Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [114]
I told you he could be brusque,” said Younger as their carriage clopped down the cobblestoned Berggasse toward the Danube canal.
“He’s so very sad,” answered Colette.
“Freud? Tired, I think,” replied Younger. “And angry—I’m not sure why.”
“Pragmatic, I would have said,” reflected Oktavian, their coachman. “Professional.”
“I’ve never seen such sad eyes,” said Colette.
“I didn’t find them sad at all,” replied Younger.
“Ah, there, you must take me out of it,” declared Oktavian. “I could hear him from the window, but I couldn’t see his eyes.”
“That’s because you never know what other people are feeling,” Colette said to Younger. “It’s a good thing you gave up psychology. You’re like a blind man.”
FOURTEEN
A MONG THE GRANDER EDIFICES on Vienna’s Ringstrasse was a five-story, pink-and-white confection of an apartment building, the first floor of which housed the elegant Café Landtmann. In the main salon of that coffeehouse, below a receding boulevard of crystal chandeliers, Younger met Freud at eleven the next morning. The head waiter had greeted Freud as if he knew him personally and guided them to a table at a window with elaborate drapery, through which they could see the magnificent state theater across the street.
“So,” said Freud, taking a seat, “do you know what I want to discuss with you?”
“The Oedipus complex?” asked Younger.
“Miss Rousseau.”
“Why?”
“Tell me first,” said Freud, “what you thought of my old friend Jauregg, the neurologist.”
Younger, Colette, and Luc had visited Dr. Julius Wagner-Jauregg in his university office earlier that morning. “His treatment for war neurosis is electrocution,” said Younger.
“Yes. His team reports considerable success. Was he surprised I had sent you?”
“Very. He said you testified against him at a trial of some kind last week.”
“On the contrary, I testified for him. There was an allegation that he had essentially tortured our soldiers into returning to the front. The government commissioned me to investigate. I reported that his use of electrotherapy had been perfectly ethical. I explained, of course, that only psychoanalysis could uncover the roots of shell shock and cure it, but that this was not yet known in 1914. My friend—and his many supporters—spent the rest of the hearing attempting to destroy the reputation of every psychoanalyst in Vienna.” A waiter brought them two small gold-rimmed demitasses of coffee and a basket of pastries. “Foolish of me. I’d somehow forgotten how intense a hostility we still provoke. But never mind. Did he persuade you to attempt electrocution on the boy?”
“He made a case for a single treatment at low voltage. He believes shell shock is a kind of short circuit inside the brain—and that a brief convulsive charge can clear the circuitry.”
“I know. And since you disbelieve in psychology, you should be favorably inclined.”
Younger pictured the confused and harrowed expressions he had seen in the faces of shell-shocked soldiers. The scientist in him knew that the cause of their suffering could indeed have been a cross-firing in their neural circuitry. But something in him rebelled at this diagnosis—or at least at the treatment. At last he said, “I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with the boy’s brain.”
“Ah—you think the problem is in his larynx?”
“I doubt it,” said Younger.
“Well, at least you have one