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ALICE You say you have never had direct experience of a mysterious event; do you mean by that that you have not been in a room at the time when someone, not you, was under the influence of a mystical force?
P.A. I have had no evidence that either I or the other was passing through such an experience. I only remember two or three occasions when an analysand of mine actually claimed a mystical origin for the event. I have been more impressed when the individual was not consciously making such a claim.
ROBIN Why? Surely ‘unconscious’ claims are far more open to mis-interpretation.
P.A. Agreed – I do not wish to decry the events of which I know nothing. But I have been compelled to notice that ‘fashions’ in beliefs, in theories, in varieties of psychoanalysis and in psychoanalysts, are as plentiful as fashions in cosmetics. I suspect that the fundamental source of fashion, whether in people, religions, ‘scientific’ theories or holiday resorts is, or ought to be, one goal of our curiosity. As individuals we cannot hope to do more than reach some outlying, peripheral goal and please ourselves by claiming that it is ultimate truth; or alternatively fall into despair at discovering our insignificance.
ROLAND Most people with any common sense know that.
P.A. ‘Most people with any common sense’ are, in my experience, very few people indeed. Common sense is only rarely in fashion. ‘Real’ common sense, in contrast to cosmetic common sense, tells too many uncomfortable things. ‘Eyes that have seen colossal storms and terraqueous convulsions’ are not likely to be sought after if they reveal danger and the emotional state appropriate to it.
ROLAND Don't you think that psychoanalysis itself glorifies the
importance of a man's thoughts and feelings as a way of being deaf and blind to facts?
P.A. Yes; it can be used, chosen as a method of ‘not choosing’, inhibiting awareness of facts which we do not like and cannot do anything about. The danger of such use is that it blinds us to facts ab