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PARTISAN REVIEW
chemist. A chemist has to be thoughtful or else he's a bad chemist!
RS:
I also get the feeling that you're a bit hostile towards psycho–
analysis.
PL:
In fact, I am! A friend of mine who was arrested with me is now
a psychoanalyst in Milan. She wrote me a beautiful letter saying that
she liked this book but that her professional conscience didn't. Now,
I have to confess that I didn't think much of Bruno Bettelheim's first
book.
3
It
seems to me that his interpretation of imprisonment as
regression just isn't valid in general. It's valid for some but for
others, like me, it was the exact opposite. So to hold up this theory as
a general rule strikes me as unfair. But, more generally speakipg,
I've read Freud's works and I even like them a lot. He is a great
writer and a great poet as well. A man of extraordinary acumen. But
the psychoanalysts today leave me cold. They're schematic. Mind
you: I'm not a psychotic myself and I've never had any direct
experience!
RS:
You also mention Liliana Cavani's film
The Night Porter
in
I som–
mersi e i salvati.
PL:
Yes, haven't you seen it?
RS:
Yes, I saw it, but I had to walk out halfway through.
PL:
Really?
RS:
It was almost an affront. I couldn't sit through it because of the
anger I felt.
PL:
Yes, but unfortunately, it's not a bad movie. It's very well made.
And Cavani isn't stupid. I know her personally.
RS:
You've said that
The Night Porter
is "beautiful and false."
PL:
Yes, it's beautiful from a technical point of view. And it has
some good actors. But it's profoundly false.
RS:
Why do you say false?
PL:
Most of all because the relationship between the girl and the SS
officer is false. Not that these things couldn't have happened. They
could even have happened, but they were extremely marginal. The
SS had nothing to do with the Lagers. Really, this avalanche of films
that has been made.... Cavani's has a certain artistic dignity, but
many of them are just trash. A lot of them make it seem as if the con–
centration camps were sexual gymnasiums where prostitution was
the order of the day. I'll grant you that there was prostitution. Him-
3. Bruno Bettelheim,
Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations
(Bobbs–
Merrill : Indianapolis, 1943).
