Love and Treasure (39 page)

“You call this progress, Dr. Zobel?” he whispered furiously. “My brother promised that your talking cure would end my daughter’s rebellions, and instead she is worse even than before.”

“Has something happened, Mr. S.?”

“ ‘Has something happened?’ ” His mimicry of my tone and accent was cruel. That I grew up speaking Yiddish is something I refuse to be ashamed of. My family is of Galicianer origin, but none can question our loyalty to our Magyar home. I am a patriotic Hungarian, whatever traces might remain in my accent.

“Yes, something has happened,” Mr. S. whispered, spraying saliva into my poor ear. “All this week she has been gallivanting around the city. Instead of being home, asleep, as she should be, she has been seen in the company of artists and radicals! Radicals, Dr. Zobel!”

I tried as best I could to remind my patient’s father that I had assumed the responsibility of treating his daughter’s ailments, physical and psychical, and while I might as a father of daughters agree that Nina’s behavior was unacceptable, as a physician I had been forthright from the beginning in informing him that psychoanalysis was not designed as a cure for youthful rebellion.

“This is far more than youthful rebellion,” Mr. S. insisted. “Nina has become irrational. Erratic. She has been behaving like a …” He shuddered.
It is only women of ill repute who frequent coffeehouses without chaperones. What had poor Nina done to her reputation?

The outraged father continued, “My brother assures me that her behavior is a sign of deep psychical distress. Dementia praecox, Dr. Zobel! That’s what we’re dealing with.”

I resisted the urge to offer Mr. S. a wager that his brother, a urologist, had less experience with my organ of expertise than I with his, and instead promised that I would discuss the matter with Nina.

“We have made great progress in our dream analysis,” I told Mr. S., perhaps less than candidly, as I was quite frustrated by Nina’s refusal to see her dream of missing the train in its true light. “I am confident that as her treatment progresses you will see more and more tangible results.”

“Marriage, Dr. Zobel,” he said as he lumbered to his feet. “That is the goal. The result of your treatment must be that Nina abandons her neurotic ambitions and accepts her role as a modest Jewish wife and mother.”

Should I have been more firm with Mr. S.? While it is indeed true that ambitions out of proportion to ability are often a sign of neurotic grandiosity, I had yet to see any indication that Nina fit that description. On the contrary. The girl earned top marks at her gymnasium. She was diligently and by all accounts successfully preparing for her
matura
and her medical school admissions examinations. Even her uncle, who disapproved of her desire to study medicine, admitted that her tutors felt her to be eminently qualified. Indeed it was he who described her to me as possessing a “rare and admirable intelligence.”

It was understandable that her father would prefer that she lead a more conventional life. I, too, would object to my daughters pursuing any career, especially one so demanding. I would certainly have been as horrified as he had my daughter been out at night unaccompanied. The question remained, however, whether a girl’s rebellion and eagerness to thwart her parents’ desires were in and of themselves evidence of neurosis. I was as yet unable to affirm either way. True, most young women have little difficulty in acceding to the knowledge and experience of their elders and betters. And yet, with each passing day of my acquaintanceship with this particular young woman, I had become more impressed by her intellectual acumen, by her wit, by her verve. Far from being outsize, her ambitions struck me as entirely realistic, not evidence of neurosis but a genuine and well-considered assessment of potential.

Nonetheless, neurotic or not, staying out until all hours with young
men of vague repute was hardly acceptable, and I admonished Nina strongly to resist such temptations in the future. “If for no other reason,” I told her, “than that it is bad for your health. You need your rest to continue our work together.”

Nina snapped her compact a final time, tucked it into her reticule, and said, “You bring up a good point.”

“I do?”

“I have grown fond of you, Dr. Zobel. Very fond. You’re a kind man, and I’ve enjoyed our time together. But I am no closer to understanding the point of our work together than I was a month ago.”

You will forgive my immodesty at saying that my services as a physician are highly sought after in Budapest and beyond. Never before had I felt myself to be in the position of forcing treatment on both patient and patient’s family. This goes a small way to explain the impatience with which I responded, “Must we do this again, Nina?”

At my vehemence, her confidence seemed to waver, and she bit her lip.

I continued, “Do you have no desire to recover from the crippling menstrual cramps that have had such a deleterious effect on your life?”

“I do. I just …”

“What?”

“I’m just not sure the talking cure can help.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“You know I’m not.”

“Am I a doctor?”

She gave a small moue of impatience.

“Am I?” I insisted.

“Of course.”

“Well then, whose confidence is relevant? That of the trained, experienced physician or that of the young girl?”

Though I waited, she didn’t answer.

More gently, I said, “Nina, my dear. What kind of a physician will you make if you persist in resisting medical advice?”

After a moment she sighed and said, “A poor one, I suppose.”

I am ever so slightly ashamed to admit that I was relieved to have bested her in this conversation. “Exactly. A poor one. Now, let us return to a topic immediately useful to resolving your hysterical pain.” I pulled out my notebook and leafed through the pages. “We’ve addressed the issue of your experience of the menstrual period itself, and I think we
both can agree that we did not there discover the site of the initiating trauma.”

I waited for her to agree. When she didn’t speak, I said, “Correct?”

“Correct,” she said.

I resolutely ignored her grudging tone. “I would like to explore further an issue that my colleague Dr. Sándor Ferenczi has found to be present quite frequently in cases such as yours.”

“Cases such as mine?”

“Cases of hysteria.” I hesitated for a moment and then continued as I’d planned. “Nina, I must insist now that you take your place on my examination couch. It is crucial for the next phase of our work.”

I had only in the previous year adopted Freud’s use of the analytic couch. Before that my patients sat in a chair on the other side of my desk or, if I needed to use massage, lay on the examination table. Those patients too ill to leave their beds at home or in the sanatorium I sat next to, in a chair pulled up to the bedside, often holding their hands in my own. But the year before I began treating Nina S., I was invited to hear Freud lecture before the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association (to which my application for membership was pending) and became convinced by the good doctor’s argument in favor of the couch. Since following his example, I found that being liberated from eye contact with the analyst inspires greater confidences on the part of the analysand, especially when discussing issues of a sexual nature. Young women naturally avert their eyes when embarrassed and ashamed. Lying on a couch, with the analyst out of sight in a chair behind, they can indulge the illusion that they are alone, which allows them to more freely discuss their sexual experiences.

Nina finally acquiesced to my insistence that she lie down. After the excitement of flouting her father’s authority and of spending the evening in the company of strange young men, I believed, correctly it turned out, that she might be due for a breakthrough, so before taking my seat behind her, I went out and instructed my nurse to release the remaining patients in my waiting room. As I returned to my office, I heard my nurse encouraging my disappointed patients to return after lunch for afternoon office hours.

“Now, Nina,” I said, sitting down behind her. “We are going to discuss something difficult, and even terrifying. I want to assure you that I would not put you through this if I didn’t think it might expose the traumatic source of your pain.”

She inhaled tremulously, her bosom quivering beneath the silk of her shirtwaist.

“Relax,” I said, laying a hand on her forehead and smoothing her hair. “Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

She took a few breaths, and I matched my inhalations and exhalations to hers.

“Nina, I’d like to talk now about sexual matters.”

Like all my young female patients, she had a visceral reaction to the word. Her skin fairly trembled beneath my hand. I cupped her cheek with my palm, calming her. A note, here, about technique. Like my mentor, Dr. Ferenczi, I believe heartily in the importance of expressions of affection between analyst and analysand. I have learned from him to think of the traumatized as children in dire need of a parent’s fond embrace. It is for this reason that I often embrace or stroke my patients. I believe it to be conducive to treatment and cure.

“Nina, are you familiar with the work of my esteemed colleague Dr. Sándor Ferenczi?”

“I know who he is. My uncle tried to convince him to treat me before coming to you.”

This surprised me. I had assumed that it was by virtue of our long acquaintance that Dr. S. had beseeched me to undertake the care of his niece. Had I known that I was his second choice, I might not have made such a concerted effort to adjust my calendar to accommodate an old friend. But then I would have been robbed of the opportunity of getting to know such a lovely and lively young woman.

I put aside my wounded vanity and said, “Dr. Ferenczi and I often consult on one another’s cases.”

“Have you consulted on mine?”

“We reserve our consultations for our most dire patients.”

“I’m glad to hear that my case is not dire.”

With a gentle pressure of my hand on her forehead I brought her attention back to the matter at hand. “Dr. Ferenczi and I have had cause to discuss at great length a theory about one of the primary causal factors in the development of psychopathology. It is his opinion, and one that I am inclined to share, that hysterical symptoms are often caused by the trauma of sexual seduction in childhood.”

“Sexual seduction?”

“Dr. Ferenczi has found that many patients, particularly those suffering
from narcissistic, borderline, and psychotic conditions, experienced sexual seduction at the hands of a parent or parent figure.”

“Have you found this to be the case with your patients?”

“Perhaps less frequently than Dr. Ferenczi, but then he is quite often the psychoanalyst of last resort. His cases are thus more complex. But even in my own practice I have discovered a disturbing number of cases of the seduction of girls by their fathers.”

Her reaction surprised me. Rather than break down in tears, as other patients have done when confronted with this terrifying truth, Nina began to laugh.

“Are you asking me if my father seduced me? My father? Really, Dr. Zobel?”

“I assure you, Nina, that it is far from uncommon. I cannot tell you how many young ladies have confessed the very thing that you find laughably unimaginable.”

“Confess? Why should they confess? They committed no crime. Surely if any confessing was necessary, then it was on the part of their fathers.”

“A bad choice of word. Nina, I wonder if your attempt to distract me from my question doesn’t indicate a fear of the answer.”

“My father never seduced me, Dr. Zobel. I should think he was far too busy seducing his various mistresses to think about me in that way.”

“Your father has mistresses?”

“Of course. Don’t you all? My mother says that a mistress is as necessary to a man of our class as a decent pipe stand or frock coat.”

“You and your mother have discussed your father’s indiscretions?”

“We don’t make a habit of it. But there was a small scandal a few years ago when my father took up with my younger sisters’ governess. You might have heard about it.”

I had not, and this surprised me. My own wife, secure in the attentions of a husband who found her as sexually compelling at age forty-nine as he did when she was but nineteen, was fond of sharing such gossip with me. I was surprised that this morsel had not caught her attention.

“Did you perhaps catch your father and the governess in flagrante? The witnessing of such a scene might be just the traumatic source we have been looking for.”

“No. I found out at school. Miss Lanier, the governess, was a distant relation of one of my classmates, and it was to this family that she retired
once her condition became unmistakable. Greta, my classmate, and I were competing at the time for first place in arithmetic, and there was no love lost between us. She told the entire class about my father and Miss Lanier. I still bested her, though, at that week’s mental-arithmetic competition. Small comfort, I suppose. At any rate, all of this happened long after my crippling menstrual cramps began.”

“Her condition? Was there a baby?” I’m afraid there was no therapeutic reason for this question. I just knew that when I told my wife the story she’d expect to hear what happened in the end.

“Miss Lanier lost the baby. As to whether my father still sees her, that I can’t tell you. He has others, though. Or at least I assume he does. Perhaps that’s why he’s so horrified at the thought of my going to the New York Café. That might be where he meets his paramours.”

“There certainly are young women of that sort at the New York,” I said. “Though I imagine that he’s less concerned with you meeting a young lady like that than with you being taken for one.”

Nina laughed. “Are you so very scandalized by me, Dr. Zobel? Do you worry that people might think I am of easy virtue?”

“I worry that you seem inclined to take your virtue for granted. Once lost it is unrecoverable.”

“Now you sound like Mama.”

“Again you’ve distracted me from the issue at hand! What are you afraid of discussing, Nina? Why run from this conversation? If not your father, then was there another who seduced you when you were a child, your uncle perhaps?”