I liked Ferenczi at once, but I had never before shaken a hand
that offered no resistance whatsoever, less than a joint of meat
at the butcher’s. It was embarrassing: he let out a yelp and
yanked his fingers away as if they had been crushed. I
apologized profusely, but he insisted he was glad to “start
learning right away American walls,” a remark at which I could
only nod in polite agreement.
Jung, who was about thirty-five, made a markedly different
impression. He was better than six feet tall, unsmiling,
blue-eyed, dark-haired, with an aquiline nose, a pencil-thin
mustache, and a great expanse of forehead—quite attractive to
women, I should have thought, although he lacked Freud’s ease.
His hand was firm and cold as steel. Standing ramrod straight,
he might have been a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard, except for
his little round scholarly spectacles. The affection Brill
clearly felt for Freud and Ferenczi was nowhere in evidence when
he shook Jung’s hand.
“How was your passage, gentlemen?” asked Brill. We could not go
anywhere; our guests’ trunks had to be collected. “Not too
wearisome?”
“Capital,” said Freud. “You won’t believe it: I found a steward
reading my Psychopathology of Everyday Life.”
“No!” Brill replied. “Ferenczi must have put him up to it.”
“Put him up?” Ferenczi cried out. “I did no such—”
Freud took no notice of Brill’s comment. “It may have been the
most gratifying moment of my professional life, which does not
perhaps reflect too well on my professional life. Recognition is
coming to us, my friends: recognition, slowly but surely.”
“Did the crossing take long, sir?” I inquired idiotically.
“A week,” Freud answered, “and we spent it in the most
productive way possible: we analyzed each other’s dreams.”
“Good God,” said Brill. “I wish I had been there. What were the
results, in the name of heaven?”
“Well, you know,” Ferenczi returned, “analysis is rather like
being undressed in public. After you overcome initial
humiliation, is quite refreshing.”
“That’s what I tell all my patients,” said Brill, “especially
the women. And what about you, Jung? Did you also find the
humiliation refreshing?”
Jung, almost a foot taller than Brill, looked down on him as if
at a laboratory specimen. “It is not quite accurate,” he
replied, “to say the three of us analyzed each other.”
“True,” Ferenczi confirmed. “Freud rather analyzed us, while
Jung and I crossed interpretative swords with each other.”
“What?” Brill exclaimed. “You mean no one dared to analyze the
Master?”
“No one was permitted to,” said Jung, betraying no affect.
“Yes, yes,” said Freud, with a knowing smile, “but you all
analyze me to death as soon as my back is turned, don’t you,
Abraham?”
“We do indeed,” Brill replied, “because we are all good sons,
and we know our Oedipal duty.”
In the apartment high above the city, a set of instruments lay
on the bed behind the bound girl. From left to right, there
were: a man’s right-angled razor, with a bone handle; a black
leather riding crop about two feet in length; three surgical
knives, in ascending order of size; and a small vial half full
of a clear fluid. The assailant considered and picked up one of
these instruments.
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