Fine, a devoted Freudian (he’d go on to write two book-length studies of Freud’s theories and a history of psychoanalysis), took the position that chess is symbolically related to the libido and has Oedipal significance: “The King stands for the boy’s penis in the phallic stage, the self-image of man, and the father cut down to the boy’s size.”
He also devoted a chapter to the psychoses of four chess masters, selected from the millions of normal people who’d played seriously over the years. This imbalance provoked criticism for its promotion of the belief that all chess players are seriously addled.
Regina was impressed enough with the book, however, and with Dr. Fine’s chess credentials (he was an international grandmaster and had been a contender for the world title) to think he might be able to help Bobby, or at least temper the boy’s slavish devotion to the game. She wanted her son to do well in high school, enter a prestigious university, and get down and do some real work.
Regina arranged for Dr. Fine to telephone Bobby and invite him to his home just for an evening of chess. Bobby was well aware of Fine’s chess reputation, having played over his games; he also owned and had read several of his chess books. Bobby was suspicious, however. He didn’t want psychological probing. Fine assured him that he just wanted to play a few games with him.
Reuben Fine was not a therapist in the strict sense of the word, but he was a renowned psychoanalyst. His theory was that the problems of many troubled patients rested in forgotten psychic traumas, and through free association and the interpretation of dreams the key to the problems could be unlocked. The cure was usually a long process—sometimes lasting years—starting first with childhood memories and even, if possible, memories formed in utero.
Fine’s office was located in a huge apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. One wing of it was his home, which he shared with his wife and three children; the other part consisted of an analysis room, complete with a Freudian fainting couch, and a group room next door. Patients underwent a minimum of one hour a week of analysis at $55 a session, and some participated in group sessions in the evening. Fine would sit in on the groups for one hour, say nothing, and observe how the members interacted with one another, and then for the final hour he’d quit the room and the group would continue alone. He’d then briefly discuss that session the next time each patient appeared for psychoanalysis. With Bobby, Fine wanted to first gain the boy’s trust and respect by playing chess, and then begin classical Freudian analysis, in tandem with the group process.
So that Bobby wouldn’t think he was being psychoanalyzed, Fine avoided bringing the boy into his analysis room at first, instead inviting him to the home wing of the apartment. Bobby met Fine’s wife Marcia and their children, and then he and Fine played speed chess for an hour or two. The psychoanalyst was then one of the fastest players in the country, perhaps even stronger than Bobby had anticipated. Fine would later write that Bobby “was not yet strong opposition. My family remembers how furious he was after each encounter, muttering that I was ‘lucky.’ ”
After about six weekly sessions of chess, at the point when Fine believed Bobby had bonded with him, the psychoanalyst nonchalantly started a conversation about what Bobby was doing in school. Bobby was on his feet in seconds, recognizing that he’d been duped. “You’ve tricked me,” he blurted out, and stalked out of the apartment, never to go back. Fine later remarked that whenever the two saw each other after that, at a chess club or a tournament, Bobby would give him an angry look “as though I had done him some immeasurable harm by trying to get a little closer to him.”
Although there may be some substance to Fine’s implication that Bobby’s hostility was all about the psychoanalyst’s attempt to “get closer,” to peel back his layers, the main reason that Bobby never talked to him again was Fine’s deception, and his use of chess to accomplish it. In a boastful statement, Fine wrote “that it becomes one of the ironic twists of history that of the two leading American chess masters of the twentieth century one almost became the psychoanalyst of the other.” Hardly.
Bobby, for his part, didn’t think that anything was wrong with him. At thirteen, his behavior at chess tournaments and in clubs was quite benign, but like many teenagers, he was sometimes too loud when talking, clumsy when walking past games in progress, unkempt in grooming, and a perennial “bobber” at the board. There was nothing in his actions, however—at that time—that indicated serious problems or advanced neurosis.
Perhaps Fine’s monograph gave impetus to the press; whenever they did chess stories, reporters would look for a certain amount of aberration among the players. Bobby, therefore, frequently became a victim of a twisted interpretation of his personality. When he was interviewed by a reporter, he was often asked patronizing or offensive questions (“How come you don’t have a girlfriend?” … “Are all chessplayers crazy?”), and it became clear to him that they were going to slant the story to make him appear weird. “Ask me something usual,” he once said to a reporter, “instead of making me look unusual.” To another he talked about newspapermen in generaclass="underline" “Those guys always write bad stories about me. They say I’m stupid and that I have no talent in anything except for chess. It’s not true.”
Some articles proclaimed Bobby an idiot savant, with emphasis on the first word rather than the second. Chess Life, indignant at the disrespect shown Bobby, came to his defense, calling such articles “Fischer-baiting” and proclaiming them “utter nonsense.”
Of course, Bobby was obsessed with chess and spent hours playing and studying it, but perhaps not any more than musical prodigies practice their craft. And he did have other interests, including sports. He saw as many hockey games as he could, was an active tennis player, skied, swam, and belonged to a Ping-Pong club in Manhattan. Science interested him most of all. What he was not interested in was hypnotism and prehistoric animals, as some pop-culture articles indicated.
The press was sometimes negative enough to cause those around Bobby to revise their opinion of him. Some players at the Manhattan Chess Club began huffing that he was a meshuggener—a Yiddish term of disparagement suggesting he was “a little crazy.” But others, also using Yiddish, referred to him as a gaon, a genius.
Despite all the discussion about Bobby, including the nicknames and the petty comments leveled at him, he just continued to play and study the game that he loved. During that one year, from 1956 to 1957, Bobby’s official rating soared. Just fourteen years old, he was now officially ranked as a chess master, the youngest person ever to achieve that ranking in the United States. By the rules of the U. S. Chess Federation he could no longer play in amateur tournaments, which was fine by him. Bobby always wanted to play the strongest players possible, seeing it as a way to hone his abilities. And every time he defeated a player with a higher rating, his own rating rose.