Freudian slips

It is not generally known, but Sigmund Freud, the founding father of modern psychology, conducted some of his most important case studies right here in Trinidad. In 1937, Freud, on his way to Britain on the Arctic steamship By Polar, stopped off on the island for a few days’ rest and some Cuban cigars. He had been forced to flee Germany after psychoanalysing Hitler and finding him to suffer from excessive nose hairs. “The Final Solution was instituted out of Hitler’s fear that I would tell everyone why his moustache really looked like that,” wrote Freud in a now-lost diary. “He did not understand that I would never violate doctor-patient confidentiality, save to entertain guests at a cocktail party.” Freud was able to escape the Nazi menace only by fleeing across the German border disguised as an Oedipus complex.

While in Trinidad, Freud was fascinated to read in the local newspaper of the case of Ralph M, a man who believed he was a grasshopper. “I contacted the attending physician, who was honoured to receive my professional opinion,” wrote Freud, who was then looking for new material for the fifth edition of Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten (Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious). When he met with the patient, Freud’s keen insight allowed him to instantly diagnose the root of Ralph M’s delusion. “He had very long legs which were also quite hairy,” he wrote. “It was easy to see how he could think he was a grasshopper, especially in dim light.” The great psychiatrist noted that Ralph M was convinced that the grass was always greener on the other side and that, in a society where feteing was an important cultural habit, he was quite unable to function unless he was in a party. “Without a party, the patient became despondent, depressed, and even lost his fake British accent,” wrote Freud. “But once he was in a party, he would be happy, smiling, and speak the Queen’s English better than the Queen herself, though with more r’s. It did not even matter what party he was in, once he was getting his photo taken.”

The local physician also asked Freud to look at the similar case of Keith R, who thought he was a billiard ball – the eightball, to be exact – and who lived in chronic fear of being potted in the sidepocket. Because of his condition, Keith R had taken up residence on a pool table and manifested an acute aversion to cuesticks. “The patient believes that sticks get favourable handling while balls are largely ignored,” wrote Freud. “He objects to the balls being racked and hit, and wants the game changed so that they are fondled lovingly instead.” Freud was able to cure Keith R’s neurosis by buying him a university degree and a wig. It was when he went into a store looking for the latter item that Freud met the woman he called IP, whose case almost made its way into his famous Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie (Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality), but which was omitted because Freud thought readers might be too turned on by the third essay to finish the book. Although she made a good living putting the lead in pencils, IP really wanted to be an author. She was in love with words, especially “pulchritude” and “sybaritic”, but neither of them returned her calls.

Her ambition was to write The Great West Indian Novel and, because she considered her initials to have cosmic significance, to do so in urine rather than ink. “She had good calligraphy,” Freud wrote, “but a rather hysterical prose style.” IP herself felt that she could never be a successful writer in the male-dominated world. “Men see how beautiful I am,” she told Freud, “and never realise I also have a bladder.” It was IP who introduced Freud to another patient whose case nearly made it into Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens (The Psychopathology of Everyday Life) but which was cut because of the printers’ strike of 1904. AD was a well-known Trinidadian writer, who had always taken special pride in the fact that his initials occurred after the birth of Jesus. “The patient suffers from a Christ complex and feels that, since his prose impresses the island’s leading merchants who are also his relatives, he should receive the same salary as God,” Freud noted after the first consultation. “The prime manifestation of his split personality is a predilection to speak the Queen’s English when in Trinidad, the Trinidadian dialect when in England, and to be equally pretentious in both.”

The last case recorded in Freud’s Trinidad diary was that of Anand R, whose psychoses would have figured prominently in Freud’s Studien ?ber Hysterie (Studies in Hysteria) except that Freud couldn’t find a couch to fit Anand’s head. “This patient was absolutely convinced that he could see things that everyone else overlooked,” Freud wrote. “While walking on the street, we passed a young Negro woman, who smiled politely and said ‘Good morning.’ Anand R. took this to be a sinister event. ‘You en see how she watch me with lust in she eye, Herr Doktor?’ he screamed. ‘You en see she want to make dougla chirrun and eradicate all we Indian!’” Freud soon realised that Anand R’s paranoia was directed mainly at Black people, although he also became hysterical about Indians who did not share his odd perceptions. “He was congenitally incapable of starting any sentence without the words, ‘You en see’ and, when I pointed this out to him, he only said, ‘You en see that is only Indian like me who could see? You en see all dem Creole eye have yampee in em!’” Freud said he could have cured Anand R of his racial paranoia, given more time and a curling iron. However, he had to leave Trinidad hurriedly since Hitler, having learned that Freud was on the island, was planning to invade. These, then, are the Trinidadian case studies that nearly made it into Freud’s major works. As I said at the start, these facts are not generally known, and the main reason for this is that I made them all up. This does not, however, make the studies any less valid than Freud’s own, since he actually invented – or at least exaggerated — quite a few of his own cases. Who am I to try and improve on the master’s technique?

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com Website:www.caribscope.com/baldeosingh