MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

The so-called "second generation” of psychoanalysts was much better qualified than the first one. To begin with, they knew for sure what it was all about. The first one was a bit lost. Ferenczi, for example, initially believed that psychoanalys was a new type of dance. Ernest Jones was convinced that it was a card game and, well into the 20th century, he always carried a deck of cards in his pocket just in case. These early psychoanalysts had learned psychoanalysis haphazardly, in dribs and drabs so to speak. Their theoretical grounds depended to a large extent on the mood in which Freud had got out of bed in Vienna that morning. Besides, practice is everything in any therapeutic discipline. And before the Great War few people allowed themselves to be psychoanalyzed if it was not at gunpoint. Psychoanalysts of the first generation were like those hairdresser trainees who roam the streets in search of whatever head of hair he can get his hands on. In general, people prefer to place...

Nobody understood why, among all the wide spectrum of neuroses and complexes at his disposal, Michael Pea would have chosen precisely the superiority complex. He had no attribute that legitimately granted him the right to believe himself superior to others. He had all the defects that a human being can have and even some other. He was a liar, selfish, quarrelsome, cowardly (How can one be cowardly and quarrelsome at the same time? You had to know Pea to find out), lazy, stupid ... Well, why list them all? I have already said that there was no defect that he didn't have. And even those defects that can have a positive side, such as ambition for example, he lacked that side. That a guy like that had a superiority complex was something that didn't fit in anybody's head. Hence, when the brilliant psychoanalyst Edith Jacobson met Mr. Pea, she considered him a phenomenon worthy of study. Mrs. Jacobson had recently moved to Brooklyn with her family and Mr. Pea lived in the house n...

Jacob Rosenbloom and Samuel Tannenbaum, two of the charter members of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, were sitting in armchairs by the fireplace, commenting on a recent academic essay entitled "Psychoanalysis of a sheep", when suddenly Donald, the concierge, burst into the small room visibly agitated. "What's wrong, Don? You'd think you just saw a ghost." "Almost!” he said pointing to the door that led to the lobby. An elegantly dressed man walked into the parlor, handling gracefully his pearl-handled cane. "Kirby!" Exclaimed the two men in unison, leaping to their feet, "We thought you were dead!" Before proceeding, it must be explained that George H. Kirby was another of the charter members of the Society, but no news of him had been heard since he was buried with all the honors in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn a week ago. "I don't suppose it’s occurred to you to resurrect, right?", Tannenbaum dared to say,...

In the Roaring Twenties, New York City was a hotbed of neurotics. There were neurotics of all kinds: obsessive-compulsive, compulsive-obsessive, hypochondriac, manic-depressive, depressive-manic, manic-compulsive, obsessive-depressive, depressive-obsessive, compulsive hoarding, hysterical... In short the whole spectrum of craziness. Then, there were the complexes. Some more than other, everyone was hung-up. Over weight, over height, over poor intelligence, over too much intelligence, over acne, over this or over that. The variety of complexes was infinite, it can not be enumerated. But the three-level podium was for the Oedipus complex (discovered by Freud); the Guilt complex (discovered by a child named Artie who, while ordering an old attic of his family, discovered it hidden among a pile of old clothes); and perhaps the favourite of every neurotic: the inferiority complex (discovered by Alfred Adler while wearing boots with artificial soles to look taller). The inferiority complex ...