ago, involving a forbidden wish. The wishes from which neurotics suffer are not unique to them. We all had them in our childhood, but with neurotics, something prevents these recollections from being forgotten and disposed of in the ordinary way. They linger in the recesses of the individual's mind — so well hidden that my patients initially are not even conscious of them. The aim of analysis is to make the patient conscious of these repressed memories.'
'In order to forget them?' asked Colette.
'In order to be free of them,' replied Freud. 'But the process is seldom an easy one, because the truth can be difficult to accept. Invariably the patient — and the patient's family — will resist our interpretations, resist them quite forcefully. There can be good reason. Once the truth is out, the family may be changed unalterably.'
Colette frowned. 'The family?'
'Yes. In fact that's often how we know we've arrived at the truth: the patient's family suddenly demands that the analysis come to an end. Although occasionally there are other, stronger proofs. I'll give you an example. I have a patient — like you, French by birth — from a family of considerable rank and wealth. Her complaint is frigidity.'
Younger shifted. The carnal explicitness of psychoanalysis was chief among the reasons Younger didn't like discussing it with Colette.
'In one of her first sessions,' Freud continued, 'this patient, an attractive woman of about forty, described a dream she'd had the night before. She was in the Bois de Boulogne. A couple she knew lay down on a double bed right there in the park, on the green grass by a lake. That was all — nothing more. What would you say that dream meant, Miss Rousseau?'
'I don't know,' answered Colette. 'Do dreams have meaning?'
'Most assuredly. I informed her that she had witnessed a scene of sexual intercourse that she was not supposed to have seen — perhaps more than one — when she was a small child, probably between the ages of three and five. She replied that such a thing was impossible, because she grew up with no mother. But of course she'd had nurses. Suddenly she remembered that her first nurse had left the family abruptly when she was five. She had never known why. I said it was likely this nurse was involved in her dream. So she made inquiries back home.
'She asked everyone, including the longtime servants. They all denied anything untoward in the nurse's departure, and she reported back to me that I must be mistaken. Then she had another dream, in which this very nurse appeared, but with a horse-like face. I told her that this represented — but, Younger, perhaps you know what the second dream represented?'
'No,' answered Younger.
'No? In that case,' replied Freud, 'why don't you tell Miss Rousseau what I said it meant?'
'I'm not sure the subject matter is appropriate.'
'For me?' asked Colette sharply.
'If Miss Rousseau is going to consent to her brother's treatment,' said Freud, 'don't you think she should know what she's consenting to?'
'Very well,' said Younger. 'To begin with, Dr Freud would probably have said that the nurse's horse-like face was an example of condensation: it represented both the nurse herself and the man she slept with.'
'Good,' said Freud, looking genuinely pleased. 'And who was that man?'
'The patient's father was a horseman, I suppose?'
'No,' Freud replied, giving nothing else away
'Did she associate him with horses?'
'Not to my knowledge.'
Younger paused. 'But horses were kept on the property?'
'They had a stable,' said Freud. 'For their carriages.'
'In that case,' Younger reflected, 'I suspect you would have said that the man the nurse slept with was someone involved with those horses — but associated as well in some way with the patient's father.'
'Excellent!' cried Freud. 'I told her that her nurse was in all probability involved with their groomsman, who was in fact related to her father. She answered that she had already questioned the groomsman he was one of the servants who had told her the nurse had done nothing illicit. I said she might wish to question him again.'
'Did she?' asked Colette.
'She did indeed,' replied Freud. 'She went to the man and told him she knew all about his affair with her nurse. Whereupon he confessed everything. Their tryst was the stable. The nurse would feed my patient a syrup that made her very drowsy. They would lay her down on a bed of hay and proceed to their business. The groomsman added, by the way, that the maid was quite hot-blooded — he was afraid sometimes she might die of pleasure. The affair began when my patient was three and continued until she was five, when the lovers were discovered and the maid was dismissed.'
'But that's incredible,' cried Colette. 'Vraiment incroyable.'
'Well done, my boy,' Freud said to Younger, as if he deserved the credit, and rose to indicate that the interview was over. 'You must join us for dinner this evening, both of you. Martha, my wife, especially invites you. Bring your brother, Fraulein. It will give me a better sense of how to proceed.'
Colette said she would be honored.
'Dr Freud,' said Younger, 'might I have a word with you?'
'I was about to ask the same of you. Will you excuse us for five minutes, Miss Rousseau? Younger, come to my study.'
'And how exactly,' asked Freud, seated behind the desk in his private study, which was populated by even more antiquities, 'do you expect me to analyze a boy who can't talk?'
'But you-'
'It's like the beginning of a joke: Did you hear about the mute who went to see Sigmund Freud? Your behavior, my boy, wants analyzing.'
'My behavior?'
Freud raised the lid of a wooden box. 'Cigar?'
'Thank you.'
Freud cut the cigar with fine, delicate scissors. 'Well, you have something to say to me, and I to you. Let's start with what you want to tell me.'
Younger considered how to put it.
'Will you permit me?' asked Freud. 'You want to say, first of all, that bringing the boy to me wasn't your idea.'
Younger didn't reply.
'If it had been your idea,' said Freud, 'you would have explained psychoanalysis to Miss Rousseau, told her you'd practiced it, described its benefits, and so on. You did none of these things. The idea was therefore hers. Moreover, the reason you were reluctant to have the boy analyzed is what you expect me to say about his condition. Miss Rousseau has obviously been the boy's substitute-mother for some time. You expect me to conclude that he therefore wants to sleep with her, and you want me to keep that information from her.'
Younger was astounded. 'There's only one other man alive,' he said, 'whom I constantly ask how he knows what he knows, and he happens to be listening to this story right now.'
'You didn't say that,' said Littlemore, his badly scuffed black shoes once again crossed on top of the kitchen table. 'Don't interrupt like that. It spoils the — uh-'
'Dramatic effect?'
'Yeah. You know, this Freud guy, he should have been a detective. But you mixed things up pretty good there, Doc. You made it sound like, according to your man Freud, Luc wants to sleep with Colette. And he wants to sleep with her because she's been his mom all these years!'
Littlemore broke into a loud laugh. He stopped when he saw Younger's unchanged expression. 'He doesn't think that,' said Littlemore. Younger nodded. 'No, he doesn't,' said Littlemore.
'That's why I stopped practicing psychoanalysis,' answered Younger. 'I told Freud ten years ago I didn't believe in it. That's how he knew what I was thinking.' 'So what did you say?'
'Yes, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell her that, Dr Freud,' answered Younger. 'She'll believe it's true.'
'Whereas you don't.'
