The Dream of the Blue Oxford -- Parts I and II

Upon retiring on the evening of Friday July 1, 1994 I had the following strikingly brief and simple dream:

Dream of the Blue Oxford

I am looking at a man's shirt; it is blue with a buttoned-down collar. I know intuitively that the shirt belongs to my friend Craig. There is no objective evidence that the shirt belongs to Craig, however. I look at a tag affixed to the shirt that indicates its size. I see that the collar measures 15«" and the sleeve measures 33", which is my shirt size. I feel a great deal of satisfaction to learn that Craig and I wear the same size shirt. I have an impulse to smell the shirt. At that moment I think: "Only a queer would smell another guy's shirt." I examine the collar of the shirt and notice that it is frayed in one location.

EVENTS OF THE PREVIOUS DAY, July 1, 1994: I watch the televised preliminary hearing in the O.J. Simpson murder case. On this day of the hearing the prosecution attempts to establish the approximate time of death of the victims, who were killed in a knife attack.

I receive a bill in the mail from the George Washington University Medical Center for psychological testing that had been performed in May 1994. I am angered because I had been told at the time of the testing that I would not be charged because the testing was being performed for didactic purposes. In view of the fact that my psychiatrist at GW, Suzanne M. Pitts, M.D., had told me that she had not been apprised of the test results, the testing had absolutely no therapeutic value. I thought: "It's like billing a corpse for a didactic autopsy."

EVENTS OF JULY 1, 1976: My father dies one day after having undergone a coronary artery bypass, a surgical procedure. A brief time after my father's death, doctors approach my mother to obtain her permission to perform an autopsy. The doctors tell my mother: "We view an autopsy as a continuation of our medical care for your husband." My mother refuses to give her consent. On the evening of July 1, 1976 my mother gathers together a suit, necktie and shirt for my father's burial. She wants to bury him in a white shirt, but my father does not own a suitable white shirt. My mother asks me if I will give her a white shirt that I own, which I do. I had worn the shirt on only one previous occasion. Thus, my father was laid to rest attired in my white shirt.
_________________________________________________

The following is a partial transcript of the testimony of one of the witnesses called at the O.J. Simpson preliminary hearing on July 1, 1994. The witness is wearing a white suit, dark tie--and a blue shirt with a buttoned-down collar.

I interpolate various personal associations between the lines of the transcript.

[Clerk]: State and spell your name for the record.

[Witness]: My name is Steven Schwab. S-T-E-V-E-N S-C-H-W-A-B.

__________________________________________________

The name Schwab calls to mind an incident involving the composer Richard Wagner and one of his creditors, a woman named Schwabe. One of Wagner's biographer's describes the incident as follows: "Police officials entered Wagner's house with warrants to attach his furnishings for failure to settle the claims of Madame Schwabe, the English Jewess who had once generously lent him money in Paris. Despite his efforts to quash the idea that the King's coffers were at his disposal, old creditors, not fooled, were pressing their demands. Julie Schwabe quite justifiably expected to be repaid, and her attorney had given ample notice." Gutman, R.W. Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music at 275 (New York: Time Inc., 1972).

I discuss Wagner's relations with his creditors in a letter to Dr. Pitts, dated November 27, 1992 (page 2, 2). Perhaps significantly, the letter dated November 27, 1992 was written days after the "Dream about Greensboro" of November 25, 1992, the latent content of which deals with my father's death. See letters to Dr. Pitts dated December 3, 1992 and December 9, 1992, which letters analyze the "Dream about Greensboro."

Though he lived the life of a sybarite, Wagner's pleasures came at a cost. His luxuries were more often than not paid for with borrowed money. For many years of his adult life, Wagner was pursued throughout Europe by creditors seeking repayment for their loans. Wagner's chronic indebtedness--a central feature of his life--was a kind of guilt by alternate means. It was as if Wagner could not enjoy a luxury unless that enjoyment carried a penalty. One might say that Wagner had established an extrinsic superego: the anxiety associated with being doggedly pursued by creditors being a symbolic, externally-rooted sense of guilt. Indeed, one wonders whether pleasure was Wagner's ultimate aim or whether, paradoxically, the ultimate, unconscious aim of his pleasure was the gratification of a masochistic need to remain debt-ridden. Not unlike those individuals oppressed by an unconscious sense of guilt, about whom Freud writes, who require an opposing force of equal strength to mitigate or expunge that guilt, Wagner sought out wealthy patrons who would redeem his debts and not seek repayment for themselves. (One might note that, as with Freud, the theme of the father is an important aspect of the verbal content of Wagner's creative output. Though the fathers of Wagner's dramatic heroes are almost always absent, their presence hovers over the action as a kind of Divine Absence, to use one of George Steiner's phrases.) Wagner's benefactor, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who finally rescued the composer financially, extinguished Wagner's debt (Wagner's symbolic sense of guilt), serving as an "opposing force" to Wagner's creditors--literally acting as Wagner's "protector, savior, and redeemer." Excerpt from Letter to Dr. Pitts, dated November 27, 1992.

Note the symmetry of the following issues pertinent to the present dream:

1. The inventory of Wagner's possessions by his creditor pursuant to a warrant. (Dreamer's association)

2. The search of the home of O.J. Simpson, the legality of which was at issue in the preliminary hearing. (Emotionally significant aspect of the previous day's experience)

3. The autopsy of my father's body pursuant to a consent sought from my mother; the didactic purpose of the procedure is deceitfully concealed. (Emotionally significant event from the Dreamer's past)

4. The inventory of my personality by means of psychological testing; again, whether the testing was primarily didactic or therapeutic is unclear. (Emotionally significant aspect of the previous day's experience)

See Palombo, S.R. Dreaming and Memory at 219 (New York: Basic Books, 1978) ("the dream compares the representation of an emotionally significant event of the past with the representation of an emotionally significant aspect of the previous day's experience.") The highly emotionally-charged nature of item no. 4, above, is suggested by the fact that three months later, in October 1994, I wrote a letter of complaint to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that referred to inadequacies in the testing, which letter also referred to the President of the United States. The FBI forwarded my letter to the U.S. Secret Service for investigation. In December 1994 the U.S. Secret Service initiated an investigation into whether I posed a security risk to the President of the United States. The Secret Service called me in for questioning in mid-December 1994: an indirect result of my reaction to the psychological testing performed in May 1994 by the George Washington University Medical Center.

_________________________________________________

[Court]: You may inquire.

[Prosecutor]: Thank you, your honor. Good morning, Mr. Schwab.

[Witness]: Good morning.

[Prosecutor]: Directing your attention, sir, to the date of June 12th, 1994, Sunday, as of that date, sir, can you tell us where you lived?

[Witness]: I live on Montana Avenue. Do I need to give the address?

[Prosecutor]: No, sir, you don't. Was that on Montana near to Bundy?

[Witness]: Yes. That's on Montana between Bundy and San Vicente.

[Prosecutor]: How far from the intersection of Bundy and San Vicente did you live at that date?

[Witness]: It's about half a block.

[Prosecutor]: Do you own any pets, sir?

[Witness]: Yes, I have two pets. I own a dog and a cat. 1/

[Prosecutor]: Do you ever walk the dog in that neighborhood?

[Witness]: Yes, I walk the dog in that neighborhood, in the morning and at night.

[Prosecutor]: With regard to at nights, is that a habit that you have, sir, of doing that every night?

[Witness]: Yes. I walk the dog every night after watching television.

[Prosecutor]: Is there a particular time that you always walk the dog at nights?

[Witness]: There . . . It varies from day to day, because of the different shows that are on, generally, during the week I walk at a different hour than on the weekends.

[Prosecutor]: During the week, what time do you usually walk the dog at night?

[Witness]: I usually leave the house at 11:30. That's during the week. I generally watch the Dick Van Dyke Show, and then walk my dog, and that's during the week. That's on between 11:00 and 11:30.

[Prosecutor]: And on Sunday nights?

[Witness]: Well, the Dick Van Dyke Show is also on, but it's on an hour earlier. So, I watch the Dick Van Dyke Show on Sunday night--I watch it between 10:00 and 10:30. And then I go to walk my dog.

[Prosecutor]: Now, June the 12th was a Sunday, sir?

[Witness]: Yes, it was.

[Prosecutor]: Did you watch the Dick Van Dyke Show that night?

[Witness]: Yes, I did.

[Prosecutor]: And that was at what time you watched that show?

[Witness]: I watch the show between 10:00 and 10:30.

[Prosecutor]: Did you watch the entire show, sir?

[Witness]: Yes, I did.

[Prosecutor]: And what time did that show end?

[Witness]: That ends just prior to 10:30.

[Prosecutor]: Did you walk your dog that night after you watched the show?

[Witness]: Yes, as soon as the show was over, I got my dog, put her leash on, and took her for a walk.

[Prosecutor]: So, on the night of June the 12th, that Sunday night, about what time did you leave your apartment to walk your dog?

[Witness]: Shortly after 10:30. Between 10:30 and 10:35. Much closer to 10:30, though.
__________________________________________________

The unvarying routine of the witness's conduct parallels the theme of periodicity that I discussed in the "Dream about Greensboro" (See letter to Dr. Pitts of December 9, 1992, page 6, 3): "Note the recurring theme of periodicity: the annual trips to Atlantic City in early July, the annual celebration of Thanksgiving, the annual celebration of Christmas at which time I would have played with my toy trains, the weekly visits to Dr. Pitts, the regular revolutions of the toy trains around the track--all possibly symbolizing that most fundamental and vital periodic event, the contractions of the heart."
__________________________________________________

[Prosecutor]: Can you tell us what route you took when you walked her?

[Witness]: Yes, I walked down Montana, and I continued along Montana, I crossed the street at the intersection of Montana and Bundy and continued along Montana until I got to a street called Gretna Green. At Gretna Green I made a left and walked up one block, made a right on a street called Gorham, I then walked down one block, made a left on Amherst, walked up one block to Amherst and Dorothy, made a left at Amherst and Dorothy, and continued along Dorothy until I came to Bundy.

[Prosecutor]: Now, if you can tell us. You walked along Montana past Bundy, and you went left on Gretna Green?

[Witness]: Yes.

[Prosecutor]: How long did it take you to get to Gretna Green?

[Witness]: Well, I looked at my watch, when I turned to go down Gretna Green and that was 10:37. I remember that my dog had taken care of its business. I was deciding whether to return home or continue walking. And it was a nice night, so I decided to continue walking.

[Prosecutor]: Sir, what time was it about when you got to Gretna Green?

[Witness]: 10:37.

[Prosecutor]: 10:37 -- You know that exactly?

[Witness]: Well, between 10:35 and 10:40. Obviously, it's not exact because I don't have a digital watch. But it was between 10:35 and 10:40.

[Prosecutor]: Were you wearing a watch at all?

[Witness]: Yes, I was wearing a watch.

[Prosecutor]: A regular watch, not the digital kind?

[Witness]: Not the digital. In fact, I'm wearing it now. It's a regular watch.

[Prosecutor]: Can you tell us what kind of watch that is?

[Witness]: Sure. [Witness displays watch.] It's a regular watch. It doesn't have numbers on the face. It's not a digital watch.

[Prosecutor]: For the record, the witness is indicating a watch that has dots where the hours would
be . . .

[Court]: All right.

[Prosecutor]: An analog watch.
__________________________________________________
The witness's discussion of his watch parallels a portion of the "Dream of Greensboro" letter of December 9, 1992 (page 7, 6): "Wagner's last words, 'my watch,' are noteworthy. In light of certain observations by Erikson, the phrase, which symbolically expresses a concern regarding the passage of time carries certain existential implications (though certainly not intended by Wagner) that may have significance with regard to the interpretation of my dream. Erikson's comments may shed light on the theme of the train station in my dream and its underlying relation to my father's death from heart disease. Erikson writes, 'During these years [the 1890's] Freud at times expressed some despair and confessed to some neurotic symptoms which reveal phenomological aspects of a creative crisis. He suffered from symptoms of an over-concern with the all too rapid passage of time. 'Railroad phobia' is an awkwardly clinical way of translating what in German is Reisefieber--a feverish combination of pleasant excitement and anxiety. But it all meant, it seems, on more than one level that he was 'coming too late,' that he was 'missing the train,' that he would perish before reaching some 'promised land.' He could not see how he could complete what he had visualized if every single step took so much 'work, time and error.' As is often the case, such preoccupation with time leads to apprehension centered in the heart, that metronome and measure of endurance.'" Insight and Responsibility at 39 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964).
_________________________________________________

[Prosecutor]: So, at what street did you decide to turn around and go back home?

[Witness]: Well, that was when I came to Amherst and Dorothy. At Amherst and Dorothy I made a left, which would take me back home. I use this route . . . This takes me, generally, half an hour to do because I get home and then another show begins at 11:00 and 11:30. So, that's the route I use.

[Prosecutor]: So, you turned around at Amherst and Dorothy and decided to go back home.

[Witness]: Correct.

[Prosecutor]: What happened next?

[Witness]: Well, I was walking down Dorothy and as I approached the corner of Dorothy and Bundy, I saw that there was a dog at the corner of Dorothy and Bundy, I saw that there was dog at the corner. It was a large Akita, very white, and as I approached further I saw that it wasn't with anyone. There was no one walking the dog. The dog was just there. And, the dog. . . It was unusual for a dog to just be wandering the neighborhood by itself. And the dog seemed agitated. It was barking at the house on the corner.

[Prosecutor]: On the corner of what?

[Witness]: On the corner of Dorothy and Bundy. There's a house on the corner that has a driveway that . . . a path to the door--that comes right to the corner. And it was unusual for a dog to be barking at a home that way. But that's what it was doing. And. . .

[Prosecutor]: Can you describe the way the dog looked?

[Witness]: Yes. It was a white Akita. Beautiful dog. It had a collar on, what looked like a very expensive embroidered collar--red and blue.
__________________________________________________
The witness's discussion of the dog's collar seems to parallel the dream thought concerning the frayed collar: "I examine the collar of the shirt and notice that it is frayed in one location." The precise significance of the collar's frayed condition is not known.

Note, incidentally, that the witness's use of the phrases "white Akita" and "red and blue" collar links up with the witness's later use of the phrase "I flagged down a police car" to create an unintended patriotic allusion; my father died days before the U.S. Bicentennial celebration, held on July 4, 1976.
_________________________________________________

[Witness]: Um, and it smelled my dog and my dog smelled it.
_________________________________________________
The witness's statement clearly parallels the following dream thought: "I have an impulse to smell the shirt. At that moment I think: 'Only a queer [i.e., a castrate] would smell another guy's shirt.'"

Note that the chemical formaldehyde, a compound with a distinctive and pungent odor, has applications both in the textile industry and as a tissue preservative. Formaldehyde thus encapsulates in some symbolic fashion both the manifest dream thought about the shirt and the corresponding latent dream thoughts about death. Even the word "formaldehyde" itself suggests the idiosyncratic symbolism: "formal"=formal wear=dress shirt; "hyde"=hide= (to keep secret)=human skin=tissue preservative.

In the weeks prior to my job termination in 1991 by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, I had been working on a special project for the client Hoechst-Celanese, a chemical firm, and had been reviewing technical documents relating to formaldehyde, including its industrial (textile) applications. I was terminated, in an apparent retaliatory action, by Akin Gump in late October 1991, a few days after I made a complaint of harassment to senior management about my supervisor. The supervisor in question was later determined by a federal district court to have engaged in racially-inappropriate conduct in her dealings with minority employees. It was my view that my intrusion on the firm's "secrets" provoked the termination; firm management had, in a sense, seized the opportunity to suppress me by terminating me. See n. 3, below.

Cf. Letter to Dr. Georgopoulos, dated July 10, 1995 ("Dream of the Elephant Sanctuary") (discussing my identification with a rebellious son figure who intrudes on the private ("secret") territory of another, and fears being "smelled out" and retaliated against [i.e., castrated].)

Significantly, my associations to the present dream relate to two noteworthy acts of rebellion and their consequences: (1) my complaint of harassment to my employer in October 1991 concerning a supervisor (and the employer's response in "investigating" my complaint and later terminating my employment); and (2) my letter of complaint to the FBI in October 1994 that referred to inadequacies in the psychological testing performed by GW and that also referred to the employer's allegation that I was potentially violent (and the FBI's response in forwarding the letter to the U.S. Secret Service, which initiated an investigation). The present dream is no doubt an Oedipal dream.
_________________________________________________

[Witness]: And I looked . . . I checked the collar to see if there was an address or a tag on it. But there wasn't.
_________________________________________________

The witness's statement regarding a possible dog tag or other identifier seems to parallel the following dream thought: "I look at a tag affixed to the shirt that indicates the size of the shirt. I see that the collar measures 15«" and the sleeve measures 33", which is my shirt size. I feel a great deal of satisfaction to learn that Craig and I wear the same size shirt."

It is significant that the theme of inquiry into identity recurs (or is, loosely speaking, "overdetermined") in the hearing transcript. The witness's inquiry into the identity and origin of the dog ("I checked the collar to see if there was an address or a tag on it") parallels the later courtroom examination of the witness himself, who was asked pro forma by the Court to state his name, and, by the prosecutor, to state his address. The witness's later description of his discovery of blood on the dog's paws points to some unidentified victim. An issue of personal identity attaches to three figures in the hearing transcript: the witness (Schwab), the unidentified dog, and the unknown putative victim. Thus, the theme of personal identity emerges in various guises in the testimony, thereby conferring an unintended esthetic balance and integrity.

Similarly, at almost every level, Wagner's opera Parsifal derives its conflict from situations involving the problem of identity. Cf. Gregor-Dellin, M. Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century at 20-21 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983). In Act I Parsifal blunders into an alien realm he has no means of understanding; Gurnemanz's cross-examination of Parsifal exposes the ignorant boy's orphaned dislocation from his origins. Beckett, L. Richard Wagner -- Parsifal at 31 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Cf. Lost Prince: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. Translated and Introduced by J.M. Masson (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

[Gurnemanz]: From where did you come?

[Parsifal]: I don't know.

[Gurnemanz]: Who is your father?

[Parsifal]: I don't know.

[Gurnemanz]: Who told you to come this way?

[Parsifal]: I don't know.

[Gurnemanz]: Your name then?

[Parsifal]: I once had many, but now I don't know any of them.
______________________________________________________________

[Witness]: So, I didn't know where the dog was from. And as I examined the dog further, I noticed that there was blood on the paws.

[Prosecutor]: Blood on all four paws?

[Witness]: There seemed to be blood on all of the paws in different amounts. There was more on some than on others. But there was blood on the paws. I specially, I noticed some blood on one of the back paws. That was the one I noticed first.
_________________________________________________

The witness's unwitting discovery of evidence relating to an as yet unreported crime parallels a recurring theme in the Wagner operas: the naive innocent who unwittingly stumbles upon--and becomes entangled in--an ongoing web of corruption. The theme finds its starkest representation in Parsifal, where, coincidentally, the hero's initial appearance in Act I is heralded by the discovery of a recently killed swan, the feathers of which are soaked in blood.

It was, in fact, Parsifal himself who had shot the swan, with bow and arrow, in mid-flight (psychoanalytically, suggestive of male sexual arousal--"To look for his mate he flew aloft"). 2/ In Act II of the drama Parsifal barely escapes being impaled by a spear, hurled at him by a castrating father figure 3/ while Parsifal contemplates the commission of an Oedipal crime. There is, therefore, a likeness in the fate of the swan in Act I and the near fate of Parsifal in Act II, strongly suggestive of child sacrifice and sacrificial substitutes for children. A cultural analogy for these dramatic themes is found in Jewish belief and ritual practice, where symbolic derivatives of child sacrifice are prominent features of the modern-day ritual observance of Passover. 4/ "Originally, (pre-Judaic) child sacrifice must have been prevalent at festival time. Eventually, animal surrogates were permitted. At a later stage, these events were memorialized in holy day ceremonies. The origins of Judaism must lie in that transition. . . . The traditional basis of the reading of the Haggadah [i.e., the book that presents the holiday's liturgy] on Passover eve is derived from the biblical sentence 'and thou shalt tell thy son . . .' (Exod. 13:8).
But the Bible also states, 'and it shall come to pass when your children shall say unto you--what mean ye by this service?' 5/ (Exod. 12:26). This question is repeated three more times in different forms in the Bible (Exod. 13:14; Exod. 13:8; Deut. 6:20). . . . [C]hildren ask this question because of their anxiety, whose source is the unconscious recognition that the 'service' (sacrifice of the lamb) is a substitute for their sacrifice." Lustig, E. "On The Origin of Judaism: A Psychoanalytic Approach." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Id. Vol. 7: 359-367 at 362-3.

The issue of guilt transmuted from object to object (or from generation to generation) emerges as part of the Passover observance. "The most popular Seder song is the Chad Gadjoh (One Only Kid). It is in Aramaic Hebrew and harks back to medieval days. It is a repeated refrain in which a hierarchy of killings occurs from the destruction of a kid through the destruction of the slaughterer by the Angel of Death and culminating in the Holy One (Hakodesh) slaying the Angel of Death. Here in this children's song is captured the quintessential meaning of the holiday." Schlesinger, K. "Origins of the Passover Seder in Ritual Sacrifice." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Id. Vol. 7: 369-399 at 389.

"The song was popularly interpreted as an allegorical history of Israel. The kid was Israel, purchased by God for the price of the tables of the Covenant." Gaster, T.H. Passover: Its History and Traditions at 72 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1949).

Wagner's Parsifal has, likewise, been interpreted as an allegory depicting an endless cycle of guilt, passed from generation to generation. "In his essay 'Parsifal: A Betrayed Childhood: Variations on a Leitmotif by Alice Miller' the musicologist Martin Geck attempts a radical reinterpretation of Parsifal using the unconventional views of the psychoanalyst Alice Miller [citation omitted]. Whereas the drama, in keeping with Freud's Oedipus theory . . . , has variously been seen hitherto as the symbolic enactment of a necessary process of development by which the individual learns to conform, Geck seeks to turn this positive interpretation right side up. The process of development depicted here is not in the least necessary for Parsifal either as a boy or as adolescent. Rather it is necessary for the patriarchal society of the Grail brotherhood, which seizes the opportunity offered by the 'pure fool,' mistreating him as a sacrificial lamb and expecting him to solve the problems which their society has brought on itself. Just as Alice Miller sees Freud's drive theory, and the kind of psychoanalysis practiced on the basis of that theory, as a means by which to implement paternalistic interests at the cost of children's rights in life, so Geck shows how the Grail fathers unload their own sense of guilt onto the shoulders of the next generation in the person of Parsifal, thereby breaking that generation on the wheel of their demands and rendering its members sufficiently submissive as to rid them of their guilt, while in actual fact forcing them to accept the same obligation to atone for that guilt, an obligation which passes ineluctably from one generation to the next in a never-ending spiral." Wagner Handbook at 140-141. Muller, U. and Wapnewski, P., eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) (emphasis added).
__________________________________________________

[Prosecutor]: Now, what time was it when you first saw that dog?

[Witness]: Well, I didn't look at my watch the moment that this occurred. But based on the path and how long it generally takes me, I would say that that was approximately 10:55.

[Prosecutor]: And that was at the corner of Dorothy and Bundy?

[Witness]: Yes, it was.

[Prosecutor]: Did the dog wear a leash?

[Witness]: No, there was no leash. There was just the collar.

[Prosecutor]: The blood that you saw on the dog's paws, did it appear to be wet, fresh or dry?

[Witness]: I didn't touch the blood, so I don't really know. The dog was also dirty, and there seemed to be mud on the dog. But, um, I didn't get like any blood on my hands or anything like that, so I don't know whether it was wet or dry.

[Prosecutor]: After those two dogs met each other, what happened next?

[Witness]: Well, my dog doesn't like other dogs very much. They barked at each other for a little bit. And then I noticed by that time that no one had come that wasn't like a block or two behind that, you know, in front of its owner or anything. So, I crossed the street at that point. I crossed the street from one side of Bundy to the other. And the dog stayed with us. The dog followed us, and, ah, so knowing that this was a lost dog I allowed it to stay with us. And I continued. . . I made a left at that point on Bundy heading back towards my house.

[Prosecutor]: During the time that the dog walked with you, did it continue to bark?

[Witness]: Yes, it was very strange. It would bark at each house as we passed. It would bark at. . . When we got to the entrance to the house, the path leading to the door of the houses, it would bark at the house. I had never seen anything like that before. But it would stop at each house and bark.

[Prosecutor]: So, as you walked down the sidewalk, you and your dog. The other one was following you. And every time you got to a place where a path leading up to a residence met the sidewalk, the dog would stop, look at the house, and bark.

[Witness]: Yes, absolutely. But the dog also didn't want to get very far from myself and my dog. It stayed very, very close to us.

______________________________________________________________

The witness's description of the dog's seeming desperate need to communicate what it had witnessed parallels in some way Bruno Bettelheim's discussion of his need to communicate his experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. Bettelheim writes: "From the moment I arrived in this country, within weeks after I spoke ["barked"] of the camps to everybody willing to listen, and many more unwilling to do so. Painful as this was because of what it brought back to mind, I did it because I was so full of the experience that it would not be contained. I did it also because I was anxious to force on the awareness of as many people as possible what was going on in Nazi Germany, and out of a feeling of obligation to those who still suffered in the
camps. . . . It was a need which, many years later in the literature on survivors, was called their compulsion to 'bear witness.'" Bettelheim, B. Surviving and Other Essays at 14 and 16 (New York: Vintage, 1979).
__________________________________________________

[Witness]: Well, I continued to walk down Bundy and at that point, ah, a police car came, going in the other direction. And so I flagged the police car down to tell him that I had found this dog. And I did. I told the officer that I had found this dog that's obviously lost, and that maybe he could, you know, call someone, find out if someone had reported a missing dog. And he said he would take care of it. And so I continued on, but the dog continued to follow me. And it followed me down Bundy past Gorham, again, and then, all the way to Montana. So, I turned the corner on Montana. I made a right on Montana heading home, and the cop pulled into a driveway on Montana heading home, and the cop pulled into a driveway on Montana and we spoke again because obviously the dog wasn't going to leave my side. So, at that point I gave him my address and the phone number and said that I would take the dog home and that he would call the animal control people, and that they would contact me with regard to the dog. So, I left the police officer at that time, continued home, and the dog followed me into the courtyard of my building, which has a pool, and up the stairs--I live on the second floor--up the stairs into my apartment. I mean, it stayed right with me. At that point I went into the house, leaving the dog outside because my wife was inside, and I also have a cat. And I didn't want to freak either of them out. So I closed the door and told my wife that this big Akita followed me home.

* * * *

[Witness]: At that point while we were discussing the various options my neighbors came home.
And. . .

[Prosecutor]: Can you tell us what their names were?

[Witness]: Yes. His name is Sukru and her name is Bettina. And they live. . .

[Prosecutor]: What time was it when you saw them?

[Witness]: That would have been, oh, about 11:40.

[Prosecutor]: At the time that they came into the apartment building, were you outside still?

[Witness]: Yes, we were out in the courtyard. And we were discussing whether it would be OK if maybe we could tie the dog up in the courtyard overnight 'cause my plan was to tie the dog up or keep the dog with us overnight and then print up some posters on my computer, go back to the location, put up lost dog signs, and try to find the owner.

[Prosecutor]: So, you were outside in the courtyard with your wife and the dog. . .

[Witness]: And the dog, absolutely.

[Prosecutor]: when Sukru and Bettina came up.

[Witness]: That's exactly what happened. And Sukru and Bettina take care of my dog when I'm away, either on vacation or if I'm out of town for the weekend, they take care of my animals. And, um, so, at that point Sukru offered to take care of the dog overnight and to leave it out in the courtyard in the morning so that in the morning I could deal with trying to find the owner once again.

[Prosecutor]: And, did you give him the dog?

[Witness]: At that point I gave him the dog. And, I said, "fine." And at that point he took the leash that I had put on the dog--it was still on the dog--he took the dog for a walk. My wife and I spoke to his wife, Bettina, for a few more minutes and then went to bed.

[Prosecutor]: And did you ever see the dog again after that?

[Witness]: I have not seen the dog again since then. That was the last that I saw of the dog.
[Prosecutor]: Thank you. I have nothing further.
_________________________________________________

Another witness, Steven Schwab's neighbor, Sukru Boztepe, later testified that "he had been literally pulled to the murder scene by [murder victim, Nicole Simpson's] dog, a white Akita, which [Schwab] had found wandering the streets earlier in the evening and given to him to keep for the night. Boztepe said he and his wife left their apartment around midnight with the dog, which was pulling hard on its leash. Finally, he said, the dog stopped in front of Nicole Simpson's condominium and looked up the path that led to the house. . . . Bettina Rasmussen, his wife, testified that there was blood everywhere. 'It was coming down like a river,' she said." The Washington Post, A3, July 2, 1994.

Note, additionally, that the murder scene, described as a place flowing with blood, is--as a literary symbol--a negated image of the Biblical "promised land," described as a place "flowing with milk and honey." This conflicted imagery--of a cursed place of suffering from which there is no escape that disguises by means of negation a place of fond recollection (or a promised land that one despairs of ever attaining)--is elaborated in Part II of this dream analysis, which follows. See Rothenberg, A. "Janusian Thinking and Creativity." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Vol. 7: 1-30. Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., contributing editor. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) (describing a creative ego process characterized by "actively conceiving two or more opposite or antithetical ideas, concepts, or images simultaneously").

_______________________________________________________________________________________

FOOTNOTES

1/ A group of daydreams, the animal fantasies of the latency period, originate as a result of the same emotional conditions (oedipal conflicts) that are the basis for the so-called family romance wherein the latency period child develops fantasies of having a better and worthier family than his own, which has so bitterly disappointed and disillusioned him. Burlingham, D.T. "The Fantasy of Having a Twin." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. I: 205-210, 205-6 (New York: International Universities Press, 1945). The child takes an imaginary animal as his intimate and beloved companion; subsequently he is never separated from his animal friend, and in this way he overcomes loneliness. This daydream is constructed in much the same way as the family romance, with this difference: the child does not here choose a new family, does not repeat a similar experience under improved conditions, but chooses a new companion who can understand him in his loneliness, unhappiness, and need to be comforted. Id. at 206. Animal fantasies and the fantasy of having a twin sibling are related fantasies, oedipal in origin, of the latency period. Id. at 210.

2/ Gurnemanz asks Parsifal if it was he who killed the swan; Parsifal replies: "Of course, I hit in flight whatever flies!" Gurnemanz explains to Parsifal what he has done: he has killed a beautiful creature who has done him no harm: "What did the faithful swan do to you?" Gurnemanz forces the boy to see for himself the congealing blood on the white feathers, the dead eye, as the music moves from a lyrical description of the swan flying over the lake to the dawning of guilt in Parsifal. Beckett, L. Richard Wagner -- Parsifal. Id. at 31.

3/ It is believed that "infanticide was widely practiced by prehistoric man. Possibly, therefore, parricide never occurred in the form described in [Freud's] Totem and Taboo. Instead of the son's successfully rebelling against the father, it may be that the father successfully suppressed the son by murdering him. In terms of later Judaism, the extensive ritual laws developed by the Jews, as well as their ethics, were not the result of guilt feelings for the crime of parricide. Rather, they were adhered to because of the constant reminder that infanticide can be invoked against a rebellious son." Lustig, E. "On the Origin of Judaism: A Psychoanalytic Approach." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Vol. 7: 359-367 at 362. Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., contributing editor. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).

4/ Wagner's wife, Cosima, records in her diary that the composer had the following (possibly unconsciously-determined) associations on a morning just weeks prior to the premiere performance of Parsifal, which took place in late July 1882. "Tuesday, June 27 [1882] R. had a restless night, he got up 4 times, dreamed that he was on trial and having a difficult time in court! [suggesting the themes of guilt and interrogation, or questioning.] In the morning he is pleased by the peacocks, the white and the colored ones sitting together on the roof timbers of the poultry shed. He jokes about the 'mousetrap for house tutors' he is setting in friend Gross's 'den.' Then we talk about a preface for [Heinrich von] Stein's dialogues. At lunch he remarks on the beauties of La Juive [i.e., the opera The Jewess], the Passover celebrations, the final choruses, also the lively first act, and says it contains the best expression of the Jewish character; before that he jokingly told [the Jewish conductor] Levi that frivolity did not suit him." (Heinrich von Stein was the tutor of the Wagners' son Siegfried, the couple's youngest child.)

(Parsifal features a depiction of a Eucharist-like service, which may have reminded Wagner of "Passover celebrations.")

Tradition dictates that at the Passover celebration the youngest child ask four questions, prescribed by ritual, relating to the Passover service. "The earlier determinants for questioning [might] arise out of the child's response to his previously central role to the ceremony as sacrificial object. The four questions thus interpreted are a later vestigal remnant of a child-centered celebration in which sacrificial and purification rites were central." Schlesinger, K. "Origins of the Passover Seder in Ritual Sacrifice." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Id. Vol. 7: 369-399 at 386.

5/ In Act I of Parsifal, when the Eucharist service is finished, Parsifal, who has been an interested spectator of the scene, shows no comprehension of its meaning. Gurnemanz asks Parsifal: "Do you know what you have seen?" When Parsifal shakes his head slightly, Gurnemanz tells him, "You are nothing but a fool!"

The Dream of the Blue Oxford -- PART II

According to Greenspan "every dynamic drama must take place in the context of a particular structure or set of structures. In addition, when focusing on structural perspectives it's [important to recognize] that structures provide the foundation--the housing, so to speak--for different dynamic dramas, each with its own content or meanings." "A Conversation with Stanley Greenspan." The American Psychoanalyst, 28(3): 25-27, 26 (1994).

I have identified a text the structure of which is identical to that of the Schwab testimony reproduced in Part I of the dream analysis, while elements of the content of that text mirror important aspects of both the manifest and latent dream content.

The text is a portion of the transcript of the 1985 French film Shoah. The film, produced by Claude Lanzmann, comprises a collection of interviews of Nazi holocaust survivors, Nazi officials, and other eyewitnesses of the holocaust. The text in question is a transcript of an interview of Jan Karski, a former courier of the Polish government-in-exile in London who was enlisted by underground Jewish leaders in Poland to inspect the Warsaw ghetto and report his observations to the Allied governments. See Lanzmann, C. Shoah: Transcription of English Subtitles to 1985 French Film Shoah at 167-175 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985).

The key figures in the text are (1) the interviewer (an intellectualized, or affectively neutral, figure), (2) Jan Karski (an outsider witness), (3) the underground Jewish leaders (frantic witness-participants), and (4) inhabitants of the ghetto (mute victims).

These key figures parallel the central figures of the Schwab testimony, who comprise (1) the prosecutor (an intellectualized, or affectively neutral, figure) who examines (2) Steven Schwab (an outsider witness), (3) the dog Kato (a frantic witness-participant), and (4) the mute victims.

I am intrigued by the apparent likelihood that it was not the content of the Schwab testimony alone that instigated the dream, but also the housing of that content: namely, the structure of the Schwab testimony. Cf. n. 4, below. That structure may be interpreted to symbolically express the differentiated or contradictory mental states of a single individual: integrated representations of thought and feeling of a single individual as projected onto a "gallery of characters."

"The existence of the complicated split mental representations of self and parents does not automatically make for pathology," explains Shengold. "That depends on how the splits are used. The crucial questions are whether the contradictory mental representations can be integrated if necessary, and whether they
can be brought together and taken apart again so that they can be worked with in a flow of thought and feeling." See Shengold, L. Soul Murder at 280-281 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

The structure of the Schwab testimony (and that of the Shoah narrative) may be interpreted to relate to aspects of ego structure and functioning:

--a split between observing and experiencing egos;

--a differentiated ego structure that houses, or accommodates, valences of thought and feeling arrayed in layered gradations; and

--a superego that permits (indeed, demands as a form of ego mastery) examination of the self and the environment (denoted symbolically in the Schwab testimony by the judge's direction to the prosecutor: "You may inquire." 6/). Cf. Shedler, J. et al. "The Illusion of Mental Health." The American Psychologist, 48(11): 1117-1131 at 1119 and 1121 (1993) (discussing the use of verbal defensiveness to stifle inquiry by persons whose superego intones: "That question shall not be put!").

I had seen the eight-hour movie Shoah in a television broadcast in about 1987 or 1988. In my recollection the many interviews presented in the film merged into a vague sameness, except for one (which apparently held some special meaning for me), the interview of --

_______________________

Jan Karski, university professor (USA), former courier of the Polish government in exile:

Now . . . now I go back thirty-five years. No, I don't go back . . . I come back. I am ready.

In the middle of 1942, I was thinking to take up again my position as a courier between the Polish underground and the Polish government in exile in London.

[The reference to the "government-in-exile" may be interpreted, psychoanalytically, to relate to the Family Romance fantasy, with the Nazi occupiers of Poland representing a debased parental image, and the Polish government-in-exile in London representing an idealized parental image, endowed in fantasy with a rescuer role.]

The Jewish leaders in Warsaw learned about it. A meeting was arranged, outside the ghetto. There were two gentlemen. They did not live in the ghetto. They introduced themselves--leader of Bund, Zionist leader.

Now, what transpired, what happened in our conversation? First, I was not prepared for it. I was relatively isolated in my work in Poland. I did not see many things. In thirty-five years after the war I do not go back. I have been a teacher for twenty-six years. I never mention the Jewish problem to my students. I understand this film is for historical record, so I will try to do it.

They described to me what is happening to the Jews. Did I know about it? No, I didn't. They described to me first that the Jewish problem is unprecedented, cannot be compared with the Polish problem, or Russian, or any other problem. Hitler will lose this war, but he will exterminate all the Jewish population. Do I understand it? The Allies fight for their people--they fight for humanity. The Allies cannot forget that the Jews will be exterminated totally in Poland--Polish and European Jews. They were breaking down. They paced the room. They were whispering. They were hissing. It was a nightmare for me.

Did they look completely despairing?

Yes. Yes. At various stages of the conversation they lost control of themselves. I just sat in my chair. I just listened. I did not even react. I didn't ask them questions. I was just listening.

They wanted to convince you?

They realized, I think . . . they realized from the beginning that I don't know, that I don't understand this problem. Once I said I will take messages from them, they wanted to inform me what is happening to the Jews. I didn't know this. I was never in a ghetto. I never dealt with the Jewish matters.

Did you know yourself at the time that most of the Jews of Warsaw had already been killed?

I did know. But I didn't see anything. I never heard any description of what was happening and I was never there. It is one thing to know statistics. There were hundreds of thousands of Poles also killed--of Russians, Serbs, Greeks. We knew about it. But it was a question of statistics.

Did they insist on the complete uniqueness . . . ?

Yes. This was their problem: to impress upon me--and that was my mission--to impress upon all people whom I am going to see that the Jewish situation is unprecedented in history. Egyptian pharaohs did not do it. The Babylonians did not do it. Now for the first time in history actually, they came to the conclusion: unless the Allies take some unprecedented steps, regardless of the outcome of the war, the Jews will be totally exterminated. And they cannot accept it.

This means that they asked for very specific measures?

Yes. Interchangeably. At a certain point the Bund leader, then at a certain point the Zionist leader--then what do they want? What message am I supposed to take? Then they gave me messages, various messages, to the Allied governments as such--I was to see as many government officials as I could, of course. Then to the Polish government, then to the President of the Polish republic, then to the international Jewish leaders. And to individual political leaders, leading intellectuals--approach as many people as possible. And then they gave me segments--to whom do I report what. So now, in these nightmarish meetings--two meetings--two meetings I had with them--well, then they presented their demands. Separate demands. The message was: Hitler cannot be allowed to continue extermination. Every day counts. The Allies cannot treat this war only from a purely military strategic standpoint. They will win the war if they take such an attitude, but what good will it do to us? We will not survive this war. The Allied governments cannot take such a stand. We contributed to humanity--we gave scientists for thousands of years. We originated great religions. We are humans. Do you understand it? Do you understand it? Never happened before in history, what is happening to our people now. Perhaps it will shake the conscience of the world.

We understand we have no country of our own, we have no government, we have no voice in the Allied councils. So we have to use services, little people like you are. Will you do it? Will you approach them? Will you fulfill your mission? Approach the Allied leaders? We want an official declaration of the Allied nations that in addition to the military strategy which aims at securing victory, military victory in this war, extermination of the Jews forms a separate chapter, and the Allied nations formally, publicly, announce that they will deal with this problem, that it becomes a part of their overall strategy in this war. Not only defeat of Germany but also saving the remaining Jewish population.

* * * *

Between those two Jewish leaders--somehow this belongs to human relations--I took, so to say, to the Bund leader, probably because of his behavior--he looked like a Polish nobleman, a gentleman, with straight, beautiful gestures, dignified. I believe that he liked me also, personally. Now at a certain point, he said: "Mr. Vitold, I know the Western world. You are going to deal with the English. Now you will give them your oral reports. I am sure it will strengthen your report if you will be able to say 'I saw it myself.' We can organize for you to visit the Jewish ghetto. Would you do it? If you do, I will go with you to the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw so I will be sure you will be as safe as possible."

A few days later we established contact. By that time the Jewish ghetto as it existed in 1942 until July 1942 did not exist anymore. Out of approximately four hundred thousand Jews, some three hundred thousand were already deported from the ghetto. So within the outside walls, practically there were some four units. The most important was the so-called central ghetto. They were separated by some areas inhabited by Aryans and already some areas not inhabited by anybody. There was a building. This building was constructed in such a way that the wall which separated the ghetto from the outside world was a part of the back of the building, so the front was facing the Aryan area. There was a tunnel. We went through this tunnel without any kind of difficulty. What struck me was that now he was a completely different man--the Bund leader, the Polish nobleman. I go with him. He is broken down, like a Jew from the ghetto, as if he had lived there all the time. Apparently, this was his nature. This was his world. So we walked the streets. He was on my left. We didn't talk very much. He led me. [Compare Steven Schwab's description of his interaction with the dog Kato.] Well, so what? So now comes the description of it, yes? Well . . . naked bodies on the street. I ask him: "Why are they here?"

The corpses, you mean?

Corpses. He says: "Well, they have a problem. If a Jew dies and the family wants a burial, they have to pay tax on it. So they just throw them in the street."

Because they cannot pay the tax?

Yes. They cannot afford it. So then he says: "Every rag counts. So they take their clothing. And then once the body, the corpse, is on the street, the Judenrat [i.e., the Jewish Council] has to take care of it."

Women with their babies, publicly feeding their babies, but they have no . . . no breast, just flat. Babies with crazed eyes, looking . . .

[The phrases "If a Jew dies and the family wants a burial" and "Every rag counts--so they take their clothing" are facially related to both the dream's manifest content (the blue shirt with the buttoned-down collar) and the dream's latent content:

"On the evening of July 1, 1976 my mother gathers a suit, necktie and shirt for my father's burial. She wants to bury him in a white shirt. My mother asks me if I will give her a white shirt that I own, which I do. I had worn the shirt on only one previous occasion. Thus, my father was laid to rest attired in my white shirt."

___________________________________________________________________________

It has occurred to me recently that the choice of the title "Dream of the Blue Oxford" may have been more than random. My father's parents lived on Oxford Street in North Philadelphia, in a house later occupied by my father's older sister and her family (the Klein family). As a small boy I accompanied my mother, by subway train, to visit my aunt on Oxford Street, where she lived until about 1957. Perhaps, other relatives were present, possibly including my father's maternal aunt, Tante Elke. I have no firm conscious recollection of these visits, but I can assume that for a small boy Oxford Street must have looked "like a completely strange world, another world." The word "Oxford" is a play on words, relating both to an article of clothing and to a street associated with my father's world.]

Did it look like a completely strange world? Another world, I mean?

It was not a world. There was not humanity. Streets full, full. Apparently all of them lived in the street, exchanging what was the most important, everybody offering something to sell--three onions, two onions, some cookies. Selling.

[When I was a small boy I used to accompany my mother once a year to the Jewish market on Marshall Street in North Philadelphia, where my mother would buy, in preparation for Passover, kosher chicken, fresh carp for gefilte fish, and horseradish (which the merchant ground fresh).]

Begging each other. Crying and hungry. Those horrible children--some children running by themselves or with their mothers sitting. It wasn't humanity. It was some . . . some hell.

[Karski's account of his visit to the Warsaw ghetto, in which he was accompanied by a Jewish underground leader, parallels psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson's description (published in his autobiographical work Final Analysis) of his visit to a psychiatric hospital where he was guided by a psychiatrist who showed Masson "his world." See Letter to Dr. Georgopoulos dated July 10, 1995 ("The Dream of the Elephant Sanctuary"). The lethargy of the patients as described by Masson resembles the despairing demeanor of the Warsaw ghetto inhabitants: in the case of both psychiatric patients and the Jewish ghetto inhabitants, the victims' fate is attributed to an autocratic regime. Also, as in the Karski narrative concerning the Warsaw Ghetto, the Family Romance fantasy may to some extent inform the Masson narrative.

Extended excerpt from Letter to Dr. Georgopoulos dated July 10, 1995 ("The Dream of the Elephant Sanctuary"), beginning with a passage from Masson's book Final Analysis:

And so, in September 1973, on a cold gray evening, I presented myself to the Clarke [to begin my psychoanalytic training]. The building was forbidding. It was a psychiatric hospital; this was immediately apparent upon entering. I spotted another man carrying a letter of acceptance and introduced myself. He was David Iseman, an M.D. who had only recently completed his residency in psychiatry. He was my age, about thirty. He seemed shy and, like me, in awe of this first evening, so we made our way together down the halls.

I had rarely visited a psychiatric hospital before, and I was struck by the patients who shuffled past us in the hallways wearing slippers and institutional gowns, with their vacant stares, tic-like movements of the mouth, and slow deliberate gaits.

"What do they have?" I asked David. "What kind of illness is this that makes them look so vacant?"

"They don't have anything. Or rather they do. That's part of the problem. What you're seeing is not from the illness, it's from the cure.

[Note that the emphasized phrase is a symbolic variant of Alice Miller's concept of "poisonous pedagogy." Miller writes: "the conviction that parents are always right and that every act of cruelty, whether conscious or unconscious, is an expression of their love is so deeply rooted in human beings because it is based on the process of internalization that takes place during the first months of life--in other words, during the period preceding separation from the primary care giver." Miller, A. For Your Own Good at 5 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983)].

They look the way they do as a result of psychotropic drugs. Some of them probably have tardive dyskenesia, a real scourge, and one that is entirely iatrogenic."

I was glad that I sensed a note of disdain in his voice. I also liked the sound of "iatrogenic," which means "created by the doctor." I had never heard it before. I was puzzled and pleased by his apparent irreverence for psychiatry.

"They're not suffering from an emotional disease?"

"You mean an affective disorder? Oh, I guess it's the same. You know, when it's put like that the physician in me bristles. When I was doing my histology rotation, I never saw an emotional disease under a microscope." He was thinking out loud, and was thinking critically. I realized I could learn from him.

[It appears possible that the psychiatric patients Masson describes are his own Family Romance-mediated identification projects. In effect, Masson may be saying: "You see, this is what the 'occupiers' (actually, Masson's real parents) did to me; my 'real' parents (actually, Masson's exalted fantasy-parents) would never have allowed this to happen!"]

I also knew that David was no dyed-in-the-wool psychiatrist. We both smiled, and I sensed we were going to be friends.

__________________________________

Masson identifies in his colleague Iseman another person with whom he shares a secret identity and affinity in a strange world that both attracts and repels him. 7/ There is an almost subversive quality about the relationship, which Masson seems to savor: a subversive attitude of disdain for the therapeutic ideals of the medically-trained analytic candidates who comprise the majority of Masson's training unit.

I am reminded here of a passage from Demian by Hermann Hesse:

'When you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son one day came home from school and said to me: there is a boy in school, he has the sign on his brow, he has to become my friend. That was you. You have not had an easy time but we had confidence in you. . . .'

We who wore the sign might justly be considered 'odd' by the world; yes, even crazy, and dangerous. We were aware or in the process of becoming aware and our striving was directed toward achieving a more and more complete state of awareness while the striving of the others was a quest aimed at binding their opinions, ideals, duties, their lives and fortunes more and more closely to those of the herd.

The theme of subversion of the existing order suggests, in psychoanalytic terms, issues relating to the family romance fantasies that Freud and Rank "attributed to the disillusionment in childhood with one's parents. Such fantasies often include the development of a sense of 'differentness' that is associated with the circumstances (real or imaginary) of one's birth; this, in turn, may be followed by the feeling that other, usually more exalted, parents are preferable to the real parents; finally, the construction (in imagination) of the other set of parents may give way to the belief that one is actually descended from these more exalted persons, which implies, as well, a desire to 'get rid of' the real parents." Day, R. and Davidson, R.H. "Magic and Healing: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Examination." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 231-291, at 283. Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., consulting editor. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).

[End of Excerpt from Letter to Dr. Georgopoulos dated July 10, 1995 ("Dream of the Elephant Sanctuary")]

* * * *

[Karski's Warsaw Ghetto narrative, continued:]

Next day we went again [to the ghetto]. The same house, the same way. So then again I was more conditioned, so I felt other things. Stench, stench, dirt, stench--everywhere, suffocating. Dirty streets, nervousness, tension. Bedlam. This was Platz Muranowski. In a corner of it some children were playing something with some rags--throwing the rags to one another. He says: "They are playing, you see. Life goes on. Life goes on." So then I said: "they are simulating play. They don't play."

It was a special place for playing?

In the corner of Platz Muranowski--no, no, no, open. So I say: "They are . . ."

There are trees?

There were a few trees, rickety. So then we just walked the streets; we didn't talk to anybody. We walked probably one hour. Sometimes he would tell me: "Look at this Jew"--a Jew standing, without moving. I said: "Is he dead?" He says: "No, no, no, he is alive. Mr. Vitold, remember--he's dying, he's dying. Look at him. Tell them over there. You saw it. Don't forget." We walk again. Its macabre. Only from time to time he would whisper: "Remember this, remember this." Or he would tell me: "Look at her." Very many cases. I would say: "What are they doing here?" His answer: "They are dying, that's all. They are dying." And always: "But remember, remember."

We spent more time, perhaps one hour. We left the ghetto. Frankly, I couldn't take it anymore. "Get me out of it." And then I never saw him again. I was sick. Even now I don't go back in my memory. I couldn't tell any more.

But I reported what I saw. It was not a world. It was not a part of humanity. I was not part of it. I did not belong there. I never saw such things, I never . . . nobody wrote about this kind of reality. I never saw any theater, I never saw any movie . . . this was not the world. I was told that these were human beings--they didn't look like human beings. Then we left. He embraced me then. "Good luck, good luck." I never saw him again.

[It is noteworthy that Karski's statement "I never saw him again" is virtually identical to Steven Schwab's concluding statement (in Part I of the dream analysis):

[Prosecutor]: And did you ever see the dog again after that?

[Witness]: I have not seen the dog again since then. That was the last that I saw of the dog. ]

___________________________________________________________

6/ At the Passover Seder the ritual emphasis on a particular structure--namely "questioning"--may have a more than incidental relationship with the dynamic drama, or content, of the Passover observance. At the Seder "[t]he Mah Nishtanoh (The Four Questions) are asked. Tradition has it that the youngest child ask the questions, 'Why is this night different from all other nights?' [etc.] . . . Traditionally it is said that giving a child a function at the Seder incorporates him in the proceedings, makes him more attentive to the moral of the redemption from Egypt. It seems plausible to me that peeling back this historicized layer, the role of the child may be central in a much more fundamental way. The earlier determinants for questioning could then arise out of the child's response to his previously central role to the ceremony as a sacrificial object. . . . The iteration of the moral of redemption and the need to inculcate a fearful moral appears to be a reaction-formation. The emphasis on responses to questioning appears disproportionate. The inference of much more ambivalently cathected observances in which children are involved at a much higher level of intensity seems quite plausible. The reading of the subtext would be that the injunction that all men regard themselves as personally redeemed out of the underworld, out of death, from the obligation of being the sacrifice. Thus everyone's life is enhanced by the death of one. (The stridency of the argument, the insistence on learning the lesson, is related to the intensity of the countercathexis against the sacrificial ceremonies.)" Schlesinger, K. "Origins of the Passover Seder in Ritual Sacrifice." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of Society. Id. Vol. 7: 369-399 at 386-387.

7/ "A common daydream which in spite of its frequency has received very little attention to-date is the fantasy of possessing a twin. It is a conscious fantasy, built up in the latency period as the result of disappointment by the parents in the oedipus situation, in the child's search for a partner who will give him all the attention, love and companionship he desires and who will provide an escape from loneliness and solitude. The same emotional conditions are the basis of the family romance. In that well-known daydream the child in the latency period develops fantasies of having a better, kinder and worthier family than his own, which has so bitterly disappointed and disillusioned him. The parents have been unable to gratify the child's instinctual wishes; in disappointment his love turns to hate; he now despises his family and, in revenge, turns against it. He has death-wishes against the former love-objects, and as a result feels alone and forsaken in the world." Burlingham, D.T. "The Fantasy of Having a Twin." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. I: 205-210, 205 (New York: International Universities Press, 1945). "A further element in many daydreams of having a twin is that of the imaginary twin being a complement to the daydreamer. The latter endows his twin with all the qualities and talents that he misses in himself and desires for himself. The twin thus represents his superego." Id. at 209.

The Dream of Milton's Successor

Upon retiring on the evening of August 9, 1995 I had the following dream:

The Dream of Milton's Successor

I am at a bookstore on the campus of Harvard University. There is a stairway in the bookstore. Standing on the lower steps is John E. Mack, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Harvard.

Dr. Mack greets me, and I am delighted. I am somewhat surprised to see Dr. Mack, but, oddly, I am not at all curious that he knows who I am. (Dr. Mack and I have never met.) Dr. Mack tells me that he leads a study group once a week, and he says that I am welcome to attend any time. I think: "That is something I would like to do." He refers to the study group as his "inventory." I have no idea what he means by this. Dr. Mack walks up the steps, and I do not see him again.

I walk over to a shelf in the bookstore. The shelf contains a collection of tiny busts (head figurines), which are for sale. Some of the busts are of the composer Richard Wagner; other busts have generic features, like the features found on the face of a mannequin.

EVENTS OF THE PREVIOUS DAY AND ASSOCIATIONS:

On Wednesday August 9, 1995 I took a continuing legal education course to fulfill Pennsylvania Bar requirements. The course was titled "The Ethics of a Judicial Decision--Justice and Mercy." The course was presented by the University of Pennsylvania Law School Center on Professionalism, and was taught in part by Edmund B. Spaeth, Jr., former President Judge of the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the intermediate appellate court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

A portion of the course was taught by Peggy B. Wachs, associate Director of the University of Pennsylvania Law School Center on Professionalism. Ms. Wachs mentioned during the course of her presentation that a recent study indicated that female judges, more so than male judges, tend to favor plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases.

On appeal before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in August 1995 was my action against the District of Columbia Department of Human Rights, relating to my employment discrimination claim against the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, my former employer. The three-member appeals court panel comprises two male judges and one female judge, the Hon. Julia Cooper Mack. Thus, the dream image of John E. Mack relates to the latent image of Judge Julia Cooper Mack.

A portion of the course on professional conduct was devoted to a legal analysis of a scene from Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice. I together with the other course participants were shown a video of Act IV, scene 1: the famous trial scene in which the character Portia, dressed as the lawyer Balthasar, litigates Shylock's claim against Antonio.

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, scene 1, includes the following lines spoken by Portia to Shylock:

Tarry, Jew.
The law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the laws of Venice,
If it be prov'd against an alien
That by direct or indirect attempts
He seek the life of any citizen,
The party 'gainst the which he doth contrive
Shall seize one half his goods; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state;
And the offender's life lies in the mercy
Of the Duke only, 'gainst all other voice.
In which predicament I say thou stand'st;
For it appears by manifest proceeding
That indirectly, and directly too,
Thou has contriv'd against the very life
Of the defendant, and thou has incurr'd
The danger formerly by me rehears'd.
Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.

The reference to "aliens" in the above passage can be read as a play on words, and seems to allude to Dr. Mack's investigations into reports that extraterrestrial aliens 1/ have abducted and experimented on humans--"by direct or indirect attempts." Dr. Mack's investigations had sparked controversy at Harvard Medical School. Only days before the dream, I had read that the Medical School had exonerated Dr. Mack of wrongdoing following an inquiry into Dr. Mack's professional conduct relating to his investigation of alleged alien abductions.

My very first acquaintance with John Mack--really no more than an exposure to his name and position--occurred via a dedication in Margaret Brenman-Gibson's biography of Clifford Odets: "To Professor John Mack, psychoanalyst-biographer and my first 'boss' in the Cambridge Department of Psychiatry of Harvard University School of Medicine, my deep gratitude for his steady affirmation." Dr. Mack was the founder of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard's Cambridge Hospital. Compare the "Dream of the Four Miltons," Letter to Dr. Pitts, dated 2/8/93:

"I have just completed a session with Dr. Palombo. I go outside the apartment building in which Dr. Palombo's office is located. Dr. Palombo is lounging in a swimming pool on an inflatable raft with a friend, also a physician. Dr. Palombo's friend says to me: 'Dr. Palombo is such a humble person, he probably never told you about his background, did he? Dr. Palombo is an outstanding physician. He was founder of the department of psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Penn State.'"

At the course on professional conduct Judge Spaeth referred to Portia's treatment of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice as chilling and savage. He discussed the fact that Shylock had been given no prior notice that the "alien" statute would be raised against him. I am reminded here of my own appearance before the D.C. Court of Appeals, on October 13, 1994, and the shock I experienced when, at the very commencement of oral argument, Judge Terry stated to me: "I don't think we have jurisdiction to hear this matter." The action of the Court in raising the jurisdiction issue at oral argument was totally unanticipated by me since, obviously, the Court had already granted jurisdiction to hear the appeal. My feelings in the courtroom at that moment--of shock in the face of unfair surprise--were identical to those of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, who had been advised by Portia only moments before: ". . . lawfully by this [bond] the Jew may claim a pound of flesh, to be by him cut off nearest the merchant's heart. . . . [Portia] to Antonio]: You must prepare your bosom for his knife."

The dream thought of "busts of Wagner" appears to be a play on the reference to "bosom" in The Merchant of Venice ("You must prepare your bosom for his knife.").

The shelf contains a collection of tiny busts (head figurines), which are for sale. Some of the busts are of the composer Richard Wagner; other busts have generic features, like the features on the face of a mannequin.

You will recall, incidentally, that the "Dream of Greensboro" contains numerous references to Venice, the site of Wagner's death. ("Wagner had gone to Venice for a vacation. . . .")

The "Dream of Greensboro" also discusses Wagner's financial indebtedness, which parallels the issue of the indebtedness of the Venetian merchant Antonio to Shylock:

"Wagner discusses the fact that his 1876 opera festival was a financial disaster. "We had to sell everything," he says, "lighting, machinery, costumes, to pay for it." . . . The display windows [of the bankrupt clothier Raleighs in downtown Washington at which I often used to gaze] featuring mannequins attired in Raleighs' merchandise seem to parallel the associations to [financially disastrous] theatrical productions featuring costumed singers . . . and my father's lifeless body [after his death]."

(My father had died one day after having undergone a coronary artery bypass procedure, major heart surgery: "You must prepare your bosom for his knife.").

Also, the "Dream of the Blue Oxford" links, on the one hand, the issue of Wagner's indebtedness to the British Jewess Madame Julie Schwabe (and the bailiffs' inventory of Wagner's possessions for the purpose of repayment, "a pound of flesh") with, on the other hand, the issue of the autopsy of my father (i.e., the incision into my father's flesh). See Letter to Dr. Georgopoulos, dated July 18, 1994; in that letter I observed that in either case--autopsy by a pathologist and property inventory by a creditor 2/--the theme of an "inventory of goods" is expressed.

The course on professional conduct on August 9, 1995 was held in the basement of an office building in downtown Washington. At the conclusion of the session I walked out into the basement lobby area. An older gentleman who was walking directly in front of me turned around. His gaze fixed on me. It was former Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh. He too had taken the course on professional conduct. At that moment I thought: "No. It can't be. He doesn't recognize me. Besides, Thornburgh is a Republican 3/--Strauss would never have talked to him about me!"

I am somewhat surprised to see Governor Thornburgh. He walks up the steps, and I do not see him again.

Dick Thornburgh assumed the office of Governor of Pennsylvania in January 1979. He was Milton Shapp's successor as Governor. See the "Dream of the Four Miltons," which discusses my visit to Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, on a class trip in May 1967. "The Dream of the Four Miltons" also includes an association to Richard Olney, U.S. Attorney General during the Cleveland Administration; Attorney General Olney was a critical actor in the Pullman strike of the 1890s. It was Dick Thornburgh who, as Governor of Pennsylvania, presided over the Three Mile Island 4/ nuclear reactor crisis, in March 1979. I lived in Philadelphia at that time.

Oddly, the day I saw Governor Thornburgh, August 9, 1995, was the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city, Nagasaki 5/; commemorations marking the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki were reported on television and in newspapers that day. See Dream of Greensboro, dated December 9, 1992, specifically, the parable of the nuclear reactor: "In the 1930's a group of scientists is gathered together under a physicist named Wagner to develop nuclear fission. . . . During the war a nuclear weapon is dropped on each of two Japanese cities. The cities are devastated. . . ." (Compare the following paraphrase: "A group of judges is gathered together under a judge named Wagner. . . ." The Chief Judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals is the Hon. Annice M. Wagner to whom I had forwarded a collection of documents relating to professional misconduct by Akin Gump's attorney managers.)

_______________________________
FOOTNOTES

1/ The letter to Dr. Georgopoulos dated May 8, 1995 is devoted to an analysis of an aspect of anti-Semitism. The letter is dedicated to John E. Mack, M.D. It now appears that the dedication to Dr. Mack was determined in part by my unconscious association of Jews and "aliens," i.e., outsiders.

2/ A debtor/creditor theme may also underlie "The Dream of the Four Miltons." At the time of the dream, in March 1990, I was employed at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld on a project for the client Eastern Airlines, then in bankruptcy and facing liquidation. See "Eastern's Creditors Threaten to Move for Liquidation," The Wall Street Journal, 3/30/90. Issues relating to Eastern's debt service and loan payment schedules may be represented in the manifest dream thought of "room service" and the birthday (anniversary) cake. "The Dream of the Four Miltons" and the current dream are linked by the latent theme of financial loss relating to transportation. In The Merchant of Venice Antonio faces financial ruin when it is learned that his ships have been lost at sea while "The Dream of the Four Miltons" includes the latent themes of a nationwide truckers' strike and the disastrous Pullman railroad strike of the 1890s. (Also, the manifest content of the "Dream of Greensboro," from 11/25/92, featured anxiety centered on "the business section" of Greensboro. At the time of that dream I was on extended unemployment benefits, which were scheduled to end ten days later, effective 12/4/92.) Of possible interest is the coincidental fact that the surname of Eastern Airlines' owner, Frank Lorenzo, is shared by a character in The Merchant of Venice: Lorenzo, the lover of Shylock's daughter, Jessica. At the end of the play, Shylock is forced to forfeit his estate to Jessica and Lorenzo.

3/ I recall an incident that occurred in November 1962, when I was eight years old. In early November 1962 former Philadelphia mayor Richardson Dilworth, a Democrat, was running for governor of Pennsylvania against Republican, William Scranton. The Dilworth campaign had distributed a paperback biography of Dilworth that detailed his military, legal, and political career. My father's union had distributed copies of the biography to the membership. My father had given the book to me. I believe that I identified Dilworth's having served in the Marine Corps in the South Pacific in World War II with my father's having served in the South Pacific during the war. Dilworth was also a founding partner of one of the major Philadelphia law firms, now Dilworth, Kalish & Kauffman. One day at school, one of my fourth-grade classmates, Aaron Ezekiel (a somewhat rebellious and subversive character--compare "The Dream of the Elephant Sanctuary," Letter to Dr. Georgopoulos, dated July 10, 1995), and I surveyed the school yard, trying to figure out which teachers might vote for Dilworth and which might vote for Scranton. If we liked a particular teacher we would say, "She looks like a Democrat--she'll probably vote for Dilworth." But if we didn't like a certain teacher we'd say, "She's definitely a Republican--she'll vote for Scranton." I was glad that I sensed a note of disdain in Aaron's voice. I was pleased by his apparent irreverence for Republican politicians. These events occurred just weeks after the Cuban missile crisis, in October 1962, in a period of "reprieve from the forces of evil."

4/ The city of Venice might be aptly described poetically as a kind of "Three Mile Island," and Wagner's death in Venice from a heart attack was a cardiovascular catastrophe that might serve as a metaphor for a devastating nuclear catastrophe.

5/ Dr. Mack is active in the field of international political dispute resolution and the study of nuclear conflict avoidance. Applying the metaphor set forth in n. 3, above, which equates catastrophic cardiovascular events with nuclear catastrophe, Dr. Mack might be viewed as a kind of "cardiologist" who emphasizes the importance of "preventive medicine" in international relations. Analogous to preventive cardiology, legal professionalism concerns the ongoing conduct of lawyers, and is directed at preventing that ultimate catastrophe, disbarment. Compare "The Dream of Murder in the Lobby." Letter to Dr. Pitts, dated June 18, 1993.

___________________________


The Dream of Milton's Successor--Additional Thoughts:

Buried Memories at the Bookstore

On Friday August 7, 1987 a friend and coworker at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson, where I was employed at the time, Craig Dye, was scheduled to go on vacation to Florida. Another employee, Tom Veatch, a summer employee, was scheduled to leave that day also; he was entering his second year of college. I had purchased books for these coworkers--a book titled The Making of a Psychiatrist by David Viscott, M.D., which I gave to Tom Veatch on August 7th as well as a book titled Character and Culture (an anthology of essays by Freud) which I gave to Craig, also on August 7th.

My associations to four of the essays by Freud contained in the book Character and Culture ("The Theme of the Three Caskets," "A Childhood Recollection from 'Dichtung und Wahrheit,'" "Dostoyevsky and Parricide," and "Buried Memories on the Acropolis") elaborate issues suggested by the present dream, while the book The Making of a Psychiatrist may have an associative link to the manifest dream image of Dr. Mack. The importance of these book purchases as associative elements relates to the content of the books, and possibly also to the circumstances surrounding the purchase of the books in August 1987, namely, to the circumstances of loss and nostalgia.

"The Theme of the Three Caskets" --

Bettelheim summarizes Freud's 1913 essay as an analysis of "the unconscious motives that may explain the frequently evoked image of the always fateful choice among three: three caskets in The Merchant of Venice, three daughters in King Lear, three goddesses in the judgment of Paris, and three sisters of whom Psyche was the most beautiful. Freud tried to show that two related topics underlie this motif: the wish to believe that we have a choice where we have none, and a symbolic expression of the three fateful roles that the female plays in the life of the male--as mother, as beloved, and, finally, as the symbolic (Mother Earth) to whom man returns when he dies." Bettelheim, B. Freud and Man's Soul at 12-3 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985).

It will be seen immediately that the theme of three fateful persons is an important element of the latent content of the present dream: at the time of the dream (in August 1995) a three-judge appellate panel was considering my appeal of an unlawful job termination complaint I had filed against my former employer. Not only is the element of choice crucial--that is, the decision by the three judges to favor either appellant or appellee. But also, the issue of the judges' gender was key. I had apparently placed special hope in the fact that one of the judges considering the appeal, Julia Cooper Mack, was female. My special hopes in connection with the fact that one of the judges was female was based on the observation made by the course instructor (Peggy Wachs) that female judges tend to favor plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases.

We can see that the associations to The Merchant of Venice are overdetermined and relate not only to the figure of Shylock as litigant (that is, an individual who attempts to avenge a wrong done to him) but also to the "theme of the three caskets" as an allusion to the three-judge panel that was considering my appeal. Also, "The Theme of the Three Caskets" (as well as the other three Freud essays discussed below) relates back to the book Character and Culture that I had purchased for a departing friend, almost exactly eight years earlier, in August 1987.

In the essay "The Theme of the Three Caskets" Freud alludes, in his enumeration of the various mythical expressions of the idea of three fateful persons, to the three sisters of Destiny found in Greek mythology, the "Fates," who weave the fate of man. The issue of fate, or, more specifically, the issue of a felicitous destiny determined by female authority is elaborated in another one of Freud's essays --

"A Childhood Recollection from 'Dichtung und Wahrheit'" --

In this essay from 1917 Freud compares a childhood recollection contained in Goethe's autobiography (Dichtung und Wahrheit) (the details of which relate to the issue of sibling rivalry) to similar childhood recollections reported to Freud by his own patients. As in "The Theme of the Three Caskets" Freud again discusses the paramount role of a female authority--here, the mother--in the destiny of the individual. Freud writes:

If we now return to Goethe's childhood-memory and put in the place it occupies in Dichtung und Wahrheit what we believe we have obtained through observations of other children, a flawless connection appears which we should not otherwise have discovered. It would run thus: "I was a child of fortune: destiny had preserved me for life, although I came into the world for dead. Even more, destiny removed my brother, so that I did not have to share my mother's love with him." . . .

I have, however, already declared elsewhere that he who has been the undisputed darling of his mother retains throughout life that victorious feeling, that confidence in ultimate success, which not seldom brings actual success with it. And a saying such as "My strength has its roots in my relation to my mother" might well have been put at the head of Goethe's autobiography. In: Character and Culture at 200-201.

Shengold quotes Freud's Goethe essay in his book Soul Murder, the relevant chapter of which presents the case of a man who had had sexual intercourse with his mother during adolescence. See Shengold, L. Soul Murder at 155-180 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). The patient, a man in his mid-thirties, is described by Shengold as a "strong-looking man with rugged good looks and an athletic presence" and an "aggressively masculine aura" (p. 162). Shengold states: "My patient had solved the riddle of the Sphinx in incestuous action, and then repressed it. But the arrogance continued for him, the narcissistic triumph derived from feeling himself the 'son of Fortune.'" (p. 170). Shengold then quotes Freud directly: "Freud uses almost the same words, with no reference to Oedipus, in his construction of the thoughts of Goethe, one of Freud's alter egos: 'I was a child of fortune' [quoting "A Childhood Recollection from 'Dichtung und Wahrheit']" (p. 170). Shengold reports that the patient's arrogance was such that his wife "would frequently be stimulated to repeat to him: 'You know, you are not of royal blood'" (p. 170).

During the summer of 1987 my working relationship with Craig Dye (who, coincidentally, had a physique and bearing that matched that of Shengold's patient) was one of rivalry. Our mutual antagonism is suggested by the fact that Craig and I shared the following characteristics, attributed by Shengold to his patient, in equal measure. "In later life, when there was competition for a particular post, or if he had to submit work in contention with that of peers, he confidently assumed he would win; true to Freud's prediction, he often did. He was both intelligent and gifted, and that helped him live up even to overweening pretensions. Although generally good-natured and even "humble" in manner, he had many arrogant traits" (p. 170). A paraphrase of a line from a novel by Goethe (Elective Affinities) aptly describes my workplace relationship with Craig: "Once they have been brought together, God help them!"

Compounding the hostility between Craig and me was the fact that our supervisor was a somewhat attractive young woman. That is, the relationship between Craig and me vis-a-vis a female authority carried an implicit plea, not unlike the plea of parties before an appeals court: "Choose one of us. Is it to be he or I?"

Craig Dye had a mother/son like symbiotic bond with the firm's data base administrator, Esperanza Rebollar. In June 1987--two months before Craig left for vacation on August 7, 1987--it was rumored in the firm that Craig Dye had embarked on a sexual relationship with Esperanza Rebollar: a quid pro quo arrangement whereby Rebollar would secure Dye's advancement in the department. Given the psychological relationship between the parties, a possible sexual relationship between the two would carry the suggestion of mother-son incest.

The theme of choosing or being chosen is overdetermined here. Portia in The Merchant of Venice offers her suitors a choice among three caskets, an appeals court chooses a victor between two parties, in politics the electorate chooses among candidates (Governor Thornburgh had been such a victor), a customer in a bookstore is presented with a decision to choose among books, etc.

A curious feature of the dream's manifest content is that the theme of choice, so pervasive in the latent content, is missing--which suggests that the theme of choice or rivalry (Oedipal or sibling; or the negative consequences in the form of jealousy of being favored, or "chosen," by a parent [cf. anti-Semitism]) is ego dystonic and defended against (repressed). It may be that the odd term "inventory" (Dr. Mack invites me to join his "inventory") defends against the idea of choice. In an inventory one simply enumerates the objects that form a collection; one does not choose any single object. In this sense, the term "to inventory" opposes, or negates, the term "to elect," or to choose. The dream image of the busts on the shelf fading into a vague sameness (that is, the appearance of a generic quality) obviates choice based on specific qualities.

Note that the supervisor's name "Miriam" was also the name of the older sister of the biblical Moses. In the biblical tale Miriam concocts a scheme with her mother whereby the sister will "choose," or rescue, her infant brother Moses from the Nile and present the child to Pharaoh's daughter in the hope that the child, mendaciously-depicted by Miriam as a child of unknown heritage, will be accepted and raised by members of the Royal House of Egypt (cf. "destiny removed my brother, so that I did not have to share my mother's love with him.") Recall that the previously-prepared portion of this dream analysis contained associations to a childhood classmate named "Aaron," a name shared by the brother of the prophet Moses.

In early 1988 the supervisor terminated my employment, but retained Craig, who later, himself, assumed the position of supervisor.

"Dostoyevsky and Parricide" --

In this 1928 essay Freud discusses various facets of Dostoyevsky's personality: the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner, with special reference to Dostoyevsky's "mania for gambling," which Freud analyzes as a substitute for masturbation.

According to Freud, "the 'vice' of masturbation is replaced by the mania for gambling; and the emphasis laid upon the passionate activity of the hands betrays this derivation. . . . The irresistible nature of the temptation, the solemn resolutions, which are nevertheless invariably broken, never to do it again, the numbing pleasure and the bad conscience which tells the subject that he is ruining himself (committing suicide)--all these elements remain unaltered in the process of substitution." In: Character and Culture at 202.

I note, incidentally, that in April 1987 I pointed out to my coworker and rival Craig Dye that his name was an anagram of the phrase "gray dice," dice carrying the connotation of gambling. The color gray may suggest the concept of ambiguity (being neither black nor white), possibly connoting sexual ambiguity.

There are points of correspondence between the Dostoyevsky essay and the previously discussed Freud essays: the gambler tempts Fate and pleads for Fortune's favor to confer narcissistic triumph. Further, Freud presents in the Dostoyevsky essay a tale in which a middle-aged woman seduces a young man addicted to gambling and extracts from him a promise, which he fails to keep, that the young man give up his vice. See Character and Culture at 290-291.

Freud reduces the story to a "wishful phantasy belonging to the period of puberty, which a number of people actually remember consciously. The phantasy embodies a boy's wish that his mother should herself initiate him into sexual life in order to save him from the dreaded injuries caused by masturbation." See Character and Culture at 291-292.

Like some gamblers, Shengold's patient (described above) possessed a conscious need to triumph coupled with an unacknowledged requirement to fail.

[A]longside the hubris and quasi-delusional pride, and completely unsynthesized with it, was an intense need to lose out and be chastised. One of the effects of the consummated incest was this split in my patient's conscience. A patchwork pattern seems to have been established, of achievement followed by the unconscious arrangement for failure and punishment. It was a dim awareness of this that had led him into analysis when he, like Oedipus, was blind to the reason for the "plague" in his life. Shengold at 171.

My own dream about Dr. Mack also alludes to an initiation, or seduction, -- he invites me to join him in his reading group, which he refers to as his "inventory" (possibly suggestive of sexual violation). Here, a male figure initiates a symbolic seduction, but a male figure who stands in for, or symbolizes, a female (the female judge). This analysis appears to confirm, or at least suggest, the role of my father in later childhood or adolescence as an idealized screen or symbolic substitute for earlier memories of my mother: more precisely, the role of my father as an exclusive repository of feelings originally invested in my mother, feelings that I had withdrawn from my mother in the wake of profound disappointment in my relations with her.

It is worthwhile to note that at the time of the dream I was aware of aspects of Dr. Mack's work with so-called "experiencers" (that is, persons supposedly abducted, or "seduced," by extra-terrestrial aliens): the experiencers reported that they had been physically and/or sexually violated by the alien abductors.

Biographical facts about Dostoyevsky, not contained in Freud's essay, parallel the manifest dream image of the "discussion group," that is, Dr. Mack's "inventory."

"In 1847 Dostoyevsky began to participate in the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of intellectuals who discussed utopian socialism. He eventually joined a related, secret group devoted to revolution and illegal propaganda. It appears that Dostoyevsky did not sympathize (as others did) with egalitarian communism and terrorism but was motivated by his strong disapproval of serfdom. On April 23, 1849, he and the other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were arrested. Dostoyevsky spent eight months in prison until, on December 22, the prisoners were led without warning to the Semyonovsky Square. There a sentence of death by firing squad was pronounced, last rites were offered, and three prisoners were led out to be shot first. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered and a messenger arrived with the information that the tsar had deigned to spare their lives. The mock execution ceremony was in fact part of the punishment.

Dostoyevsky passed several minutes in the full conviction that he was about to die, and in his novels characters repeatedly imagine the state of mind of a man approaching execution. The hero of The Idiot, Prince Myshkin, offers several extended descriptions of this sort, which readers knew carried special authority because the author of the novel had gone through the terrible experience." Encyclopaedia Britannica.

For Dostoyevsky participation in a secret discussion group led ultimately to near death, terror and humiliation--an outcome that is the polar opposite of, and therefore possibly related to, the idealized affects that surround Dr. Mack in the manifest dream.

(It is interesting that at my job termination by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, and Feld in October 1991 I had the following thoughts throughout the termination meeting: "This has to be a joke. At some point they are going to say, 'This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual termination, we would have come up with better reasons for firing you than we did. We just wanted to see how you would react under severe pressure. We are doing this as a prelude to offering you a promotion.'" And again, before the Court of Appeals, in October 1994, when Judge Terry told me that the Court lacked jurisdiction to hear my appeal, my initial thought was: "He can't possibly be serious.")

But there is more. The mock execution to which Dostoyevsky was subjected bears a notable parallel to an aspect of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, at the close of World War II. The following facts about the bombing were detailed in a newspaper account published in The New York Times on August 9, 1995--the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing; these specific facts had an uncanny resonance for me and were a part of the day residue of my dream.

Throughout the war, Nagasaki, though it was a strategically-important site, escaped conventional bombing. The residents of Nagasaki felt that they had been spared by Fortune from the devastation of allied bombing. Unknown to the Japanese at the time, the U.S. military had chosen Nagasaki as a test site for any future atomic bombing. The U.S. military wanted to be able to assess the effects of an atomic bomb on an intact city not damaged by conventional bombing. Thus, for the residents of Nagasaki an extended period of imagined reprieve (experienced as unreal) was shattered by the sudden terror of the atomic blast. This sequence of affects is the polar opposite of that experienced by an individual subjected to a mock execution, in which the individual undergoes an extended sense of imminent death that is relieved by the unexpected announcement of reprieve (experienced as unreal), that the transaction is a charade.

It appears that the idealized affects of the manifest dream are a screen or substitute for highly-charged unconscious affects that have the quality of terror and desperation.

The image of an object as the victim of a grim Fate is the polar opposite of the image of an object rewarded by a bounteous Fate. As Shengold observes, an individual's sense of quasi-delusional pride--the feeling that he is the "son of Fortune"--may be balanced against an unacknowledged need to experience a cruel destiny (p. 171). In the three Freud essays discussed thus far, these conflicting images of fate emerge. In "Dostoyevsky and Parricide" Freud elaborates the need to offer oneself as a victim to fate as being determined, in Dostoyevsky's case, by two factors: past interaction with a hated, strict father coupled with a strong bi-sexual disposition--that is, two characteristics that might also account for a male dreamer's defensive dream-image of an idealized male figure. That is, Freud's reconstruction of Dostoyevsky's psychic life, with its emphasis on hatred of the father and a strong latent homosexual disposition, would appear to be an adequate unconscious determinant of my manifest dream image of an idealized Dr. Mack.

If the father was hard, violent and cruel, the super-ego takes over these attributes from him and, in the relations between the ego and it, the passivity which was supposed to have been repressed is re-established. The super-ego has become sadistic, and the ego becomes masochistic, that is to say, at bottom passive in a feminine way. A great need for punishment develops in the ego, which in part offers itself as a victim to fate (emphasis added), and in part finds satisfaction in ill-treatment by the superego (that is, in the sense of guilt). For every punishment is ultimately castration and, as such, a fulfillment of the old passive attitude towards the father. Even fate is, in the last resort, only a later father-projection. . . .
To sum up, the relation between the subject and his father-object, while retaining its content, has been transformed into a relation between the ego and the super-ego--a new setting on a fresh stage. In: Character and Culture at 283 and 284.

"A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis" --

In this late essay written in 1937 (actually an open letter to Romain Rolland) Freud discusses a feeling of derealization he experienced when, as a mature adult, he saw for the first time the Acropolis, during a trip to Athens.

When, finally, on the afternoon after our arrival, I stood upon the Acropolis and cast my eyes around upon the landscape, a remarkable thought suddenly entered my mind: "So all this really does exist, just as we learnt at school!" . . . If I may make a slight exaggeration, it was as if someone, walking beside Loch Ness, suddenly caught sight of the form of the famous Monster stranded upon the shore and found himself driven to the admission: "So it really does exist--the sea-serpent we always disbelieved in!" In: Character and Culture at 313.

The affect of derealization (an alien state of mind) that Freud experienced upon viewing the Acropolis for the first time is also present in the manifest and latent content of my dream: my delight and surprise upon seeing Dr. Mack, which paralleled my feelings of surprise and unreality the previous day at the moment I recognized that it was the former Attorney General of the United States (former Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh) who was standing directly in front of me and gazing at me.

Masson analyzes derealization, nostalgic memories, and elation as negations of depressed states. Masson, J.M. and Masson, T.C. "Buried Memories on the Acropolis: Freud's Response to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism." Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 59: 199-208 (1978).

According to Masson nostalgia and elation may replace the painful affects originally associated with memories of seduction, humiliation, and sadistic depreciation (including anti-Semitism)--the negation acts as "the patch over the affective break that occurred because of the repression of the original feelings." (p. 200-201). "Depression, rage and aggression are the obverse of the ecstasy [of mystic states of elation] and are the inevitable hidden accompaniments of . . . journeys into a sad past. The apparent reliving of a lost past in terms of grasping at the illusion of ecstasy can only represent a falsification of memory for the purpose of defence. And the dry, brittle memories of an emotionally arid childhood are as fearsome as those of more openly violent abuse. The hunger that such childhood misery and emptiness leave behind often becomes 'bound' in a phantom memory." Masson at 205.

The manifest dream image of Dr. Mack as the leader of a discussion group may be a benign expression of a disturbing intra-psychic reality that centers on sado-masochism. "In mystical traditions, the relationship between a master and his disciple is always 'homosexually' intense, prohibiting the 'distraction' of heterosexual family life, and overtly humiliating to the disciple. This is rationalized as diminishing his 'ego', cloaking the aggression in the purple robe of a promise of eventual aggrandizement [citation omitted]. Thomas Mann (1930) in his short novel, Mario and the Magician, seizes upon all of these elements at the heart of magic. His magician is a deformed, cruel, perverse imposter who preys upon his victims by arrogantly displaying his sadism, that is his magic. The story ends with the ultimate victimization: a homosexual seduction followed by death." Masson at 203.

Comment by Gary Freedman on October 17, 2009 at 11:21am:

I read this New York Times report on the morning of August 9, 1995. The burakumin were also "aliens."

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/09/world/through-survivors-tales-nagasaki-joins-japan-s-timeless-folklore.html