ISE BALAsz-RAK6CZY
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on a secret room - the same door that in Egyptian tombs permits the
soul to come and go. Katje, in this way, was becoming my first analyst as
Scheherazade was her king's. In this way, too, Katje became my Sche–
herazade.
What does it mean to be an analyst along the lines of this formidable
odalisque? According to the legend, the king had suffered a terrible blow
when his wife betrayed him with the Negro, Masoud. Torn by rage and
despair, he would revenge himself on
all
women -like Jack the Ripper -
a Ripper with license. The brave Scheherazade determines to save her sex
by means of an ingenious ruse. For this she is well equipped. She has im–
mense erudition, a prodigious memory, a penetrating mind and superb
poetic gifts. And to what end does she place these wide accomplish–
ments? To the end of telling tales.
Pascal, too, divined the needs of kings. "Le Roy," he wrote, "est
environee de gens qui ne ponce pesent qu'a divirtir Ie Roy, et
I'empescher de penser a luy. Car il est malheureux, tout Roy qu'il est, s'il
y pense." That is the essence of Sheherazade's wisdom: to divert her
husband endlessly and so keep him from the abyss of thinking on himself.
The free imagination, like the thousand-petaled rose, is unceasingly
regenerative. Images metamorphose into one another; stories within sto–
ries unfold . Like the King's desire, the flower closes on itself each night
and in the morning begets itself anew.
In psychoanalysis, of course, it is the patient who tells the tale, over
and over in different ways, incorporating memories, real and imagined,
digressing, returning, finding new inflections, connecting disparate
threads, weaving a picture of his life that occupies a plane other than the
plane of life but no less ...
It
is the analyst'S task to listen, and to see that the tale is never done.
Like Scheherazade. Like the king.
6. Last night Alice gave an intimate musicale - just a few of us in her
small green drawing room. Her stepdaughter Daphne played the cello in
the Schubert B-flat Trio. All through the andante, I found myself staring
at a bowl of flowers - a small crystal bowl touched here and there with
gold. The bouquet was simple: two crimson roses with their leaves, one
open, the other partly closed. Then, a single tulip of a more cadmium
red, brushed with lines of black. All three were set against a double spray
oflilacs, heavy and intensely white. Opposite me sat the old Baroness von
R.,
the flowers glowing against her dress. Somehow their beauty and the
music opened an ache in my heart; I could not contain it. Before the
scherzo I fled the room. When Alice came to find me later, the tears had
come and gone, but the ache, the ache ...
