The Manticore

"I am not going to do anything to you. I am going to try to help you in the process of becoming yourself."

"My best self, I expected you to say. A good little boy."

"Your real self may not be a good little boy. It would be very fortunate if that were so. Your real self may be something very disagreeable and unpleasant. This is not a game we are playing, Mr. Staunton. It can be dangerous. Part of my work is to see the dangers as they come and help you to get through them. But if the dangers are inescapable and possibly destructive, don't think I can help you fly over them. There will be lions in the way. I cannot pull their teeth or tell them to make paddy-paws; I can only give you some useful tips about lion-taming."

"Now you're trying to scare me."

"I am warning you."

"What do we do to get to the lions?"

"We can start almost anywhere. But from what you have told me I think we would be best to stick to the usual course and begin at the beginning."

"Childhood recollections?"

"Yes, and recollections of your life up to now. Important things. Formative experiences. People who have meant much to you, whether good or bad."

"That sounds like the Freudians."

"We have no quarrel with the Freudians, but we do not put the same stress on sexual matters as they do. Sex is very important, but if it were the single most important thing in life it would all be much simpler, and I doubt if mankind would have worked so hard to live far beyond the age when sex is the greatest joy. It is a popular delusion, you know, that people who live very close to nature are great ones for sex. Not a bit. You live with primitives – I did it for three years, when I was younger and very interested in anthropology – and you find out the truth. People wander around naked and nobody cares – not even an erection or a wiggle of the hips. That is because their society does not give them the brandy of Romance, which is the great drug of our world. When sex is on the program they sometimes have to work themselves up with dances and ceremonies to get into the mood for it, and then of course they are very active. But their important daily concern is with food. You know, you can go for a lifetime without sex and come to no special harm. Hundreds of people do so. But you go for a day without food and the matter becomes imperative. In our society food is just a start for our craving. We want all kinds of things – money, a big place in the world, objects of beauty, learning, sainthood, oh, a very long list. So here in Zurich we try to give proper attention to these other things, as well.

"We generally begin with what we call anamnesis. Are you a classicist? Do you know any Greek? We look at your history, and meet some people there whom you may know or perhaps you don't, but who are portions of yourself. We take a look at what you remember, and at some things you thought you had forgotten. As that goes on we find we are going much deeper. And when that is satisfactorily explored, we decide whether to go deeper still, to that part of you which is beyond the unique, to the common heritage of mankind."

"How long does it take?"

"It varies. Sometimes long, sometimes surprisingly short, especially if you decide not to go beyond the personal realm. And though of course I give advice about that, the decision, like all the decisions in this sort of work, must be your own."

"So I should begin getting a few recollections together? I don't want to be North American about this, but I haven't unlimited time. I mean, three years or anything of that sort is out of the question. I'm the executor of my father's will. I can do quite a lot from here by telephone or by post but I can't be away forever. And there is the problem of Castor to be faced."

"I have always understood that it takes about three years to settle an estate. In civilized countries, that is; there are countries here in Europe where it can go on for ten if there is enough money to pay the costs. Does it impress you as interesting that to settle a dead man's affairs takes about the same length of time as settling a life's complications in a man of forty? Still, I see your difficulty. And that makes me wonder if a scheme I have been considering for you might not be worth a trial."

"What are you thinking of?"

"We do many things to start the stream of recollection flowing in a patient, and to bring forth and give clues to what is important for him. Some patients draw pictures, or paint, or model things in clay. There have even been patients who have danced and devised ceremonies that seemed relevant to their situation. It must be whatever is most congenial to the nature of the analysand."

"Analysand? Am I an analysand?"

"Horrid word, isn't it? I promise I shall never call you that. We shall stick to the Plain Style, shall we, in what we say to one another?"