How My Book Significant Moments Grew Like a Plant

The following memo to my psychiatrist at The George Washington University Medical Center transmits a rough draft of my book, Significant Moments, which eventually grew to a length of 548 pages.  During the period April 1993 to about 2004, an eleven year period, I worked continually on the book -- inserting new material here and there in the draft, perhaps the way genes are inserted in various places in a genome by, say, a retrovirus.

* * * *

TO:        Suzanne M. Pitts, MD
FROM:  Gary Freedman
DATE:    March 5, 1994
RE:         Masson/Eissler paper additions
______________________________

The following lists the page numbers of changes (additions, rearrangements) to the above referenced paper, a copy of which is attached

2
3
4
5
6
8 [cf.: But, unlike most attorneys, whose sins against the spirit of fact go undetected because nobody takes the trouble to check up on them, Dennis Race had the misfortune to attract the notice of someone who was willing to go to any lengths to catch him out.  Freedman administers one of the most severe trouncings of one attorney by another in the annals of jurisprudence.]
9
13
15 [editorial comments re Assault on Truth]
17
18
21
22
24 [links to Freud and Spinoza]
26
27
36 [rearranged Hollingdale quote]
40 [links Nietzsche to Spinoza; also introduces the "healer" theme mentioned again in connection with Shamanism]
45 [lines 5-9 added to provide symmetry with existing material on page 47: "some of the seed fell upon stony places"]
63 [rearranged Bettelheim quote; entire section rewritten]
64
65
66
67
70
73
74
75 [Incidentally, Masson's comments about "goggles" suggests Spinoza's profession as a lens grinder.  By the way, retail is for suckers.]
76
77 [was able to insert "Abraxas" material previously omitted since it now ties in with newly added express reference to Abraxas at page 4.  I have a thing for symmetry.]
80 [rearranged and added new Meistersinger material: point here is that both the "old order" and the "new order" are following the dictates of their respective "imagoes," which have the same psychological source.  The conflict of the old and the new is a conflict of "imagoes."]
81
84 [Freud material]
91 [added quote from the infamous New York Times article.  What is astounding is that the article, which was in part the cause of Masson's termination, includes a quotation that foreshadows the very events of Masson's termination: "identical scenes with the father." Also, the article discusses Fliess's paranoia toward Freud concerning Freud's revelation of confidential material!

Note that the passing on of information, a recurring theme of the paper, is the raison d'etre of DNA; indeed, the chapter of Asimov's book (The Wellsprings of Life) from which I quote is titled "Passing on the Information."]
92
101