be. And therefore we shall not follow Bleuler in his estimation of
jealousy as one of the “unconscious commonplaces” which makes love
valueless as “the plant-louse does the rose-bud.” We shall recognise
in it, when it is baseless, a disease of the soul occurring in persons
whose cravings and realities do not coincide and who have with a heavy
heart been forced to the recognition after cruel inner conflicts that
their virtue is only an over-emphatic opposition to their weakness.
Their jealousy has taken on a pathological (neurotic) character because
of this repression and this relegating of their own desires into the
unconscious. That is why all the logic of realities is effectless when
opposed to the logic of the unconscious. One might almost say that
jealousy is a cultural disease which results from the restrictions on
our love-life imposed by law and morality. If so-called “free love”
ever becomes a fact there will be far fewer cases of jealousy than we
have to-day. That sounds plausible. But will life be more worth living
when there will be no more jealousy? We gladly put up with jealousy if
only our costly treasure of love continues secure. Would a life free
from all jealousy and pain, a life without passions, be worth while?
Is it not a fact that our possessions are most highly valued by us at
the moment when we fear to lose them?... The sweetest harmonies are to
be found only in contrasts. The wagon of life rolls with greater tempo
over the endless lonely roads when it is harnessed to the passions.
CHILDHOOD FRIENDSHIP
An indescribably sweet breeze blows over the friendships of childhood.
They are tender, delicate, pale blue petals that tremble with each
stir of the childish soul and whose roots even then already penetrate
down to the deep layers in which inherited instincts and tempting
desires fertilise the soil of the passions. Its first friendship
is a revelation for the child. Till then it loved its parents, its
surroundings, its teacher. But behind this love the educational
tendency was always in evidence. “You must love your parents because
they are so good to you. You must respect your teacher because from him
you get the knowledge that is indispensable to you in your life.” Thus
we make that love a duty for the child which ought, on the contrary, to
make it conscious of its duties.
How different it all is in the case of friendship. Here the child
can follow its natural inclinations. Here it can choose according to
its own standards without having to listen to the dictates of its
educators. And indeed one has thousands of opportunities to observe
that a child is much more cautious than adults in the selection of its
friends, that it will not accept a friend assigned it by its parents
unless he meets with its approval, unless an unconscious urge pleads in
his behalf.
How peculiar children are in their choice of a friend! Either he is
the nicest or the finest, the quietest or the noisiest, the best or
the worst, the strongest or the weakest. They prefer one whose traits
are clearly and sharply defined, rather than one who is neither one
thing nor the other. There must be something about the friend that they
can admire; he must excel them in something. But it is not a bar to
friendship that they excel the other in something.
Let no one say that it is an easy matter to read the souls of children!
That their emotions are simple, that their soul’s an open book! We can
discover all the puzzling roots of love, even in the friendships of
children, _e.g._, sympathy, cruelty, desire, humility, and subjection.
It is my belief that we adults cannot love with the love we were
capable of in childhood. We cannot hate so, cannot be so resentful, and
cannot be so self-sacrificing. Alas! even our emotions become pallid
with the years and can make a show of colour only with the aid of
memory.
Let us watch a child that has entered into a close friendship. Is it
not playing the same game that we adults later on designate as love?
Have we forgotten the feverish impatience with which we awaited the
hour of the friend’s coming and how jealous we were if he stopped to
converse with another? How we hated him then and how terribly unhappy
we were? How we would have loved to cry aloud, if we had not been
ashamed to betray such weakness. Have we forgotten how the hours flew
when we were playing together, how we whispered dreadful and mysterious
things to each other in the twilight, how passionately we embraced
each other, and kissed, and how ready we were to give up our little
treasures to our friends? There is but one time that resembles this
friendship:--the time when a happy love makes a wooer a sweet child
again.
Even in a child’s soul the hunger for love cries aloud and will not be
stilled. For a love that is more than a love of parents, for a love
that is touched with that dark power which at a later period shapes the
life of man to its will.
Oh! blessed time, in which our yearning for a second human being is so
easily gratified! Blessed time, in which we do not yet feel the hot
breath of burning desires when the arm of a beloved being entwines us,
in which the threatening fist of Destiny does not pin us to the ground
at the moment when we think we are plucking down the sky! The mirror of
our soul still reflects pure innocence; we do not yet suspect that the
passions that set the waters in motion must also stir up the muddy ooze
that lies at the bottom.
Childhood friendship is the school of love. Without such friendship the
child is impoverished and forever loses the power to love. Look at the
mothers’ darlings whose mothers took the place of friends! See how they
are bound to their mothers by all their emotions, by all the bonds of
their souls, incapable of breaking loose from the love for the mother
and founding another generation. The stupidest dream of parents is the
wish to be the friends of their children. But are we not deceiving
ourselves? Is such a thing possible? Is there not between ourselves and
our children a world of disappointments and buried hopes? Are there
not here yawning chasms in whose depths wild torrents carry away the
residue of past years, chasms which cannot be bridged? Say what we
will, only a child can be a child’s friend!
And there is much food for reflection in this. The child is surrounded
by so much authority, so much school, so much dignity, so much law,
that it would have to break down under the weight of all these
restraints if it were not saved from such a fate by meeting with a
friend. In secret conferences, at first in whispers and only in hints,
but subsequently more and more clearly and distinctly, the road to life
is outlined. The gods are dethroned, or, at any rate, are not feared so
much; little jokes about the teacher are the beginning, and gradually
the excess of parental authority goes tumbling till it assumes just
proportions. The way to freedom of thought, the way to independence,
the way to individuality is opened. What the child could not have
accomplished alone was a mere toy with the help of another. And the
friendship grows ever prouder and more intimate the more the child
loses the feelings enforced upon it.
One great mystery, the child’s eternal question, occupies its mind
more than most parents, most persons, will believe: the question about
the origin of man, the question which is customarily answered with a
childish tale about a stork (or a big tree in heaven, a large cabbage,
or a department store), a tale with which the clever little ones make
fools of their elders who go on repeating for many years a story they
had long ago ceased to believe. Behind all the child’s curiosity there
lurks the one great question: “Where do children come from?” One will
never go wrong in concluding that a child who is plaguing his elders
with a thousand stupid and clever questions is suffering from a kind of
obsession, an obsessive questioning, behind which lies the one great
and important question that troubles all children. On this subject the
child cannot speak with its parents. Instinctively it feels that here
is a great mystery that is being withheld from it and whose solution
the parents have put off for a future time. It is during childhood
friendship and in connection with this question that sexuality plays
its first trump. It is a pity that human beings so easily forget their
own childhood, else parents would not be so blind in this regard. In
the northern psychologist’s, Arne Gaborg’s, best work “By Mama” there
is a wonderful scene copied direct from nature: Two little girls are
sitting on the basement stairs whispering to each other their latest
bit of information about the great mystery; gradually it grows dark
and an inexplicable dread of something great, threatening, mysterious,
fills their trembling souls; it is that fear which faithfully
accompanies love throughout life and whose dark wing has just barely
brushed their innocent childhood.
The child gets older and friendship changes its nature. Life and
its claims interpose their authority. Into the quiet and unselfish
friendship of childhood, into the pure and simple childish harmonies
there penetrate various over- and under-tones whose inharmonious
character is not discovered until long after. Envy, egoism,
covetousness, cunning, distrust,--all these feelings steal their way
into the childhood friendship, and finally friendship degenerates into
what Moebius has so aptly named _Phantom-practice_. Young obstetricians
train their unskilled hands on “phantoms” (or mannikins) to fit them
for the serious requirements of their art. Something exactly like this
is the conduct of young adolescents, especially girls, who are still
half-child and already half-woman. To a girl the admiration of a girl
friend takes the place of a lover’s wooing; to be kissed by her results
in a dream of being kissed by a man. Recently biology has developed
the idea, erroneously attributed to Otto Weininger, that every human
being is a mixture of both sexes. Before puberty the two elements
_M._ and _F._, male and female, must balance. The child is bisexually
constituted, and therefore every friendship is in a certain sense a
love affair. About the time of sexual maturity the sexuality of every
individual triumphantly asserts itself. This is the great moment when
childhood friendship has fulfilled its mission. It is as if the child
were now freeing itself from the yoke of its own sex and entering the
arena equipped for the battle of love.
This also explains why childhood friendships so seldom are preserved
and carried over into adult life. The friendships of adults are based
upon different foundations. Now it is the thinking, reflecting,
conscious being who seeks a fellow combatant who he hopes will fully
understand (and sympathise with) him. Higher interests determine
their friendships. But it is no longer so deeply rooted as childhood
friendship. It no longer requires the co-operation of the instinctive
emotions.
Now and then one comes across persons who are always children, whom not
even the bitterest experiences can strip off the pollen linked with
their emotions. They are the only ones capable of true friendship even
in their old age. They spread friendship with the sweet smile of the
child; they do not love for the sake of the advantages to be derived;
they do not even ask whether they are their friends’ friend. Ah! If we
could be such a child again! Or if we could but find it!
EATING
I was once invited to the house of a certain writer who had made a
name for himself by several very clever novels and had acquired a
fortune by the publication of a successful journal. He was now living
on an estate in the country, retired from active life, spending his
days in luxurious peace. Much too soon, as I very quickly found
out. For he was in no sense old. A man about fifty whose eyes still
looked challengingly at the world. His look had in it nothing of the
asceticism of one who is tired of life. No; here the fire of secret
passions still blazed; here one could still detect power, ambition, and
desires.
Much in his conduct seemed puzzling to me. A stony calm, a certain
lassitude in his movements,--an enforced pose calculated to conceal the
internal restlessness which his eyes could not help betraying.
Only when the time to eat came he became all life. Then he stretched
his neck aloft, that he might see clearly the dish that was being
brought in. His nostrils dilated as if the sooner to inhale the
delightful aroma. His mouth made remarkable twitching movements and his
tongue moved over his thin lips with that peculiar rapid movement that
one may observe in a woman when she is engaged in animated conversation
with a man. He became restless, fidgetted nervously in his chair, and
followed tensely the distribution of the food by his wife, a corpulent,
energetic and almost masculine woman, who, very naturally and to his
secret distress, helped her guests first. Finally--much too late to
suit him--he received his portion. First he regarded his food with the
eye of an expert, turning it from side to side with his knife and fork.
Then he cut off a small piece and rolled it about in his mouth with
audible clucking and smacking of his tongue, let it rest on his tongue
awhile, his face the meantime assuming an expression of visionary
ecstasy. It was easy to see that for him eating had become the day’s
most important task. During the meal he never stopped talking of the
excellence of the food, all the while smacking his tongue and lips, and
literally expounding a system of culinary criticism.
When finally, to my great relief, the grace after dinner had been
pronounced, I hoped at last to be done with the wearying, unpleasant
chatter about eating. But this time I had really reckoned without my
host.
“What shall we serve our guests to-morrow, my dear?” the gourmand
inquired of his sterner half.
“To-morrow? The big white goose with the black patch.”
“The big white goose with the black patch! Ah! She’ll taste wonderful!
You don’t know how childishly happy it makes me. Come, let me show you
the white goose with the black patch!”
Resistance was useless. I had to go into the poultry-yard, where my
host stopped in front of a well-fed goose. “She’ll make a fine roast! I
am greatly pleased with this goose.”
No matter what subject was discussed, political, literary, or economic,
the main motif kept recurring: “I love to think of the big white goose
with the black patch!”
The meaning of gourmandism then suddenly flashed on me. What passions
must this man have suppressed, how much must he have renounced, before
his craving for pleasure had found new delights in this roundabout way!
Behind this monomaniac delight in eating, thought I, there must lurk a
great secret.
And such was indeed the case. My amiable host was really his wife’s
prisoner. While he was residing in the capital he had begun to indulge
in a perversion. His vice grew on him to such an extent that it
threatened to destroy everything, health, fortune, mind, ambition,
personality, spirit, everything. There was nothing left for him to do
but to tell his wife all and implore her assistance in saving him. The
virile woman soon hit on the only remedy. He became her prisoner. They
broke off all relationships that bound them to their social group. Most
of the year they spent in the country and lived in the city only two or
three winter months. The time was spent in eating and card playing, to
which fully half of the day was devoted. He was never alone. At most he
was permitted to take a short walk in the country. His wife had charge
of the family treasury, with which he had nothing to do. Of course,
this did not cure his pathological craving, but it made gratification
impossible. And gradually there began to develop in him the pleasure
for delicate dishes. In this indirect way he satisfied a part of his
sensuous craving. Thus he transformed his passion. His meals took the
place of the hours spent in the embraces of a lover. For him eating was
a re-coinage of his sexuality.
Is this an exceptional case, or is this phenomenon the rule? This is
the first question that forces itself on our attention. An answer to it
would take us into the deeps of the whole sexual problem. But let us
limit ourselves for the present only to what is essential for an answer
to our immediate question. Between hunger and love there is an endless
number of associations. The most important is this: both are opposed by
one counter-impulse, namely, disgust. Both love and hunger are desires
to touch, (to incorporate or to be incorporated with the desired
object); disgust is the fear of doing so. Love is accompanied with a
counter-impulse, a restraining influence, which we call shame. But this
very feeling, shame, is manifested by certain primitive peoples in
connection with eating. In Tahiti, says Cook, not even the members of
the family eat together, but eat seated several metres apart and with
their backs to one another. The Warua, an African tribe, conceal their
faces with a cloth while they are drinking. The Bakairi are innocent
of any sense of shame in connection with nakedness, but never eat
together.
The Viennese psychiatrist Freud, the Englishman Havelock Ellis (“The
Sexual Impulse”), and the Spanish Sociologist Solila, regard the
sucking of the breast by an infant as a kind of sexual act which
creates permanent associations between hunger and love. And the
language we speak has coined certain turns of expression which bring
these connections out unmistakably and which have great interest for
us as fossilisations of primitive thought processes and as rudiments
of cannibalism. Note, for example, the following expressions: “I could
bite her”; or, “I love the child so I could eat it up!” But we express
even disgust, aversion and hatred in terms of eating, _e.g._, “I can’t
stomach the fellow,” or, “he turns my stomach,” “she is not to my
taste,” etc.
On the other hand the names of certain dishes reveal connections with
other emotional complexes than the pure pleasure of eating. There is
an everyday symbolism which we all pass by blindly. Let him who has
any interest in this subject read Rudolph Kleinpaul’s book, “Sprache
ohne Worte” (Language without Words). This symbolism plays a much more
important rôle than we are wont to admit. For it alone is capable of
interpreting the puzzling names of the various delicacies on the bill
of fare. We are cannibals, for we eat “Moors in their ‘Jackets’” (a
fine revenge on the tawny cannibals!) “poor knights,” “master of the
chase,” “apprentice-locksmith,” and many more of the same kind. “Bridal
roast” holds an important place in the menus of the whole world. Social
inferiority is compensated for by numerous royal dishes ... _e.g._,
steak-a-la-king, cutlet-a-la-king, chicken-a-la-king, royal pudding,
etc., etc. One who will take the trouble, as Kleinpaul did in his
“Gastronomic Fairy-tale,” to follow up these things, will discover many
remarkable links with unconscious ideas. We are really hemmed in on
every side by fairy tales. Every word we speak, every name we utter,
has its story. And the many fairy tales in which children are devoured
by wolves, witches, man-eaters, and sea-monsters, together with the
tales in which so much is said about man-eating cannibals, reveal to
us a fragment of our pre-historic past in which love and hate actually
resulted in persons being eaten. In their naïveté our children betray
this very clearly. When the little ones eat maccaroni, noodles, or
similar dishes, they often make believe they are eating up somebody.
But, “something too much of this.” Let us turn our attention again to
the epicures, the little progeny of a great race. It is not difficult
to divide them into five classes according to which one of the five
senses is being chiefly gratified during the eating process. First,
there are the “Voyeurs,” to use the term so aptly coined by the French
with reference to a phenomenon in the sexual sphere. They must “see”
before they can enjoy. To see is the important thing with them. The
dishes must be served neatly and must look inviting. They are the
admirers of the many-coloured adornments on patisserie, of torts,
cakes, and puddings built in the shape of houses, churches, towers,
animals, wedding-bells, etc. They reckon their pleasures by the colour
nuances of their foods. Their chief delight is in the fore-pleasure
derived through the eyes. (This is clearly implied in the popular
phrase “a feast for the eyes.”)
Not quite as common are the listeners “who are thrown into a mild
ecstasy by the sizzling of a roast, the cracking of dry crumbs, and the
fiz of certain liquids.” Numberless are the “smellers” whose sensitive
noses drink in the aroma of the foods as their chief delight, whereas
the eating, as such, is performed mechanically, as an unavoidable
adjunct. Such persons can revel in the memories of a luscious dish,
and many of their associations are linked with the olfactory organ.
The pleasure in offensive odours, such as arise from certain cheeses,
garlic, rarebits, and wild game is to some extent a perversion
nutritional instinct and betrays innate relationships to sexual
aberrations, as are unequivocally indicated by certain popular ditties
and college songs. The folk-lore of all nations teems with hints at
such things.
An important group, the fourth, is that of the “toucher.” As we know
the tongue of man is the most important of the gustatory organs, even
though it has not that primacy and importance which it has in many
animals. Such “touchers” derive their greatest pleasure from the mere
touching of the food with the tongue. They prefer smooth and slippery
foods, _e.g._, oysters which they can suck down, and they love to roll
the food around in their mouths. It goes without saying that these
persons are also “tasters,” as indeed the majority of eaters are. But
for all that, these have their own peculiar traits; whereas the feeling
of fullness or satiety is to many persons a kind of discomfort, and a
full stomach gives rise to a disagreeably painful sensation, to these
“touchers” a full stomach means the most delightful sensation the day
has to offer.
Of the “gourmands” (literally “the relishers”) we need not say much.
The whole world knows them; to describe them many words and phrases
have been coined, _e.g._, sweet-toothed, cat-toothed, epicures, etc.
As might have been expected, these various forms are often combined in
one person, and your genuine gourmand eats with all his senses. We need
only keep our eyes open at a restaurant to observe that most persons
show some trace of epicurism. Very few resist the temptation to follow
the platter the waiter is carrying to some table. (Almost every one
likes to see what his neighbour is eating.) We may be discussing art,
politics, love, or what not, yet watch carefully how much the person
serving is taking for himself or dishing out for the others, and how
little he is leaving for us. Most of the time in these cases we are the
victims of an optical deception. Our neighbour’s portion always seems
bigger than ours. Hunger and envy magnify the other person’s portion
and minimise ours. And is it not an everyday experience that we order
what our neighbour is eating? “Waiter, what is that you served the man
over there? Bring me the same!”
How a person eats always reveals something of his hidden personality.
In the case of most human beings at meals the same thing happens that
one may observe at the menagerie during feeding-time: the peacefully
reposing lion becomes a beast of prey. That is why beautiful women
become ugly when they eat and lose their charm, cease to become
interesting when they are seen eating. It is not a meaningless custom
that we honour distinguished persons by dining them. By so doing we
create a situation in which there is no superiority and in which we
feel ourselves at one with the great man and on a level with him.
Much more complicated than the psychology of the ordinary eater is
that of the gourmand, who always seems even to himself to be an
exceptional kind of person and who has in unsuspected ways enlarged
the sphere of possible pleasures. In most of these cases we shall find
that they are persons of whom life has demanded many renunciations.
Just as the habitual drinker rarely stupifies himself because of the
pleasure he takes in drinking but mostly out of a desire to drown in
unconsciousness a great pain, to draw the veil over some humiliation,
disillusionment, failure, or disappointment, so the gourmand likewise
compensates himself for his lost world. He has the same right to the
pleasures of life that others have. Well for him that he is capable of
securing his portion in this way!