Significant Moments: Part 21

I recognize in all humility that I cannot understand why the world is arranged as it is. Men are themselves to blame, I suppose: they were given paradise, they wanted freedom, and stole fire from heaven, though they would become unhappy. So there is no need to pity them. With my earthly, Euclidean understanding, all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level--
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
Like Adam and Eve, we must lose the promise of the glory of Eden--
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
I do not hear threats or punishment in this, but rather a statement of the reality principle, or the way things are.
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
We regularly find that abusers of children have been abused as children by their own parents. This is not heredity (although we cannot completely rule that out) but rather a passing down of a traumatic past from generation to generation. The sins of the father are laid upon the children-- . . .

The intimate relations of [victimizer] to his victim is illuminated by a remark Freud made to Fliess about the confessions of those supposedly possessed by the devil that were extracted under torture during the Inquisition. He traced back to their seduction as children by adults, by parents, the torture and torment, the leading questions and compliant answers of inquisitor and accused: "thus victim and torturer alike recall their earliest youth . . . . "
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.

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" . . . I wrote a poem about a year ago. If you can waste another ten minutes, I'll tell it to you." . . .

"I've never written two lines of poetry in my life. But I made up this poem in prose and I remember it. I was carried away when I made it up. You will be my first reader--that is, listener. Why should an author forego even one listener?" . . .

"My poem is called "The Grand Inquisitor.' It's a ridiculous thing, but I want to tell it to you."
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
In Portugal, the Inquisition began in the 1490s. During it every book in Hebrew, including the Torah, was banned from the country, and anyone who was found reading or speaking the language could be executed. In fact, anyone who was circumcised, or refused to eat pork or shellfish, or refrained from going to church could be denounced as a heretic and killed. So, to preserve some shreds of tradition, Portuguese sages invented an elaborate system of subterfuges and translated much of the Hebrew litany into Portuguese jingles, which could be remembered and transmitted from one generation to the next.
Paul Cohen, An Orphan in History.
Crypto-Jews, anusim in Hebrew and conversos in Spanish, are Jews who were converted to Catholicism--generally by force--in 14th-, 15th-, and 16th-century Spain and Portugal but retaining some measure of Jewish identity or Jewish ritual practice.
Sarah Wildman, Conversos Surfacing Among Southwest’s Hispanics: 'Crypto-Jews' Seek Lost Heritage as Academic Debate Rages.
As recently as sixty years ago, the conversos [of Belmonte, Portugal] thought that all the Jews in the world had been killed in the Inquisition, and that they alone had survived by escaping to their barren, remote province and taking on the protective coloration of Christianity.

Even though they now know that other Jews exist, they still fear the Inquisition. Their ceremonies must comprise one of the most durable underground religions in human history, since they blend open Christianity with the rituals that hark back to the Judaism that was denied to their ancestors. For example, many of them are married in two ceremonies: in church and, later that same day, in the cellars of their own homes, where on old woman binds the hands of the bride and groom and weds them “according to the laws of Moses.”

Most of them go to church. But, as they cross themselves and dip their hands into the holy water, they mutter an incantation of spiritual resistance—a rejection of idolatry.
Paul Cohen, An Orphan in History.
Only a few Hebrew words have survived among them. Adonai, of course, is their secret name for God. Goyo, from the Hebrew goy, still refers to a non-Jew. Entrefada, from the Hebrew trefa, means impure, or not kosher. Some of their prayers contain words which are indecipherable in either Hebrew or Portuguese. And in one prayer an entire sentence of Hebrew is preserved, though completely garbled. The [conversos] pronounce it, “Adunai Sabaat Malcolares; Cobrado.” In the original Hebrew it is “Adonai Tzeva’ot m’lo kol ha’aretz k’vodo” (Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory). They recite these words mechanically, without any hint of their meaning.
Dan Ross, Acts of Faith.
After their forced conversion to Christianity, their Jewish identity and consciousness were gradually obliterated—to be replaced by the mere memory of a remote Jewish ancestry . . .
Raphael Patai, Foreword to Dan Ross, Acts of Faith.
In recent years, psychoanalysts have paid increasing attention to the fascinating problem of identity. . . . As far as I know, the term identity has been introduced into the psychoanalytic literature by Victor Tausk in his brilliant paper on the “influencing machine” (1919).
Edith Jacobson, The Self and the Object World.
It would necessary at this point to discuss the psychoanalytic literature on the psychology of identity and self, and that cannot be done in this context. But this much may be said—that, while much that has been discussed in all post-Freudian psychoanalytic literature under the headings of “self” and “identity” does, in my opinion, find its place in ego psychology, as outlined by Freud, it is certain that not all of it finds its place within the area Freud staked out. I do not know whether Freud would have accepted those problems of self and identity that do lie outside ego-psychology proper as valid problems of psychoanalysis.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
The Inquisition prided itself on preserving the medieval faith undiluted . . .
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VII. The Age of Reason Begins.
. . . for without doubt . . .
G.A. Henty, The Dragon and the Raven.
. . . it is so essential that there be one flock and one shepherd
Feodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov.
So the Inquisition continued its conscientious ferocity. It checked with “moderate” punishments—such as a hundred lashes—such heresies as that fornication is no sin, or that marriage is as holy as monastic celibacy. But for “relapsed” Marranos—converted Jews who secretly returned to Judaism—death or life imprisonment was the standard expiation.
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VII. The Age of Reason Begins.
It is hardly to be doubted that the early Christians would have been paralyzed in the propagation of their faith if they had known what their followers would do a few generations later—if they had known, for example, the future truth of the Inquisition . . .
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
The outside world knew nothing of the conversos until 1917, when Samuel Schwarz, a Polish mining engineer, came to Belmonte. People there warned him not to trade at one of the local stores. It was owned by Jews. Of course, that warning whetted his curiosity. But when he attempted to establish contact with the conversos, insisting that he shared their secret faith, they didn’t believe him. How could he have survived the Inquisition?

But they were curious about him. In Belmonte, their religion is a matrilineal one—possibly because the faith is centered in the home. When a girl reaches eleven she learns the secret [Jewish] prayers and ceremonies from her mother, and is warned not to share them with the outside world.

One summer evening, with much of the community present, Schwarz was moved to chant the ancient Hebrew prayer, Shema, Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Ehad. (Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.)
Paul Cohen, An Orphan in History.
. . . the old prayer they had neglected for so many tears—the forgotten creed!
Arnold Schoenberg, A Survivor From Warsaw.
Though the people of Belmonte had never heard of a language called Hebrew, that prayer opened the door of trust. Adonai—God—was the only Hebrew word that had survived the Inquisition: the only trace of the holy tongue . . .
Paul Cohen, An Orphan in History.
—a kind of . . .
O. Henry, The Moment of Victory.
. . . mother tongue, . . .
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
. . . that remained in their Portuguese language liturgy. As soon as Schwarz uttered the word, the conversos covered their eyes. One of the oldest women among them recited a prayer. Then, weeping, she reached out her hands and touched Schwarz’s face. “He is indeed a Jew,” she said. “For he knows the name Adonai.”
Paul Cohen, An Orphan in History.

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First a word about the term “identity.” As far as I know Freud used it only once in a more than incidental way, and then with a psychosocial connotation. It was when he tried to formulate his link to the Jewish people that he spoke of an “inner identity” which was less based on race or religion than on a common readiness to live in opposition, and on a common freedom from prejudices which narrow the use of the intellect. Here, the term “identity” points to an individual's link with the unique values, fostered by a unique history, of his people. Yet, it also relates to the cornerstone of this individual’s unique development: for the importance of the theme of “incorruptible observation at the price of professional isolation” playing a central role in Freud’s life. . . . It is this identity of something in the individual's core with an essential aspect of a group’s inner coherence which is under consideration here: for the young individual must learn to be most himself where he means most to others—those others, to be sure, who have come to mean most to him. The term “identity” expresses such a mutual relation in that it connotes both a persistent sameness within oneself (selfsameness) and a persistent sharing of some kind of essential character with others. . . .

The community, often not without some initial mistrust, gives [identity] recognition with a (more or less institutionalized) display of surprise and pleasure in making the acquaintance of a newly emerging individual. For the community, in turn, feels “recognized” by the individual who cares to ask for recognition; it can, by the same token, feel deeply—and vengefully—rejected by the individual who does not seem to care.
Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle.

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This chronicle is drawing to an end, and this seems to be the moment for . . .
Albert Camus, The Plague.
. . . tying the threads together . . .
Jo Palmer and Faye Davies, Vascular Specimen Mounting Guidelines for the Australian National Herbarium.
. . . enough to carry us to the end of our journey.
Voltaire, Candide.
The Jews who emigrated . . .
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
. . . from Spain to Portugal . . .
John Butt, Introduction to Voltaire, Candide.
. . . under the expulsion order issued by . . .
Ferdinand and Isabella and the Confiscation of the Property of the Jews of Spain upon their Expulsion in 1492.
. . . the crown of Spain . . .
Voltaire, Candide.
. . . bore the marks of the Inquisition, and also of the program of forced conversion. Young men experienced emotional crises over who they really were and what the true religion was. Their mental defenses would include a sense of superiority to other Jews. Their Judaism, if they preserved it, would often be cynical, or highly formal and rigid. The Spanish people were not the only ones whose character was wrenched by the Inquisition.

With the grandeur—real or imagined—of the Spanish past lost, the Jews built up a new base in Portugal, with new, touching loyalties. The Inquisition pursued, as Portugal fell under Spain’s domination; huge bribes to Papal nuncios could not stave it off, and “Judaizing heretics” were burned in Portuguese acts of faith. This homeland too, and the emotions invested in its settlement, became less and less tenable for many of them.

Some began leaving Holland, and they must have brought with them a complicated past.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
In their view . . .
Gilbert Parker, The Judgment House.
. . . the past . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . was all very confusing and somehow as necessary to know about as it was dangerous.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
They were a people marked indelibly by the culture of passage. Spain had gone so deep that, many years and two migrations later, in Holland, the liturgy of their synagogue would still be in Spanish; and their Community’s poets would glorify in Spanish both their True Faith and their martyrs to the True Faith of the Spanish Inquisition. Portugal went so deep that in the Jewish community cemetery, near Amsterdam, coats of arms would be carved on gravestones over men who died a hundred years after the migration from Portugal—with inscriptions in Portuguese.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
[They] had made the memory of oblivion into a cause, and [they] seemed determined to transform the loss of identity into an identity in its own right.
Philip Gourevitch, The Memory Thief.
No doubt there are many reasons for this, but I think the chief is that . . .
Bryan Magee, Aspects of Wagner.
A society requires antecedents. Where these are not naturally at hand, where a community is new or reassembled after a long interval of dispersal or subjection, a necessary past tense to the grammar of being is created by intellectual or emotional fiat.
George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle.
This tangled solution “kept the past,” made the present viable, and also complicated further the inner problems of identity these people had brought with them—the confusion of having chosen to be Jews again, and of being proud of having had to be Christians. Some of them had also learned too well the Inquisition’s tricks, and its cynicism. A depressing thing about oppression is that the oppressed so often is tempted to admire the oppressor. Their’s was a most complex equation. It encouraged insincerity, and superficiality, and could not help imparting a special rigid sinuousness to character. It would take an unusual young man . . .
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
. . . a determined outsider—
Charles L. Mee, Jr., Rembrandt’s Portrait: A Biography.
. . . to break with these mental patterns. He would have to be unusually straightforward, and perhaps naïve, or psychologically somewhat primitive. He would need a kind of inner ruthlessness toward himself, and a tough clarity about others.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
It was natural that a youth of exceptionally active mind should raise some questions about the doctrines transmitted to him in the synagogue school. Perhaps even there he had heard of Hebrew heresies. . . . Spinoza must have read Levi ben Gerson, who had reduced Biblical miracles to natural causes, and had subordinated faith to reason saying, “The Torah cannot prevent us from considering to be true that which reason urges us to believe.” And only recently, in this Amsterdam community, Uriel Acosta had challenged the belief in immortality, and, humiliated by excommunication, had shot himself (1647).
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
Thus was the young idealist hurled down and shattered.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
Or so the story goes.
Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
As for me . . .
Thomas Mann, Felix Krull.
. . . it is my opinion that . . .
Edgar B.P. Darlington, The Circus Boys On the Mississippi.
A psychoanalyst makes, ultimately, the same claims as a religious leader, and they are equally false. In my experience, psychoanalysis demanded loyalty that could not be questioned, the blind acceptance of unexamined “wisdom.” It is characteristic of religious orders to seek obedience without skepticism, but it spells the death of intellectual inquiry. All variants of “because I say so,” or because the Koran says so, or the Bible says so, or the Upanishads say so, or Freud says so, or Marx says so, are simply different means of stifling intellectual dissent. In the end they cannot satisfy the inquisitive mind or still the doubts that naturally arise when such a mind is confronted with authoritative statements about human behavior.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
[T]he portrait that seems to be coming into focus is that of a lone (and lonely) youth, doing lone reading, making lone decisions . . . hanging on, perhaps out of sentiment, to a spot in the heart of that guardian of orthodoxy [Rabbi] Morteira . . . meanwhile constructing quietly his view of what the Torah and Talmud really were: a method by which lawmakers and rules provided laws and rules, using the hocus-pocus of supernatural sanction in order to direct the credulous masses. . . .

He was assembling the evidence for the shattering realization that theology had always been politics.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
[His] was a faith of dramatic interruptions, agonizing temptations, unresolved struggles, and gnawing anxieties, not one of saintly callings and ecstatic martyrdoms. Uncertainty, anger, disbelief, and betrayal were at the heart of it.
Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
But to my confession.
First of all I must make it clear that . . .
Thomas Mann, Felix Krull.
. . . I acknowledge that Freud’s preoccupations, with dreams, with memory, with the primacy of emotions, with the importance of childhood and especially human misery, are now our preoccupations, for the better. I am convinced that throughout history they have always been the preoccupations of men and women concerned with the betterment of their lives and those of their fellow creatures. We need to acknowledge Freud’s achievements; we do not need to revere his errors. Freud was an extraordinary human being with all the failings of a man; turning him into an idol is a disservice to what must remain a continual search for truth. He taught us much; there is still much to learn.

But while I admire much of what Freud taught us, I do not admire the fact that he turned astute observations about human nature into elements of a vast and profitable profession with all the trappings of a jealously protected guild. The price for joining the fraternity is silence about its membership policy. Corruption is incorporated, not exposed; prejudice and bias have been accepted, even embraced. It is a high price to pay for membership.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
And what of Spinoza?
Colin Wilson, Spinoza—the Outsider.
I need not go into great detail—
Thomas Mann, Felix Krull.
The rabbis summoned Spinoza, and chided him for disappointing the bright hopes that his teachers had held for his future in the community. [Spinoza’s mentor, ultraconservative Rabbi] Saul Morteira, pleaded with the youth to abandon his heresies.
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
The rabbi placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
David Evanier, My Rabbi, Ray Charles, and Singing Birds.
I am charged, . . .
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo.
. . . Baruch . . .
Honore de Balzac, The Two Brothers.
. . . with cautioning you to abandon these teachings.
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo.
In fairness to the rabbis we must note that [Spinoza’s friend and biographer] Lucas, though strongly sympathetic with Spinoza, records that when Morteira recalled the loving care he had given to the education of his favorite pupil, Baruch . . .
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
—admittedly . . .
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.
. . . a young know-it-all . . .
Charles L. Mee, Jr., Rembrandt’s Portrait: A Biography.
. . . cast as the rebel, the “heretic,” . . .
Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
. . . “answered that in return for the trouble Morteira had taken in teaching him the Hebrew language, he [Spinoza] would now be glad to teach his instructor how to excommunicate.”
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
The truth-seeker knew all the mummery used by the establishment, and knew it better than they did.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
“One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge you—answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—[a] child beating its breast with its fist, for instance—in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
There came a pause, then a deep shuddering groan.
Elia W. Peattie, A Michigan Man.
Enough.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
“The question will not be raised.”
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
I tried rephrasing the question:
Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir.
“But, Dr. Eissler . . . ”
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
And another pause. Then—
Katherine Mansfield, The Singing Lesson.
‘No, no! . . .’
Emile Zola, The Debacle.
“The question will not be raised.”
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
He stood up and started pacing back and forth.
Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir.
Eissler was very agitated, and became more personal now. “Has anybody ever loved you the way I loved you? I never refused you anything. It was true, but I did not know what it had to do with the accusations being hurled at me. I really did not know how to respond. “Has anybody ever done as much for you as I have? And is this how you repay me?”
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
What is resonating in that phrase? Do you remember Tristan?
Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question.
This to me? This, Tristan, to me? Whither has loyalty fled now that Tristan has betrayed me?
Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde.
I remember the look on his face, the agony, the sadness, the dismay.
Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir.
The only reward for my sacrifice . . .
Richard Wagner, Lohengrin.
. . . said the old man . . .
Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Injured.
. . . has been your . . .
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus.
. . . betrayal and moral instability.
Maynard Solomon, Mozart: A Life.
God, the rhetoric!
Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir.
And I tried to follow what came next, as . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . Eissler . . .
K.R. Eissler, Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study 1775-1786.
. . . was now considering what he called my "soul."

He said he'd studied it closely--and had found a blank, "literally nothing, gentlemen . . . ." Really, he said, I had no soul, there was nothing human about me, not one of those moral qualities which normal men possess had any place in my mentality.
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
Why not?
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
He proceeded to discuss my conduct toward . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . Anna Freud, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . repeating what he had said in the course of . . .
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
. . . the meeting.
Rex Ellingwood Beach, The Winds of Chance.
But he spoke at much greater length of my crime--
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
Had I not had the full confidence of Anna Freud? Did I not stab her in the back? Had I not prepared a "patricidal" edition of the letters--meaning that I had prepared an unexpurgated edition that allowed Freud to speak for himself for the first time?
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
As it was, I thought it . . .
P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith, Journalist.
. . . an instance of Eisslerian overkill—
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
Yes, that was all.
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
In so doing I may or may not have committed an act of disloyalty.
Carl Bernstein, Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir.
There was but one conclusion to be drawn.
Jules Verne, Master of the World.
Such are the characteristic marks of outraged love by an old man, wise in his own eyes, when repudiated by his most brilliant object.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
But that is the way people are. They want people to be talented—which is already something out of the ordinary. But when it comes to the other qualities which go with the talents—and are perhaps essential to them—oh, no, they don’t care for these at all . . .
Thomas Mann, Felix Krull.
[M]indful as Eissler was of his friendship for me, he was even more mindful of the position of psychoanalysis. After all, Freud had sacrificed everything, certainly mere friendships, for die Sache, or “the cause,” that is, psychoanalysis. So much depended on appearances. The articles in the New York Times made psychoanalysis look bad. The directors . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . of the Sigmund Freud Archives . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . who found themselves . . .
Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask.
. . . condemned, as it were, . . .
Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset.
. . . to the excruciating mental task of holding reality and the official version of reality together. . .
Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.
. . . were not asking why, or whether there was any truth in my claims, but were simply concerned with appearances.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
The circle of self-interest created a complete circle of self-deception that . . .
Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.
. . . supported the persistent official policy of silence and denial.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
Characterological harmonies resound in . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . our image of the Amsterdam ghetto of Spinoza’s time.
James Collins, Interpreting Spinoza: A Paradigm for Historical Work.
The only defense . . .
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
. . . the Amsterdam ghetto . . .
Erica Jong, Fear of Flying.
. . . knew, against the ever present possibility of anti-Semitic reaction, was to show a constant pious face to the outside world. Strict observance of doctrine, a resolute belief in dogma, could compel the grudging respect of the most dogmatic predikants. These facts of life the truth-seeker [Spinoza] insisted on ignoring.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
Things had to be brought to a conclusion . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
And so, on . . .
Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution.
. . . July 24, 1656, the religious and secular authorities of the Jewish community . . .
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
. . . hands folded, tight-lipped, hats on head . . .
Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s Eyes.
. . . solemnly pronounced from the pulpit of the Portuguese synagogue the full excommunication of “Baruch d’Espinosa,” with all the customary curses and prohibitions: no one was to speak or write to him, . . .
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
. . . harbour him or join him . . .
Richard Wagner, Lohengrin.
. . . or do him any service, or read his writings, or come within the space of four cubits’ distance from him. Morteira went before the Amsterdam officials, notified them of the charges and the excommunication, and asked that Spinoza be expelled from the city.
Will Durant and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization: Part VIII. The Age of Louis XIV.
Such is the fate of him who tries to reach for truth, upward.
Dan Levin, Spinoza.
He [had] surrendered utterly to the power that to him seemed the highest on earth, to whose service he felt called, which promised him elevation and honours: the power of intellect, the power of the Word, that lords it with a smile over the unconscious and inarticulate. To this power he surrendered with all the passion of youth, and it rewarded him with all it had to give, taking from him inexorably, in return, all that it is wont to take.
Thomas Mann, Tonio Kroger.
It had never occurred to me before, but it struck me now almost like an act of retribution on the part of destiny.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
I knew that my fall from grace meant that I would no longer have any function within psychoanalysis. Everything would be removed from me. It was.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I was shunned.
O. Henry, Man About Town.
I ought to have felt terrible. Instead I felt free.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
There are certain things on which Destiny stubbornly insists. Reason and virtue, duty and all that is sacred to us oppose them in vain. Destiny wishes something to happen which to it seems right, but does not seem right to us; and in the end Destiny will be the Victor, fight against it as we may.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.

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“ . . . What happened to Jeff at the Archives was unfortunate. He very much needs the acceptance and corroboration of people he respects. He wants desperately to have ties to people like Eissler. These connections give him narcissistic nourishment, and when he doesn’t get it, it’s a terrible strain for him. He provoked what happened, of course, but it’s terribly unfortunate that he elicited all this reaction from Anna Freud and Eissler and the whole psychoanalytic establishment. It pushed him in an unhealthy direction. There’s a kind of crazy sincerity there, but he can turn against anyone, because he can . . .
Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives.
. . . be exposed for what he is . . .
Richard Wagner, Lohengrin.
. . . by anyone.”

I said, “He feels that Eissler betrayed him by firing him?”

“Eissler betrayed him by suddenly looking at him and seeing what he was. That’s a fatal sin.” Shengold paused . . .
Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives.
Shengold was a heavy-set, older analyst with a friendly demeanor who in spite of his size looked younger than his years.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Shengold paused, then said, “Eissler may have been attracted to Jeff in somewhat the way Freud was attracted to Fliess. Fliess was a very charming and vivacious man, and Freud had a need and a terrible weakness for that kind of glamorous person. When Jung came along, he became that person again for Freud. Both Fliess and Jung were charlatans in some ways, but very bright, very beguiling ones. There must have been something of that sort going on between Eissler and Jeff. But there was something else. Eissler is such an isolated person. Everybody respects him, but nobody will approach him, because they’re a little afraid of him. He has a standoffish manner. But Jeff approached him in a very friendly and interested way, and Eissler responded immediately. Eissler doesn’t think he’s lovable. I have a feeling that he doesn’t have close friends. He seems desperate for a kind of friendliness that he cannot achieve naturally and spontaneously. And he found it in Jeff.”
Janet Malcolm, In The Freud Archives.
This is very strange, I said to myself. How can one make sense of all this?
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat.
. . . the relationship between a master and his disciple . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson and Terri Masson, Buried Memories on the Acropolis: Freud’s Response to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism.
Was there any precedent? Had anything like this ever been described— . . .? I did not know, but I immediately thought of a possible parallel—
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat.
Joseph Knecht, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . the character in . . .
Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial.
. . . Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, My Father’s Guru.
Yes, I thought to myself . . . .
Here is a similar case.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
Let me see, how does it go?
Anton Chekhov, Swan Song.
Ah, yes!
John Galsworthy, Justice.
Joseph himself would scarcely have imagined that . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . his precocious . . .
Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son.
. . . appointment to Mariafels represented a special distinction and . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . one of the major steps in a candidate’s progress . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . but he was after all a good deal wiser about such matters nowadays and could plainly read the significance of his summons in the attitude and conduct of his fellow students. Of course, he had belonged for some time to the innermost circle within the elite of the Glass Bead Game players, but now the unusual assignment marked him to all and sundry as a young man whom the superiors had their eyes on and whom they intended to employ.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
At the same time, being more or less part of an inner circle meant that I made automatic enemies, or at least awakened jealousy and envy in those who, rejected by the circle, felt rightly or wrongly that I did not have as great a claim to this circle as they did.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
There were bitter hostilities among the young men, as there were bound to be in a court circle.
Sheldon M. Novick, Henry James: The Young Master.
His associates and ambitious fellow players did not exactly withdraw or become unfriendly—the members of this highly aristocratic group were far too well-mannered for that—but an aloofness nevertheless arose. Yesterday’s friend might well be tomorrow’s superior, and this circle registered and expressed such gradations and differentiations by the most delicate shades of behavior.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
The consequence was easily foreseen—
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan.
[The disciples’] reverence for The Master was balanced by their malice for his Shadow; they wanted [the Master’s chosen disciple] to fail even if the Master himself had to suffer as well.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Everybody, of course, considered his own views to be the closest to those of the master . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . [a Master who acted like] a withholding parent, whose “adopted children” [the disciples] hungered for his attention.
Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud’s Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis.
But far beyond that, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . [a Master who, for his part, needed] to recruit disciples [and] to have his beliefs validated; but [who would remain] an isolated figure who did not have any close friends who might criticize him on equal terms.
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay. Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus.
Disciples were a mandatory part of . . .
Charles B. Strozier, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst.
. . . the great Game, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . for without a following . . .
Charles B. Strozier, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst.
. . . the Glass Bead Game Master . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . remained inconsequential, empty, without echo or a symbolically immortalized future. In music the first such figure was Wagner, around whom a cult quickly gathered. The tradition generated the imperative for rebellion. The script required submission to . . .
Charles B. Strozier, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst.
. . . the Magister . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . as essential for learning. That experience of discipleship sparked in turn the recognition of one’s own genius. The result, inevitably, was a break with the original, revered figure and the establishment of one’s own movement.
Charles B. Strozier, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst.
Out of this process there evolved a new conception, more akin to a symbol than a dream, more insight than image: the conception or rather the insight that this meaningful and meaningless cycle of master and pupil, this courtship of wisdom by youth, of youth by wisdom, this endless, oscillating game was the symbol of Castalia. In fact it was the game of life in general, divided into old and young, day and night, yang and yin, and pouring on without end.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
This kind of thing has historical precedents, of course, both in life and in literature.
Douglas Hofstadter and Dennis C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul.
Everything now looked transparent . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . in my imagination . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
. . . and there was a dreamlike quality to familiar scenes. Had I really been there?
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I’m dreaming. Or is it . . .
Arrigo Boito, Falstaff.
. . . someone else—
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
In the mid-seventies, a young man named Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson began to appear at psychoanalytic congresses and to draw a certain perplexed attention to himself. He was an analyst-in-training at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, but he wasn’t like the other analytical candidates one sees at congresses—quiet and serious and somewhat cowed-looking young psychiatrists who stand about together like shy, plain girls at dances, talking to one another with exaggerated animation. Masson (to continue the metaphor) not only assiduously steered clear of the wallflowers but was dancing with some of the most attractive and desirable partners at the ball: with well-known senior analysts, such as Samuel Lipton, of Chicago; Brian Bird, of Cleveland; Edward Weinshel and the late Victor Calef, of San Francisco; and—the greatest catch of all—K.R. Eissler, of New York.
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
Of late, the effects of his personality had begun to dawn upon the young man. He became aware of his attraction for those below him, and gradually, belatedly, of how he affected those above him. And when he looked back from his new standpoint of awareness to his boyhood he found both lines running through his life and shaping it. Classmates and younger boys had always courted him; superiors had . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . with a curiosity and awe . . .
Lance Morrow, A View from the Shore.
. . . taken benevolent note of him. There had been exceptions, such as Headmaster Zbinden; but on the other hand he had been recipient of such distinctions as the patronage of the Music Master, and latterly of Dubois and the Magister Ludi. It was all perfectly plain, in spite of which Knecht had never been willing to see it and accept it in its entirety. Obviously his fate was to enter the elite everywhere, to find admiring friends and highly placed patrons. It happened of its own accord without his trying. Obviously he would not be allowed to settle down in the shadows at the base of the hierarchy; he must move steadily toward its apex, approach the bright light at the top. He would not be a subordinate or an independent scholar; he would be a master. That he grasped this later than others in a similar position gave him that indescribable extra magic, that note of innocence.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
It was at the Denver congress that Masson and Eissler had their first, fateful meeting. Eissler was then (and remains) one of the grand old men of contemporary psychoanalysis. He is tall, gaunt, and unmistakably European.
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
At the same time, he looks ancient enough to have been mentioned in the Old Testament.
Richard Selzer, Raising the Dead.
—I don’t know that I can describe him to you better than by saying. . .
Charles Dickens, Bleak House.
His powers of . . .
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
. . . psychological . . .
H.G. Wells, The Secret Places of the Heart.
. . . observation were tempered by profound humanity.
Gaston Diehl, Pascin.
He speaks with an accent whose dominant tone of Viennese asperity is incongruously coupled with and (one realizes on closer acquaintance) rendered all but pointless by an underlying, almost pathological kindheartedness. There is a class of persons, however, to whom this kindheartedness does not extend. These are the enemies of Sigmund Freud (as Eissler sees them), for whom he has nothing but fierce enmity and a kind of bewildered derision. Eissler has thin gray hair, very thick glasses, and a full mouth, whose flat, downward-curving upper lip is startlingly familiar: one has seen this mouth in German Expressionistic art—on the faces of the writers and intellectuals in the drawings of Pascin, the paintings of Kokoschka, the photographs of Sander.
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
What the effects of face, voice, and gesture all added up to was unforgettable, beyond summary, and yet stubbornly elusive.
Matthew Gurewitsch, Risk Taker Supreme: Is Daniel Day Lewis Too Good to be a Movie Star?
He slept little at night. Often he awoke from dreadful dreams, his face sweaty, in savage temper and weary of life. But soon he would jump up and stare into the mirror, reading the desolate landscape of those distraught features, examining it gloomily, hatefully, or smilingly, as if gloating over its devastation.
Hermann Hesse, Klingsor’s Last Summer.
In truth, his . . .
Jack London, The Iron Heel.
. . . face was a mask, only the smoldering eyes reflecting the life within. The more active, clear and purposeful his inward world, the more disordered became his everyday life.
John N. Burk, The Life and Works of Beethoven.
Uneasily, unsteadily, he paced his rooms, the doors slamming behind him, pulled bottles from the cupboard, pulled books from the shelves, rugs from the tables, lay on the floor reading, leaned out of the windows, breathing deeply, rummaged for old drawings and photographs and piled floors and tables and beds and chairs in all the rooms with papers, pictures, books, letters.
Hermann Hesse, Klingsor’s Last Summer.
An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality.
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.
Even if I am . . .
Anton Checkov, Uncle Vanya.
. . . exaggerating in retrospect, one feels that the essential truth is told here.
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
Recently, speaking of his first meeting with Masson (whose letters he no longer answers), Eissler said bitterly, . . .
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
. . . in a voice . . .
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . marked by a sudden change of tone into a passionate minor key . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . “I realize now that there was something already wrong. He came up to me in the lobby of the hotel and said ‘Dr. Eissler?’ How did he know who I was?” But (as Masson points out) how could it have been anyone but Eissler? Who else would have looked like that? Eissler stands out from American analysts the way a lady’s slipper leaps out at you in the woods. When I met him for the first time, in his apartment on Central Park West, I, too, felt a shock of recognition.
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
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