Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [40]
“Delighted, Fräulein,” said Freud. He turned back to Younger: “But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I no longer practice psychology at all, sir.”
“You were a psychoanalyst?” Colette asked Younger.
“Didn’t I mention it?” he replied.
“He never told you he was once my most promising follower in America?” asked Freud.
“No,” said Colette.
“Certainly,” said Freud. “The first time we met, Younger conducted an analysis under my supervision—of the girl who became his wife.”
“Oh yes,” said Colette. “Of course.”
Younger said nothing.
“He didn’t tell you he was married?” asked Freud.
Colette colored. “He doesn’t tell me anything about himself.”
“I see. Well, he isn’t married anymore, in case the subject is of interest. But he’s told you what analysis consists of, surely?”
“No, not that either.”
“I’d better explain then—take a seat, please,” said Freud, glancing at Younger. Then he called out to his maid, instructed her to bring tea, and eased himself into a comfortable chair. “You’re a scientist, Miss Rousseau?”
“I’m studying to be one. A radiochemist. I’ll be working in Madame Curie’s institute. My post begins next week.”
“I see. Good. As a scientist, you will easily follow what I’m about to say. When a child is to be analyzed, we’ve found it necessary for the parent—or guardian, in your case—to be informed in advance of what we analysts do. That’s why Younger has given me an opportunity to speak with you first.”
Younger and Colette had left Luc at the hotel. Paula, the Freuds’ maid, came in with a tea service.
“All neuroses,” Freud went on as the maid poured tea, “are caused by memories, typically a memory from long ago, involving a forbidden wish. The wishes from which neurotics suffer are not unique to them. We all had them in our childhood, but with neurotics, something prevents these recollections from being forgotten and disposed of in the ordinary way. They linger in the recesses of the individual’s mind—so well hidden that my patients initially are not even conscious of them. The aim of analysis is to make the patient conscious of these repressed memories.”
“In order to forget them?” asked Colette.
“In order to be free of them,” replied Freud. “But the process is seldom an easy one, because the truth can be difficult to accept. Invariably the patient—and the patient’s family—will resist our interpretations, resist them quite forcefully. There can be good reason. Once the truth is out, the family may be changed unalterably.”
Colette frowned. “The family?”
“Yes. In fact that’s often how we know we’ve arrived at the truth: the patient’s family suddenly demands that the analysis come to an end. Although occasionally there are other, stronger proofs. I’ll give you an example. I have a patient—like you, French by birth—from a family of considerable rank and wealth. Her complaint is frigidity.”
Younger shifted. The carnal explicitness of psychoanalysis was chief among the reasons Younger didn’t like discussing it with Colette.
“In one of her first sessions,” Freud continued, “this patient, an attractive woman of about forty, described a dream she’d had the night before. She was in the Bois de Boulogne. A couple she knew lay down on a double bed right there in the park, on the green grass by a lake. That was all—nothing more. What would you say that dream meant, Miss Rousseau?”
“I don’t know,” answered Colette. “Do dreams have meaning?”
“Most assuredly. I informed her that she had witnessed a scene of sexual intercourse that she was not supposed to have seen—perhaps more than one—when she was a small child, probably between the ages of three and five. She replied that such a thing was impossible, because she grew up with no mother. But of course she’d had nurses. Suddenly she remembered that her first nurse had left the family abruptly when she was five. She had never known why. I said it was likely this nurse was involved in her dream. So she made inquiries back home.
“She asked everyone, including the longtime servants. They all denied anything untoward in the nurse’s departure, and