Part 11

The old doctor took his leave with animated steps. With the power of his words he had once again reformed a human being.

But his joy was short-lived. That afternoon, as he walked by a café on the main thoroughfare his eyes fell on a vivacious group within. And there he saw his recalcitrant patient who had evidently gone out only to get a chance to discuss thoroughly with her friends the theme: “The flight from the house.”

DEAD-HEADS

“Are there any people who still pay for tickets?” I was asked in all seriousness by a man, who, as a result of his numerous connections, had been able to develop the art of getting passes to its utmost possibilities.

Ridiculous though the question may sound to some, there is, nevertheless, something very profound in it. The pursuit after passes is in our day a favourite “sport” of residents of large cities. To most such people a journalist or a writer is not an artist who laboriously strives to give adequate expression to his thoughts, who has to listen to the secret voices within his breast and to translate them into the language of every day. No, in their mind a writer is the Croesus of passes. He only sits in front of his desk, as there accumulate before him green, blue, and red tickets, the magic keys that open the doors to all the temples of art without having to go to the trouble of digging into his money bag and experiencing the pleasure of paying out his shining coins. And they take it ill of the Croesus that he is so niggardly as to guard his treasures so greedily and not make everybody he comes in contact with happy by distributing the little papers. For to them getting a pass is considered a great piece of good fortune, almost like drawing a grand small prize in a lottery. It enables one to temporarily enjoy the greatest sensation in life: pleasure without cost. That is, it should so enable one.

With a pass one gets everything,--the respect of the upper classes, the right to be rude and the enforcement of courtesy. If it were possible to say of certain young women that for a ride they would part with their honour, then one might aptly vary the phrase and say: for a pass, with everything.

There are human beings, persons with so-called “good connections,” who lead a wonderful life with the aid of passes. The physician who is at their beck and call throughout the year is compensated for his efforts by the presentation from time to time of a box or a pair of seats for the theatre. So, too, the lawyer. The Cerberus rage of the most terrifying of all apartment-house superintendents melts into the gentlest humility at the prospect of a pass. We expect a thousand little favours from our fellow-citizens who assume the obligation to render these favours by the acceptance of a pass.

There are probably only very few persons who feel any shame on going on a trip with a pass. These exceptional beings have not yet discovered that nowadays it is only the person who pays who is looked down upon. Every one takes his hat off to the possessor of a pass. The train conductor makes a respectful bow because he does not know whether the “dead-head” is an officer of the company or some other “big gun.” The ticket collector does the same because experience has taught him that the dead-head usually overcomes by a treat the social inferiority associated with “enjoyment without payment.” In short, a pass invests its possessor with the mysterious air of a great power and weaves about his head a halo which lifts him above the misers plebs contribuens.

But you must not think that the possessor of passes constitutes that part of the public that is particularly grateful for and appreciative of the artistic offerings. On the contrary! Artistic enjoyment in the theatre requires a certain capacity for illusion, and the purchase of a ticket exercises a considerable influence on this capacity. For one who has dearly paid for his seat has imposed the moral obligation upon himself to be entertained.

Down in his subliminal self there dwell forces that may be said to have been lessoned to applaud. The higher the price, the more painfully the pleasure was purchased, the greater is the willingness to be carried away by the work of art and the artists. The poor student who has stood for hours in front of the opera house and been lucky enough to secure admission to standing room in the gallery will have a better time than his rich colleague down in the orchestra, and a very much better time than the envied possessor of a free seat. For his capacity for illusion has been tremendously heightened. He expects a reward commensurate with the trouble he went to and the money he sacrificed. His tension being much higher, the relaxation of that tension must yield him a much greater quantity of pleasure. The greater the restraints that one has to overcome the greater the pleasure in having succeeded in overcoming them.

The necessity for illusion is absent in the possessor of a pass. There is nothing to make it incumbent on him to be entertained; he has not paid anything. He can even leave the performance before it is concluded if it does not please him. He is more sceptical, more critical, and less grateful.

Any dramatist who at a première would fill the theatre with his good friends by giving them passes would have little knowledge of human nature; certain failure would await him. Not only because these so-called good friends, in obedience to their unconscious envy, frankly join the enemy’s ranks, but because the possessors of passes involuntarily get into the psychic condition which is characteristic of “dead-heads,” viz: indifferent critical smugness and a diminished capacity for illusion.

I know of a striking example of this that came under my own observation. One of my friends, a young playwright, invited his tailor and his wife to go to his première, and not to be backward in expressing their approval. He had distributed a sufficiently large number of friends in the orchestra, but the gallery had not been provided for. He had, naturally, also sent two tickets to one of his competitors. It so chanced that I was in the thick of it, because I was interested in seeing how the simple public would receive the piece. I sat right behind the doughty tailor couple, who, of course, did not know me. Several times during the performance we almost came to blows. The married couple hissed with might and main, whereas I applauded with all my power. We exchanged angry words and otherwise acted in a manner characteristic of such a situation and of such a youthful temper as mine then was. The play was a failure. Later we discussed the reason for this failure. One said that the play was not deep enough for the enlightened public. I challenged this contention, and referred to the simple people who sat in front of me and whose names and station I had discovered from some neighbours. My friend would not believe me at first until I had convinced him by a detailed description of the couple that the tailor who had for so many years made his clothes had felt it incumbent on him to repay the author’s gift of a pass by contributing to the failure of his play.

To be under obligations always oppresses us. We have the instinctive impulse to disregard them. A pass is an obligation to acknowledge the excellence of the offered entertainment, to confirm that it is worth the price of admission. In addition to the absence of a need for illusion from material considerations we have to reckon with the impulse to disregard this obligation. These two psychic factors serve to bring about in the heart of the possessor of a pass the defence reaction that I have previously described.

Notwithstanding this, the craving for passes, which formerly was the privilege of the few exceptional personages, keeps growing more and more, infecting other levels of society, and would easily become a serious menace to the directorate of the theatres if these had not hit upon an adequate remedy in distributing passes on the homœopathic principle. They fight the “pass with the pass.” They distribute passes and reduced rate tickets very lavishly for the days on which they know the receipts will be poor and for plays which no longer draw large audiences. The exaction of a small fee on the presentation of the coupon serves to cover part of the running expenses; the house is filled and the many’s fire for passes is quenched. On the following days the people are much more willing to buy their tickets because they think that they can afford to be so extravagant, inasmuch as they had seen one or more performances free or practically so, and are swayed by the unconscious instinct that a purchased pleasure is sure to prove more delightful.

One would have to be a second limping Mephisto to be able to follow the invisible stream of passes in a large metropolis. The romance of a pass is still to be written. It would yield us an insight into the psychology of modern man that would be second to none. It would prove that one of the most important impulses of our time is the desire not to have to work for one’s pleasures. I say “not to work for one’s pleasures” rather than “not to pay for one’s pleasures,” because money always means an equivalent for our work. The most industrious persons are in reality those who are most averse to work. For behind their zeal to accumulate money there is the burning desire to hoard up as much as will ensure an income sufficient to purchase enjoyment without additional work. In the language of every day this would be: a care-free old age. But, in sooth, worry is the main source of our pleasures. Were there no cares the variegated colours of the spectrum that constitute the light of life would be replaced by dull monotonous grays that resemble each other as closely as the two links that unite the two ends of a chain converting it into a whole.

The pursuit after passes is only a small fragment of that mad pursuit after “pleasure without work” that is being enacted all around us. I have gone into the subject so minutely only because it is a typical example of mankind’s stupid beginning to free itself from the iron bonds of material dependence. For the more free we think ourselves, the more enslaved we really are.

IDENTIFICATION

I know a man who suffered a great deal from his wife’s moods. No matter how much he tried he could never please her. If he was happy and contented she called him “Mr. Frivolous” and would say what a fine figure he’d cut in a Punch and Judy show; if, on the contrary, cares troubled him and his face betrayed his anxiety, she called him “Old Grouch” and railed at him for making her life bitter. If he wanted to go to the theatre, she thought they ought to stay home; if he longed for the peace of the home, she egged him on to take part in all sorts of senseless pastimes. Is it any wonder that the poor man became “nervous”? that he lost his peace of mind and his hitherto imperturbable good humour?

In those painful days his comfort was his quiet daughter who seemed to be in all respects the opposite of her moody mother. He sought sanctuary with her, and over and over again she had to listen to his cries for peace.

Finally his nervous condition got so bad that a physician had to be consulted. The physician being fully aware of the patient’s domestic relations did not have to consider very long and ordered the sick man to take a trip. More easily prescribed than done. For our patient had one very bad habit: he could not be alone. It was a cruel punishment for him to have to look after his small daily wants away from home. What was he to do? His wife would gladly have gone along with him. But there were numerous objections to that. Besides, the wise physician would not hear of it. In this quandary the distressed man thought of his gentle, affectionate, young daughter. Everybody rejoiced at this happy solution; the anxious physician, the jealous wife, and, not least, the sensible daughter who had not yet seen anything of the world and whose secret dreams of youth had been disturbed by the erratic educational methods of her mother, in which exaggerated love and pitiless sternness alternated.

Great excitement marked the time for departure. Mother changed her plans ten times over. First she wanted to drop everything and accompany her husband; then she wanted to induce the unhappy husband to give up the trip, and so on. Finally the time for departure arrived. They were on the platform at the station and were saying the last good-byes. Mother had an unlimited number of things to say and suggestions to make. Then the conductor gave the last warning and there was no time to lose. Through the little window the happy father and the still happier daughter looked out on the source of their woes who had been suddenly converted into an inexhaustible fountain of tears. Was she so grieved because the objects upon whom she was wont to project the discontent of her unresting heart were gone? With a sudden movement she wiped away her tears and called after her daughter in stentorian tones: “Freda, now you’ll take the place of your mother! Remember that!”--What else she said was lost in the din of the moving train whose shrill whistle drowned the asthmatic woman’s commanding tones. During the next few seconds they waved their last greetings and then the scene so painful to all was over.

Father and daughter looked at each other, their faces beaming. For a little while, at any rate, they would be free and have nothing else to do but to enjoy life. The mother’s last words rang in their ears. Involuntarily the man smiled and remarked tenderly to his daughter: “Well--I shall be curious to see how my little sunshine will take her mother’s place.” The little one looked at her father seriously and replied: “Papa, I shall try to do so to the best of my power, surely.” And deep within her she rejoiced at the thought that strangers might think her really the young wife of this fine-looking man.

After a few minutes Freda began to complain that it was getting very cold. “There is a draught! It’s terribly cold!” The anxious father at once closed the window. After a little while she complained that the compartment was unbearably stuffy. Why had not the conductor assigned them a more spacious one? Had papa given him a tip? She had been told by a friend who had just returned from a wedding trip in Italy that conductors are respectful and accommodating only to those who give liberal tips. She was not so inexperienced as a certain papa seemed to think. If he gave the man the tip they would surely be transferred to a more comfortable car. Somewhat irritated, the father complied with his daughter’s wish. After considerable trouble they were transferred from their small cosy compartment in which they could sit alone, to a large one into which a stout elderly gentleman entered at the next station and plumped himself down beside them. Freda had an insurmountable repugnance to fat old gentlemen. She reproached her father; he had not given the conductor a large enough tip.

Why waste words? After a few hours the poor man saw only too clearly that his daughter was bent on taking her mother’s place in the true sense of the word. She pestered him with her moods and gave him not a minute’s rest. He tried to console himself with the thought that Freda was not herself owing to the excitement of the last few days, and that she would soon be herself again. Vain hope! The girl was as if transformed. From a quiet, amiable child, she had become a moody, fractious torment. The trip which had been intended as a cure became an unmitigable torture. For at home he knew how to adapt himself quietly to his wife’s tyranny. But here, away from home, he was constantly getting into all sorts of unpleasant situations. Finally, he pretended to be too sick to continue the trip and after a few days they returned home.

I have narrated this tragic-comical history in such detail because it makes the meaning of “Identification” clearer than any definition could. What had happened to the young girl to transform her so quickly? Her mother had enjoined her to take her place. She had to some extent taken upon herself her mother’s duties. She identified herself with her mother. She played the role of mother exactly as she had for years seen it played at home, though, in secret, she had disapproved of her mother’s conduct. This identification nullified her own personality and replaced it with another.

This is a phenomenon that takes the most surprising forms among the victims of hysteria. But it would be erroneous to think that it occurs only among hysterics. Almost all persons, especially women, succumb to the seductive power of identification. I wonder if it is because of this that all of us secretly bear a measure of neurosis with us throughout life! At home, Freda might have concealed her hysteria as a kind of reaction to her mother’s conduct. It was only when she had to play the mother’s role that the neurosis, in consequence of an unconscious affect, became manifest. It is thus that epidemics of hysteria break out. If a neurosis is capable of transferring an affect, it can arouse another, slumbering neurosis. For to-day we know, from Bleuler’s studies, that suggestion is not the transference of an idea but an affect.

The phenomenon that the above case brings out so clearly and unequivocally may be seen in everyday life behind various motives, catchwords, tendencies, and strivings. Notwithstanding these disguises the eye of the investigator will not find it difficult to recognize the mechanism of identification and the element of the neurosis in the normal person. But if this is so everybody is neurotic. Let us not get excited about this conclusion. There is no such thing as a normal human being. What we call disease and abnormality are only the highest peaks of a mountain chain that rises to various heights above the sea-level of the normal. Every person has his weak spots, physical and psychical. We can reckon only relative heights, never the absolute, inasmuch as a standard of the normal is really never at our disposal.