The Interpretation Of Murder (18 page)

    I woke at six on Wednesday morning. I
hadn't dreamt of Nora Acton - so far as I knew - but as I opened my eyes in the
wainscoted white box of my hotel room, I was thinking of her all the same.
Could sexual desire for her father really underlie Miss Acton's symptoms? That
was plainly the thrust of Freud's thinking. I didn't want to believe it; the
thought repulsed me.

    I never liked Oedipus. I didn't like
the play, I didn't like the man, and I didn't like Freud's eponymous theory. It
was the one piece of psychoanalysis I never embraced. That we have an
unconscious mental life, that we are constantly suppressing forbidden sexual
desires and the aggressions that arise in their wake, that these suppressed
wishes manifest themselves in our dreams, our slips of the tongue, our neuroses
- all this I believed. But that men want sex with their mothers, and girls with
their fathers - this I did not accept. Freud would say, of course, that my
skepticism was 'resistance.' He would say I did not want the Oedipus theory to
be true. No doubt that was so. But resistance, whatever else it is, surely does
not prove the truth of the idea resisted.

    Which is why I kept coming back to
Hamlet
and to Freud's irresistible but infuriating solution to its riddle.
In two sentences, Freud had demolished the long-standing notion that Hamlet
was, as Jung's 'great-grandfather' Goethe had it, the overly intellectual
aesthete, constitutionally incapable of resolute action. As Freud pointed out,
Hamlet repeatedly takes decisive action. He kills Polonius. He plans and executes
his play-within-a-play, tricking Claudius into revealing his guilt. He sends
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths. Apparently there is just one
thing he cannot do: take vengeance on the villain who killed his father and
bedded his mother.

    And the reason, Freud says, the real
reason, is simple. Hamlet sees in his uncle's deeds his own secret wishes
realized: his Oedipal wishes.

    Claudius has done only what Hamlet
himself wanted to do. 'Thus the loathing which should drive him on to revenge'
- to quote Freud - 'is replaced in him by self- reproaches, by scruples of
conscience.' That Hamlet suffers from self-reproach is undeniable. Over and
over, he castigates himself - excessively, almost irrationally He even
contemplates suicide. Or at least that is how the
To be, or not to be
speech is always interpreted. Hamlet is wondering whether to take his own life.
Why? Why does Hamlet feel guilty and suicidal when he thinks of avenging his
father? No one in three hundred years had ever been able to explain the most
famous soliloquy of all drama - until Freud.

    According to Freud, Hamlet knows -
unconsciously - that he himself wished to kill his father and that he himself
wished to replace his father in his mother's bed, just as Claudius has done.
Claudius is, therefore, the embodiment of Hamlet's own secret wishes; he is a
mirror of Hamlet himself. Hamlet's thoughts run straight from revenge to guilt
and suicide because he sees himself in his uncle. Killing Claudius would be
both a reenactment of his own Oedipal desires and a kind of self-slaughter.
That is why Hamlet is paralyzed. That is why he cannot take action. He is an
hysteric, suffering from the overwhelming guilt of Oedipal desires he has not
successfully repressed.

    And yet, I felt, there must be some
other explanation. There must be another meaning of
To be, or not to be.
If I could only solve that soliloquy, I somehow imagined it would vindicate my
objection to the entire Oedipus theory. But I never had.

    At breakfast, I found Brill and
Ferenczi at the same table they had occupied yesterday. Brill was manfully
assaulting a plate of steak and eggs. Ferenczi was not so hale: he insisted he
was not going to touch a crumb all day. Both seemed a little forced in their
conversation with me; I think I had interrupted them in private talk. 'The
waiters,' said Ferenczi, 'they are all Negro. Is that common in America?'

    'Only in the better establishments,'
replied Brill. 'New Yorkers opposed emancipation, don't forget, until they
realized what it meant: they would get to keep their blacks as servants, only
it would cost them less.'

    'New York did not oppose
emancipation,' I put in.

    'A riot is not opposition?' asked
Brill.

    Ferenczi said, 'You must ignore him,
Younger, really you must.'

    'Yes, ignore me,' Brill responded.
'Everyone does. Instead, we must attend solely to Jung, because he is
"more important than the rest of us put together." '

    I saw that Jung had been their topic
before I appeared. I asked if they could give me a clearer sense of Jung's
relationship to Freud. They did.

    Quite recently, over the last two
years, Freud had attracted a new set of Swiss followers. Jung was the most
prominent. The Zurichers were resented by Freud's original Viennese disciples,
whose jealousy had intensified when Freud made Jung editor in chief of the
Psychoanalytical Yearbook,
the first periodical in the world devoted to the
new psychology. In this position, Jung had the power to rule on the merits of
everyone else's work. The Viennese objected that Jung had not genuinely
embraced the 'sexual aetiology' - Freud's core discovery that repressed sexual
wishes lie behind hysteria and other mental illnesses. They felt Jung's
elevation demonstrated favoritism on Freud's part. Here, Brill told me, the
Viennese were righter than they knew. Freud not only favored Jung but had
already selected him as his 'crown prince' and 'heir' - the man who would take
over the movement.

    I didn't mention having already heard
Freud make this very statement to Jung last night, principally because I would
then have had to describe Freud's mishap. Instead, I observed that Jung seemed
highly sensitive to Freud's opinion of him.

    'Oh, we all are,' Ferenczi answered.
'But, not to question, Freud and Jung have very father-son relations. I saw
them myself on the ship. Hence Jung is very sensitive to any rebuke. It enrages
him. Especially about the transference. Jung has - how shall I say? - a
different philosophy when it comes to transference.'

    'Really? Has he published it?' I
asked.

    Ferenczi exchanged a look with Brill.
'Not exactly. I am speaking of his approach to his patients. His - ah - female
patients. You understand.'

    I was beginning to.

    Brill whispered, 'He sleeps with
them. He is notorious.'

    'Myself, I have never,' said
Ferenczi. 'But I have not yet faced too many temptations, so congratulations in
my case are sadly premature.'

    'Does Dr Freud know?'

    This time Ferenczi whispered, 'One of
Jung's patients wrote to Freud, most upset, describing everything. Freud showed
me letters on the ship. There is even a letter from Jung to the girl's mother -
very peculiar. Freud consulted me for guidance.' Ferenczi was distinctly proud
of this. 'I told him he should not take the girl's word as proof. Of course I
already knew all about it. Everyone does. A beautiful girl - Jewish - a
student. They say Jung did not treat her well.'

    'Oh, no,' said Brill, looking at the
entryway to the breakfast room. Freud was on his way in, but not by himself. He
was accompanied by another man, whom I had met in New Haven at the
psychoanalytic congress there a few months ago. It was Ernest Jones, Freud's
British follower.

    Jones had come to New York to join
our party for the week. He would then travel up to Clark with us on Saturday.
About forty, Jones was as short as Brill but a little stouter, with an
exceedingly white face, dark well-oiled hair, almost no chin, and a tight,
thin-lipped smile more suggestive of self-satisfaction than amiability. He had
the peculiar habit of looking away from a person while addressing him. Freud,
who was joking with Jones as they approached our table, was plainly delighted
to see him. Neither Ferenczi nor Brill appeared to share this sentiment.

    'Sandor Ferenczi,' said Jones. 'What
a surprise, old fellow. But you weren't invited, were you? By Hall, I mean, to
give a paper at Clark?'

    'No,' answered Ferenczi, 'but -'

    'And Abraham Brill,' Jones went on,
casting his eyes about the room as if expecting to find others he knew. 'How
are we getting on? Still only three patients?'

    'Four,' said Brill.

    'Well, count yourself lucky, old
man,' replied Jones. 'I am so crawling with patients in Toronto I don't have a
minute to put pen to paper. No, all I have in the pipeline is my handwriting
piece for
Neurology,
a little thing for
Insanity,
and the lecture
I gave at New Haven, which Prince wants to publish. What about you, Brill,
anything coming out?'

    Jones's remarks had produced an
atmosphere less than convivial. Brill assumed an expression of feigned
disappointment. 'Only Freud's hysteria book, I'm afraid,' he said.

    Jones's lips worked, but nothing came
out.

    'Yes, only my translation of Freud,'
Brill went on. 'My German was rustier than I would ever have believed, but it's
done.'

    Relief filled Jones's countenance.
'Freud doesn't need translating into German, you sod,' he said, laughing out
loud. 'Freud writes in German. He needs an
English
translator.'

    'I
am
the English translator,'
said Brill.

    Jones looked dumbfounded. To Freud he
said, 'You - you don't - you're letting Brill translate you?' And to Brill,
'But is your English quite up to it, old man? You
are
an immigrant,
after all.'

    'Ernest,' said Freud, 'you are
displaying jealousy.'

    'Me?' answered Jones. 'Jealous of
Brill? How could I. be?'