The chaos dream, about the great flood, has now become a matter of earnest and sometimes acerbic debate between Toni and me. She insists that my analysis is too glib, that I am wrong to read the dream as prophecy and that the death-wish symbols have many more sinister undertones than I will admit.
I argue that she is falling into Freud’s error. He tends to see the unconscious as engaged in a kind of mischievous hide-and-seek with the conscious. The dream images it harbours are, for him, a smokescreen thrown up to obscure an unbearable reality. I don’t agree with that at all. To dream is as natural as to breathe.
The unconscious is like an attic where all the unused or unusable material of our personal and tribal experience is tossed, higgledy-piggledy: old wedding photographs, grandmother’s shawl, greatgrandfather’s diaries. They pop out of the clutter by accident, as when children play there or an inquisitive housemaid begins turning over the dusty relics. Nature doesn’t set out to deceive us. We don’t even set out to deceive ourselves. It is simply that we cannot cope, all at once, with the clutter of information and emotion that is delivered to us. So we consign it to the attic of the unconscious.
I am writing about this very calmly. But today’s debate with Toni was anything but calm. It was complicated by an embarrassing letter, which Toni opened with the rest of the morning mail. The letter was from Sabina Spielrein, who not so long ago was pleading with me to give her a child . . . our little Siegfried! Christ! How I am beset by these women! I cannot live without them. I cannot live with them. If I had the money I would pack my bags and be off to Africa tomorrow!
A new chain of disasters begins, as it always seems to do nowadays, in the small hours of the morning. I have the chaos dream again; but this time new elements appear in it.
Elijah is on the train. He is dressed as a conductor. He settles me into my compartment. Salome is already there. She is naked. She stretches out a hand to touch me. There is a large straw basket on the seat beside her. The snake is inside it. I hear the rustle of his body against the straw.
Again I am uneasy with Salome. I am expecting Toni. I do not want to have sex with a blind girl who carries a snake. The train starts, and once again I see the flood – yellow at first, then blood-red – rolling across the land. I recognise the same bodies tossed in the waves. This time, however, there is one living creature: a beautiful black stallion. I see his noble head and forequarters as he struggles to leap from the water. As he comes closer I see his wild eyes and his flaming nostrils and the great muscles on his neck. Now I really try to get out and rescue him. I batter vainly on the window until I see the stallion swallowed up by the blood-red water. I cry out in despair and wake up.
Mercifully Emma is still asleep. I creep down to my study, prepare my pipe and my drink and begin to record the new elements in the dream. I am very lucid. What I write contains a number of fresh and stimulating ideas. The next thing I remember is Emma’s voice calling me and the morning sun flooding into the room. Emma is standing by Toni’s desk pouring coffee. I am startled and I yell at her:
“Emma! What the hell! Haven’t I told you never, never to interrupt me here?”
She answers in that bland, controlled fashion which is her usual response to my boorishness.
“Don’t bully me, Carl! It’s tiresome. I brought you breakfast. Would you like to wash before I serve it? There’s a clean smock on the chair.”
It is only then that I become aware of my condition. My face is sticky from lying in ash and spilled drink. My hands are filthy. My sleeves are sodden with brandy. My papers are stained. There is a large burn scar on the leather surface of the desk. I lurch to the wash basin and look at myself in the mirror. Emma’s comment is apt but redundant.
“You really are a mess.”
I mumble an apology through the soapsuds.
“I’m sorry. I must have . . .”
“You were dead tired and dead drunk. One of these nights you’ll burn the house down with that confounded pipe!”
I strip off my soiled shirt, sponge and dry myself and put on the peasant’s smock which is my working garb. Then I go to offer Emma a good morning kiss. She turns a cool cheek to me, hands me the coffee and moves two paces away from my contaminated presence. As I stuff a piece of pastry in my mouth and gulp a mouthful of coffee she attacks.
“This is crazy, Carl! Five times in a row you’ve been up all night. You smoke like a chimney. You’re drinking too much. You’ll kill yourself!”
I choke on my coffee, which entirely ruins the effect of my reply.
“For God’s sake, Emma! You exaggerate everything. I woke at two in the morning out of a terrible nightmare. I couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you. I came down here to record the dream and have my notes ready for a proper analysis. I had one glass of brandy. I never have more. I was weary. I fell asleep. Is that a crime? Besides I got through a lot of work – good work! Look, I’ll show you!”
I go to my desk, pick up the stained sheets of notepaper and hold them out to her. She takes them, glances at the first page. Her expression changes. She leafs through the rest of the material – three sheets in all – then stares at me, horrified. I ask her what is the matter. She tells me, very quietly.
“Carl, this is gibberish. Utter nonsense! And the handwriting. It’s just a scrawl!”
I snatch the pages from her. The words I can decipher make no sense at all. They are a garble of German and Latin and Greek and no language at all. I make feeble excuses.
“I must have been more exhausted than I thought. You know, the body wastes build up and you get a temporary narcosis. The thought patterns become confused. The handwriting drifts.”
She comes to me, and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder. She seems suddenly invested with authority. I am glad to have her by me. She admonishes me tenderly.
“Please, Carl! Sit down. We have to talk.”
She leads me to my desk. I slump in my chair. She pulls up another chair and sits facing me. She takes my hands and caresses them as she talks. It seems an age since we have had contact, skin to skin, like this.
“Carl, I want you to listen to me very carefully. You’re a sick man! Everything points to it: the nightmares, the insomnia, the depressions, the rages that scare the children so. Be honest with yourself. What would you say if one of your patients at the clinic had produced those pages of nonsense!”
“Clinically that material’s irrelevant.” I was immediately irritated. “Extreme fatigue or simple anoxia will produce the same effect!”
“All right! Let’s admit they’re irrelevant; but the rest of it is very much to the point. Please, my darling! Can’t you understand we’re all desperately worried about you?”
“I’m worried about myself.”
“Tell me then – after all you trained me! – suppose I were the patient and I came to you with all the symptoms you have, what would be your diagnosis?”
It would only make matters worse to tell her that the rumourmongers accuse me of suffering from dementia praecox, that I recognise at least primary schizoid symptoms and manic-depressive cycles. Instead I try to hedge my answer.
“I wouldn’t be prepared to offer a diagnosis yet. It’s too early. The symptoms are too varied. I would recommend a complete physical examination. Then if there is no physical pathology I would like to put the patient into analysis for a trial period.”
“Then, my dear physician;” she strokes my stub-bled cheek and coaxes me tenderly, “why don’t you follow your own prescription?”
We are on easier ground here. She knows I’ve seen Lansberg for a physical check-up. She knows his verdict. I am sound as a prize bull, except for an occasional labile blood pressure, which is associated with emotional stress. But that does not satisfy her She presses me.
“But you know the problem isn’t a physical one.”
“True. On the other hand . . .”
“So, why don’t you put yourself into analysis?”
“With whom, for God’s sake? Bleuler, Ferenczi, Jones? These are not my peers!”
This is an old frayed question between us. I know she corresponds with Freud. I know she thinks my disagreements with him are overstated and inflamed by my ill humours. As I expected, she walks head first into the trap.
“Freud then! I know you and he have disagreed over a lot of things but . . .”
“Disagreed? I don’t believe in him any more. I can’t trust him any more. The man’s a hopeless dogmatist. He faints when he’s confronted with an un-pleasing thought! Faints clean away like a woman with the vapours!”
I am determined to end the discussion. I get up from my desk and walk to the window, where I stand, silent and hostile, looking out at the garden. Emma refuses to abandon the argument. She challenges me again.
“What do you see out there, Carl? Elijah? Salome?”
I am shocked and angry. I have never discussed these personages with her. I confront her harshly.
“How do you know about them? Have you been going through my papers?”
“You know I never do that, Carl. You talk in your sleep. You talk to yourself, loudly, as you stride up and down the lawn. Who are these people, Carl? What do they mean in your life?”
Suddenly I am not angry any more. I am tired and fearful like a stricken child. I answer wearily:
“I don’t know who they are. They are personifica tions from my subconscious. All I know is that when Elijah’s there I feel safe and content. I don’t like Salome; but it seems I can’t have one without the other.”
“Can you see them now?”
“No. I can’t.”
Emma stares at me for a long silent moment; then with a strange wintry sadness she pleads with me.
“I’ll tell you what I see, Carl. I see a great man far advanced towards a mental breakdown. I see the one-time clinical director of the Burgholzli, the most brilliant lecturer in his subject at the university, babbling to himself like one of his own patients. I say to myself, that’s my husband. I love him. I’m carrying his fifth child . . . and I wonder if he’ll be rational enough to recognise the baby when it’s born!”
She bursts into tears and buries her face in her hands. I am ashamed to have hurt her so much. I hurry to her and try to comfort her, but her grief pours out in a torrent of broken words.
“You don’t know, you don’t care, how bad it is! I wake in a cold bed. The children don’t know you any more. They’re scared to be near you. You lock yourself in here like . . . like a monster in a cave. I can’t bear it any more! I just can’t bear it!”
I put my arms around her and rock her wordlessly from side to side like a child. Then, as gently as I know how, I try to reason with her:
“Emma, my love, I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart I’m sorry. But I have no words to explain what it’s like when these black storms start inside me. The only thing I know is that I can’t fight them. I just have to ride out the fury and hope I’ll be sane afterwards. That’s why I hide down here – to spare you the spectacle.”
“You can’t go on hiding for ever. You need help!”
“I know . . . but I know how little real help is to be had.”
“How can you say that, you, of all people?”
“Because this science of ours, this medicine of the mind, is still in its infancy. The methods are tentative. The procedures are incomplete. So, I ask myself whether I am not being prompted – called even! – to make a journey beyond the charted limits. Perhaps that’s what Elijah means: a prophet from the Old Testament, who was swept up to heaven in a fiery chariot!”
“It’s not heaven I see in your eyes, Carl. Sometimes it’s the suffering of the damned. And I can do nothing about it.”
“Neither can I. I’m like a leaf tossed in the wind. So, I have no choice but to let myself be swept along by these storms of the subconscious and see where, finally, they drive me.”
“You’re taking a terrible risk.”
“It’s not such a big risk, truly.”
“For us it is.”
“You are the anchor that holds me to reality. You, the children, our life in this house.”
“Just so the anchor holds! I’m not sure how much we can take, Carl. We’re human, too. We need a little laughter in our lives.”
Her vehemence shocks me. I have always presumed so much on her stability. I try to calm her with soft words.
“Of course you do So, until I’m through this crisis, I want you to forget me. Ignore my moods. Let me come and go as I please. Treat me like. . .like a piece of furniture. Concentrate your thoughts on the new baby. Build your life round the children.”
“And leave you to fight your devils alone?”
“I won’t be alone. Toni Wolff will record the experience, and help me to analyse it. She’s been through her own crisis. She understands in a way that no one else can.”
I am a fool with a big mouth. The words were hardly out before the storm burst around my ears.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Carl! Let me be sure I have it right. You admit you’re in a situation of psychic crisis. You don’t trust Freud. You say Bleuler and Ferenczi are not your peers. You find me inadequate. But you put yourself in the hands of a twenty-five-year-old girl who was once your patient. Does that really make sense?”
“It makes sense to me. She’s young but she’s brilliant. I’ve trained her myself and . . .”
“And what, Carl? Let’s have the truth!”
Now it is my turn to rage. This is the way the game goes. It is easier to abuse one another than to disabuse ourselves of illusions. I shout at her:
“The truth is you make a scene about every goddamned woman who steps into my office . . . and I’m sick of your pathological jealousy!”
“And why shouldn’t I be jealous? Look at the scandals we’ve had. You’re a fool with women! You turn on that great tender charm, and they all think it’s an invitation to bed. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t; but it gets you a bad name and damages the practice. But with Toni it’s way beyond that. You want to make her a member of the family!”
“She has a legitimate place in my life – just as you have.”
“Legitimate place! Do, please, tell me about that!”
“You are my wife, the mother of my children, the mistress of my house.” As I mouth the pompous phrases I have a sudden comic vision of my father acting out his Sunday sermon. Like my father I ignore the comedy and plough on: “You have my love, my respect and my unswerving loyalty. Toni began as my patient. Her personal experience of mental illness and her natural intelligence make her a most valuable collaborator.”
“And in bed, Carl? How is she? What do you do? Read case histories to each other?”
Before I have the chance to reply, the door opens and Toni comes in. She carries the morning mail and a new summer hat that dangles from a pink ribbon. She greets us both cheerfully, tosses the mail on the table and displays the hat to Emma.
“How do you like this? I trimmed it myself.”
“Charming!” Emma is frigid but meticulously polite. Not for nothing was she bred among the good burghers of Basel. Toni looks to each of us for some explanation of this moment of suspended animation. Finally she asks, “Forgive me, but have I interrupted something? If so, I can take a stroll in the garden.”
“No, we’ve just finished.” Emma adds a parting word for us both. “I’ll take your advice, Carl. I will – I must – concentrate my life round the children. They have a special need of me now. As for you, Toni, Carl tells me you’ll be directing his analysis. He has great faith in your skill. I hope, for all our sakes, it’s justified Which reminds me, you must have him show you the notes he wrote last night. They’re very revealing!”
The door closes, a shade too loudly, on her exit. Toni asks with somewhat edgy humour:
“And what, pray, was all that about?”
This time I cannot lie; the best I can do is defuse the drama. I tell her with a shrug:
“We had a few sharp words. She thinks I should go into analysis with Freud. I told her I want to work with you.”
“And she of course said, ‘Oh how splendid! The best treatment for any psychosis is a tumble in the hay with Toni.’”
That sets us both laughing; but our mirth has an uneasy ring to it, like the giggling of children listening to ghost stories around a dying fire. We kiss, we embrace. I am full of desire for her but she disengages herself quickly and retreats behind her desk. Clearly, she is still punishing me for the Spielrein letter. She mentions Emma’s comment about my notes. It is easier to show them to her than to explain. Her reaction is identical with Emma’s.
“Good God! This is a farrago of nonsense!”
“Toxic fatigue.” Again I try to shrug the matter off “I’ve been up five nights in a row.”
“You’d have been better off spending them at my place.”
“I agree, my love; but I can’t very well go creeping around the countryside at two in the morning.”
“You’d have found me awake. I need you, too, you know.”
Once again we are on the edge of a quarrel. Always it is over the same thing – the precedence of wife and mistress and other women in my very complicated life. I sometimes think it would be wonderful to have the power of bi-location as certain Christian mystics and primitive witch doctors are supposed to have. On the other hand, it might not be such a good idea after all. Quarrelling with two women at once could be a very exhausting experience.
I decide it is time to be businesslike. I return to my desk. Toni brings her notebook. We begin the analysis of the new elements in the chaos dream. I must say this for Toni: no matter how irritable she gets about our love affair, in clinical matters she is one hundred per cent professional. The first point she makes is the presence of the black stallion in the dream. She recalls to me that the horse is always myself. Always, too, the animal is handicapped. In the earlier dream he was dragging a great log. In this one he is trying in vain to find a foothold in the floodwaters. Finally he is drowned – as I am afraid of drowning in a sea of personal troubles.
Next, we talk of Elijah. He is a conductor in the dream. He controls the train and the destiny of everyone on board. We can sleep safely under his tutelage. He is for me the archetype of the perfect father figure.
Salome, however, has changed her role. She is no longer the daughter, lover, protector of Elijah. She is the hostile woman playing the role of naked seductress to me, a man who has no desire for her. There is a clear connection here with Sabina Spielrein, who I had thought was out of my life for good. Now she has written herself back into it. I do not want her. I have Toni. For the first time Toni steps out of her professional role and asks me a very pointed question:
“Have you ever thought that the day may come when you will be talking about me exactly as you are talking about Sabina Spielrein?”
I protest stoutly that my feelings for the Spielrein were pure infatuation. I was betrayed into them by pity and by her dependence upon me during her illness.
“Which is exactly how you and I came together,” Toni reminds me sweetly. “I, too, have progressed from patient to pupil to colleague and mistress.”
“Then as a colleague, please remember that we are in a clinical situation where you have no right to intrude your private sentiments.”
She blushes. Her eyes fill up with tears. She protests bitterly.
“My God! You can be brutal sometimes!”
“And you are tactless, stupid and unprofessional! At this moment I am not your lover, I am your patient. The fact that I am in control of myself makes no matter. In other circumstances with another person, you could do great damage.”
“Forgive me, doctor!” she blazes at me. “I have so little experience in these matters. This is my first affair with a married man.”
“And may I remind you that you walked into it with your eyes open.”
“So I did. But I also walked into it with all of me, body and soul. I am not like you. I can’t divide my life into neat little slices and hand them round like sponge cake. This one’s for you; this one’s for Emma. This one’s for Aunt Mary! I’m me – Toni Wolff! – all of one piece; and if you don’t like that, I’m sorry.”
“On the contrary, I like it very much. As your former physician, I am proud of your mature and stable personality!”
She bursts into tears, slams her notebook on my desk and runs towards the door. I shout at her like a drill sergeant:
“Stop right there!”
She stops. I berate her brutally.
“You are not a child. You are an intelligent woman, free to make your own choices about your own life. At this moment, however, you have the responsibility of a healer. I am in desperate need of your help with this analysis. Now compose yourself and let’s get back to work!”
I see what it costs her to control her emotions. It is a physical effort, painful to watch. Finally her head comes up proudly, and she turns to face me again.
“I am at your service, doctor. If you agree, I think we should now consider the death wish element in both the versions of the dream.”
I tell her that I would rather not get too involved in the smaller details. I would rather discuss for a while the larger context: the vast flood obliterating the land. She reminds me with cool formality:
“I know what you would rather do; but have you not told me over and over again that the subject which the patient least wishes to discuss is that which is nearest to the heart of his problem? So, if you don’t mind, let’s talk about your death wish – for Emma, for Freud, for your own children. Let’s ask what you will do instead of killing them . . . because the ritual has to be accomplished in fact or in symbol.”