by Jeanne Safer
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In Greek mythology, the bandit Procrustes had an iron bed in which he forced every passerby to spend the night. If the victim was too short, Procrustes stretched him to fit, and if he was too tall, Procrustes chopped off his legs to make him fit; everyone who slept in his bed was killed because nobody fit exactly. Many mentors—particularly narcissistic ones—have procrustean standards, requiring their protégés to be exact replicas of themselves. They fall in love with what they believe is their own reincarnation. When that reincarnation turns out to be a different person, the mentor feels betrayed and enraged and can turn childish, cowardly, and vengeful. While such a mentor does not literally murder the offending protégé, he punishes, banishes, or disowns him, arbitrarily blaming the former favorite for being himself.
One of the most embarrassing examples of a mentor-protégé relationship gone horribly wrong occurred between the founding titans in my own field, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. Their passionate friendship and collaboration began in 1906 and ended in very public grief and rage six years later. At the start, Freud was a renowned fifty-year-old Jewish Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist who was in the midst of founding psychoanalysis, and Jung, a Swiss Christian, was a brilliant thirty-one-year-old psychiatrist on his way up, with a knack for treating psychotic patients and a taste for the occult. Their love affair began when Jung sent Freud a book he had written in which he praised Freud’s insights. Freud, who had a lifelong hunger for adulation and whose ideas were still being scoffed at in orthodox psychiatric circles, was delighted, grateful, and impressed. It did not hurt that Jung was one of the very few non-Jewish friends of psychoanalysis, which its founder desperately wanted to be more widely accepted and not hobbled by the medical establishment’s anti-Semitic prejudice. They talked for thirteen hours the first time they met. Very soon, Freud was referring to Jung as his “adopted son,” “crown prince,” and “successor.” With his adoptive “father’s” backing, Jung was made editor of the psychoanalytic society’s annual publication and then became chairman for life of the International Psychoanalytic Association—an appointment that was fated to last only two years.
After the first thrill of mutual discovery died down, each began to notice worrisome differences from the other, among them the utility of religion, the centrality of sexuality, and the nature of the unconscious. Jung, a minister’s son, wrote that “human nature is by nature religious.” Freud, an atheist and rationalist, thought that religion was an infantile delusion. Repressed sexual desire and incestuous wishes, along with aggression, were the central causes of neurotic suffering for Freud, and he believed that “sublimating” these impulses (“Where id was, there ego shall be” was his later formulation of this idea) was the way to freedom. Jung thought that “individuating” and integrating opposing aspects of the “self” was the proper goal. He discerned a “collective unconscious” of “archetypes” beneath the “personal unconscious” where repressed impulses resided; Freud never accepted this. In addition to their theoretical differences, Jung was already chafing at his role as acolyte by 1912. Both were strong and exceptionally gifted personalities and original thinkers who needed to be in charge.
The growing tension between them reached the breaking point when Jung published The Psychology of the Unconscious—an unconscious that was nothing like Freud’s. Freud dealt with his disciple’s apostasy by writing him cold, wounded letters and pointedly avoiding seeing Jung when he took a trip to Switzerland to visit another colleague in a nearby town. Jung responded by writing enraged, infantile letters of his own to Freud, in one of which he said he would “pluck the Prophet by the beard.” Hell hath no fury like two analysts scorned.
The bitterness of their estrangement and mutual sense of personal betrayal made it impossible to keep their inevitable parting of the ways from disintegrating into name-calling. They detested each other for the rest of their lives, and many of their followers continue to do so to this day. Freud was deeply pained by their break, but Jung suffered a near-psychotic episode. In later years, the former crown prince diverged radically from his mentor’s ideas and became renowned as the founder of what he called “analytical psychology.” Ultimately, the only person who could succeed Freud was one whose loyalty was unassailable, with whom he did not need to compete because her mind was shaped by him in his own image,5 and she was his designated and self-designated keeper of the flame: his daughter Anna.
THE ENFANT TERRIBLE AND THE BOY GENIUS
When Jung parted ways with Freud, he at least had a large practice, a growing reputation in his own right, and a position at a famous clinic. He and his former mentor and now nemesis also lived in different countries. Deposed protégés whose mentors are their bosses don’t have it so easy.
The protégé, who began writing for his idol, the editor in chief, when he was fourteen, went to work for him and his journal of opinion as soon as he graduated from college. A year later, when the protégé was only twenty-three, his new boss took him to lunch at the fancy Italian restaurant that served as his cafeteria. As soon as they raised their first glass of wine, the famous journalist announced his verdict. “I have decided that you are going to succeed me.”
The recipient of this declaration was beyond astonishment. “The best word to describe what he did was ‘breathtaking,’” he recollected thirty-six years later in far more tranquility than he had felt at the time. “It was completely unexpected; I had no hint. I was the most junior member of the staff, just out of school. First I was to be made the youngest senior editor in the history of the magazine”—this was announced with due pomp soon afterward—“and later I would become managing editor so I could learn how to run it.” He was also informed that he would own the magazine outright when his mentor stepped down and that, along with the title, he was inheriting 100 percent of the stock. The current owner had a son of his own who was also a writer, though not a political one; since he did not aspire to the post, the arrangement would not be contested.
Why did the editor in chief, who was fifty-two at the time, at the height of his renown and influence and with no plans to retire, drop this bombshell when he did and the way he did? “I was thinking of going to law school, and he wanted to head off my leaving with a grand gesture; he specialized in grand gestures,” said the protégé. “A good way to keep somebody in the building is to offer him the keys to the building.”
The building and its contents would be the least of it, he realized with apprehension at the time. To inherit this mantle was to become the spokesman of the political movement of which the magazine was the bible and the editor in chief the messiah, with the attendant duties (defining the mission of the magazine and representing it in the media), responsibilities (endlessly finding and feting donors to the cause), and perks (a glamorous public life) of the role, all of which were utterly alien to the heir’s temperament and experience and nothing he had aspired to in his wildest dreams. A gifted writer he already was, but becoming a pundit, celebrity, bon vivant, and media star by fiat seemed inconceivable. How would he ever fill his mentor’s shoes? He was so overwhelmed by the job he was summarily informed that he was being groomed for and so in thrall to the man who currently held it—who had, in fact, created it in his own larger-than-life image—that he never dared ask himself whether he wanted to do it, let alone express any doubts about his similarity to the personage whose identity he was slated to assume.
The protégé’s precocity clinched the deal for his patron because it reminded him of his own. How could the man who had written a bestselling polemic at age twenty-one fail to see himself in the eloquent recent graduate of the same university he had attended, who as a high school freshman had sent in an article that he himself could have written, particularly since its cheeky, contrarian style had been inspired by the editor in chief’s own prose? Overjoyed to find a mirror that reflected so well on himself, he had scrawled “This kid is a genius!” on the typescript when a staff member gave it to him for commen
t, and he published the piece as a cover story with the author’s age prominently displayed. He might as well have added, “This Just In: I’ve Found the Next Me!” In fact, although their writing had a similar sparkle and punch, their personalities were worlds apart. The editor in chief never took into consideration or even noticed that the original “me” was an extrovert and the new “me” an introvert, that the first edition was wealthy and worldly and the second was a naive child of the middle class, or that he himself was supremely confident and self-directed and his successor self-conscious and anxious to please. Talent in a kindred spirit was the only thing he saw.
Beyond literary style and a common political philosophy, what created such intoxicating synergy between them? The protégé’s father, a self-contained, unexpressive man, felt little affinity for his younger son and preferred his elder son. The mentor had an intermittently contentious relationship with his own son, who was slightly older than his protégé and considerably more rebellious. The younger man sought an appreciative and inspiring father; the elder one wanted a responsive son who shared his vision. Each seemed to be a perfect match for what the other needed.
This was a once-in-a-lifetime offer the heir apparent could not—dare not—refuse or even consider the implications of too closely. To question his idol’s judgment at all would be to risk displeasing the man to whom he owed everything. “He was the most exciting person in the world to me,” he said. “I’d been reading his work and watching his TV show for years. He perfectly expressed my own thoughts and beliefs and championed the political cause that mattered most to me. I’d corresponded with him; he’d recognized my talent and given me national prominence as a teenager.” He feared, with justification, that he risked losing his unique position if he demurred. Raising any question at all might well be interpreted as ingratitude and cast doubt on his aptness as his mentor’s chosen one.
I recall being at least as astonished as my boyfriend (to whom I became engaged the next year and married the following one) when he told me the news the night he received it, looking as much dazed as dazzled. As exciting as it was in the abstract for our future together, I felt queasy about the proposition. Was this, I wondered from the start, what he really wanted? And yet, how could he refuse? To these misgivings in his behalf were added my wondering how on earth I was going to become the official hostess for this small but potent empire, a position I was at least as ill suited for. How could we sponsor private classical music concerts by famous artists in our two-bedroom apartment, as the editor in chief regularly did in his palatial East Side duplex? My own future was in the balance too. Just as the wizard Merlin had revealed the future to his protégé Arthur before his coronation, including Arthur’s demise, I had vague fears that there was something ominous in the fate that this modern-day magician was revealing to his crown prince.
Everything seemed to be going as planned when, a year later, the editor in chief made another grand gesture, this one inauspicious in retrospect. “He said, ‘I want to talk to you,’ and I figured we’d go to lunch again, but instead he took me to Mexico for the weekend; it was a piece of performance art. He insisted that we stay in the same hotel and the same suite he and his son had stayed in, but once we got there, he didn’t tell me anything.” Being forthright, particularly with criticism, was not among his boss’s gifts. “Finally, on the last night, he said that he wanted me to ‘step up’ to the role he’d assigned me. In essence, he was saying, ‘I’ve decided you’re me. You have to be more like me than you are.’” He did not elaborate, and of course his heir apparent was afraid to ask for details or advice; it might have broken the charm.
The editor in chief made another telling gesture on that trip. He bought a turquoise-encrusted silver plate for his protégé to deliver to me when they returned. So sumptuous a gift was far beyond my fiancé’s—we had become engaged by then—means to buy for me himself; that it wasn’t at all my taste was beside the point. Was this showing off, pulling rank, competing with a younger man who didn’t have the resources to be a challenger? Even now, my husband remembers the sting that having to present me with his boss’s purchase epitomized and what it stirred up in him. “I felt humiliated and inadequate,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t do this. I’ve got to tell him I have serious doubts about this; what should we do?’ But I couldn’t take him into my confidence because I couldn’t face it myself. ‘If I’m not going to accept the offer, can we continue to have a relationship? If I don’t become the next him, will he need me at all? What will I do?’” He was still bowled over by the honor, but the weight of expectation that had been placed upon him, with no guidance on how to fulfill it—since they were the same person in his boss’s eyes, none should be needed—felt crushing. No one, he was vaguely beginning to realize, can step effortlessly into a ready-made identity. A paralyzing paradox faced him: if he became his own true self, he would lose his special role in the life of the man he adored, longed to emulate, and depended on for his livelihood.
For the next eight years, there were no more subtle complaints from headquarters, and the plan seemed to be going swimmingly. The protégé was given all manner of plum assignments designed to showcase his talents and to initiate him into the position that would someday—though it was never made clear exactly when—be his. He edited a book of his patron’s columns, ghostwrote the most challenging parts of his voluminous correspondence (“I could impersonate him on paper,” he observed), produced portraits of all the presidential candidates, oversaw the magazine’s thirtieth anniversary edition, and became its managing editor. He also wrote his own first book—the editor in chief arranged for his own editor to take it on. Any misgivings he had about this poisoned proposition went underground. “‘Is this right for me?’ is more formulated than the doubts I let myself have,” he said. “To even ask the question meant either risking his displeasure or failing, both awful alternatives.”
Then, as swiftly and shockingly as the keys were proffered, they were snatched away. The protégé, now thirty-two, went out to lunch one day and came back to find a letter from his mentor on his desk, marked “Confidential.” The deposing was done with more elaborately defensive eloquence than the original anointing. “It is now plain to me that you are not suited to serve as editor-in-chief after my retirement. This sentence will no doubt have for a while a heavy, heavy effect on your morale, and therefore I must at once tell you that I have reached the conclusion irrevocably. You have no executive flair.… You do not have executive habits [or] an executive turn of mind, and I would do you no service, nor the magazine, by imposing it on you.” After lowering the boom, he bestowed honest praise. “What you have is a very rare talent, so rare that I found it not only noticeable but striking when you were very young. You will go down in history as a very fine writer, perhaps even a great writer.” Writing, he said, was what the recipient naturally inclined to, whereas editing would be “asphyxiative” to his true gift—perhaps as he thought it had been to his own. The message could be summed up as “do what you’re actually good at, and not what I wanted you to be good at just because I was good at it.” This turned out to be excellent advice, although the delivery left something to be desired. The editor in chief wanted his soon-to-be-ex-protégé to stay on as a senior editor, and of course to continue to write for him, but at a 60 percent pay cut. To avoid dealing with the fallout, the editor in chief conveniently, if cravenly, left the country before his letter was delivered.
In addition to coping with a blow of gargantuan proportions to his ego, the still-young man, who was no longer as young as he was when his future was mapped out for him, now had to figure out what to do for himself, all the while coping with shame, rage, and the devastation of having been treated abominably by the person he most esteemed. He went from precocious to superannuated in one day. “I had no idea what else I could do,” he recalled. “This had been my world since I was fourteen. I’d never written for anybody else—the magazine was an enchanted cave. I was paranoid, sure
that everybody knew what had happened, but in fact nobody did until I wrote about it myself decades later. I crafted a cover story that I was cutting back to leave myself more time to write, and I learned to be a freelance journalist; I proceeded to do what I should have been doing all along.” He never stopped writing for the magazine, and still does so, but it was no longer the center of his universe.
Eventually, he discovered that being a biographer and chronicler of American history used all the political, psychological, and literary acumen he had been accumulating in the cave. His first historical biography—not surprisingly of George Washington, a father figure who did not disappoint and whose motto was, unlike the editor in chief’s, “We must take men as we find them”—made the front page of The New York Times Book Review. From then on, he defined his own future, lecturing, making documentaries, and fulfilling his early promise in his own way.
It took longer to mend the tie with his former mentor than it did to create a professional identity for himself. “Of course the relationship chilled,” he said. “We were never rude, but when he complimented articles of mine, it felt sour.” The elder man never apologized, and they never directly discussed what had happened, but their relationship reconstituted itself with new warmth and less of a power differential over time through efforts on both their parts. Theirs was a slow, but authentic, rapprochement. “The first thing that impressed me later was the concern he showed when I got ill,” the ex-protégé said. “In the manner typical of him, he had a piano delivered to me, knowing that I, like him, loved the instrument, and remembering that we had played duets together.” This was another grand gesture, to be sure, but it also revealed another side of the man: genuine affection, generosity, and sympathy for people who mattered to him. He even put his money where his mouth was, giving his former surrogate son a large sum, as you would to a family member, to refurbish “your dream house,” the country place we had recently bought, where many years later we entertained him. He also gave us a handsome old shotgun to defend ourselves against human and animal intruders—a far more practical gift than the turquoise-encrusted plate.