My Summer with Sigmund Freud

It was the summer of 1966 and I had a cousin visiting from out of state. It had been just a bang-up great summer vacation to Jackson, Mississippi with my mom, my dad, and my dad's 15 year old wife. Prior to the visit, my dad had bought his wife a number of new outfits. Unfortunately for her, that would be the last windfall she'd ever see while they were together. Photos were taken along the way, his wife (in her new clothes) and me standing in front of various unidentifiable landmarks. Once we arrived, we must have visited several of his relatives. I never knew what story he offered up to explain the 15 year old wife. I was mainly concerned with being left alone. I was profoundly humiliated by the whole situation, so I just tried to escape into solitude whenever possible. We visited one of my aunts who had four children, but I maintained my distance from them unless compelled to interact. Though all but one of them was younger than I, I firmly believed that they knew how fucked up my family was and laughed at me when I wasn't around. The other aunt that I remember visiting was the mother of my summer guest.

I'm not sure why I decided to hang out with my cousin Theresa. On the face of it, it seems a highly uncharacteristic congeniality on my part. Nonetheless, we must have had a good time and my dad issued the invitation for her to come for the summer. I wonder now why it was that her parents thought sending any female child home with my dad was a good idea. I was 12 and his wife was 15. I don't know...I just don't think I would have felt comfortable sending my daughter home with him.

Theresa, in addition to being my age, was about my size. She had a better complexion than I, which my father used as a cudgel to beat me with. As usual, whenever my dad was around other female kids my age, he always liked to point out the many ways those kids were more appealing than I. My dad also pointed out that Theresa seemed smarter than I. That fact was probably at the heart of my eventual change of heart towards her. I have no idea why Theresa didn't like me, but I'm sure it wasn't without cause.

Sometime that summer I discovered Sigmund Freud. I have no idea how I found out about him, but reading was my escape of choice and trips to the library were frequent. At that point in my life, I was searching for challenging intellectual books. I had abandoned any literature that seemed to be directed at people my age. I read adult books and began thinking about weighty and complex ideas. I lived in a frighteningly adult world and I knew books directed at 12 year olds wasn't going to help me one tiny bit.

I'm not sure which of Freud's books I read that summer, but I remember the case studies of his patients. One of them detailed one of his patient's hysterical amnesia. It was the most promising thing I'd heard of since I abandoned the Bible as a means of coping with my crazy life. Obviously God wasn't going to be rescuing me or he'd have done it long before then. It made supreme sense to me thatif I couldn't get God to help me escape, I might be just fine if I could simply forget everything that had happened up to that point. However just to ensure my success at forgetting, I decided to pray for it, too.

Of course, I also encountered penis envy. I gave a lot of thought to that issue. At first it just seemed absolutely preposterous. I searched my heart. Did I really want a penis? No amount of soul searching produced any envy that I could identify. Maybe I envied kids who didn't live with psychotic parents, but none of them had penises. Finally, just as many feminists concluded, I determined that he was incorrect. Grossly incorrect. Unfortunately, it seemed he was incorrect about the possibility of amnesia, too.

The real irony here is that, over the years, I have forgotten. Incidents are truncated or confusing. I guess God did answer my prayers after all. As I struggle to make sense of my life, I reach back to grab onto formative memories. Sadly, the absence of memory doesn't result in the absence of suffering connected to those memories. I'm not so sure I'd want to relive them even if I could. I guess the summer I spent with Dr. Freud was like mining fool's gold.

Quote of the day:
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute." ~ Rebecca West

America Held Hostage Day 1909
Bushism of the Day:
"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law." —Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000

Website of the day: A Krishnamurti Library of Athens
http://www.kathens.org/