Fear Of Flying

We were bound for Vie

Welcome back! Welcome back! At least those of you who survived Auschwitz, Belsen, the London Blitz and the cooptation of America. Willkommen! Austrians are nothing if not charming.

Holding the Congress in Vie

I had been asked by a new magazine to observe all the fun and games of the Congress closely and to do a satirical article on it. I began my research by approaching Dr. Smucker near the galley, where he was being served coffee by one of the stewardesss. He looked at me with barely a glimmer of recognition.

“How do you feel about psychoanalysis returning to Vie

“I’m writing an article for a new magazine called Voyeur,” I said. I figured he’d at least have to crack a smile at the name.

“Well then,” Smucker said stolidly, “how do you feel about it?” And he waddled off toward his short bleached-blond wife in the blue knit dress with a tiny green alligator above her (blue) right breast.

I should have known. Why do analysts always answer a question with a question? And why should this night be different from any other night-despite the fact that we are flying in a 747 and eating unkosher food?

“The Jewish science,” as anti-Semites call it. Turn every question upside down and shove it up the asker’s ass. Analysts all seem to be Talmudists who flunked out of seminary in the first year. I was reminded of one of my grandfather’s favorite gags:

Q: “Why does a Jew always answer a question with a question?”

A: “And why should a Jew not answer a question with a question?”

Ultimately though, it was the unimaginativeness of most analysts which got me down. OK, I’d been helped a lot by my first one-the German who was going to give a paper in Vie

You dream about breaking your leg on the ski slope. You have, in fact, just broken your leg on the ski slope and you are lying on the couch wearing a ten-pound plaster cast which has had you housebound for weeks, but has also given you a beautiful new appreciation of your toes and the civil rights of paraplegics. But the broken leg in the dream represents your own “mutilated genital.” You always wanted to have a penis and now you feel guilty that you have deliberately broken your leg so that you can have the pleasure of the cast, no?

No!

OK, let’s put the “mutilated genital” question aside. It’s a dead horse, anyway. And forget about your mother the oven and your analyst the pile of shit. What do we have left except the smell? I’m not talking about the first years of analysis when you’re hard at work discovering your own craziness so that you can get some work done instead of devoting your entire life to your neurosis. I’m talking about when both you and your husband have been in analysis as long as you can remember and it’s gotten to the point where no decision, no matter how small, can be made without both analysts having an imaginary caucus on a cloud above your head You feel rather like the Trojan warriors in the Iliad with Zeus and Hera fighting above them. I’m talking about the time when your marriage has become a ménage à quatre. You, him, your analyst, his analyst. Four in a bed. This picture is definitely rated X.

We had been in this state for at least the past year. Every decision was referred to the shrink, or the shrinking process. Should we move into a bigger apartment? “Better see what’s going on first.” (Be

Because the fact was that we’d reached that crucial time in a marriage (five years and the sheets you got as wedding presents have just about worn thin) when it’s time to decide whether to buy new sheets, have a baby perhaps, and live with each other’s lunacy ever after-or else give up the ghost of the marriage (throw out the sheets) and start playing musical beds all over again.

The decision was, of course, further complicated by analysis-the basic assumption of analysis being (and never mind all the evidence to the contrary) that you’re getting better all the time. The refrain goes something like this:

“Oh-I-was-self-destructive-when-I-married-you-baby-but-I’m-so-much-more-healthy-now-ow-ow-ow.”

(Implying that you might just choose someone better, sweeter, handsomer, smarter, and maybe even luckier in the stock market.)

To which he might reply:

“Oh-I-hated-all-women-when-I-fell-for-you-baby-but-I’m-so-much-more-healthy-now-ow-ow-ow.”

(Implying that he might just find someone sweeter, prettier, smarter, a better cook, and maybe even due to inherit piles of bread from her father.)

“Wise up Be

But I was having those thoughts myself and if Be

What was it about marriage anyway? Even if you loved your husband, there came that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the taste buds, no bittersweet edge, no danger. And you longed for an overripe Camembert, a rare goat cheese: luscious, creamy, cloven-hoofed.