Demon Box

“How about we consider instead who is correct. Der Siggy Freud? All those interesting theories? like how anal retention becomes compulsive repetition and causes some sort of blockage what he called petrification? Und how this blockage could be dissolved with enough analysis, like enough castor oil? Please, mine colleagues, let us speak truthfully, doctor to doctor. We have all observed the application of these theories. Interesting though they may be, we all know that they are for all practical purposes useless in the psychiatric ward. Castor oil would be more effective, and Sigmund would have been more useful had he written romances for a living. The romantic ideal can be useful in the world of fiction; in world of medicine, never. Und we are all medical men, yah? We must be able to distinguish medicine from fiction. We must be able to know what is psychological results and what is psychological soap opera, never mind how the one is so discouraging while the other is so fascinating. You are all just as capable as I am of knowing who is really who and what was really what, so you all must have suspected what I am trying to tell you before now: that Sigmund Freud was a neurotic, romantic, coke-shooting quack!” When he said this he slapped the podium a sharp crack. The effect on the convention crowd would not have been greater if he’d said Albert Schweitzer was a Nazi, then fired a Luger at the ceiling. He swept his black-goggled gaze about the hall until the air subsided.

“Old daydreamer Carl Jung mit his sugar-glazed mandala? Willy Reich teaching orgasm by the numbers? All quacks. Yah, they were all very good writers, very interesting. But if you are a woodcutter, let us say, and you purchase a woodsaw—what does it matter how interesting the sawmaker writes about it? If it does not saw good it is not a good saw. As a woodcutter, you should be the first to detect the cheat: it won’t cut straight! So take it back to that lying sawmaker, or paint a sunset on it, or throw it in the river—but don’t pass the crooked wood on to your customers!” He paused to reach down and pick up Dr. Toocter’s wadded napkin. He bowed his head to dab at the sweat that had begun to glisten on his neck and throat. He waited until his breathing calmed before he looked back up.

“Also, you are bad woodcutters for more reason than you invest in bad saws. You are afraid to go into the forest. You would rather invent a tree to fit your theory, and cut down the invention. You cannot face the real forest. You cannot face the real roots of your world’s madness. You see the sore well enough but you cannot heal it. You can ease the pain, perhaps, but you can’t stop the infection. You cannot even find the thorn! Und so”—he lifted his shoulders in a deprecating shrug—“that is the reason why I have flown to speak to you here tonight, even here, in the very heart of the festering American dream: to point out to you that thorn. Miss Nichswander?”

She was already rolling out the blackboard. When it was secured behind the dais she took a stick of chalk from her jeweled handbag and handed it to her boss. He waited until she was out of sight through the curtains before he turned back to us.

“Okay, some concentration if you please.” The hand began pushing the chalk around the slate rectangle. “I will explain you this only once.”