first
and ordered her husband out of the room, telling him to fetch the doctor and a
policeman. Gingerly she went to the girl, trying to calm her, unwinding the
tie. When her mouth was freed, the girl made all the motions that normally
accompany speech, but still no sound came out, no words at all, not even a
whisper. When the police arrived, they were dismayed to learn that she could
not speak. A still greater surprise lay in store for them as well. Paper and
pencil were brought to the girl; the police asked her to tell them in writing
what happened. I can't, she wrote. Why not? they asked. Her reply: I
can't remember.
Chapter Four
It was almost seven on Monday evening
when Freud,
Ferenczi, and I returned to the
hotel. Brill had gone home, tired and happy. I believe Coney Island is Brill's
favorite place in America. He once told me that when he first arrived in this
country at the age of fifteen, penniless and alone, he used to spend entire
days on the boardwalk and sometimes nights beneath it. All the same, it wasn't
obvious to me that Freud's first taste of New York should have included the
Live Premature Incubator Babies show or Jolly Trixie, the 685-pound lady,
advertised under the rapturous slogan holy smoke - she's fat! she's awful fat.
But Freud seemed delighted, comparing
it to Vienna's Prater - 'only on a gigantic scale,' he said. Brill even
persuaded him to rent a bathing costume and join us in the enormous saltwater
swimming pool inside Steeplechase Park. Freud proved a stronger swimmer than
either Brill or Ferenczi, but in the afternoon he had an attack of prostatic
discomfort. We sat down, therefore, at a boardwalk cafe, where, punctuated by
the clattering roar of the roller coasters and the steadier pounding of surf,
we had a conversation I will never forget.
Brill had been ridiculing the
treatment of hysterical women practiced by American physicians: massage cures,
vibrating cures, water cures. 'It is half quackery and half sex industry,' he
said. He described an enormous vibrating machine recently purchased - for four
hundred dollars - by a doctor he knew, a professor at Columbia no less. 'Do you
know what these doctors are actually doing? No one admits it, but they are
inducing climax in their women patients.'
'You sound surprised,' replied Freud.
'Avicenna practiced the same treatment in Persia nine hundred years ago.'
'Did he make himself rich from it?'
asked Brill, with a note of bitterness. 'Thousands a month, some of them. But
the worst of it is their hypocrisy. I once pointed out to this august
physician, who just happens to be my superior at work, that if his treatment
worked it was a proof of psychoanalysis, establishing the link between
sexuality and hysteria. You should have seen the look on his face. There was
nothing sexual in his treatment, he said, nothing at all. He was simply
allowing patients to discharge their excess neural stimulation. If I thought
otherwise, what it proved was the corrupting effect of Freud's theories. I'm
lucky he didn't fire me.'
Freud merely smiled. He had none of
Brill's bitter edge, none of his defensiveness. One could not blame the
ignorant, he said. In addition to the inherent difficulty of uncovering the
truth about hysteria, there were powerful repressions, accumulated over
millennia, which we could not expect to vanquish in a day. 'It is the same with
every disease,' said Freud. 'Only when we understand the cause can we claim to
understand the sickness, and only then can we treat it. For now the cause
remains hidden from them, so they remain in the Dark Ages, bleeding their
patients and calling it medicine.'
It was then that the conversation
took its remarkable turn. Freud asked if we would like to hear one of his
recent cases, about a patient obsessed with rats. Naturally we said yes.
I had never heard a man speak as
Freud did. He recounted the case with
and ordered her husband out of the room, telling him to fetch the doctor and a
policeman. Gingerly she went to the girl, trying to calm her, unwinding the
tie. When her mouth was freed, the girl made all the motions that normally
accompany speech, but still no sound came out, no words at all, not even a
whisper. When the police arrived, they were dismayed to learn that she could
not speak. A still greater surprise lay in store for them as well. Paper and
pencil were brought to the girl; the police asked her to tell them in writing
what happened. I can't, she wrote. Why not? they asked. Her reply: I
can't remember.
Chapter Four
It was almost seven on Monday evening
when Freud,
Ferenczi, and I returned to the
hotel. Brill had gone home, tired and happy. I believe Coney Island is Brill's
favorite place in America. He once told me that when he first arrived in this
country at the age of fifteen, penniless and alone, he used to spend entire
days on the boardwalk and sometimes nights beneath it. All the same, it wasn't
obvious to me that Freud's first taste of New York should have included the
Live Premature Incubator Babies show or Jolly Trixie, the 685-pound lady,
advertised under the rapturous slogan holy smoke - she's fat! she's awful fat.
But Freud seemed delighted, comparing
it to Vienna's Prater - 'only on a gigantic scale,' he said. Brill even
persuaded him to rent a bathing costume and join us in the enormous saltwater
swimming pool inside Steeplechase Park. Freud proved a stronger swimmer than
either Brill or Ferenczi, but in the afternoon he had an attack of prostatic
discomfort. We sat down, therefore, at a boardwalk cafe, where, punctuated by
the clattering roar of the roller coasters and the steadier pounding of surf,
we had a conversation I will never forget.
Brill had been ridiculing the
treatment of hysterical women practiced by American physicians: massage cures,
vibrating cures, water cures. 'It is half quackery and half sex industry,' he
said. He described an enormous vibrating machine recently purchased - for four
hundred dollars - by a doctor he knew, a professor at Columbia no less. 'Do you
know what these doctors are actually doing? No one admits it, but they are
inducing climax in their women patients.'
'You sound surprised,' replied Freud.
'Avicenna practiced the same treatment in Persia nine hundred years ago.'
'Did he make himself rich from it?'
asked Brill, with a note of bitterness. 'Thousands a month, some of them. But
the worst of it is their hypocrisy. I once pointed out to this august
physician, who just happens to be my superior at work, that if his treatment
worked it was a proof of psychoanalysis, establishing the link between
sexuality and hysteria. You should have seen the look on his face. There was
nothing sexual in his treatment, he said, nothing at all. He was simply
allowing patients to discharge their excess neural stimulation. If I thought
otherwise, what it proved was the corrupting effect of Freud's theories. I'm
lucky he didn't fire me.'
Freud merely smiled. He had none of
Brill's bitter edge, none of his defensiveness. One could not blame the
ignorant, he said. In addition to the inherent difficulty of uncovering the
truth about hysteria, there were powerful repressions, accumulated over
millennia, which we could not expect to vanquish in a day. 'It is the same with
every disease,' said Freud. 'Only when we understand the cause can we claim to
understand the sickness, and only then can we treat it. For now the cause
remains hidden from them, so they remain in the Dark Ages, bleeding their
patients and calling it medicine.'
It was then that the conversation
took its remarkable turn. Freud asked if we would like to hear one of his
recent cases, about a patient obsessed with rats. Naturally we said yes.
I had never heard a man speak as
Freud did. He recounted the case with
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