"In the Freud Archives"

[fiefoe]

Janet Malcolm tells the story of a complex of psychoanalysts, and it's fitting that she does some analysis on her own.

• Eissler, incredibly, held back no part of himself, refused Masson nothing, loved him quite beyond all expectation. ... And Masson, in return, fitted himself to the image that Eissler had formed for him. That things should have ended so badly between them was probably inevitable.
• Eissler's... character: its singular mixture of brilliance, profundity, originality, and moral beauty on the one hand, and willfulness, stubborness, impetuosity, and maddening guilelessness on the other.
• Swale's screed is unfailingly interesting.. In Henry James's phrase, Swales is "one of the people on whom nothing is lost," and, like a James character, he takes things very far.
• The whole thing is immensely satisfying to contemplate as a piece of intellectual work; there are no loose ends, all the pieces fit, the joints are elegant. But it's all wrong. It's like a Van Meegeren forgery of Vermeer...

The younger protagonists express themselves all too well in their own words:
Swale: (the scene-stealer)
    "At the brunch, I had to face up to the moral dimension of my situation. There I was, infiltrating the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies, the Freud Archives. Where did that put me? I thought, That's what journalists do, that's what spies do - which triggered a whole romantic dimension that I'm not indifferent to."
    "In Masson I immediately recognized a kind of mirror image of a part of myself. He is an entrepreneur, a hustler."
Masson:
    "There's another idea I had... that (we) would go around the world, staying for a couple of months in each country and finding out what's wrong with each culture. I feel I have unique insights into the evils of different societies..."
    "I think that the best people in any field eventually become disillusioned and withdraw from the field. "