Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (6 page)

With warm regards, Freud

Breuer’s reply is not known, of course, because of the curious manner in which he conducted his correspondence. (Breuer was unreasonably afraid that samples of his handwriting might fall into the hands of his “many powerful enemies;” therefore, upon receiving a letter, he would carefully draft a reply, take it to the addressee’s home, read it aloud to him, and then tear it to shreds. He claimed that this behavior saved him a fortune in postage, although Mrs. Breuer opined that her husband’s head was lined with “wall-to-wall kugel.”) Breuer’s only public statement on the napkin question was made during a demonstration of hypnosis, when he remarked that “a patient in a trance can be induced to stand on his feet for an entire treatment and never know the difference.”

It is perhaps ironic—or, as Ernest Jones put it, “not ironic at all”—that the napkin problem should have emerged at a time when the antimacassar was attaining universal acceptance by the East European intelligentsia. Freud, however, abhorred simplistic solutions, and sought more profound answers. Failing to find these, he sought more complicated questions. In any event, he rejected the use of antimacassars as “Victorian, confining, and repressive—everything I am fighting against. Besides, they are too bumpy.” The extent of the problem, however, can be inferred from a perusal of Freud’s professional expenses incurred for April, 1886, his first month of private practice:

W
AITING
R
OOM

C
ONSULTING
R
OOM

"At this rate,” Freud wrote to Koller, “every neurasthenic I treat this year should set me back in the neighborhood of four hundred gulden. Pretty soon,
I’ll
be needing some treatment, eh? Ha, ha.” On the advice of Charcot, Freud had his housekeeper apply a solution of nux vomica and lye to his consulting chair after each session—a remedy that was hastily abandoned when a patient, Theo F., brought a legal complaint of massive hair loss directly traceable to consultations with the young neurologist. Freud managed to mollify the unfortunate man with a sampler of marzipan and a warm fur hat, but his reputation in Vienna had been shaken.

THE early practitioners of psychoanalysis devised artful stopgap solutions to the problem of the napkin. For a time, Jung met his patients at a furniture store, where, under the pretext of inspecting a couch, he would conduct an analytic session. After fifty minutes, patient and doctor would depart, Jung explaining to the salesman that they wanted to “shop around a little more.” By contrast, Ferenczi required his patients to lie face down on the consulting couch—a procedure that eliminated all stains but a small nose smudge. However, the patients’ constant mumblings into the upholstery caused Ferenczi to become enraged, and he finally abandoned this technique. Klein, claiming that he was only trying to “lighten up” what was “an already dreary enough business,” asked his patients to wear cone-shaped party hats during their session hours. The real reason, of course, was to protect Klein’s couch, a flamboyant chesterfield covered in pale-lemon bombazine.

Freud launched his own systematic research program by scouring Vienna for fabric samples, which he placed on the upper portion of his couch, a different sample being assigned to each patient. One case, that of a man who was analyzed on a folded barbecue apron, became the subject of an extended monograph of Freud’s on hallucinations and hysteria. The apron had been presented to Freud by Charcot, and bore the legend “
König von die Küche
” (“King of the Kitchen”). An apparently severe olfactory hallucination (old cabbage) reported by the patient during his analysis eventually proved to have its source in the apron, and Freud was forced to withdraw his paper. To conceal his disappointment, he invited the man to a coffeehouse, but at the last moment changed his mind and instead sent Adler to meet him. Unfortunately, Adler became distracted in the process of flattening kreuzer on the trolley tracks and arrived a day late. (This episode was often referred to sarcastically by Freud, and provided the basis for the later break between him and Adler.)

In a series of unattended lectures (May, 1906), Freud crystallized the need for a resolution of the “sofa problem,” as he termed it. “Something small and protective, yet flexible,” he wrote in his notes, “ought to be placed beneath (or possibly wrapped around) the patient’s head. Perhaps a small rug or some sort of cloth.” It was several decades before the notion of a napkin would surface, but during a summer visit to Manchester, England, during which Freud presented his half sister with a bookend, he purchased a bolt of Japanese silk, which he sent to Vienna and caused to be cut up into small squares. The new material seemed to be working admirably, until an unexpected occurrence shattered his illusions. From his notebook:

October 8. Especially crisp fall day. Treating Otto P., a petty official of the Bureau of Wursts. Classic psycho-neurosis: inability either to go to sleep or remain awake. Patient, while recounting significant dream, thrashed about on the couch. Because of the extremely cool climate, extensive static electricity caused the silk to cling to the patient’s hair when he rose to leave at the end of the session. Analytic propriety, plus the delicacy of the transference, prevented me from mentioning the situation and I merely bade him good day.

Upon reaching home, Otto P. was mortified to find a square of cloth adhering to the back of his head, and he publicly accused Freud of insensitiveness and willful japery. An anti-Semitic journalist claimed that Freud had attempted to impose his own ethnic customs on a patient. The outcry raged for months, severely taxing Freud’s energies, and only after it had abated could he enter in his journal, with wry insight: “Clearly, silk is not the answer—unless perhaps it is first dampened.”

Freud’s tentative moves in the direction of an all-purpose analytic napkin inspired others to ponder the matter. At the Weimar Congress, Bleuler called for a standardization of napkin technique. A lively debate ensued, with a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials finding ready champions. Abraham favored classical antimacassars, while Jung was partial to jute placemats, which he imported from a private source in Africa. The purist Holtz (it was he who in 1935 criticized Freud for not being Freudian enough) ridiculed the whole notion of a napkin and advocated “six couches, to be changed daily, like underwear.” Liebner, who detested Holtz, suggested that the material of the napkin vary with the patient’s complaint; Freud then recalled that he had had no success in treating the celebrated “Wolf Man” until he tried a scrap of terry cloth, to which the patient developed a massive transference. In a culminating speech at Weimar, Freud outlined his vision of the ideal solution: “Hygienic, disposable, inexpensive, and without any referential value whatsoever. I dream of a totally affect-less napkin that every analyst can afford.”

Freud’s experimental early napkins (many of which are still in private collections) show this drive toward simplicity and clarity—swatches of wool, gabardine, madras, burlap, and unbleached muslin, and, finally, a double layer of cheesecloth. He was making notes on the use of blotting paper when the Anschluss forced him to leave for London. Later that week in Vienna, the Nazis publicly burned most of his napkin file, including an irreplaceable sampler knitted by Lionel Walter, the Baron Rothschild.

The enormous current popularity of psychoanalysis in the United States is easily explained by the napkin historian. American technological know-how, plus the easy availability of materials, provided the answer Freud and his early disciples searched for but never found. In 1946, after extensive research at Mount Sinai Hospital, a team of pillow scientists at the Kimberly-Clark paper company test-marketed a prototype napkin in the analytic communities of Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. It was a double-ply, semiabsorbent, bleached-wood-fibre product, with a forty-per-cent rag content and an embossed edge. The response was overwhelming, and the course of psychoanalysis was forever altered. As Dr. Neimann Fek said, expressing the gratitude of his colleagues, “It took seventy years before we perfected the beard and the fee. Now, finally, the napkin. No one need ever be crazy again.”

1975

MARSHALL BRICKMAN

WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST

ANTHONY MOON (Zeckendorf) was born in England and attended Eton, Wibley, and Miss Gobbett’s Academy, concluding his formal education at St. Vitus’s College, Oxford, where he studied
moue
under the brilliant House Beamish. His first professional job was as Obadiah in the revue
A Pound of Cheese,
which ran for fifteen years at the Wee-Theatre-in-the-Bog, breaking all records for the West End and closing only when the cast set fire to the scenery. After joining the National Theatre, Mr. Moon was acclaimed for his performances as Rosalind in
As You Like It,
Monroe Parch in
Parsippany Place,
and Sir Giggling Fatbody in Sheridan’s
The Wind-Sucker.
Mr. Moon is the author of
A Penn’orth of Rumply,
a fantasy for “children of all ages” based on the limericks of Albert Speer, which is currently in preparation for the 1977 season. His autobiography,
Scones at Eventide,
was a best-seller and will be filmed by the Rank Organisation, featuring Colin Ponce and Colin Headstrong-Jones as the twin bakers.

MISHRU FEK (Curley) in a long and distinguished theatrical career has appeared in over three thousand productions, from Second Avenue cabaret (
Don’t Make Me Laugh, So Who Are You Kidding?, I’m Entitled,
and
You Should Live So Long
) to regional theatre (Chaim in
The Wild Mouse,
Vontz in
Crusts
) to Broadway, where he triumphed last season as the grief-stricken father in
Runteleh,
the Pulitzer Prize–winning musical drawn from the life of Eddie Carmel, the Jewish giant. In recent years, Mr. Fek has divided his time between
King Lear
(“twice a year, rain or shine”) and Hollywood; his latest films include
Blood of the Face Eaters, Nostril from Outer Space,
and
Monster Beach Party.
His television credits include numerous specials, notably an abbreviated version of
Runteleh,
for which he won the coveted Emmeleh. The Department of State has engaged Mr. Fek to tour Europe with his phenomenal one-man show
Jews in Motion,
an entertainment based on the
responsa
of Chodish, the skating rabbi of Budapest.

MARY BETH NUMKINS (Nell Runcible) is a self-professed “stage kook” who has appeared in stock and regional theatre. Among her favorite roles are Molly in
Tom O’Monahoon’s Chowder,
Sally in
The Misty Bog,
Wendy in
The Bosky Feu,
Peggy in
The Dusky Glen,
and Polly in
Poppa’s Pockmark.
She appeared as Princess Tinkle-Beam in
Toast and Mrs. Toast
and won plaudits for her portrayal of the shepherdess in
The Bleat of My Heart.
She maintains that the theatre is a “special, magical place, made of fairy-webs and gossamer.” She lives in New York City with her cat, Mister Cat, and a large colored man.

RAMON PELIGROSO (Parson Anders, Ziggy) was last seen in the role of the psychotic barber in
Don’t Nobody Gonna Whup My Face,
presented last season at the Drainpipe Theatre. In addition, Mr. Peligroso has appeared as the addict in
No Horse for Handkerchief-Heads
and the sadistic orderly in
Enema.
He created the role of Goatberry Jones in the national company of
Harlan Peachtree’s Massive Apparatus,
for which he won the Frobischer Award. His autobiographical play,
The Repositude of Naphthalene Catfish,
was presented last season by the Militant Playhouse.

LYDIA BUNTING (Mrs. Peahen) made her theatrical debut thirty years ago in Tennessee Williams’
For the Safety of the Passengers, the Driver Is Not Permitted to Change Any Bills Larger Than Five Dollars,
playing the harelip to Luther Dabchick’s waterhead. After a hiatus of twenty-eight years, she returned to Broadway last season in the revival of
Perfervid Desires,
which closed during the first act, although the critics were unanimous about her performance. This marks Miss Bunting’s first appearance in the legitimate theatre without a mobcap.

RENÉ CATAFALQUE (Beggars, Whores, Townspeople)

To act is to be;

To be is merely to seem.

The truth is a hat.

—H
ANS
E
KHARDT

O’BOB MACVOUT (Director) trained at L.A.M.D.A. and the Yale Drama School under Fleming Pease, directing revue and cabaret (
Redoubtable Antics of ’62, Arty-Tarty
). After a spell in television, he directed the wildly successful nature film
Ring of Bright Beavers
(“Vapid family fun! Non-threatening!”—L.A.
Times
), which grossed six hundred million dollars worldwide and won him three Oscars, two Patsys, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Last season he directed Sir Henry Wolfsbane in the highly acclaimed R.S.C. production of Congreve’s
Pox; or, The Traducer Traduced,
which won both the Drama Circle Critics Citation Prize Award and the Award Circle Drama Critics Prize Citation.