by Morris West
Our pact once made, he seems in no hurry to dismiss me. He watches me with a smile as I repair my make-up at the mirror. He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me round to face him. He tells me:
“I’m very pleased with you. I gave you a rough passage this morning; but you came through it very well. Enjoy your lunch. Oh, by the way, now that we know each other, you don’t have to dress quite so formally. Wear something casual. It will help you to relax.”
I have a sudden impulse to kiss him, but I hold back. I do not want to be one of those foolish ones Frau Jung told me about who lean like children on their analyst. At the door I offer my hand and thank him for his help. He laughs and quotes me the old proverb: “The wounded physician makes the best healer.”
As he walks me to the gate, through the apple trees and the roses in full blush, I am aware of his authority, sensible of his physical vigour. He is a big man, burly and thrusting. I wonder how he would be in bed – and which of us would conduct the symphony.
JUNG
Zurich
I watch as she drives off in that vast car and I wish that I could afford one half as large. Her opulence irritates me. It is an affront to my own modest estate. Until now, this one has never had to count the cost of anything. I was deeply offended by the way she waved an envelope full of cash under my nose; then immediately I understood it as a gesture of desperation. Her arrogance, the brutality she claims to practise, contrast strangely with the picture of the young girl systematically debauched by a profligate father and a conniving nurse.
The image of the dominant female, the “mater terribilis”, is endemic in male mythology. It is repugnant to most males, but enormously seductive to others. I personally find no pleasure in it. I am more moved by the spectacle of innocence, ravaged and exploited, which perhaps is what makes me so easy a prey to dependent women, and makes this Magda Kardoss von Gamsfeld so fascinating a study in typology.
I stroll for a while, alone in the garden, trying to fit together a clinical summation. First and foremost, she is quite rational. In any court of law she would be held sane and accountable for her actions. Given her background and education, any plea for mitigation in a criminal case would most certainly fail. Why have I begun there, with an assumption of criminality? I know it is a potential in her case. I have no evidence that it is actual. The colonel in Berlin was a consenting partner, as presumably are all her other associates. The cruelty to her animals was never made a subject of charges. Nonetheless, the content of her dream, and her questions about forgiveness, her fear that she may lose courage and flee, all suggest an enormous, subconscious guilt.
Yet she has very little moral sense. In sexual matters, she is promiscuous with both sexes. In her episodes of nymphomania, she seeks catharsis by cruelty, but is more concerned with police intervention than the damage to her own psychic life. The roots of her malady are clear enough: excessive sexual stimulation during the prepubertal and pubertal life, the long standing incestuous relationship with her father, who was himself an obvious psychotic, the ambivalent situation with Lily, the surrogate mother.
Once again I am impressed most strongly by the similarity of our natures and our symptoms. The animus, the male principle, is strong in her, as the anima, the female principle, is strong in me. There is violence in both of us. There are moments when I am tempted to administer a good old country thrashing to some of Freud’s toadies. I, too, am obsessive and becoming more so. I am subject to sudden rages and sharp swings into depression. I am haunted by guilt which I cannot always define, and by ambivalent sexual urges and experiences.
Even our dreams concord strangely. We are both imprisoned in a transparent world, she in the globe of glass, I behind the window of the railway carriage. We both see the stallion in a context of death and disaster. It did not escape me that, even when she was pleading to continue our session, she used a horse metaphor: the “puissance”, the trial of strength for jumpers.
So, there is between us the possibility of wordless communication, of instinctive interaction, which may be either fruitful or dangerous. The good thing is that we have both been educated in the same discipline of medicine – she more richly than I, who had to settle for Basel, while she was plunged immediately into the mainstream of tradition in Padua, where arts, letters and medicine all flourished together. Perhaps, one day, if I have any success with her, we may be able to share some field of study. At least she is more mature than the Spielrein girl, who really turned into a near disaster for me!
Which reminds me, I must ask two questions. Why did she give up medicine? What will she do now that she can no longer return to her estates in Austria?
Normally Toni and I take a midday snack in my study, so that the rhythm of my work and the privacy of our communion are not interrupted. Today, because the children are absent, Emma suggests that the three of us lunch together. There is no way I can decently refuse; but these three-cornered occasions are always fraught with tension as each woman tries to assert her claims on my person and my attention.
Now I am caught in a new dilemma. I do not, as a rule, discuss my private patients with Emma. It is not fair to her; it is not fair to them. Zurich is a small city, and the doctor’s wife must be above all suspicion of gossip. With Toni it is different. She is my pupil, my colleague, my archivist. She must be privy to everything that goes on. At lunch, however, both women are curious about my new case; so, to keep the peace, I have to be a little more forthcoming. Both are surprised – suspicious would be a more accurate word! – when I tell them that Magda Hirschfeld is returning after lunch. Emma remarks tartly:
“I’ve never known you to do that before, Carl. You’ve always said that two hours is the limit for an effective session.”
“I know; but this is an unusual subject. She has opened up very quickly. She could as quickly lose courage and fall silent again. I gave her extra time on condition that we completed the biographical survey this afternoon.”
“Has she told you her real name yet?”
It is Toni’s question. I could kill her for asking it. I answer that she has not told me, but it is a matter of no consequence.
“Isn’t that a bit risky? If anything unforeseen happens, you’ll look a little foolish if you don’t even know your patient’s name.”
“Not really.” I am irritated by this sidelong reference to my past indiscretions, but I try not to show it. “I have a note from her medical advisor in Paris who urges me to grant her anonymity. In extreme need, the management at the Baur au Lac will have a record of her identity documents. Besides, the fact that I acceded to her first request has helped to elicit other and more relevant information.”
“She’s very beautiful.” Emma’s admiration is not altogether guileless. “And those clothes must have cost a fortune!”
“She’s a rich widow – and a merry one.” Toni is an excellent mimic and she does my patient’s accent perfectly. “‘I have no permanent lover, but I am adequately entertained.’ I’ll bet she is! I’d say she was a real man eater!”
The moment she says the words, an extraordinary thing happens. It is as if I have been struck by catalepsy. I am dumb and rigid; I am no longer at my own table; I am back in the underground cave, looking up at the great, blind phallus god, while my mother’s voice admonishes me: “Look well! That’s the man eater!”
It seems an age before the vision dissolves and I am back to normality. Yet, neither of the women has noticed anything strange, because Emma is saying in her calm, judicial fashion:
“A man eater? She didn’t give me that impression. I talked with her in the garden. She’s very intelligent and altogether charming. But that doesn’t signify, I suppose. I’m sure there are intelligent and charming man-eaters. What’s your opinion, Carl?”
I am not going to be drawn into that little snare – not for all the tea in China! I tell her:
“I don’t have too many opinions yet. I’ve established that there is an acute father fixation, with related
sexual obsessions. I’m hoping to make some sense of those this afternoon.”
Both women understand the warning; but Toni is prepared to risk more than Emma. She asks solicitously:
“Would you like me to write up your notes before she comes back. It would only take an hour.”
And that would put her exactly where I don’t want to have her, right in the middle of a relationship which I have only begun to nurture. Thank you, my dear, but no! You have privileges enough already. I need some private ground to stroll in! I tell her I’d rather leave the collation until the session is finished. She can take the afternoon off and I’ll drop the notes round to her apartment this evening. She accepts that with good grace. It means we can have an hour or two in bed. Emma affects to ignore this transparent little stratagem and turns the conversation back to my patient.
“I’ll be very interested to see how this case works out.”
“Works out? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, she is of a certain age – in full bloom, you might say. Most of your problems in transference situations have arisen with much younger women.”
There is no reproach in her tone. Her eyes are innocent of malice. I try to look wise and professional as if I have not seen the blade under the velvet sheath.
“I don’t expect too much trouble. She’s quite rational about her problems. She’s a trained physician. If I have any fear at this time it is that, rather than face a progressive breakdown, she would commit suicide. The impulse to destruction, which is evident in her sexual relations, could vent itself finally in self-destruction.”
I have said more than I wanted about the patient, but it helps us over the bad moment. Toni seizes on the thought and asks:
“How does this destructive impulse demonstrate itself?”
“Periodic obsessional nymphomania, culminating in sado-masochist episodes.”
“I told you.” Toni cannot resist the small triumph. “A man-eater, a real one!”
“It doesn’t follow.” Emma’s cool retort surprises me. She is normally reticent in discussion and would rather be silent than precipitate an argument. “Perhaps she doesn’t really like men; so every episode must end destructively. There are men like that, too. They would die if you called them homo-erotic, but their relations with women are always tainted by cruelty. Don’t you agree, Carl?”
I can do nothing else but agree – and make my escape as quickly as possible. I understand now, with a curious lurch of fear in my gut, that Emma has taken me at my word. She will let me go my own uncertain way; she will ignore my vagaries and concentrate her life around the children; but she will do it without illusions and she will reserve the right to be what she pleases and say what she pleases in her own house . . .
Before Toni goes home for the afternoon, we have a brief, unhappy interlude in my study. She is boiling with anger and she does not mind if I get scalded, too.
“I ask you, Carl, how long can this go on? I had one session with her in the kitchen this morning. She told me she thought you could well be going out of your mind – and what was I going to do about it. She’s prepared to abdicate everything except being the Frau Doktor Jung. What kind of marriage is that? Why do you and I have to skulk around like criminals because we love each other? And that scene at lunch! My God, she was slicing us up like apples for a strudel and you just sat there, nodding and consenting, as if . . . as if you were discussing the morning headlines! Well, I’ve had enough, I promise you, Carl! I’ll jump over the moon for you. I’ll pack my bags and run away with you any time you like. But I will not stay here and take this kind of torture. I won’t let you take it either!”
She is deaf to argument. She will not be coaxed. In the end I let her go. By the time evening comes she will be penitent and hungry for loving. I don’t blame her for being angry. I don’t blame Emma either. I myself am the culprit. I am like the greedy monkey with his fist caught in the jar of lollipops. I want all I can grab. I won’t have any unless I settle for one at a time!
Truth to tell, there are days, like today, when I am bored with all these well bred women and their shopping list of demands. I yearn to be out of this stuffy town and in some savage place where I don’t have to argue and discuss and define, but only dance to the wild drums, and couple in the dust under the bushes, and give not a hoot in hell afterwards.
A thought, by way of postscript. I wonder what would happen if I dangled the same idea in front of Magda Liliane Kardoss von Gamsfeld. My guess is that she would say, “Fine! Let’s saddle and go!” The sad thing is I’ve never learned to ride a horse. Still, with a good teacher, I could learn very quickly.
MAGDA
Zurich
When I left Jung’s house, I felt like a child let out from school. I wanted to shout, sing, dance, roll in the green meadows. Before I was halfway to the hotel, reaction had set in. I was plunged into black melancholy. The air was heavy with menace. The hills seemed about to lurch over and bury me. When I walked through the foyer of the Baur au Lac, it was as if I had been stripped of my skin. Every glance, every whisper, was an intolerable pain.
Alone in my room I was beset by panic and confusion. My head was full of tiny mice, squealing and scurrying this way and that. I wanted to scream aloud. Instead I stood in the middle of the floor, dumb and rigid, trying to regain control of myself. When, finally, I succeeded I was trembling in every limb, bathed in sweat like a fever patient.
I stripped off my clothes, took a hot bath, put on a Japanese kimono, ordered coffee and English sandwiches sent to my room, then lay down on the bed and considered my situation. There was no doubt now: I was much more fragile than I had believed. I remembered how Professor Lello in Padua used to describe the progress of certain pneumonic infections: “The change from sub-acute to acute and critical condition is often sudden and dramatic. The patient is not prepared for it. Even an experienced physician may be taken unaware.”
I myself had noted often that patients who had resisted or deferred medical treatment for a long time deteriorated very quickly once they put themselves in the hands of a doctor. Their will to resist seemed suddenly to drain away once they surrendered themselves to a professional healer. Now the same thing was happening to me. My brief separation from Jung – no more than a lunch hour – had put me in a gibbering terror, as if, in a raging sea, I had been snatched from the hand of the rescuer. When the waiter brought my lunch, I held him as long as I could with idle talk. He was a garrulous old man and I was glad of it. Anything was better than the squeak and scurry of mice inside my head.
When he had gone, I ate and drank with deliberate care, cutting the sandwiches into geometric designs, making each mouthful last a long time, trying to compare the taste of this coffee with all the other coffees I had drunk during all my years of travel. Finally, when it seemed I was stable again, planted with reasonable firmness on the plane of simple reality, I began to think of Carl Gustav Jung.
I still do not know how far I can trust him, how much I can lean on his strength and his judgment. I was touched by his offhand remark that the wounded physician makes the best healer. That reminded me again of Professor Lello, who used to deliver as his opening address to undergraduates a discourse on the Hippocratic oath. He was a man of singular simplicity and when he reached the phrase “primum non nocere . . . first do no harm” he would say: “When you get sick, when you cut your finger or drop a hammer on your toe – remember the experience. It will teach you never to inflict unnecessary pain on those who already suffer.”
To this profession of faith and ethics I am, of course, renegade and traitor. I inflict pain to pleasure myself. This is why I need more from Jung than compassion and understanding. This is why I got angry with him when he dismissed the question of guilt in so offhand a fashion. This is why his talk about religious fictions, myths and fairy tales left me with a nagging question: whether he is afraid of certainty, makes a profession of doubt, because at bottom he is as confused as any of his patients.
>
I remembered Emma Jung’s quiet but poignant words: “In our group we’ve had two suicides and a lot of near breakdowns, Carl himself is under great stress just now. We all are.” If my guess is right, he is trying to cope with the stress exactly as I am – by sexual release. I wonder if he understands, as I do, that as time goes on you need more and get less – and pay more dearly. A Frenchman, as usual, described it best, with a pen dipped in acid: “L’amour coûte cher aux vieillards. Love gets expensive for old men.” And for old women? I am not yet old, but I pay more – much more than most – for very special dissatisfactions.
But I am still hedging the question of Jung and myself. When I have laid out all my history in front of him like a pack of tarot cards, what then? I know already what I am and I hate myself. I know – at least in part – why I am so; and Jung, no doubt, can help me to understand the rest. The real question is what he can teach me, promise me, to change myself and make tomorrow endurable.
It is not an unusual question. It presents itself every day to every physician. What do you say to the patient, man or woman, in whom you have just diagnosed a terminal disease? Professor Lello used to say cryptically: “The patients will tell you that; provided you are wise enough to understand what they are saying.” But I am saying so many contradictory things to Jung; how can he possibly be sure what I mean? How can I be sure myself? My fear is that, as in the past, I shall find myself in a single suspended moment, a winter time, with only a yea or a nay between living and dying.
