I am therefore disturbed by a suspicion, which may well derive from my lay ignorance, but may also be true. For as far as I know, the aforementioned Oedipus complex is now, more than ever, central to the theory; almost all symptoms are traced back to it, and I fear that within one or two generations there will be no more Oedipus! We are cognizant of the fact that he springs out of the nature of the little man, who finds his pleasure in his mother’s lap, and is supposed to be jealous of his father, who drives him away from there. What, then, if the mother no longer has a lap?! We understand of course where this leads: the lap is after all not the only bodily region for which the word in its strictest sense was coined; but it also signifies psychologically the whole incubative mothering quality of the woman, the bosom, the warming fat, the calming and tender-loving softness; indeed, it signifies also, and not unjustifiably so, the skirt whose wide pleats form a secret nest. In this sense, the fundamental experiences of psychoanalysis definitely derive from the dress of the 1870s and 80s, and not from the ski outfit. And particularly if you consider the modern bathing suit: where is the lap in our day and age? If with psychoanalytic longing I attempt embryonically to imagine my way back to the lap in the running and swimming girls’ and women’s bodies that are fashionable nowadays, then, their curious beauty notwithstanding, I see no reason why the next generation might not be just as eager to crawl back into the father’s lap.
And what then?
Will we instead of Oedipus be given Orestes? Or will Psychoanalysis have to give up its beneficent effect?
*Members of the elite Italian assault troops.
UNSTORYLIKE STORIES
The Giant Agoag
When the hero of this little story — and truly, he was one! — rolled up his sleeves, two arms as thin as the sound of a toy clock came into view. And the women praised his intelligence in a friendly manner, while they went out with others for whom they didn’t always have such kind words. Just one comely beauty once, to everyone’s surprise, deigned to grant him a greater intimacy; she loved to make big eyes at him and shrug her shoulders. And following the vacillation in the selection of endearments that usually comes at the start of every love affair, she called him “my little squirrel!”
Henceforth he read only the sports section of the newspaper, in the sports section dwelt most avidly on the boxing news, and of the boxing news preferred to read about the heavyweights.
His life was not happy, but he never stopped searching for a means to build up his strength. And since he didn’t have enough money to join a muscle-building club, and since sports has in any case, according to modern view, long since ceased to be the lowly talent of the body, and has become instead a moral triumph, a victory of the spirit, he pursued the search for strength on his own. There was no free afternoon which he did not use to go walking on his toes. Whenever he found himself alone and unobserved in a room, he reached with his right hand behind his shoulder to grab the things that lay on his left, and vice versa. Getting dressed and undressed became a challenge to the spirit which he carried out in the most strenuous way possible. And since every muscle in the human body has a counter muscle, such that one stretches while the other flexes, or flexes while the other stretches, he succeeded in infusing every movement with the most unspeakable difficulties. One might well maintain that on good days he consisted of two people, complete strangers who were forever fighting each other. And when, after such an optimally utilized day, he got ready to go to sleep, he once again strained all at once, all the muscles he could reach; and then he lay there, in his own muscles, like an alien piece of meat in the claws of a bird of prey, until tiredness came over him, his grip loosened and he let himself slip vertically into sleep. By this lifestyle it was inevitable that one day he would become invincibly strong. But before this could happen, he got into a fight on the street and was beaten up by a sizable crowd.
Following this disgraceful melee, in which his soul suffered injury, he was never the same as before, and it was questionable for quite some time thereafter if he would be able to endure a life stripped of all hope. Then he was saved by a giant omnibus. He chanced to witness a massive omnibus run over a rather athletically built young man, and this accident, as tragic as it turned out for the victim, resulted in a new point of departure in his life. The athlete was, so to speak, peeled-off existence like a wood shaving or the skin of an apple; whereas the omnibus, hardly stirred by the contact, rolled to the side, stopped and gaped back out of its many eyes. It was a sad sight, but our man quickly saw his chance and climbed aboard the victor.
So it was and so from that hour it would remain: For fifteen cents he could, whenever he wished, crawl into the body of a giant from whose path every muscleman had to jump aside. The giant’s name was Agoag. That probably stood for Athletes-Get-on-Omnibus-Associated Group; and in any case, those who still want to experience fairy tales nowadays can’t be too overly cautious. So our hero climbed on top of the bus and was so big that he lost any feeling for the dwarves that swarmed on the street below. He could no longer even imagine what they had to talk about with each other. He loved to see them leap aside in terror. And when they crossed the line of traffic, he barked at them like a watchdog snapping at sparrows. Cognizant of his destructive power, he looked down disdainfully on the roofs of the stylish private cars whose elegance had always in the past intimidated him, and he felt like a man with a knife eyeing the poor dumb chickens in a coop. This didn’t require that much imagination, just the application of a little logic. For if it is true what they say, that clothes make the man, then why not an omnibus too? You put its immense strength on about you, like someone else might put on a suit of armor or hang a rifle over his shoulder; and if knightly valor can be associated with armor, then why not just as well with an omnibus? And even for the mighty conquerors of history: Was it their weak body softened by the comforts of power that instilled terror in the enemy, or the apparatus of power with which they were able to surround themselves which made them invincible? And what is it, our man thought (enthroned in his new way of thinking), about the noble coterie who surround the kings of boxing, running and swimming like courtiers, from manager to trainer to the man who carries away the bucket of bloody water or lays the bathrobe on the champ’s shoulders; do these contemporary descendents of the old Lord High Steward and Cup-Bearer derive their dignity from their own power, or from the reflected rays of an alien power that surrounds them? (As one can see, he drew great insight from the accident.)