Then it was Dr. Freud’s turn. I regarded the celebrated psychiatrist as being in the semi-joker class and saw no reason why we shouldn’t have a bit of fun with him. Yasmin agreed. So the two of us cooked up an interesting psychiatric malady for her to be suffering from, and in she went to the big greystone house on Berggasse at two thirty on a cool, sunny October afternoon. Here is her own description of the encounter as she told it to me later that day over a bottle of Krug after I had frozen the straws.
“He’s a goosey old bird,” she said. “Very severe looking and correctly dressed, like a banker or something.”
“Did he speak English?”
“Quite good English, but with that dreadful German accent. He sat me down on the other side of his desk and right away I offered him a chocolate. He took it like a lamb. Isn’t it odd, Oswald, how every one of them takes the chocolate without any argument?”
“I don’t think it’s odd,” I said. “It’s the natural thing to do. If a pretty girl offered me a chocolate, I’d take it.”
“He was a hairy sort of fellow,” Yasmin said. “He had a moustache and a thick pointed beard which looked as though it had been trimmed very carefully in front of a mirror with scissors. Whitish-grey it was. But the hair had been cut well back from his mouth above and below so that the bristles made a sort of frame for his lips. That’s what I noticed above everything else, his lips. Very striking, those lips of his, and very thick. They looked like a pair of false lips made out of rubber which had been stuck on over the real ones.
“‘So now, frãulein,’ he said, munching away at his chocolate, ‘tell me about this so urgent problem of yours.’
“‘Oh, Doctor Freud, I do hope you can help me!’I cried, working myself up at once. ‘Can I speak to you frankly?’
“‘That’s vot you are here for,’ he said. ‘Lie down on that couch over there, please, and just let yourself go.’
“So I lay down on the goddamn couch, Oswald, and as I did so I thought well anyway I’m going to be in a reasonably comfy place for once when the fireworks start.”
“I see your point.”
“So I said to him, ‘Something terrible is wrong with me, Doctor Freud! Something terrible and shocking!’
“‘And vot is that?’ he asked, perking up. He obviously enjoyed hearing about terrible and shocking things.
“‘You won’t believe it,’ I said, ‘but it is impossible for me to be in the presence of a man for more than a few minutes before he tries to rape me! He becomes a wild animal! He rips off my clothes! He exposes his organ–is that the right word?’
“‘It is as good a word as any,’ he said. ‘Continue, fräulein.’
“‘He jumps on top of me!’ I cried. ‘He pins me down! He takes his pleasure of me! Every man I meet does this to me, Doctor Freud! You must help me! I am being raped to death!’
“‘Dear lady,’ he said, ‘this is a very common fantasy among certain types of hysterical vimmen. These vimmen are all frightened of having physical relations with men. Actually, they long to indulge in fornication and copulation and all other sexy frolics but they are terrified of the consequences. So they fantasize. They imagine they are being raped. But it never happens. They are all firgins.’
“‘No, no!’ I cried. ‘You are wrong, Doctor Freud! I’m not a virgin! I’m the most over-raped girl in the world!’
“‘You are hallucinating,’ he said. ‘Nobody has ever raped you. Vy you do not admit it and you vu1 feel better instamatically?’
“‘How can I admit it when it isn’t true?’ I cried. ‘Every man I’ve ever met has had his way with me! And it’ll be just the same with you if I stay here much longer, you see if it isn’t!’
“‘Do not be ridiculous, fräulein,’ he snapped.
“‘It will, it will!’ I cried. ‘You’ll be as bad as all the rest of them before this session’s over!’