sexual drive arises from a simple urge towards pleasure. If he's right, the question is why is this urge so often successfully repressed? You used to have a theory involving the impulse towards destruction... and self-destruction, losing oneself. Well, suppose we think of sexuality as fusion, losing oneself, as you say, but... losing oneself in the other, in other words, destroying one's own individuality. Wouldn't the ego, in self-defense, automatically resist that impulse? You mean for selfish not for social reasons? Yes. I'm saying, that perhaps true sexuality demands the destruction of the ego. In other words, the opposite of what Freud proposes. When I graduate, I've decided to leave Zurich. I have to. Why? You know why. It's true. I'm nothing but a.. philistine Swiss bourgeois... complacent coward. I want to leave everything... break away and disappear with you. Then comes the voice of the philistine. Where will you go? Vienna, maybe. Please don't go there. I must go wherever I need to feel free. Don't. You know your paper... led to one of the most stimulating discussions we've ever had... at the Psychoanalytic Society. Do you really think the sexual drive is a demonic and destructive force? Yes, at the same time as being a creative force, in the sense that... it can produce, out of the destruction of two individualities, a new being. The individual must always overcome resistance... because of the self-annihilating nature of the sexual act. Hm. I fought against the idea for some time, I suppose there must be some kind of... indissoluble link between sex and death. I don't think the relationship between the two... is quite the way you've portrayed it. I'm most grateful to you for animating the subject in such a stimulating way. The only slight shock was your introduction, at the very end of your paper, of the name of Christ. Are you... completely opposed to any kind of... religious dimension in our field? In general, I don't care if a man believes in Rama, Marx or Aphrodite, as long as he keeps it out of the consulting room. Is that what's at the bottom of your dispute with Dr. Jung? I have no dispute with Dr. Jung. I was simply mistaken about him. I thought he was going to be able to carry our work forward after I was gone. I didn't bargain for all that second-rate mysticism and self-aggrandizing shamanism. Nor did I realize he could be so brutal and sanctimonious. He's trying to find some way forward... so that we don't just have to tell our patients, "This is why you are the way you are. He wants to be able to say, "We can show you what it is you might want to become". Playing God, in other words. We have no right to do that. The world is as it is. Understanding and accepting that is the way to psychic health. What good can we do if our aim is simply to replace one delusion with another? Well, I agree with you. Hm. I've noticed that in the crucial areas of dispute between Dr. Jung and myself, you tend to favour me. I thought you had no dispute with him. Hm. You still love him. That's not why I'm pleading his cause. I... I... I just... feel that if you two don't find some way to co-exist, it will hold back the progress of psychoanalysis, perhaps indefinitely. Is there no way to avert a rupture? Correct scientific... relations will be maintained, of course. I'll be seeing him at the editorial meeting in Munich... in September and I shall be perfectly civil. To tell you the truth, what finished him for me was all that business about you. The lies, the ruthless behaviour. I was very shocked. I think he loved me. I'm afraid your idea of a mystical union with a blond Siegfried... was inevitably doomed. Put not your trust in Aryans. We're Jews, my dear Miss Spielrein, and Jews we will always be. Now, the real reason I invited you here this evening... was to ask if you'd be prepared to take on one or two of my patients? I was interested in what you said about monotheism... that it arose historically out of some kind of patricidal impulse. Yes. Akhnaton, who as far as we know, was the first... to put forth the bizarre notion that there was only one God. Also had his father's name erased and chiseled out of all public monuments. That's not strictly true. Not true? No. You mean, it was most probably a myth? No. I mean there were two perfectly straightforward reasons... for Akhnaton, or Amenhopis the IV as I prefer to call him, to excise his father's name from the cartouches. First... this was something traditionally done... by all new kings who didn't wish their father's name... to continue to be public currency. In much the same way as your article in the Yearbook, fails to mention my name? Your name is so well-known it hardly seemed necessary to mention it. Do go on. 

Secondly, Amenhopis only struck out the first half of his father's name, Amenhotep, because, like the first half of his own name, it was shared by Amon. 

One of the gods he was determined to eliminate. 

Hm. 

As simple as that? The explanation doesn't seem to me unduly simple. And do you think your man, whatever you call him, felt no hostility whatsoever toward his father? 

I have no means of proof, of course. For all I know, Amenhopis may have thought that his father's name familiar enough... and that now it might be time to make a name for himself. 

How sweet... it must be to die. 


"If I may say so, dear Professor, you make the mistake"... "of treating your friends like patients". "This enables you to reduce them to the level of children", "so that their only choice is to become obsequious nonentities"... "or bullying enforcers of the party line, while you sit on the mountaintop", "the infallible father-figure and nobody dares to pluck you by the beard and say", "Think about your behaviour and then decide which one of us is the neurotic". "I speak as a friend". 

 Hm. 

"Your letter cannot be answered.

Your claim, that I treat my friends like patients is self-evidently untrue

As to which of us is the neurotic, I thought we analysts were agreed... a little neurosis was nothing whatever to be ashamed of. 

But a man like you, who behaves quite abnormally... and then stands there shouting at the top of his voice... how normal he is, does give considerable cause for concern". 

For a long time now, our relationship has been hanging by a thread". 

And a thread, moreover, mostly consisting of past disappointments 

We have nothing to lose by cutting it.

You will be the best judge of what this moment means to you. 

"The rest is silence".