A Dangerous Method Page #6

to build up a roster of patients,

but... I'm already under siege.

Anyway, I don't see why

a little more work...

won't make your dissertation

eminently publishable.

You think we'd be able

to work on it together without...?

It's always going to be

something of a risk, us seeing one another.

Yes.

But I believe we have the character

to be able to deal with the situation,

don't you?

I hope so.

I somehow imagined you'd have found

another admirer by now.

No.

You were the jewel of great price.

Shall we say this time next Tuesday?

And I'll start gently

ripping you to shreds.

Explain this analogy you make between

the sex instinct and the death instinct.

Professor Freud claims that...

the sexual drive arises

from a simple urge towards pleasure.

If he's right, the question is why is this

urge so often successfully repressed?

You used to have a theory involving

the impulse towards destruction...

and self-destruction,

losing oneself.

Well, suppose we think of sexuality

as fusion, losing oneself,

as you say, but...

losing oneself in the other,

in other words,

destroying one's own individuality.

Wouldn't the ego, in self-defense,

automatically resist that impulse?

You mean for selfish

not for social reasons?

Yes.

I'm saying, that perhaps true sexuality

demands the destruction of the ego.

In other words, the opposite

of what Freud proposes.

When I graduate,

I've decided to leave Zurich.

I have to.

Why?

You know why.

It's true.

I'm nothing but a..

philistine Swiss bourgeois...

complacent coward.

I want to leave everything...

break away and disappear with you.

Then comes the voice of the philistine.

Where will you go?

Vienna, maybe.

Please don't go there.

I must go

wherever I need to feel free.

Don't.

You know your paper...

led to one of the most stimulating

discussions we've ever had...

at the Psychoanalytic Society.

Do you really think the sexual drive

is a demonic and destructive force?

Yes, at the same time as being

a creative force, in the sense that...

it can produce, out of the destruction

of two individualities, a new being.

The individual must

always overcome resistance...

because of the self-annihilating

nature of the sexual act.

Hm.

I fought against the idea

for some time,

I suppose

there must be some kind of...

indissoluble link

between sex and death.

I don't think the relationship

between the two...

is quite the way you've portrayed it.

I'm most grateful to you for animating

the subject in such a stimulating way.

The only slight shock was

your introduction,

at the very end of your paper,

of the name of Christ.

Are you... completely opposed

to any kind of...

religious dimension in our field?

In general, I don't care if a man believes

in Rama, Marx or Aphrodite,

as long as he keeps it out

of the consulting room.

Is that what's at the bottom

of your dispute with Dr. Jung?

I have no dispute with Dr. Jung.

I was simply mistaken about him.

I thought he was going to be able to

carry our work forward after I was gone.

I didn't bargain for all that second-rate

mysticism and self-aggrandizing shamanism.

Nor did I realize he could be

so brutal and sanctimonious.

He's trying to find

some way forward...

so that we don't just have to tell

our patients,

"This is why you are the way you are.

He wants to be able to say, "We can show

you what it is you might want to become".

Playing God, in other words.

We have no right to do that.

The world is as it is.

Understanding and accepting that

is the way to psychic health.

What good can we do if our aim is simply

to replace one delusion with another?

Well, I agree with you.

Hm.

I've noticed that in the crucial areas

of dispute between Dr. Jung and myself,

you tend to favour me.

I thought you had no dispute with him.

Hm.

You still love him.

That's not why I'm pleading his cause.

I...

I... I just... feel that if you two

don't find some way to co-exist,

it will hold back the progress of

psychoanalysis, perhaps indefinitely.

Is there no way to avert a rupture?

Correct scientific... relations

will be maintained, of course.

I'll be seeing him

at the editorial meeting in Munich...

in September

and I shall be perfectly civil.

To tell you the truth, what finished him

for me was all that business about you.

The lies, the ruthless behaviour.

I was very shocked.

I think he loved me.

I'm afraid your idea of a

mystical union with a blond Siegfried...

was inevitably doomed.

Put not your trust in Aryans.

We're Jews, my dear Miss Spielrein,

and Jews we will always be.

Now, the real reason

I invited you here this evening...

was to ask if you'd be prepared

to take on one or two of my patients?

I was interested in what you said

about monotheism...

that it arose historically out of

some kind of patricidal impulse.

Yes.

Akhnaton, who as far as we know,

was the first...

to put forth the bizarre notion

that there was only one God.

Also had his father's name erased and

chiseled out of all public monuments.

That's not strictly true.

Not true?

No.

You mean,

it was most probably a myth?

No. I mean there were two perfectly

straightforward reasons...

for Akhnaton, or Amenhopis the IV

as I prefer to call him,

to excise his father's name

from the cartouches.

First... this was something

traditionally done...

by all new kings

who didn't wish their father's name...

to continue to be public currency.

In much the same way as your article in

the Yearbook, fails to mention my name?

Your name is so well-known it hardly

seemed necessary to mention it.

Do go on.

Secondly, Amenhopis only struck out

the first half of his father's name,

Amenhotep, because,

like the first half of his own name,

it was shared by Amon.

One of the gods

he was determined to eliminate.

Hm.

As simple as that?

The explanation

doesn't seem to me unduly simple.

And do you think your man,

whatever you call him,

felt no hostility whatsoever

toward his father?

I have no means of proof,

of course.

For all I know, Amenhopis may have thought

that his father's name familiar enough...

and that now it might be time

to make a name for himself.

How sweet...

it must be to die.

"If I may say so, dear Professor,

you make the mistake"...

"of treating your friends

like patients".

"This enables you to reduce them

to the level of children",

"so that their only choice is to become

obsequious nonentities"...

"or bullying enforcers of the party line,

while you sit on the mountaintop",

"the infallible father-figure and nobody

dares to pluck you by the beard and say",

"Think about your behaviour and then

decide which one of us is the neurotic".

"I speak as a friend".

Hm.

"Your letter cannot be answered".

"Your claim, that I treat my friends

like patients is self-evidently untrue".

"As to which of us is the neurotic,

I thought we analysts were agreed"...

"a little neurosis was nothing whatever

to be ashamed of".

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