by Morris West
“It sounds wonderful! Adultery on Saturday, absolution on Sunday! A real conjuror’s trick. Now you see it, now you don’t!”
I was mocking him and he knew it; but he was shrewd enough to understand and forgive me.
“You’ve got it wrong, my dear. It isn’t innocence which is restored, but the relationship between Creator and creature. The child says, I’m sorry! The Father embraces him back into the family. But we carry the scars of our follies until we die. I think perhaps the real value of analytic psychology may be that it makes us intelligible to ourselves and therefore tolerable to ourselves.”
That at least made sense. I know from bitter experience that my worst excesses were committed when my self-esteem was at its lowest point. I repeated my first question.
“How far can I rely on professional secrecy with Freud or Jung?”
Gianni shrugged resignedly.
“Who’s to say? At Weimar one heard the usual backstairs gossip about both men. Jung apparently has had a number of tricky episodes with women. But they are the leaders in their field. The risk of their indiscretion has to be weighed against the risk of your own death wish. You’re near the breakpoint now. Take my advice. Leave Paris tomorrow and go and talk to Carl Jung. Use another name if it makes you feel more comfortable.”
He took a prescription pad from his pocket, scribbled a few lines on it and thrust it at me. The note was superscribed to Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, Zurich. It read:
Dear Colleague,
You will remember that we met briefly at Weimar. The bearer is a distinguished lady whom I have known for many years. It is on my recommendation that she presents herself to you. For personal reasons she desires to remain anonymous, at least for the moment. I beg you to see her and offer her what counsel you can.
With most respectful salutations,
Giancarlo di Malvasia, M.D
“Take it!” said Gianni earnestly. “In God’s name take it and talk to the man! It may be your last hope.”
It was not his eloquence which persuaded me; not even my own sense of need. It was the note from Basil Zaharoff, which I found waiting for me at the hotel.
My dearest Magda,
I have known many women in my life, but never one who has given me such a generous variety of pleasures. I cannot bear the thought of losing you after a single so beautiful encounter. I leave tonight for London to meet with Lloyd George. As soon as I get back, let us dine and renew our passion together.
I want also to discuss another idea with you. I see now that the arrangement I proposed was much too rigid and burdensome for a spirited woman like yourself. I am sure we can work out another association more flexible, but no less profitable to us both.
I kiss your hand. I kiss your sweet lips. I carry you in my heart on my travels.
Lovingly,
Z.Z.
I tore the letter into shreds and flushed it down the water closet. Then I called the concierge and asked him to send me up a set of railway timetables and a Thomas Cook guide to the hotels of Europe. Afterwards I walked down to the little pharmacy where my signature is known and my prescriptions are accepted. The old pharmacist raised a cautious query when he read my recipe.
“Madame understands this stuff is deadly? I shall put a wax seal on the bottle for safety.”
I thanked him for his solicitude and explained that one of my hounds had an incurable canker and must be destroyed. I loved him so much that I wanted to put him to sleep myself.
“Ah Madame!” The old man was immediately reassured. “You remind me so much of your father. He was a beautiful man – of great heart, great tenderness!”
Oh Papa! If only you knew what kind of woman your daughter turned out to be. But then you did know, didn’t you? You never admitted it; but you knew. And the only comment you ever made sounded like a line from a Schnitzler play: “I hope, my dear, you don’t talk in your sleep!” Be assured, Papa, if this last desperate magic doesn’t work, I shall sleep long and soundly and never breathe another word of my secrets or yours. I am quite calm now. See! I can even smile at myself in the mirror. I remember one of Lily’s history lessons about the execution of the English king, Charles the First, and myself saying how much it must have hurt the poor fellow.
“Don’t you believe it, lassie,” said Lily in her happiest voice. “It looks messy but it’s very quick. Once your head’s off, you don’t have a worry in the world!”
JUNG
Zurich
The chaos dream, about the great flood, has now become a matter of earnest and sometimes acerbic debate between Toni and me. She insists that my analysis is too glib, that I am wrong to read the dream as prophecy and that the death-wish symbols have many more sinister undertones than I will admit.
I argue that she is falling into Freud’s error. He tends to see the unconscious as engaged in a kind of mischievous hide-and-seek with the conscious. The dream images it harbours are, for him, a smokescreen thrown up to obscure an unbearable reality. I don’t agree with that at all. To dream is as natural as to breathe.
The unconscious is like an attic where all the unused or unusable material of our personal and tribal experience is tossed, higgledy-piggledy: old wedding photographs, grandmother’s shawl, greatgrandfather’s diaries. They pop out of the clutter by accident, as when children play there or an inquisitive housemaid begins turning over the dusty relics. Nature doesn’t set out to deceive us. We don’t even set out to deceive ourselves. It is simply that we cannot cope, all at once, with the clutter of information and emotion that is delivered to us. So we consign it to the attic of the unconscious.
I am writing about this very calmly. But today’s debate with Toni was anything but calm. It was complicated by an embarrassing letter, which Toni opened with the rest of the morning mail. The letter was from Sabina Spielrein, who not so long ago was pleading with me to give her a child . . . our little Siegfried! Christ! How I am beset by these women! I cannot live without them. I cannot live with them. If I had the money I would pack my bags and be off to Africa tomorrow!
A new chain of disasters begins, as it always seems to do nowadays, in the small hours of the morning. I have the chaos dream again; but this time new elements appear in it.
Elijah is on the train. He is dressed as a conductor. He settles me into my compartment. Salome is already there. She is naked. She stretches out a hand to touch me. There is a large straw basket on the seat beside her. The snake is inside it. I hear the rustle of his body against the straw.
Again I am uneasy with Salome. I am expecting Toni. I do not want to have sex with a blind girl who carries a snake. The train starts, and once again I see the flood – yellow at first, then blood-red – rolling across the land. I recognise the same bodies tossed in the waves. This time, however, there is one living creature: a beautiful black stallion. I see his noble head and forequarters as he struggles to leap from the water. As he comes closer I see his wild eyes and his flaming nostrils and the great muscles on his neck. Now I really try to get out and rescue him. I batter vainly on the window until I see the stallion swallowed up by the blood-red water. I cry out in despair and wake up.
Mercifully Emma is still asleep. I creep down to my study, prepare my pipe and my drink and begin to record the new elements in the dream. I am very lucid. What I write contains a number of fresh and stimulating ideas. The next thing I remember is Emma’s voice calling me and the morning sun flooding into the room. Emma is standing by Toni’s desk pouring coffee. I am startled and I yell at her:
“Emma! What the hell! Haven’t I told you never, never to interrupt me here?”
She answers in that bland, controlled fashion which is her usual response to my boorishness.
“Don’t bully me, Carl! It’s tiresome. I brought you breakfast. Would you like to wash before I serve it? There’s a clean smock on the chair.”
It is only then that I become aware of my condition. My face is sticky from lying in ash and spilled drink. My hands are filthy. My slee
ves are sodden with brandy. My papers are stained. There is a large burn scar on the leather surface of the desk. I lurch to the wash basin and look at myself in the mirror. Emma’s comment is apt but redundant.
“You really are a mess.”
I mumble an apology through the soapsuds.
“I’m sorry. I must have . . .”
“You were dead tired and dead drunk. One of these nights you’ll burn the house down with that confounded pipe!”
I strip off my soiled shirt, sponge and dry myself and put on the peasant’s smock which is my working garb. Then I go to offer Emma a good morning kiss. She turns a cool cheek to me, hands me the coffee and moves two paces away from my contaminated presence. As I stuff a piece of pastry in my mouth and gulp a mouthful of coffee she attacks.
“This is crazy, Carl! Five times in a row you’ve been up all night. You smoke like a chimney. You’re drinking too much. You’ll kill yourself!”
I choke on my coffee, which entirely ruins the effect of my reply.
“For God’s sake, Emma! You exaggerate everything. I woke at two in the morning out of a terrible nightmare. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you. I came down here to record the dream and have my notes ready for a proper analysis. I had one glass of brandy. I never have more. I was weary. I fell asleep. Is that a crime? Besides I got through a lot of work – good work! Look, I’ll show you!”
I go to my desk, pick up the stained sheets of notepaper and hold them out to her. She takes them, glances at the first page. Her expression changes. She leafs through the rest of the material – three sheets in all – then stares at me, horrified. I ask her what is the matter. She tells me, very quietly.
“Carl, this is gibberish. Utter nonsense! And the handwriting. It’s just a scrawl!”
I snatch the pages from her. The words I can decipher make no sense at all. They are a garble of German and Latin and Greek and no language at all. I make feeble excuses.
“I must have been more exhausted than I thought. You know, the body wastes build up and you get a temporary narcosis. The thought patterns become confused. The handwriting drifts.”
She comes to me, and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. She seems suddenly invested with authority. I am glad to have her by me. She admonishes me tenderly.
“Please, Carl! Sit down. We have to talk.”
She leads me to my desk. I slump in my chair. She pulls up another chair and sits facing me. She takes my hands and caresses them as she talks. It seems an age since we have had contact, skin to skin, like this.
“Carl, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You’re a sick man! Everything points to it: the nightmares, the insomnia, the depressions, the rages that scare the children so. Be honest with yourself. What would you say if one of your patients at the clinic had produced those pages of nonsense!”
“Clinically that material’s irrelevant.” I was immediately irritated. “Extreme fatigue or simple anoxia will produce the same effect!”
“All right! Let’s admit they’re irrelevant; but the rest of it is very much to the point. Please, my darling! Can’t you understand we’re all desperately worried about you?”
“I’m worried about myself.”
“Tell me then – after all you trained me! – suppose I were the patient and I came to you with all the symptoms you have, what would be your diagnosis?”
It would only make matters worse to tell her that the rumourmongers accuse me of suffering from dementia praecox, that I recognise at least primary schizoid symptoms and manic-depressive cycles. Instead I try to hedge my answer.
“I wouldn’t be prepared to offer a diagnosis yet. It’s too early. The symptoms are too varied. I would recommend a complete physical examination. Then if there is no physical pathology I would like to put the patient into analysis for a trial period.”
“Then, my dear physician;” she strokes my stub-bled cheek and coaxes me tenderly, “why don’t you follow your own prescription?”
We are on easier ground here. She knows I’ve seen Lansberg for a physical check-up. She knows his verdict. I am sound as a prize bull, except for an occasional labile blood pressure, which is associated with emotional stress. But that does not satisfy her She presses me.
“But you know the problem isn’t a physical one.”
“True. On the other hand . . .”
“So, why don’t you put yourself into analysis?”
“With whom, for God’s sake? Bleuler, Ferenczi, Jones? These are not my peers!”
This is an old frayed question between us. I know she corresponds with Freud. I know she thinks my disagreements with him are overstated and inflamed by my ill humours. As I expected, she walks head first into the trap.
“Freud then! I know you and he have disagreed over a lot of things but . . .”
“Disagreed? I don’t believe in him any more. I can’t trust him any more. The man’s a hopeless dogmatist. He faints when he’s confronted with an un-pleasing thought! Faints clean away like a woman with the vapours!”
I am determined to end the discussion. I get up from my desk and walk to the window, where I stand, silent and hostile, looking out at the garden. Emma refuses to abandon the argument. She challenges me again.
“What do you see out there, Carl? Elijah? Salome?”
I am shocked and angry. I have never discussed these personages with her. I confront her harshly.
“How do you know about them? Have you been going through my papers?”
“You know I never do that, Carl. You talk in your sleep. You talk to yourself, loudly, as you stride up and down the lawn. Who are these people, Carl? What do they mean in your life?”
Suddenly I am not angry any more. I am tired and fearful like a stricken child. I answer wearily:
“I don’t know who they are. They are personifica tions from my subconscious. All I know is that when Elijah’s there I feel safe and content. I don’t like Salome; but it seems I can’t have one without the other.”
“Can you see them now?”
“No. I can’t.”
Emma stares at me for a long silent moment; then with a strange wintry sadness she pleads with me.
“I’ll tell you what I see, Carl. I see a great man far advanced towards a mental breakdown. I see the one-time clinical director of the Burgholzli, the most brilliant lecturer in his subject at the university, babbling to himself like one of his own patients. I say to myself, that’s my husband. I love him. I’m carrying his fifth child . . . and I wonder if he’ll be rational enough to recognise the baby when it’s born!”
She bursts into tears and buries her face in her hands. I am ashamed to have hurt her so much. I hurry to her and try to comfort her, but her grief pours out in a torrent of broken words.
“You don’t know, you don’t care, how bad it is! I wake in a cold bed. The children don’t know you any more. They’re scared to be near you. You lock yourself in here like . . . like a monster in a cave. I can’t bear it any more! I just can’t bear it!”
I put my arms around her and rock her wordlessly from side to side like a child. Then, as gently as I know how, I try to reason with her:
“Emma, my love, I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart I’m sorry. But I have no words to explain what it’s like when these black storms start inside me. The only thing I know is that I can’t fight them. I just have to ride out the fury and hope I’ll be sane afterwards. That’s why I hide down here – to spare you the spectacle.”
“You can’t go on hiding for ever. You need help!”
“I know . . . but I know how little real help is to be had.”
“How can you say that, you, of all people?”
“Because this science of ours, this medicine of the mind, is still in its infancy. The methods are tentative. The procedures are incomplete. So, I ask myself whether I am not being prompted – called even! – to make a journey beyond the charted limits. Perhaps that’s what Elijah means: a prophet from the Old
Testament, who was swept up to heaven in a fiery chariot!”
“It’s not heaven I see in your eyes, Carl. Sometimes it’s the suffering of the damned. And I can do nothing about it.”
“Neither can I. I’m like a leaf tossed in the wind. So, I have no choice but to let myself be swept along by these storms of the subconscious and see where, finally, they drive me.”
“You’re taking a terrible risk.”
“It’s not such a big risk, truly.”
“For us it is.”
“You are the anchor that holds me to reality. You, the children, our life in this house.”
“Just so the anchor holds! I’m not sure how much we can take, Carl. We’re human, too. We need a little laughter in our lives.”
Her vehemence shocks me. I have always presumed so much on her stability. I try to calm her with soft words.
“Of course you do So, until I’m through this crisis, I want you to forget me. Ignore my moods. Let me come and go as I please. Treat me like. . .like a piece of furniture. Concentrate your thoughts on the new baby. Build your life round the children.”
“And leave you to fight your devils alone?”
“I won’t be alone. Toni Wolff will record the experience, and help me to analyse it. She’s been through her own crisis. She understands in a way that no one else can.”
I am a fool with a big mouth. The words were hardly out before the storm burst around my ears.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Carl! Let me be sure I have it right. You admit you’re in a situation of psychic crisis. You don’t trust Freud. You say Bleuler and Ferenczi are not your peers. You find me inadequate. But you put yourself in the hands of a twenty-five-year-old girl who was once your patient. Does that really make sense?”
“It makes sense to me. She’s young but she’s brilliant. I’ve trained her myself and . . .”
“And what, Carl? Let’s have the truth!”
Now it is my turn to rage. This is the way the game goes. It is easier to abuse one another than to disabuse ourselves of illusions. I shout at her: