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.'
