The Interpretation of Murder

Chapter Five

I hammered on Brill's door until at last his wife, Rose, answered. I was bursting to tell them not only that I had arranged Freud's first American consultation but that a motorcar and driver were waiting downstairs to take him there, sent by the mayor of New York himself. The scene into which I intruded, however, was so full of good spirit and conviviality that I could not immediately see my way to breaking it up.

Brill's place was on the fifth floor of a six-story apartment house on Central Park West. And it was tiny — just three rooms, each smaller than my chamber at the Manhattan. But it looked out directly on the park, and nearly every inch of it was crammed with books. A homey smell of cooked onions hung in the air.

Jung was there, as well as Brill, Ferenczi, and Freud, all crowded around a small dining table in the middle of the main room, which served as kitchen, dining area, and parlor all at once. Brill shouted out that I must sit down and have some of Rose's brisket; wine was poured for me before I could reply. Brill and Ferenczi were in the middle of a story about being analyzed by Freud, with Brill acting the part of the Master. Everyone was laughing, even Jung, whose eyes, I noticed, lingered on Brill's wife.

'But come, my friends,' said Freud, 'that does not answer the question: why America?'

'The question, Younger,' Brill clarified for my benefit, 'is this. Psychoanalysis is excommunicated everywhere in Europe. Yet here, in puritanical America, Freud is to receive his first honorary degree and is asked to lecture at a prestigious university. How can that be?'

'Jung says,' Ferenczi added, 'it is because you Americans don't understand Freud's sexual theories. Once you do, he says, you will drop psychoanalysis like hot apple.'

'I don't think so,' I said. 'I think it will spread like wildfire.'

'Why?' asked Jung.

'Precisely because of our puritanism,' I answered. 'But there is something I — '

'That is opposite,' said Ferenczi. 'A puritan society should ban us.'

'It will ban you,' said Jung, laughing out loud, 'as soon as it figures out what we are saying.'

'America puritan?' Brill put in. 'The devil was more puritan.'

'Quiet, all of you,' said Rose Brill, a dark-haired woman with firm, no-nonsense eyes. 'Let Dr Younger explain what he meant.'

'No, wait,' said Freud. 'There is something else Younger wants to say. What is it, my boy?'

We trundled down the four flights of stairs as quickly as we could. The more he heard of the affair, the more intrigued Freud became, and when he learned of the mayor's personal involvement, he was as excited as I to get downtown, notwithstanding the hour. The motorcar being a four-seater, there was one extra place, so Freud decided Ferenczi would accompany us. Freud had first invited Jung, who seemed strangely uninterested and declined; he had not even come down to the street.

Just before we drove off, Brill said, 'I don't like your leaving Jung here. Let me go get him; you can squeeze him in and drop him at the hotel.'

'Abraham,' Freud replied with surprising severity, 'I have told you repeatedly how I feel about this. You must overcome your hostility to Jung. He is more important than the rest of us put together.'

'It's not that, for heaven's sake,' protested Brill. 'I've just given the man dinner in my own home, haven't I? It's his — condition — I'm talking about.'

'What condition?' asked Freud.

'He's not right. He's flushed, overly excited. Hot one minute, cold the next. Surely you noticed. Some of what he says makes no sense at all.'

'He's been drinking your wine.'

'That's another thing,' said Brill. 'Jung never touches alcohol.'

'That was Bleuler's influence,' Freud remarked. 'I've cured him of it. You don't object to Jung's drinking, Abraham?'

'Certainly not. Anything is better than Jung sober. Let's keep him drunk all the time. But there's something unsettling about him. From the moment he came in. Did you hear him ask why my floor was so soft — my wood floor?'

'You are imagining things,' said Freud. 'And behind the imagination there is always a wish. Jung is merely unused to alcohol. Just make sure he gets back to the hotel safely.'

'Very well.' Brill bade us good luck. As we pulled away, he called out, 'But there can also be a wish not to imagine.'

In the open-roofed car, rattling down Broadway, Ferenczi asked me if it was normal in America to eat a melange of apples, nuts, celery, and mayonnaise. Rose Brill had evidently served her guests a Waldorf salad.

Freud had fallen silent. He appeared to be brooding. I wondered if Brill's comments were troubling him; I myself had begun to think something might be wrong with Jung. I also wondered what Freud meant when he said that Jung was more important than the rest of us put together.

'Brill is a paranoiac,' Ferenczi said abruptly, addressing Freud. 'It is nothing.'

'The paranoid is never entirely mistaken,' Freud replied. 'Did you hear Jung's slip?'

'What slip?' said Ferenczi.

'His slip of the tongue,' answered Freud. 'He said, "America will ban you" — not us but you.'

Freud relapsed into silence. We took Broadway all the way down to Union Square, then Fourth Avenue to the Bowery Road through the Lower East Side. As we passed the closed stalls of the Hester Street market, we had to slow down. Although it was nearly eleven, Jewish men crowded the streets, wearing their long beards and peculiar outfits, black from head to foot. Perhaps it was too hot to sleep in the airless, crammed tenements in which so many of the city's immigrants lived. The Jews walked arm in arm or gathered in small circles, with much gesturing and loud disputation. The sound of their mongrel low German, which the Hebrews call Yiddish, was everywhere.

'So this is the New World,' Freud observed from the front seat, not favorably. 'Why on earth would they come so far, only to recreate what they left behind?'

I hazarded a question: 'Are you not a religious man, Dr Freud?'

It was infelicitous. At first I thought he hadn't heard me. Ferenczi answered instead: 'It depends on what is meant by religious. If, for example, religious means believing God is gigantic illusion inspired by collective Oedipal complex, Freud is very religious.'

Freud now fixed on me for the first time the piercing gaze I had seen on the quay. 'I will tell you your thought process in asking me that,' he said. 'I asked why these Jews had come here. It occurred to you to say They came for religious freedom, but you reconsidered, because it seemed too obvious. You then reflected that if I, a Jew, could not see that they came for religious freedom, it must be that religion does not signify much for me — indeed, so little that I failed to see how important it is for them. Hence your question. Do I have it right'

'Completely,' I replied.

'Not to worry,' interposed Ferenczi. 'He does this to everyone.'

'So. You ask me a direct question,' said Freud; 'I will give you a direct answer. I am the deepest of unbelievers. Every neurosis is a religion to its owner, and religion is the universal neurosis of mankind. This much is beyond doubt: the characteristics we attribute to God reflect the fears and wishes we first feel as infants and then as small children. Anyone who does not see that much cannot have understood the first thing about human psychology. If it is religion you are looking for, do not follow me.'

'Freud, you are being unfair,' said Ferenczi. 'Younger did not say he was looking for religion.'

'The boy has taken an interest in my ideas; he may as well know their implications.' Freud scrutinized me. All at once, the severity disappeared, and he gave me an almost fatherly look. 'And as I may possibly take an interest in his, I return the question: are you a religious man, Younger?'

To my embarrassment, I did not know how to respond. 'My father was,' I said.

'You answer a question,' Ferenczi replied, 'different from the one that was put.'

'But I understand him,' said Freud. 'He means: because his father believed, he is inclined to doubt.'

'That's true,' I said.

'But he also wonders,' Freud added, 'whether a doubt so founded is a good doubt. Which inclines him to believe.'

I could only stare. Ferenczi asked my question. 'How can you possibly know that?'

'It all follows,' answered Freud, 'from what he told us last night: that going into medicine was his father's wish, not his own. And besides,' he added, taking a satisfied pull at his cigar, 'I felt the same way when I was younger.'

With its grand marble facade, Greek pediments, and fantastic dome, softly lit by streedamps, the new police headquarters at 24 °Centre Street looked more like a palace than a municipal building. Passing through a pair of massive oak doors, we found a uniformed man behind a semicircular desk raised up to chest level. Electrical lights cast a yellow glow around him. He cranked up a telephonic device, and soon enough we were greeted by Mayor McClellan, together with an older, worried-looking, potbellied gentleman named Higginson, who turned out to be the Actons' family doctor.

Shaking each of us by the hand, McClellan apologized to Freud profusely for causing him so dreadful an inconvenience. 'Younger tells me you are also an expert on ancient Rome. I will give you my book on Venice. But I must take you upstairs. Miss Acton is in the most lamentable condition.'

The mayor led us up a marble staircase. Dr Higginson talked a good deal about the measures he had taken — none of which sounded harmful, so we had some luck there. We entered a large office in the classic style, with leather chairs, a good deal of brass, and an imposing desk. Behind this desk, looking much too small for it, a girl was seated, wrapped in a light blanket, with a policeman on either side of her.

McClellan was correct: she was in a pitiable state. She had been crying hard; her face was horribly red and swollen from it. Her long blond hair was loose and matted. She looked up at us with the largest, most fearful eyes I have ever seen — fearful and distrustful.

'We've been at it every which way,' McClellan declared. 'She is able to tell us, by writing, everything that happened before and after. But as to the — ah — incident itself, she remembers nothing.' Next to the girl were sheets of paper and a pen.

The mayor introduced us. The girl's name was Nora. He explained that we were special doctors who, he hoped, would be able to help her recover her voice and her memory. He spoke to her as if she were a child of seven, perhaps confusing her speaking difficulty with a difficulty in understanding, although one could tell instantly from her eyes that she had no impairment on that score. Predictably, the entrance of three more strange new men had the effect of overwhelming the girl. Tears came to her eyes, but she held them back. She actually wrote an apology to us, as if she were at fault for her amnesia.

'Please proceed, gentlemen,' said McClellan.

Freud wanted first to rule out a physiological basis for her symptoms. 'Miss Acton,' he said, 'I would like to be sure you have not suffered an injury to your head. Will you permit me?' The girl nodded. After making a thorough inspection, Freud concluded, 'There is no cranial injury of any kind.'

'Damage to the larynx could cause aphonia,' I remarked, referring to the girl's loss of voice.

Freud nodded and invited me, by gesture, to examine the girl myself.

Approaching Miss Acton, I felt inexplicably nervous. I could not identify the source of this anxiety; I seemed to be afraid that I would appear to Freud as inexperienced, yet I had performed examinations infinitely more complicated — and these in front of my professors at Harvard — without any such unease. I explained to Miss Acton that it was important to determine whether a physical injury might be causing her inability to speak. I asked if she would take my hand and place it on her neck in such a way as to minimize her own discomfort. I held my hand out, two fingers extended. Reluctantly, she conducted it toward her throat, placing my fingers, however, on her collarbone. I asked her to lift her head. She complied, and as I ran my fingers up her throat to the larynx, I noticed, despite her injuries, the soft, perfect lines of her neck and chin, which might have been carved in marble by Bernini. When I applied pressure to various points, she squinted but did not draw back. 'There is no evidence of laryngeal trauma,' I reported.

Miss Acton looked even more mistrustful now than when we first came in. I didn't blame her. It can be more upsetting for a person to find out there isn't anything physically wrong with her than to find out there is. At the same time, she was without her family, surrounded by strange men. She seemed to be assessing us all, one by one.

'My dear,' Freud said to her, 'you are anxious about the loss of your memory and your voice. You need not be.

Amnesia after such an incident is not uncommon, and I have seen loss of speech many times. Where there is no permanent physical injury — and you have none — I have always succeeded in eliminating both conditions. Now: I am going to ask you some questions, but none about what happened to you today. I want you to tell me only how you are at this moment. Would you care for something to drink?' She nodded gratefully; McClellan sent out one of the officers, who returned shortly with a cup of tea. In the meantime, Freud engaged the girl in conversation — he speaking, she writing — but only on the most general of facts, such as, for example, that she was to be a freshwoman at Barnard starting next month. In the end, she wrote that she was sorry she could not answer the policemen's questions, and she wanted to go home.

Freud indicated that he wished to speak with us outside the girl's hearing. This prompted a grave trooping of men

Freud, Mayor McClellan, Ferenczi, Dr Higginson, and I to the far corner of the spacious office, where Freud asked, in a very low voice, 'Was she violated?'

'No, thank God,' whispered McClellan.

'But her wounds,' said Higginson, 'are conspicuously concentrated around her — private parts.' He cleared his throat. 'Apart from her back, it seems she was whipped repeatedly about her buttocks and — ah — pelvis. In addition, she was cut once on each of her thighs with a sharp knife or razor.'

'What kind of monster does such a thing?' McClellan asked.

'The question is why it doesn't happen more often,' replied Freud quietly. 'Satisfying a savage instinct is incomparably more pleasurable than satisfying a civilized one. In any event, the best course of action tonight is certainly inaction. I am not convinced her amnesia is hysterical. Severe asphyxiation could bring about the same effect. On the other hand, she is plainly suffering from some deep self- reproach. She should sleep. She may wake up asymptomatic. If her symptoms persist, analysis will be in order.'

'Self-reproach?' asked McClellan.

'Guilt,' said Ferenczi. 'The girl is suffering not only from attack but from guilt she feels in connection with it.'

'Why on earth would she feel guilt?' asked the mayor.

'There are many possible reasons,' said Freud. 'But an element of self-reproach is almost invariable in cases of sexual assault on the young. She has already twice apologized to us for her memory loss. Her voice loss is more puzzling.'

'Sodomized, perhaps?' asked Ferenczi in a whisper. ' Per os '

'Great God,' McClellan interjected, also whispering. 'Is that possible?'

'It is possible,' Freud answered, 'but not likely. If an oral penetration were the source of her symptoms, her inability to use her mouth would be expected to extend to taking in. But you will notice she drank her tea without difficulty. Indeed, that is why I asked if she was thirsty.'

We contemplated this momentarily. McClellan spoke again, no longer whispering. 'Dr Freud, forgive my ignorance, but does her memory of the event still exist, or has it been, so to speak, wiped out?'

'Assuming hysterical amnesia, the memory certainly exists,' Freud answered. 'It is the cause.'

'The memory is the cause of the amnesia?' McClellan asked.

'The memory of the attack — along with the deeper recollections rekindled by it — is unacceptable. Therefore she has repressed it, producing the appearance of an amnesia.'

'Deeper recollections?' repeated the mayor. 'I don't follow you.'

'An episode of the kind this girl has undergone,' said Freud, 'however brutal, however terrible, will not at her age ordinarily cause amnesia. The victim remembers, provided she is otherwise healthy. But where the victim has suffered another, — earlier traumatic episode — so traumatic the memory of it had to be wholly suppressed from consciousness — an attack can bring about amnesia, because the fresh attack cannot be remembered without also triggering recollections of the older episode, which her consciousness cannot allow.'

'Good Lord,' said the mayor.

'What is to be done?' asked Higginson.

'Can you cure her?' the mayor cut in. 'She is the only one who can give us a description of her assailant.'

'Hypnosis?' Ferenczi suggested.

'I advise strongly against it,' said Freud. 'It would not help her, and memories yielded under hypnosis are not reliable.'

'What of this — this analysis, as you call it?' the mayor asked.

'We could begin as early as tomorrow,' Freud replied. 'But I should warn you: psychoanalysis is an intensive treatment. The patient must be seen daily, for at least an hour each day.'

'I see no difficulty there,' declared McClellan. 'The question is what to do with Miss Acton tonight.' The girl's parents, summering at their house in the Berkshire country, could not be reached. Higginson suggested calling on some friends of the family, but the mayor said it wouldn't do. 'Acton will not want word of the episode to get out. People might believe the girl has been permanently injured.'

Miss Acton almost certainly overheard the last comment. I saw her now writing a new note for us. I went to her and received it; I want to go home, it said. Now.

McClellan immediately told the girl he could not allow it. Criminals had been known, he warned her, to return to the scene of their crime. The assailant might be keeping watch over her house even now. Fearing that she could identify him, he might believe his only hope of escaping justice was to take her life. Returning to Gramercy Park was therefore out of the question, at least until her father was back in town to assure her safety. At this, Miss Acton's face changed again and she made a gesture with her hands, expressing an emotion I could not identify.

'I have it,' McClellan announced. Miss Acton, he said, would be taken to the Hotel Manhattan, where we were staying. The mayor himself would pay for her rooms. She would be settled there along with Mrs Biggs, the old housekeeper, who could see to it that proper attire and other necessaries were sent up from Gramercy Park. Miss Acton would stay at the hotel until her parents returned from the country. This arrangement would be not only the safest but the most convenient for purposes of commencing her treatment.

'There is a further difficulty,' said Freud. 'Psychoanalysis requires from the doctor a substantial commitment of time. Obviously I cannot make such a commitment. Neither can my colleague Dr Ferenczi. What about you, Younger? Will you take her on?'

Freud saw by my hesitation that I wished to respond privately to him. He drew me aside.

'It should be Brill,' I said, 'not me.'

Freud fixed me again with the look that could bore into rock. He replied quietly, 'I have no doubt of your abilities, my boy; your case history proves them. I want you to take her on.'

It was simultaneously an order I could not disobey and an expression of confidence whose effect on me I cannot describe. I agreed.

'Good,' he said aloud. 'She is yours. I will supervise as long as I remain in America, but Dr Younger will perform the analysis. Assuming, of course,' he added, turning toward Miss Acton, 'that our patient is as willing as we are.'