last night’s dream I would be asked to invent one (for some reason if I invented a dream it always began with a pig). Richmond belonged to no dogmatic school of psycho-analysis, so far as I can make out now: he was nearer to Freud than Jung, but Adler probably contributed. There had been a tragedy twenty years before when a patient had killed himself and the coroner had been brutally unsympathetic, and I have the impression that he proceeded very carefully, very tentatively. My life with him did me a world of good, but how much was due to the analysis and how much to the breakfasts in bed, the quiet of Kensington Gardens, the sudden independence of my life I would not like to say, nor whether the analysis went deep enough. In any case, as Freud wrote, ‘much is won if we succeed in transforming hysterical misery into common unhappiness’.
There he would always be, sitting behind the desk with his marred musician’s face, stop-watch ready, waiting for my coming. Was there a couch, the stock-subject of so many jokes? I can’t remember. I would begin to read out my dream, and he would check my associations with his watch. Afterwards he would talk in general terms about the theory of analysis, about the mortmain of the past which holds us in thrall. Sometimes, as the analysis progressed,he would show little hints of excitement – as though he scented something for which he had been waiting for a long while. But so far as my own dreams and associations went, he told me nothing; he patiently waited for me to discover the long road back for myself. I too began to feel the excitement of the search. Perhaps, in spite of all the good it did me, the excitement was too heady for a boy and fostered the desire to turn up every stone to discover what lay beneath, to question motives, to doubt – no love would be simple afterwards or free from dusty answers.
The classic moment approached, as in all such analyses, when the emotion of the patient is due to be transferred: a difficult period for the analyst. Perhaps Richmond was trying to provide a subject away from home, for one of the evening callers proved to be a girl who was a ballet-student and one night we went to see her dance. With the added glamour of the stage around her, I nearly fell in love. Exploring London I had found a little bookshop on the Embankment near Albert Bridge and I bought a first edition for a few shillings of Ezra Pound’s early romantic poems, Personae – he displaced Walter de la Mare in my admiration. So, under the influence of Personae , I wrote three sentimental imagist lines to the girl, whose romantic name was Isola (‘a future Pavlova’ I wrote to my mother), but I never showed them to her, the relation never went further, and I did not see her again. The transference took a more inconvenient route, settling on my analyst’s wife, and the moment I feared at last arrived when, sitting in Kensington Gardens, I found the only dream I had to communicate was an erotic one of Zoe Richmond. For the first time I dreaded the hour of eleven. I could, of course, say that I remembered nothing, and Richmond would tell me to invent, and I could trot out the habitual pig, but I was caught sufficiently by the passion for analysis to be repelled at the thought of cheating. To cheat was to behave like a detective who deliberately destroys a clue to murder. I steeled myself and left the Gardens and went in.
‘And now,’ Richmond said, after a little talk on general theory, ‘we’ll get down to last night’s dream.’
I cleared my dry throat. ‘I can only remember one.’
‘Let’s have it.’
‘I was in bed,’ I said.
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
He made a note on his pad. I took a breath and plunged.
‘There was a knock on the door and Zoe came in. She was naked. She leant over me. One of her breasts nearly touched my mouth. I woke up.’
‘What’s your association to breasts?’ Richmond asked, setting his stop-watch.
‘Tube train,’ I said
There he would always be, sitting behind the desk with his marred musician’s face, stop-watch ready, waiting for my coming. Was there a couch, the stock-subject of so many jokes? I can’t remember. I would begin to read out my dream, and he would check my associations with his watch. Afterwards he would talk in general terms about the theory of analysis, about the mortmain of the past which holds us in thrall. Sometimes, as the analysis progressed,he would show little hints of excitement – as though he scented something for which he had been waiting for a long while. But so far as my own dreams and associations went, he told me nothing; he patiently waited for me to discover the long road back for myself. I too began to feel the excitement of the search. Perhaps, in spite of all the good it did me, the excitement was too heady for a boy and fostered the desire to turn up every stone to discover what lay beneath, to question motives, to doubt – no love would be simple afterwards or free from dusty answers.
The classic moment approached, as in all such analyses, when the emotion of the patient is due to be transferred: a difficult period for the analyst. Perhaps Richmond was trying to provide a subject away from home, for one of the evening callers proved to be a girl who was a ballet-student and one night we went to see her dance. With the added glamour of the stage around her, I nearly fell in love. Exploring London I had found a little bookshop on the Embankment near Albert Bridge and I bought a first edition for a few shillings of Ezra Pound’s early romantic poems, Personae – he displaced Walter de la Mare in my admiration. So, under the influence of Personae , I wrote three sentimental imagist lines to the girl, whose romantic name was Isola (‘a future Pavlova’ I wrote to my mother), but I never showed them to her, the relation never went further, and I did not see her again. The transference took a more inconvenient route, settling on my analyst’s wife, and the moment I feared at last arrived when, sitting in Kensington Gardens, I found the only dream I had to communicate was an erotic one of Zoe Richmond. For the first time I dreaded the hour of eleven. I could, of course, say that I remembered nothing, and Richmond would tell me to invent, and I could trot out the habitual pig, but I was caught sufficiently by the passion for analysis to be repelled at the thought of cheating. To cheat was to behave like a detective who deliberately destroys a clue to murder. I steeled myself and left the Gardens and went in.
‘And now,’ Richmond said, after a little talk on general theory, ‘we’ll get down to last night’s dream.’
I cleared my dry throat. ‘I can only remember one.’
‘Let’s have it.’
‘I was in bed,’ I said.
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
He made a note on his pad. I took a breath and plunged.
‘There was a knock on the door and Zoe came in. She was naked. She leant over me. One of her breasts nearly touched my mouth. I woke up.’
‘What’s your association to breasts?’ Richmond asked, setting his stop-watch.
‘Tube train,’ I said
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