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IN THE BEST INTEREST OF ANNA FREUD
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS,
IN WHICH SIGMUND FREUD SHOOTS DOPE
AND TALKS ABOUT FAMILY VALUES
(C) 1989 RICHARD KATZ 510 525-3292
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
11/25/92; ANNA1125.DOC
ACT I (cast list after last page)
There is an abstract bench, reminiscent of a wooden bus stop bench, to the side of the stage, in front of the curtain or playing area. Before the curtain rises, or the play formally begins, DR ROB'T enters, dressed like a medical doctor in the 1930's on a housecall, in a gray suit carrying a physician's black bag. He takes his place on the bench, placing his black bag at his feet, very attentive.
The Freud house in London, 1938. The parlor. Prominent children's furniture and toys. No music or other distracting noise. No typewriter.
ANNA sits at a desk. She wears extremely comfortable Austrian peasant clothing. She is making three copies of the letter she is writing. When she completes the last page and signs it, she removes the carbon papers, files away one carbon copy in a file drawer - very office-like - and files the second copy in another filedrawer.
Whilst she is engaged in the second filing,
SIGMUND (OFFSTAGE)
(faintly; heavy Vienna accent)
Anna. Anna!
Nearly a minute goes by. Anna putters officiously.
SIGMUND (OFFSTAGE)(CONT.)
Liebchen, was gibts? Anna! Bist du hier? Are you here, Anna? I would like something to drink. Some tea perhaps.
ANNA
(to herself)
Some tea perhaps.
(loudly)
In a moment.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
2.
CONTINUED: (23) 0
ANNA (Cont'd)
(to herself)
Wes minuten.
ANNA takes the teapot from the table, steps out (to the kitchen to boil water) and returns quickly. Another minute goes by as Anna busies herself with endless paperwork.
She addresses an envelope for the letter and stamps it, then creases the letter and puts it in a stack with several other completed, unsealed documents.
SIGMUND
Annerl! Bitte!
ANNA
(doting on her letter)
It is nothing short of brilliant of you, my dear August, to have realized so far in advance of what everyone else could have realized, that our science is forever in the possession of the ability to make inferences to the unconscious. And that anyone who goes into the subject will find that our technique holds its ground against every criticism.
SIGMUND (OFFSTAGE)
Anna!Anna!Anna!
ANNA
What? What is it? What do you want?
SIGMUND (OFFSTAGE)
Hilf mir. Hilf mir. Anna! Ich brauche Hilfe!
ANNA
(to herself)
Speak English. We speak English here in England.
(to SIGMUND)
What do you need help with?
A relatively long silence. Anna at first listens for an answer, then returns to her letter writing.
ANNA (CONT.)
Nu? What do you need help with?
More letter writing, then she comes up with an idea.
(CONTINUED)
3.
CONTINUED: (24) 0
ANNA (CONT.)
Do you need "help" with your bedpan? Is that it?
ANNA reaches for a notepad.
ANNA (CONT.)
(to herself, while making very professional notes about the bedpan observations)
He is afraid of his bedpan.
ANNA puts the notepad away and clomps up the stairs to see SIGMUND.
DR ROBT takes the opportunity to snoop around the set.
ANNA (OFFSTAGE)(CONT.)
This? You called me for this? I am extremely busy, you know that I am extremely busy, and this could wait. You did not have to call me. Did you look at this? This is very small, what you called me for.
SOUND of a bedpan being emptied and a toilet FLUSHING.
ANNA (OFFSTAGE)(CONT.)
Everyday you need more and more and everyday less and less do you cooperate, to make yourself less of a problem to the people around you who are trying all the time to make things easier. Not harder! Be a little considerate!
Offstage a door SLAMS. DR ROBT goes back to his bench.
DOROTHY enters the sitting room/office with a briefcase. She has taken off her overcoat. She hangs it up in a closet, and removes her black leather gloves, with mannerisms of an uppercrust New Yorker. Except for the coat and gloves, her clothing is similar to ANNA's. She matter-of-factly reads what ANNA has written. She checks to see that everything has been filed away correctly, then opens her briefcase and takes out some plain paper with handwritten lists on it, and some stacks of 3"x5" cards wrapped with rubber bands. A teakettle WHISTLES in the kitchen. DOROTHY goes to the kitchen, returns quickly, and makes herself, SIGMUND, and ANNA a cup of tea.
ANNA returns downstairs.
(CONTINUED)
4.
CONTINUED: (25) 0
ANNA kisses Dorothy, quite affectionately.
DOROTHY
And how are you, my lovely twin?
ANNA
I was writing to August. It is very important that we keep in contact with him, and with ... It is so difficult. I wonder how much longer I must go on like this.
DOROTHY
Aichhorn? August Aichhorn? We just wrote to him last week and what sort of difficulty are we having with him, for heaven's sakes?
ANNA
No, not with him.
(motioning upstairs)
With him.
DOROTHY
Oh, dear! With Professor? I'll have a look in on him. I've made him his tea. And yours of course.
Exit DOROTHY (to upstairs.)
ANNA checks out the written lists DOROTHY has brought and left out of her briefcase. She grabs a fat pencil and crosses out several lines grouped together on one page. She goes back to her letter writing.
DOROTHY returns.
ANNA
(holding up some 3"x5" cards)
Do you want to tell me about your work on Mabbie's wedding?
DOROTHY
Yes, of course.
(referring to individual cards)
Doctor Thuringer and Mrs Thuringer. That's two overnight, two more for the train.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
5.
CONTINUED: (26) 0
DOROTHY (Cont'd)
(shuffles card)
Dr and Mrs Thuringer and their daughter... Her name - I can never remember the girl's name. She's Mabbie's age, they used to know each other quite well.
ANNA
Two overnight then, with private motorcar.
DOROTHY
(flips a few cards)
So that's the Association members from that group. What's this bunch? Sophie's relatives by marriage -- in-laws, of course.
ANNA
Those two just arrived from Vienna. Two steps ahead of the Gestapo.
(getting to the looseleaf sheet she had been crossing out lines on)
Dorothy my dear, what can she mean by this?
DOROTHY
(throwing up her hands)
She insists. She says she must have him come and bring all these people.
ANNA
I have done all I can do. I don't know what else a person could try with her to make her understand what it is that she is trying to do to herself.
DOROTHY
(fingers to lips)
Anna, not loudly, she will be here in a moment. She was just behind me by a minute.
Enter MABBIE. She is dressed fairly fashionably 1930's British. Overcoat, fur hat, carrying ice skates.
(CONTINUED)
6.
CONTINUED: (27) 0
MABBIE
Hi! It's me! Mother, how is Professor today? And Good Morning, Aunt Anna, how are you? So good to see you, I'm fine thank you.
ANNA
Annafreud is so very glad to see you my dear. Did you sleep well?
MABBIE
Very very well.
ANNA
Any dreams, any dreams to tell Annafreud about, that we know are so so important to have Annafreud help you, Mabbie dear?
MABBIE
I dreamt about a house. A house and I didn't even know the rooms in it, and a person led me through the rooms and I thought I had been there before, and then the person looked at me and he had only one eye, in the middle of his head, and he said that it was all right that he had only one eye. He was ugly. And that is all that I can remember.
ANNA
Isn't that interesting? Very interesting. You know your dreams are so much like yourself and like your things that you want to do, but you can't do them right now. Don't you think so?
MABBIE
Yes, Annafreud.
ANNA
So what does that interesting dream say to you? Ah, don't tell me, just think what it says, and we will talk about it later, allright? Right now, now we must talk about something your mother told me you wanted to talk about, about your wedding.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
7.
CONTINUED: (28) 0
ANNA (Cont'd)
You want to talk to Annafreud about your wedding, Mabbie dear? Tell me, what is it you want to tell me so?
MABBIE
I don't know ... again.
DOROTHY
Annafreud can help you if you let her help you.
ANNA
Mabbie, what is it you are trying to tell Annafreud when you write here in your list Doctor Robert and C.C. and Aunt Nancy?
MABBIE
I don't know.
ANNA glances at DOROTHY. Mabbie goes to piano, DABBLES a bit with the introduction to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet arranged for clarinet and piano.
ANNA
When you don't know, tell Annafreud just what it is you do know. What do you know, about your list and Doctor Robert and C.C. and Aunt Nancy?
MABBIE
I don't know, it just seemed like we should at least tell Daddy ... I mean Doctor Robert. Actually it was Ernst who wanted me to tell Doctor Robert and the others.
ANNA
Oh, ho! And what is it Annafreud has said to all of you about telling me just what is your story, and not what is another story?
MABBIE
That Annafreud can tell.
ANNA
Yes.
(CONTINUED)
8.
CONTINUED: (29) 0
DOROTHY
And what do we ...
ANNA
(interrupting and asserting a higher authority)
What do you want to tell me about this list?
No response from MABBIE.
ANNA (CONT.)
Your list.
Still no response.
ANNA (CONT.)
Annafreud needs to speak with your mother now.
Exit MABBIE. ANNA closes the door.
ANNA (CONT.)
She does not even realize, how much the father puts so much ugliness even in her dreams.
And we have a serious loss of the transference here to the young man. And it expresses itself in unusual ways.
DOROTHY
She is bringing out the father neurosis of the young man as her own, I think.
ANNA
This list, this list. Just for this and this and this - and, and this - this is just the list we should have.
DOROTHY
(displaying a deckle edged piece of notepaper)
Here is a very nice note for Mabbie to send to her father.
(CONTINUED)
9.
CONTINUED: (30) 0
ANNA
(reading)
For what do you want to tell him?
(reopening the door)
Mabbie, please come in.
(to Dorothy)
Send it to him after the wedding.
Enter MABBIE.
ANNA (CONT.)
Child, this marriage of yours is for you. Your wedding is to be happy. We do not want you to spoil your happy day with any conflict, any fighting. Listen to your mother and Annafreud: Don't stir up any trouble, sending invitations to anyone who is only coming to argue. No hornets' nest, please my dear.
MABBIE
(weakly)
It won't be a proper wedding. It is Ernst's wedding too, Mother. And he said that it was important to him to invite Doctor Robert, and C.C. and Aunt Nancy. Annafreud and you, I don't know, I just ...
ANNA
It is the woman's affair, her marriage.
DOROTHY
(lecturing)
We've been over and under and around and through all that, Mabbie dear,and we just wouldn't want anything spoiling your wedding. Certainly not someone whom you haven't even seen for years. I wish your father just once would stop causing me so much trouble. That's all we're going to say about it. Now go look in on Professor, and see if he is wanting anything.
DOROTHY hugs MABBIE.
Exit MABBIE.
(CONTINUED)
10.
CONTINUED: (31) 0
ANNA and DOROTHY exchange a quick hug of their own.
DOROTHY
I am so glad that's out of the way! I must answer Sir Cyril.
ANNA
Sir Cyril Burt? Ah, about the twins!
DOROTHY
He is so quantitative, but I like him.
ANNA and DOROTHY go back to their paperwork.
Enter SIGMUND'S GHOST, theatrically, off the set, same side of the stage as DR ROB'T. SIGMUND is a ghost, in his jauntiest physical prime: white beard elegantly trimmed, dressed formally in a cape (or overcoat), in his canonical white suit and dark fedora, a big cigar, carved ivory headed cane - the archetypical Sigmund Freud.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
(beaming)
Anna geht ganz in der Freundschaft auf!
SIGMUND'S GHOST approaches DR ROB'T on his park bench. DR ROB'T offers him a seat, politely. Rather than sitting down, SIGMUND'S GHOST uses his half of the park bench to inspect the shine on his shoes, and then to put down his cane and hat. [SIGMUND'S GHOST generally "offends" the audience.]
DR ROB'T
(sarcastic)
That's quite an outfit you've got on there.
(pause; very sarcastic)
Sie haben sich ganz schoen in die Schale geworfen!
DR ROB'T goes back to watching the play intently.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
Ja! Anna. Anna geht ganz in der Freundschaft auf.
DR ROB'T
(annoyed)
Pardon me? I was quite absorbed. I have never been able -- this is awful.
(CONTINUED)
11.
CONTINUED: (32) 0
SIGMUND'S GHOST
My daughter. Anna. She's head over heels in her relationship with the Burlingham girl. She's a Tiffany, you know.
DR ROB'T just nods, goes back to observing intently.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
So beautifully and completely platonic. Such a perfect sublimation, all of the energy and furor of the libido channeled, redirected into useful and acceptable social activities. It is the most breathtaking achievement of my career, of our entire science of psychoanalysis, two of the most perfectly analyzed female creatures, raising the most perfectly analyzed children.
Such a transference!
(slowing down)
When I see this, this situation like a well-oiled machine, it makes me feel that the great effort to discover the scientific truth of Psycho-Analysis has borne fruit.
(pause)
Entschuldigung. Aber Ich brauche etwas was mich auf touren bringt.
You must pardon me. I need a little something to get me started.
SIGMUND'S GHOST whips out a very old fashioned hypodermic needle and syringe, charges it with cocaine-HCl(aq), and shoots up. He offers some to DR ROB'T, who declines with obvious distaste.
SIGMUND'S GHOST (CONT.)
(fixing)
Ja! Amazing drug! Amazing. My experiments prove it beyond doubt! With scientific precision.
(supercharged)
We have here the key to the functioning of the mind. Not the body, not the brain - but the mind itself.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
12.
CONTINUED: (33) 0
SIGMUND'S GHOST (Cont'd)
I have probed the innermost recesses of the human mind. I have reconstructed the ontogeny of the psyche from birth. From before birth. And it is ... a Revelation!
(shooting)
The Science of Psycho-Analysis.
And I have never had to prove any of it.
The perfect science. Not a Shred of Proof.
That was the beauty of it! A Science of the mind.
Not the Body, not the Brain; A Science of the mind!
Very wide acceptance. "Freudian," they say.
Freudian!
DR ROB'T
(aside; sadly)
This physician, or what's left of him, presents with a smorgasbord of bizarre symptoms. As a student, I recall reading about his syndrome. The great epidemic of iatrogenic cocainization of patients occurred sometime in the 1890's, I believe. He would have been a man in his thirties. Well before my time.
SIGMUND'S GHOST (CONT.)
Psychoanalysis looks at the mind. Like people attending theater. You, the performer. You, the actor. You, the performer in real life. Perhaps even you, the real father in real life perhaps you are a ... homosexual. But you are supposed to represent perhaps all the fathers. Even, you might say, me.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
13.
CONTINUED: (34) 0
SIGMUND'S GHOST (Cont'd)
(a bit calmer; conspiratorial)
I tell you something: soon you will get to see your own father. He will pretend not to be able to talk to you, of course. Just as you are pretending not to be able to talk to your wife and my Anna, and your child Mary. I am just now talking to her, you might say. You get to see her again. Mabbie, we call her. Or called her; she commits suicide in 1970.
DR ROB'T clutches at his heart.
SIGMUND'S GHOST (CONT.)
Oh, you didn't know. Yeah, that's right. You died in ... 1939. Right after me.
Well, I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you. So. Now you know.
Later, Mabbie complains about all kinds of things, her "suffering" - it's horrible, horrible.
(lighting a huge cigar)
Meintsas. Stories. Stories is all it is. Verruecktgeschichten. I hear crap like that all day. They make it up, especially the women. They're hysterics. I know; they make it up. They want to believe it, all their little stories about beating, and sexual intercourse with older men when they were little girls, and seeing men's penises here, and there - and seeing incest, incest! where of course there is nothing. They just make it up. If you believe all of their stories, it will make you crazy.
(CONTINUED)
14.
CONTINUED: (35) 0
DR ROB'T
(turning away disdainfully)
I don't know about that, really. I don't know very much about your psycho-analysis, or your hypnosis, or your electric shocks, either.
(distinctively)
I'm a surgeon.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
Surgery! Of course! Psychoanalysis is the analog of surgery; the analyst is the surgeon of the mind. The elegance, the exactitude, the dissection into parts, the preservation of the whole while examining and rejuvenating the elements, all with surgical precision: This is psychoanalysis.
SIGMUND'S GHOST pardons himself gesturally, shoots up some more cocaine.
DR ROB'T
(aside, whilst Sigmund fixes)
Astonishing histories from that period. Doctors and dentists in the chronic phase of cocaine dependence, wandering in the street wielding revolvers, wildly gesticulating, assaulting innocent passersby who the addict swore were determined to kill him.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
You're talking to a man who was a medical doctor who got his own father addicted to this stuff. And I used to screw my sister-in-law, Minnie. Yeah, me and Minna.
(humping gestures)
My little Annerl saw us one day.
(CONTINUED)
15.
CONTINUED: (36) 0
DR ROB'T
(aside, while Sigmund shoots up)
Imagine seventeen patient-addicts from just one practice -- ten of them were doctors; three of them were patients of those doctors, for whom cocaine had been prescribed by the doctors; the rest thrillseekers or experimenters or headache sufferers. Imagine patients so afflicted by imaginary worms that they dug holes in their forearms with pencils and letter openers, to rid themselves of the worms crawling out of their flesh!
SIGMUND'S GHOST
And then that disaster with Emma. Emma Eckstein. It nearly killed the girl, that lunatic Doctor Fliess, my friend, "operating" on her nose. To cure her "nasal neurosis," he called it. Operating on her nose, making cuts in her nose, and stuffing them with (ugh) gauze and - you know, he was homosexual. Homosexual! I was not, of course - we wrote many letters, just the two of us, took our vacations together - nothing sexual of course.
(smooths his suit, pauses after each phrase)
Nothing sexual. Of course. Nothing of any sort of sexual complex. No penis complex. Two clinicians. The "nasal neurosis," he said. I disagreed.
(harrumphing)
Imagine that!
(scrutinizing the stageplayers)
He didn't know anything about sexuality. Such a pity. He didn't even know that we are all bisexual. Constitutionally bisexual. A civil war raging inthe unconscious.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
16.
CONTINUED: (37) 0
SIGMUND'S GHOST (Cont'd)
The dominant sex keeps the subordinate sex in repression, deep in the unconscious; the ignominy of defeat is in the inevitable sexual perversion, the submission,the castration, of the weak. Fliess!
DR ROB'T
(aside; sadly)
Ah -- and an urgent need to communicate a one true path to salvation -- "Freudian!" -- this also seems to come up in these histories, again, and again.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
Lots of things happen in life and then you cross over that veil of tears and you are very happy. You are dead. Like I am now, almost dead. Nothing bothers me now. So you don't think that it bothers me that I certified you as utterly insane and took your children away and gave your wife to my daughter? Do you? It doesn't bother me. Not at all. I am Doctor Sigmund Freud. I am the Father of Psycho-Analysis.
The King of the Unconscious.
Fifty years from now, everybody knows who I am, the brilliant Doctor Freud, who explained it all for you.
DR ROB'T
(aside; sadly)
This I believe appears to be the longterm etiology of iatrogenic cocainization. Hammiston spoke of the extreme paranoia. Warren referred to "high-flown confused language", where "words flowed so freely from my pen, words which made no sense when I picked up the sheets of paper the very next day."
(CONTINUED)
17.
CONTINUED: (38) 0
SIGMUND'S GHOST
And nobody will know who you are, nobody will have even heard of you. You're just a nut. Just another fellow ground up for the greater glory of psychoanalysis. Just a nut. Doesn't bother me a bit. Not at all.
DR ROB'T is slightly agitated.
SIGMUND'S GHOST (CONT.)
(fixing some more dope)
But it does bother you. And after all these years!
You lose a family, it's like losing a suit of clothes.
Your need for your wife - for Dorothy - was nothing more and nothing less than your unresolved oedipal conflict, looking looking looking always looking for your mother. And just when you think you have got her, and you have had intercourse with her - I mean really banged her brains out, right Bobby? - and that you can have all the feelings for -your mother! - she bids you adieu. And the children of course go with the mother. End of conflict.
(conspiratorially)
All that mother stuff is a lot of crap.
SIGMUND goes to shoot up again, but drops the syringe and "breaks" it.
DR ROB'T
(aside; sadly, while Sigmund contemplates the broken syringe)
Physicians make mistakes, sometimes. In 1906, the government made it illegal to prescribe cocaine. Cocaine
(while Sigmund discards the broken syringe)
was out of the physician's hands.
(CONTINUED)
18.
CONTINUED: (39) 0
SIGMUND
(fixing some more dope with a spare syringe)
Bobby, my girl stole your wife as clear as David stole Bathsheba. And I helped her. And what else was I to do? She pestered me, she nagged me. Oh how she can nag. And I wasn't feeling so good, with the pills, and the medicine.
(shooting up)
She gave me no peace. Anna made me do it, certifying you insane, otherwise she would never have emptied my pan.
(on an even keel, fully juiced up now)
All that mother stuff. It's almost a joke. But of course a man in my position as a scientist does not joke. Not even about Jewish mothers.
(laughs)
You wouldn't understand, Bobby. You Gentiles will never understand. This is the science of Jewish mothers.
(laughs cynically, uproariously)
Science! I talk to a few people and then I make a big science about it. No data, no nothing. Just a bunch of anecdotes. And all fudged too - all these people - young girls - little boys - come in and say they've been beaten, and their fathers and their aunts and their mothers played with them, their little tiny penises and vaginas - even their ears and their mouths - and you want to know what I told them? I said, you have an overactive imagination. We all have a difficult childhood. Go home and forget it. That's what I would tell them. After all, who would do such a thing to little children? I know these people, their families. Doctors, lawyers, important people -- Judges, yet! They were good Jewish families, some of them.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
19.
CONTINUED: (40) 0
SIGMUND (Cont'd)
I knew the mothers of these people, and decent people - never mind Jewish or not Jewish, believe me, I could tell you stories about Gentiles too - decent people do not do these things. These children - well, of course they were not children when they told me about these fantasies, such fantasies - beatings. These people want to believe their fantasies. They want to believe their fantasies so much, they convince themselves their fantasies ... are true!
Exit ANNA.
SIGMUND'S GHOST (CONT.)
You know, my own Anna, she wrote that she was beaten. She wants to believe her fantasies so much, you wouldn't believe it! Yeah, my Anna. She's somethin', that Anna! What an imagination! That was before my Anna got to be a world expert. On Custody of Children. My Anna writes books with some lansman from University of Yale! Yale, yet! "In the Best Interest of the Child," by Anna Freud.
But my psychoanalysis, it's just a way of saying that everybody's crazy. Verstehst du? Everybody's crazy, and I'm not. I've been analyzed. I analyzed myself.
And of course Anna's not crazy, she's a psychoanalyst, I analyzed her too. And Dorothy, I analyzed her. And your kids, Anna analyzed them. Everybody's OK. You're a nut. I know, I labelled you myself.
Do not seem so, so impatient. So irritated. Really. You are pretending not to be able to talk to me, and I am standing here, talking right to you!
(CONTINUED)
20.
CONTINUED: (41) 0
You see, this is precisely what I meant about repression. Perfect repression - like those people attending the theater, and one character "doesn't hear" what such and such a character said, and "doesn't know" that such and such a character is the villain - the killer, the thief, the murderer? That is the repression of the neurotic. Psycho-analysis relieves the repression, cleanses the soul of the deadening weight of un-re-lived experiences, opens the door to the inner circumstances of the I AM.
DR ROB'T
(aside)
It is curious, that little if any appears in the journals as followup. Men his age, some reformed, most not; autopsies, perhaps; lesions -- weren't there lesions characteristic of the drug's -- the cocaine's -- chemical assault on his nervous tissue?
(points to front of head, back of head, neck; thoughtful shrug;back to watching the production)
SIGMUND'S GHOST
Well, you are listening. That is an improvement.
DR ROB'T
(aside)
How do you argue with a guy who's that far gone?
SIGMUND'S GHOST
Well, it's true! We are Scientifically analyzed. And ask anybody about you, Robert Burlingham. Ask anybody who's heard of you - you're a nut. Ask! Ask your own kids!
DR ROB'T rises up to attack SIGMUND'S GHOST with his fist; SIGMUND'S GHOST, unscathed, just smiles.
(CONTINUED)
21.
CONTINUED: (42) 0
SIGMUND'S GHOST
Bob - Bubbala -
(inspecting a stage knife)
nothing hurts me. I'm beyond pain and suffering
(stabs himself harmlessly)
and guilt. And conflict, above all, I am beyond conflict. Listen, everyday about this time I go for a walk, a nice walk in the out of doors, I never had much time for that, now every day I can enjoy the fresh air. A regular luftmensch. So I'll be seeing you. Auf wiedersehen!
SIGMUND'S GHOST gives DR ROB'T a fatherly pinch on the cheek.
Enter MABBIE.
SIGMUND'S GHOST
But stay and watch this part. For me, it was all a blur, those last few months up there. I wonder, how is Mabbie going to tell this to the women?
DR ROB'T
My little girl's getting married, and she's not going to have her own father come to her wedding?
How could a father go on living, after his own daughter gets married and doesn't even tell him about it?
DOROTHY
So Mabbie dear, how did you find Professor today?
MABBIE
Fine.
DOROTHY
I hope you didn't bother him, my dear. He's not at all well. Poor Anna.
MABBIE
He asked me what all the disturbance was downstairs.
(CONTINUED)
22.
CONTINUED: (43) 0
DOROTHY
I hope you didn't disturb him with it. What did you say?
MABBIE
We talked about the wedding of course. He wanted to tell me about Daddy.
DOROTHY
And what did he want to tell you about that?
Enter ANNA.
MABBIE
He said - he's speaking mostly in German nowadays, isn't he? - that it wasn't my fault. That it isn't my fault that Daddy is crazy, and it's such a shame. And it can't be helped.
Exit SIGMUND, thumbs up. This TABLEAU is the advertising interface for productions of this Play.
DOROTHY
He is always so helpful. He's very understanding.
ANNA
And he is right too. He said to you what we already told you, ja? That it is far far better that your father not be here, it will only be such a problem, and that if your father were not so difficult it would be very nice if you could invite him, but under the circumstances it is quite impossible. Quite quite impossible.
MABBIE
Yes. I suppose it is.
MABBIE looks disconsolate. She sits down in a chair at the far end of the table.
MABBIE (CONT)
I remember when I was little when my Daddy used to take me fishing.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
23.
CONTINUED: (44) 0
MABBIE (Cont'd)
Just me, because I liked to go fishing. I had my own little rod and reel and a little basket to carry my fish home with me. And one time I didn't catch a fish and my Daddy caught a fish and he gave his fish to me. And then he took me and Bob Junior to Madison Square Garden.
DOROTHY
Please, don't romanticize, Mabbie dear. Let's just stick to what is important now, shall we?
ANNA
We have your best interests at heart in this. Trust us. We love you.
END ACT I.
<A>
24.
DOROTHY'S MONOLOGUE
DOROTHY is getting dressed, in front of a full length mirror.
DOROTHY
So about the Clinic. Of course we called it a nursery then. But it was really the same thing. We were really doing it, just like we wanted to, having all those children and just the right place to do it, everything all controlled. And we could really see what was going on. What was really going on, you know what I mean. That was wonderful, that we could take notes, and record all the things that when you're so busy, when it's not your job, you just miss. So now we really know about the children and their development, and their stages, I mean we've seen it, with lots of them, in one place, and we didn't have different mothers like it usually is. That's why you can't really say anything in the analysis about the development, when the child has different parents. And the parents, well, some of them know what's going on, and some of them don't know what's going on, and so you just don't know, do you? But at the Nursery, I mean, at the Clinic, that's what we call it now - we only called it the nursery during the War - you really know what's going on with the children, you have some kind of control, you know what I mean? Because the mothers - well, actually, we did let the mothers come in and see the child, and some of the mothers even worked there, so they get to see the child even more often, and that was a lot more than they would have seen them if they were still in the bomb shelter in the Underground station, or somewhere - And of course, the child's father would be off fighting the war somewhere.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
25.
CONTINUED: 0
DOROTHY (Cont'd)
Some of them would be stationed right here, I mean right there, in London, and they still couldn't come to see the child, and it would cause such an uproar among all the children, because then all of the children would say "That's my father and he's come to see me, I told you he would come to see me." And so many of them had lost their fathers. In the war. Or been away for one or two years. It got so that one of us had to go with the father if one of the fathers came on Sunday. Because we had so much to do! It really disrupted things. Or like Mabbie's father, who died. He killed himself, actually, which goes to show, that he really was crazy after all. Because like I was just saying, the development, that's what we're really studying.
<A>
26.
ACT II
The LATE DR ROB'T is an observer, wearing black. He is reading the New England Journal of Medicine. He now has all the time in the world to do what he wants. No more black bag. The deckle edged Note from ACT 1 sticks out of his pocket.
Law offices of Charles Culp Burlingham, Mr Burlingham's office. New York City, 1946. A dignified well-furnished old-fashioned room. Prominent large ship's model on a stand. A Tiffany wine glass on Mr Burlingham's desk holds Mr Burlingham's business cards. Prominent typewriter.
The office has a bit of street noise; the very loudest sounds occasionally intrude: Phones RING, bus HONKS, a PROPELLOR AIRPLANE, and on several occasions an oceangoing vessel BLOWS its STEAMHORN, answered by a second ship's AIRHORN. Near the end of the Act, church bells CARILLON in the distance, while Mr Burlingham is reading aloud to his dead son.
Mr Burlingham (C.C.BURL) is hard at work on a contract, very lawyerlike. AIRPLANE. Phone RINGS, muffled, in the other room. His secretary, MRS SMITH, RINGS him on the office INTERCOM.
C.C.BURL
Yes, Mrs Smith.
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
Mister Burlingham, Senator Carlson's office is on the line. Do you wish to speak to him?
C.C.BURL
Oh yes. Thank you.
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
Yes sir.
C.C.BURL's phone RINGS. C.C.BURL picks up the telephone. Prominent yellow pad.
Pause.
C.C.BURL opens the appropriate folder for reference as he speaks.
C.C.BURL
Good afternoon, Senator. How are you feeling?
(pause)
Things are fine in New York City, sir. What can I do for you today?
(pause)
I don't anticipate that will be a problem.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
27.
CONTINUED: 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
The language of your treaty is just as clear as day on that very point.
(more)
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
Let me elaborate, if I may, on the benefit to large harbors and ports - while we are not trying to favor domestic shipping and carriage, domestic flag ships - our ships - will have a certain advantage, especially over a flag of convenience.
(more)
Ship's STEAMHORN BLOWS, a long and three shorts. C.C.BURL looks out the window, then checks the newspaper to see which ship it was.
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
And in the long run, it is my feeling that that is precisely what the President feels is best for us.
(pause)
Fine.
(pause)
Always glad to lend a hand, Senator. Say hello to Marlene, and how is your boy doing at his school?
(pause)
I knew he would find his way, once he got a foot in the door. Good to talk to you, sir.
C.C.BURL hangs up the telephone and goes back to work. He works rapidly on some typed paperwork, dotting i's and crossing t's. When he has it finished, he wraps everything up in a red manila folder with a stringtie clasp and BUZZES Mrs Smith's INTERCOM.
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
Yes, Mister Burlingham?
C.C.BURL
The Cunard contract is ready.
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
I'll be right in.
(CONTINUED)
28.
CONTINUED: (2) 0
C.C.BURL
(getting his hat and coat)
Thank you Mrs Smith.
C.C.BURL is getting his hat and coat. INTERCOM BUZZES again.
C.C.BURL (CONT.)
Yes, Mrs Smith?
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
(flustered)
Mister Burlingham, Mrs Burlingham is here.
(short pause)
Doctor Robert's Mrs Burlingham.
C.C.BURL
(checking his appointment book)
Dorothy.
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
Yes sir. She is here ... to receive your check. She says, she wants to speak with you.
C.C.BURL
(looking for a way out)
Did she get the money?
MRS SMITH ON THE INTERCOM
Yes sir. She did. She has a friend with her. I think they both want to see you.
C.C.BURL
(hesitant; shrugs)
I will be right out.
Starts to go out, stops; remembers the Cunard contract, gets it from the desk, exits. He leaves the door open. Phones RING thru open door. TYPING thru open door.
Short pause.
Enter C.C.BURL. He holds the door wide open for DOROTHY and ANNA, and gestures them to be seated. He closes the door.
C.C.BURL (CONT)
(formally; gesturing them to be seated)
Ladies?
(CONTINUED)
29.
CONTINUED: (3) 0
DOROTHY
(waving a check)
This is very helpful, CeeCee.
C.C.BURL gestures "It's nothing." An awkward pause.
DOROTHY (CONT.)
It will be very helpful for the children, of course.
C.C.BURL
Of course.
DOROTHY
CeeCee, we've come such a long way. It didn't seem right not to have a chat. We do have so much we could talk about. Oh, CeeCee, if we could only talk like we used to. Let's try. Okay?
C.C.BURL is nonplussed and slightly offended.
DOROTHY (CONT.)
Okay?
C.C.BURL
Dorothy, I don't think we have much to discuss.
DOROTHY
(eyeing C.C.BURL's biz cards, taking one)
Well, we could start with something that we're both familiar with. Daddy. My father, Louis Comfort? You and he used to talk and it was wonderful.
C.C.BURL holds up the piece of Tiffany stemware, removing the business cards temporarily.
Ship's STEAMHORN BLOWS. One long.
C.C.BURL
(contemplating the glassware)
Your father was a man of many talents, Dorothy. Mr Tiffany. He relished his art. Somewhat of a has-been, now. Not much market for fancy glass these days, but then, there's no accounting for taste.
(CONTINUED)
30.
CONTINUED: (4) 0
Ship's AIRHORN BLOWS. One long.
DOROTHY
No, I suppose not. No, I suppose there isn't.
Phones RING thru closed door. TYPING thru closed door.
C.C.BURL
A man of many talents, Louis Comfort Tiffany. Even dabbled in the theater. Produced an elegant flop, as I recall.
(pause)
Perhaps fifty years from now this will be the Stradivarius of stemware. Who knows?
(restoring the biz card to the glassware)
He had many talents, your father. I think it would be fair to say that he found you not a little bit disreputable.
DOROTHY
(extracting her curriculum vitae from her briefcase, fresh from the Society meetings)
I am the Director and cofounder of the Jackson Clinic and a published authority on child development. Here is a list of my publications. You see, one thing I've learned is that the father is a very important object in your life.
C.C.BURL
(perusing the c.v.)
Indeed.
Ship's horn BLOWS. Five shorts. C.C.BURL gets up and looks out the window.
DOROTHY
Well, it gets kind of technical, CeeCee, but it's got a lot to do with identification. And it all happens very early, like when you are just a little boy or little girl.
(CONTINUED)
31.
CONTINUED: (5) 0
C.C.BURL
Yes, I remember now Bob telling me something about that. He was trying to explain it to me one day. About your psychoanalysis.
DOROTHY
CeeCee, I would just love to tell you more about it, you know it would be wonderful if we could really talk and I could tell you about analysis. The identification I was telling you about is part of analysis. I think you would be wonderful in analysis.
C.C.BURL
Do you? Perhaps sometime we'll ... discuss that. When we're both not ... busy.
Door SLAMS offstage.
DOROTHY
You will have to come and see us again, like you did when we were still living in Vienna. It's actually quite nice in London. Not as nice as Vienna, but I like it. And the children really like London. And we have the school, and the Clinic. Do you know about the Clinic? It was Anna who really started the Clinic, during the War.
STEAMHORN BLOWS, one long in the distance.
Ship's AIRHORN BLOWS, one long in the distance.
I'm sorry, CeeCee, you know we've just been chatting away, having a high old time, and I haven't even made the proper introductions. CeeCee, do you remember Anna, from when you came to see us? Dr Freud's daughter, and of course my closest friend. Anna, this is CeeCee. My husband's father. He was with my husband when he came to see us in Austria.
(CONTINUED)
32.
CONTINUED: (6) 0
ANNA
How do you do.
Intercom BUZZES. C.C. BURL looks at his watch.
C.C.BURL
Good to see you again, Miss Freud. I understand your father has passed away since I saw you last. My sympathies.
ANNA
Thank you very much.
C.C. BURL
(responding to the intercom)
Oh yes. Good night, Mrs Smith.
MRS SMITH
(over the intercom, inadvertently, offstage to a delivery boy)
It is indeed, the same Mr Burlingham who outlawed child labor. Here's something for yourself, the weather is frightful, you are so brave to go around delivering in this weather.
(over the intercom)
Yes, and good night to you, sir. I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr Burlingham, when you're with a client, but ...
C.C. BURL
Quite all right, Mrs Smith. What is it?
DELIVERY BOY
(offstage, and offstage over the intercom, loudly)
Six Bits!
MRS SMITH
(over the intercom)
The Court Reporter's messenger from Superior Court just brought the transcript you ordered back in January. I'm so sorry to trouble you with it, but you wanted me to tell you just as soon as it arrived.
(CONTINUED)
33.
CONTINUED: (7) 0
Door SLAMS, offstage over intercom.
C.C. BURL
Thank you. G'nite, Mrs Smith.
DOROTHY
So about the Clinic. Of course we called it a nursery then. But it was really the same thing. We were really doing it...
No more typing noises.
Anna gives Dorothy a reproving nod.
DOROTHY (CONT)
Because like I was just saying, CeeCee, the development, that's what we're really studying. That's really everything, and the analysis is just really wonderful. When you get to see it like that. When you get to see what's really going on.
C.C.BURL
I see. I'm sorry, I seem to have lost the thread here a bit. I was quite fascinated by this identification. Was that something you do yourself?
Final door SLAMS offstage.
DOROTHY
Well that's just marvelous, CeeCee, that you want to know all about that, that's one of the most important things! You see, what you identify with, why that's just the most important thing in the world. Isn't it, Anna.
ANNA
Yes. It is. Identification is a part of our science, and our science is an open book. I must warn you, however, that the number of those who can read from this book is not very many.
(CONTINUED)
34.
CONTINUED: (8) 0
DOROTHY
Anna, CeeCee really wants to know about identification. Isn't that wonderful? And then we could tell him about complexes. I know you would really like complexes. Because of what you do, with your law work here at the office. I remember when the children were little and they used to just love to come and see you at your office, right here, CeeCee. That was wonderful.
So of course, you want to know all about the children, Bob Jr and Mabbie, and they're doing so well! Don't you think? I mean, Bob Junior, going to Cambridge? And now Mabbie has a child of her own! We just stopped in to see her, you know. What they had to go through with their father. When he died, I mean. They are doing wonderfully. Really.
C.C.BURL
You mentioned something about science?
ANNA
Yes. That's what we were talking about. Our science. Identification is a part of it.
DOROTHY
That's what Professor calls psychoanalysis.
C.C.BURL
Dr Freud, you mean? The late Dr Freud.
DOROTHY
Of course! Professor would say, "Our Science," and we would know that he was talking about, well, lots of things. Important things like, well, you know, identification, and castration, and well, you know, complexes - like the penis complex, and lots of other complexes.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
35.
CONTINUED: (9) 0
DOROTHY (Cont'd)
When Professor would say "Our Science", we knew that he meant everything in the analysis. Neurosis, psychosis, transference! ... everything, and he would just say, "our science," and we knew just what he meant.
Phones RING offstage, but go unanswered.
C.C.BURL
I see.
So this identification, it's something you're quite interested in. Is it something that is especially germane to children?
DOROTHY
That was years ago, when we were in Austria, that we spoke German to the children, CeeCee.
C.C.BURL
Ah! Is it something relevant, is it something you especially do with children?
ANNA
I will explain it to you, Mr Burlingham. About the identification.
C.C.BURL
Ah, please do. Tell me about that.
DOROTHY
That would be wonderful.
Dorothy gets set to listen attentively.
C.C. BURL is in a lawyer's pose, itching for his yellow pad.
ANNA
You see, Mr Burlingham, when the object relationship is converted to identification, that is when a complex is developed.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
36.
CONTINUED: (10) 0
ANNA (Cont'd)
When a girl gives up her mother, for example, and acknowledges her castration, that is when you have a change of object. And a change of zone, of course, but that is a different matter. But, you see, we believe in the Oedipus complex, and perhaps you do not.
C.C.BURL
This is a bit different from what I usually do, in the courtroom or the library. You will have to pardon me for perhaps being a bit slow. Could you tell me a bit about the change of object? And do tell me about the analysis.
ANNA
After years of scientific inquiry, we have now the analysis to look at the mind, yes? What I said for girls, is true also, but quite opposite, for little boys. There is penis identification. But then there is danger, there is always the danger of disturbance in the associated ego functions.
C.C.BURL
That sounds extremely dangerous, indeed.
ANNA
Ah, Mr Burlingham, the danger of development is that there are perversions. Yes. A boy, for example, may identify with his penis too strongly!
C.C.BURL
Indeed! And then?
ANNA
Well, then, of course, such a little boy will develop the positive Oedipus complex. The primary relationship with the mother is in danger. Then there is the loss of ego control.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
37.
CONTINUED: (11) 0
ANNA (Cont'd)
And then there is the narcissism, the impaired narcissistic facade, and developmental arrest. We reactivate the infantile experiences which have been repressed. We analyze them in the transference relationship. The psychoanalyst knows you are hiding something. The psychoanalyst will unlock your hidden remembrances. People scarcely take so much trouble to lock up something worthless.
DOROTHY
Isn't that just marvelous CeeCee? Doesn't it make you kind of tingly?
C.C.BURL
Fascinating! And how do you discover all this, Miss Freud?
DOROTHY
Well, CeeCee, Professor always says ... Oh, but you were asking Anna, weren't you?
ANNA
All science is based upon observations. And these observations are made by our psychological apparatus. The mind! But our science studies that apparatus itself. So we must study not the conscious mental events, but the unconscious mental processes. We make inferences from the conscious to the unconscious. Anyone who goes deeply into the subject will find that our technique holds its ground against every criticism.
C.C.BURL
Criticism? Perish the thought. No, just curiosity. Especially about what you said earlier, about the - perversions?
(CONTINUED)
38.
CONTINUED: (12) 0
DOROTHY
Oh, CeeCee, Anna is just marvelous when it comes to the perversions. Anna is so good because she is so concerned. Do you know that Anna cured three homosexuals? Boys. And you know what's so amazing about that? They said right when they started the analysis, they didn't want her to change that, that they would walk right out if that was even brought up, and do you know that Anna got them so that they didn't even want to look at a penis, even a picture of a penis? It's all published. About true object love.
C.C.BURL
Astonishing! And totally against their will! Truly astonishing.
ANNA
It is all published. The series on bisexuality.
C.C.BURL
I'm sorry, I've lost the thread about identification.
DOROTHY
Oh, no, CeeCee, you're doing so well, identification and bisexuality, they're like this. We're all bisexual. All of us. That's one of the first things, and you probably didn't even know that. It's just so important, how if everybody has both kinds of identification, that's why it's so important that when you're little, you have the right kind of identification.
C.C.BURL
Because, if you don't, then you will...
DOROTHY
You might become a pervert. The perversions were something Professor was always so concerned about.
(CONTINUED)
39.
CONTINUED: (13) 0
ANNA
About the conflict of the impulse for your own sex with the impulse for the other sex.
DOROTHY
If you have misplaced identification, then you have perversion.
C.C.BURL
I do recall some discussion about that, when Bob and I were in Austria.
DOROTHY
We went to the Hochschule, remember? And to the Opera House. It seems like just yesterday. And the children were all looking forward to your coming.
C.C.BURL
Were they! That's so nice to hear. Bob Junior, as I recall, seemed a bit out of sorts at the time.
ANNA
That was a very difficult time for your grandchildren, Mr Burlingham. Extremely difficult. How can I tell you how difficult it was - you can see how much conflict there was, with the hour for the analysis being moved because of having to see the father. Terrible situation.
C.C.BURL
That was the children's father. Bob Burlingham. M.D. My son.
ANNA
I remember like yesterday the impossible demands he wanted from us. That we should abandon the analysis, just throw to the wind the years of the analysis, with the children doing so well, and just send the children for months to a camp. With boys!
(CONTINUED)
40.
CONTINUED: (14) 0
C.C.BURL
Bob Junior did go to camp. I wrote a check for it myself. That was a good idea for him to go to camp.
ANNA
That was a terrible, terrible idea.
C.C.BURL
And why, might I ask, was that a terrible idea?
ANNA
It was as if he had no concern for the child at all, and no concern for the conflict he would cause, and how much that would have to affect the child. He was not concerned about the child, he could only see what he needed, for his own needs, that he wanted the boy to go to a camp! Terrible idea.
C.C.BURL
Now what exactly was it about summer camp that was such a terrible idea for Bob Junior? The boy loved sports and the out of doors. Why I recall myself going out on the lake in the summer with him and Mary. Reminded me of when I went to camp. In the Adirondacks. Some of those boys I've known all my life. Good experience for a boy, I should think. Certainly didn't do me any harm.
ANNA
Mr Burlingham, at these camps, they have other boys, and with some of these boys there would be the danger of perversion.
C.C.BURL
Perversion? Whatever is perverted about a summer camp?
(CONTINUED)
41.
CONTINUED: (15) 0
ANNA
There are other boys, and then there is masturbating. And then there is perversion.
C.C.BURL
Homosexuality?
ANNA
Yes! That's how it gets started. Identification with another man's body, and the need for another man's penis. And then, acccch, then we have a terrible terrible situation that even the analysis cannot perhaps overcome, because the pervert gains pleasure from his naughtiness. He will not give it up!
C.C.BURL
And all this terribleness starts with masturbation?
ANNA
Ja! It certainly does. Identification with the genitals! Especially when the mother must punish the child for masturbation.
C.C.BURL
(aside)
Is that what this is all about? Jerking off?
(to ANNA and DOROTHY)
And you discovered all this? And all by making inferences from your unconscious processes?
DOROTHY
Oh, yes, but not just us. I am a published authority specializing in the study of twins. But there's also Professor , and the Society members, like Anna, and the Americans, lots of people. That's where we just were, Ceecee. At the Society, the Society meetings. That's why we're here. In America. At the Society meetings.
(CONTINUED)
42.
CONTINUED: (16) 0
C.C.BURL
I see. All contemplating your navels.
ANNA
I beg your pardon?
C.C.BURL
Self absorbed. People whose sole aim in life is contemplating their own navel.
ANNA
I beg your pardon, Herr Burlingham?
C.C. BURL
You and your friend and your friend's father wash people's dirty linen for them. You do that because you are a pack of peeping Toms. Peddling intimacy for money. By the hour. In advance. With children!
No wonder your father considered you a disgrace, Dorothy.
ANNA
Her father? Mr Tiffany? Who abandoned her when she was so young? He would have no business having any feelings at all toward Dorothy. Nor do you have any business, saying such things.
C.C.BURL
I think her father was disgusted by her. He's probably turning over rapidly in his grave this very moment.
ANNA
Because, you mean perhaps because, your daughter-in-law has her Jewish friends? Because...
C.C.BURL
Your father may have worried about that, Miss Freud. He was heard to say that your "friend" was a non-Jew, and that was "good".
(more)
(CONTINUED)
43.
CONTINUED: (17) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
Something to do with his "science" becoming too Jewish. Although another time the late Doctor Freud said that it was not so good, that Dorothy wasn't Jewish, because she didn't fit in.
(pause)
No, Miss Freud, neither Mr Tiffany nor I have ever been disgusted by any one's religion.
The reason your father would find you disgusting is because you are both women!!
ANNA
Yes? So we are. Two women. And what of that?
C.C.BURL
With your vacations alone, just the two of you? You leave my grandchildren at home in London, and the two of you get on the ferry and go to your idyllic little cabin in fairest green Ireland. Just the two of you. How charming!
ANNA
Yes? We went on our vacation. What of that?
C.C.BURL
What of that, indeed!
(pause)
I am an attorney. From time to time, I hire investigators.
ANNA
Yes? Well you were wasting your money if you sent people to spy on us, I can assure you.
C.C.BURL
Trained investigators, Miss Freud. They look under damp rocks and into rooms through keyholes.
ANNA
Whoever they were, they were wasting their time. I can assure you of that.
(CONTINUED)
44.
CONTINUED: (18) 0
C.C.BURL
Were they indeed? Were they, indeed!
(pause)
My investigators dirty their hands quite well in other people's laundry, Miss Freud. They apparently know you much, much better than you know yourself. Two good men spent three long months looking into your affairs.
(displaying deckle edged photos, etc in a folder)
Dorothy, I am glad you have at least had the decency to deport yourself to Europe, to carry on your affair with such brazen spectacle. Spare your family some of the embarrassment.
Both of you are so despicably dishonest. Miss Anna Freud, the vestal virgin and the font of pedagogic wisdom. Goes around the world, lecturing. And never even went to college. No higher education at all.
Mrs Burlingham - "She's one of the Tiffanies, you know" - Mrs Burlingham, the marvelous mother - I haven't forgotten that when your children were young, you entrusted them every day to a governess. Nor have I forgotten the day I fired your governess for locking them up in a closet.
Now you abdicate your motherhood to her family's insane goings on. This psychoanalysis - my investigators looked into that a bit too.
(more file folders and photos, and timesheets and tape recordings)
Through your keyholes. For Christ's sake, Dorothy, how could you condone the brutality she practices on our poor little children?
(more)
(CONTINUED)
45.
CONTINUED: (19) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
For hours each day, she interrogates the children and makes them confess to what you apparently think are unspeakable crimes. Their lessons. Where you teach them "cooperation", as you call it. Invading a child's mind. Controlling a child's thinking. That kind of dominance and coercion of a child is pure evil.
(referring to notes)
And by the way, Miss Freud, masturbation is not a crime. It didn't seem to hurt your father too much. Or me. Or you, for that matter. No matter what you told your father, and no matter what your father wrote in his pious eruditions. Imagine filling poor little Bob Junior's head with such fears and trepidation. Sublimate, indeed!
ANNA
Those wonderful children are living proof of the brilliance of psychoanalytic science. Dorothy and I have shaped and molded this little group - with their lessons - and of course the other little children who we have educated in our school - applying fully the scientific principles of my father, Dr Sigmund Freud. And this is in the best interest of these children, I can assure you of that.
C.C.BURL
Just a moment, Miss Freud. Dorothy, do you know what she actually does with your children? Or is this another governess with a closet?
ANNA
Dorothy knows very well ...
C.C.BURL
Miss Freud.
(CONTINUED)
46.
CONTINUED: (20) 0
ANNA
Yes, Herr Burlingham?
DOROTHY
CeeCee, please don't get angry with Anna. She's just so very apt with her answers. And to someone who doesn't really have any of the theory of our science, why I know how ... I have seen how ... it gets confused. That's why we... I don't answer as quickly ..; she is saying just what I would say to you, much better than anyone could.
C.C.BURL
Perhaps she opens doors for you in restaurants as well!
DOROTHY
(laughing)
Oh, no, CeeCee, Anna wouldn't do that! Maybe someday you'll understand.
ANNA
And who will teach him? We came here to talk, and we endure an Inquisition.
C.C.BURL
You came here for money. The money - my check - was waiting for you in the front office. We had settled all that on the telephone. It was you who said that we had something else to discuss.
ANNA
And how am I to discuss anything at all with one who is so eager for conflict?
Perhaps you just want to know what you are getting for your money. That would be very American - you want a good deal.
C.C.BURL
That, Miss Freud, would be very Jewish.
(CONTINUED)
47.
CONTINUED: (21) 0
But since you bring it up - Dorothy, how much money did you pay Doctor Freud - Professor, as you call him - for his services? How much do you pay Anna Freud for services rendered to your children? How big a check do you write each month payable to the order of Freud? Are you in fact supporting this psychoanalysis? Are they in fact, sucking money out of your trust fund like a leech?
ANNA
I will tell you this, Herr Burlingham, you will not get to see those grandchildren of yours this way. Because the way you are acting I can assure you it is not in their best interest to see you. I am much more concerned about the rights of those children than about the rights of any parents, or grandparents. We are trying to spare the children from the horrors of this horrible conflict. As long as you persist ...
C.C.BURL
You make this "conflict" with Dorothy's husband - Dorothy's late husband - out to be like Mister Roosevelt's late Great War, including Mister Truman's bomb. Giving in didn't work against the Fuehrer and it didn't work with you. My grandchildren are young adults. You won't always be able to control them as if they were young children.
ANNA
It is too late for Mabbie and Bobby; schade. But for the little ones? We who love these children, we will decide what is in the best interest of these children.
C.C.BURL
The Children - you stole those children, Dorothy.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
48.
CONTINUED: (22) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
Just took your children - yours and Bob's children - just took them off to Europe. What would you have had Bob do? Steal them back? He was far too moral for that.
ANNA
The morality, Herr Burlingham, is that the mother who has the chidren has a moral imperative to protect those children and to determine who sees those children. And that is no different for the father or anybody else who wants to visit those children and put any kind of wrong ideas into their heads.
C.C.BURL
When I think about this whole misfortunate business, I wish that Bob had thrown you out of that window instead of himself.
I'm an old man, and I get to say what I please. And I firmly believe, as God is my witness, that the world would have been witness to an act of justice and mercy if Bob had murdered you - both of you - in cold blood.
ANNA
You do not understand. You simply do not understand.
C.C.BURL
I think I do understand. You believe, you apparently really and truly believe, that sending Bob Junior to summer camp would make him a homosexual. That he'd turn queer. And from there, it followed as the night follows the day, that Bob's children should have absolutely nothing to do with him.
I understand, Miss Freud. I have heard enough of your claptrap.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
49.
CONTINUED: (23) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
This "Best Interest" slogan of yours - a slogan that you use to save people the trouble of thinking. My God, if it's in the best interest of children not to see their fathers, that's an affront to Justice. That's an affront to the Ten Commandments!
(pulling out a book by Anna Freud)
I've read your theories. I've read them. "The mother feels that the child remains a part of her body for several years" - such a lot of vile stupid nonsense you spout. I am personally shocked - and appalled - by your behavior toward my grandchildren. Never even sent them to a proper school. Never even sent them to summer camp.
ANNA
You don't have to like me or approve of my methods.
DOROTHY
Oh, CeeCee, Anna just wanted what's best for Mabbie and Bob Junior.
ANNA
A lawyer and his tricks. No proof! Not a bit of proof, just a lot of talk. Just so much posturing. The only authority here, Mr Lawyer, is Science. What's true, is true. And what isn't, isn't.
C.C.BURL
Brilliant, Miss Freud. Absolutely brilliant. Proof, indeed! And when have you, or your father, ever been concerned with proof?
(referring to the photos, hauling out some more)
Miss Freud, this dirt could have sat in this drawer another ten years.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
50.
CONTINUED: (24) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
What does it matter, really, what two old maids do in their bed together? But while these investigators were peeping at you, they found something else again. Tell me: At the end, Miss Freud - did your father still take massive daily doses of cocaine? By injection? Dr Freud, the dope fiend.
ANNA
My father, Herr Doktor Freud, was in fact a brilliant experimentalist. Experiments he did as such a young physician and researcher paved the way for modern anesthesiology, I will have you know. And ...
C.C.BURL
(displaying more photos and paperwork)
My men went to his druggist, Miss. I am most astonished at the sheer quantity of white powder "Dr Sigmund Freud" injected into himself. Two grams a day of pharmaceutically pure cocaine hydrochloride, bought from E. Merck the chemist himself. This "science" of your father - Doctor Sigmund Freud - is nothing but the paranoid ravings of a dope fiend, a cocaine addict, a crazed quack afflicted with drug-induced dementia. The Father of Drug Addiction. If I were a judge I'd have put him in jail.
ANNA
You will not have much longer, Herr Burlingham, to insult Professor Freud. Not while Dorothy and I are in your presence, because we do not share your feelings of jealousy for Professor. Not at all. It is a terrible thing that you must say these things instead of letting yourself admire him.
(CONTINUED)
51.
CONTINUED: (25) 0
C.C.BURL
He doesn't need me to admire him. He was always quite adept at tooting his own horn. Tell me: Has your father ever cured a single soul? My investigators certainly could not find any such person. They did find one - a certain Emma - who left your father's ministrations deathly ill. But we know about her, don't we Miss Freud? Your father's love affair, your father's first victim, bleeding to death from the intervention of your father's homosexual consort who attacked her nose? And then brags about it? Ought to be taken out and shot!
ANNA
You are filthy. A filthy liar!
C.C.BURL
It is your father who taught you to speak so! To deny your youngest horrors. Your father with his house of cards, built of smoke and mirrors, a flim-flam, a sideshow. A minister preaching to his faithful, a drug addict who accepts fees for an hour of his time, or a donation for his blessing and then buys white powder for his habit. Proof, indeed! Poor Emma! All the other poor unfortunate females who suffered from his so- called Science!
(confronting Dorothy)
But tell me, Dorothy: Have you ever injected the white snake that Dr Freud put in his arms? Dr Freud drowned his sorrows in a river of cocaine. The stench of those paranoiac drugs clings to his every word. That's the devil's powder, it is. Keep away from it, and keep those children away, from any man or woman who can't keep themselves away from it. They're fiends for their dope, they are.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
52.
CONTINUED: (26) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
There's no sense left in their heads after they send that damned powder through their veins. They're cursed by God himself for that dope that they use!!
DOROTHY
I don't really know very much about all that, CeeCee, but the children certainly don't go near anything dangerous.
C.C.BURL
Dangerous? Dorothy, would your husband ever have endangered your children half so much as did her father, the great Herr Doktor Freud? No, but of course not. Doctor Burlingham was only a physician. He simply did his job of healing the sick and wounded, and sent them on their way, their bloody gashes sewed up, their broken bones set to rights, their lives extended by a few days, a few weeks, or perhaps a great many years. And then went home to his kids. A good dad.
Nothing so fancy as having an affair with a woman patient. Nothing so exotic as taking vacations alone, away from his family, with another man, a fancy man to write long letters to, about this and about that. Nothing so notorious as the sexual relations of that man, bludgeoning his pitifully trusting patients with his sexual aggressiveness and over-arching perverseness. Yes, your father, Miss Freud, the one who slept with your aunt, your mother's own sister. How much of that evil white powder did your father have to suck into his needle and spit out into his vein to accomplish that?
(CONTINUED)
53.
CONTINUED: (27) 0
ANNA
I don't wish to play any ket und maus games mit you, Herr Burlingham. The science my father devoted his life to speaks eloquently for itself.
C.C.BURL
How many were there? How many damaged souls did your father notch on his blasted couch? Did your father only wish to drag as many as he could down with him? Is that what he wanted? To destroy life?
ANNA
Psychoanalysis has nothing to hide. It is people like you who hide, who take refuge in their heads and will not listen to reason.
C.C.BURL
Your father destroyed Bob. He took a good half of me. He's got you, Miss Freud, and you've got her. Your life isn't worth a candle now, Dorothy, you've sold your soul. You've no more spirit in you than a turnip or a rabbit. You just follow her around, you mouth stupid inanities, you're a convert to this fanatical and outlandish business.
ANNA
Until you are ready to work on what you are hiding, and what you are hiding from - what it is that makes you so angry, Mr Burlingham, - you will always be talking like this to us, and not trusting Dorothy and straightening out your affairs and getting things in order so that you may see these beautiful children.
C.C.BURL
You've got to get back on your feet, Dorothy.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
54.
CONTINUED: (28) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
You're a fanatic; you're no different than the Hindu on his bed of nails, suffering endless hours of pain and humiliation to some false but Godly purpose.
ANNA
Those beautiful children need to be protected from your anger, sir. And as long as I am fit and draw breath, we will do our best to protect them. That is where it stands today, Mr Burlingham. It is up to you...
C.C.BURL
You came here because you crave my money; you got your money. I know what you asked; I'll even make arrangements for you to pick up your next check on your way out my door.
And I know how much you despise me for that money, that Christian money, my money. And I know that you will always do an inadequate misguided incompetent job of raising Bob's children, just as you always have with any children. Maybe you just like to treat children, because they are so helpless and you can terrorize them to a degree you can only dream about with grown men and women, no matter how crazy and destitute they find themselves. My only consolation is that they will hate you for it.
ANNA
So Mr Burlingham, I can see, you are a man who does not lose graciously. But you yourself can see that society is on our side.
(CONTINUED)
55.
CONTINUED: (29) 0
C.C.BURL
(pulling a newly minted lawbook from his shelves and opening it to a place marked with a cloth strip)
I've been reading law books a long long time. I can feel what's coming. Here's your name, cited right here. Court of Appeals, State of New York. And then it says, "This Court will order what is in the best interest of the child, and will rely upon the recommendation of
(closing the lawbook in disgust)
professional psychologists, to determine where those interests lie."
ANNA
Don't be a "poor loser".
Anna and Dorothy are gathering their things.
C.C. BURL
You destroyed my son. You ruined my grandchildren. Now you and your "professionals" are leading judges around by the nose! You want to be responsible for the legal position of all the fathers on Earth! Go. Please. Go.
C.C.BURL motions them out.
ANNA
Don't worry. We'll get enough money for Mikey and Tinkey.
DOROTHY
(adjusting her hat)
Well, CeeCee, I'll say one thing for you, there's never a dull moment when you're around.
Exeunt Anna and Dorothy.
C.C.BURL
I'll be damned if I can follow that judge's reasoning, toadying up to a bunch of headshrinkers.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
56.
CONTINUED: (30) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
But that's how he decided. Makes about as much sense as me writing these checks.
DOROTHY and ANNA to offstage, but still audible.
ANNA
(cold and distant)
You will get what is coming to you.
DOROTHY
Whatever was he talking about, with some poor woman getting her nose broken?
ANNA
It was nothing. Something to do with Professor.
DOROTHY
Oh.
C.C.BURL grimaces, shrugs, sits down in one of his client chairs, folds his hands, and closes his eyes. He goes over to his typewriter and types a paragraph. After a moment, he picks up the law book again. He rereads the case, pausing to open a window. He gets absorbed in his book, going through a lot of emotions.
While rereading the law book, searching for some redeeming grain of truth, C.C.BURL eurekas The Mail! The Original, the Transcript! He fetches an envelope with cancelled stamps from Mrs Smith's office.
C.C.BURL
(entering the office)
Superior Court. More down in the trenches, not so much up in the clouds. That's what happened to Cardozo, Bob. Did I ever tell you about that one, Bob? I'm sure I did. They wouldn't let Cardozo on the New York bench because he was a Jew. Now look at Judge Cardozo. Ben Cardozo, Justice of the United States Supreme Court. We fixed'em.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
57.
CONTINUED: (31) 0
C.C.BURL (Cont'd)
Just the other day, Bob, I was in the new Chief Judge's office, about the Standard Oil matter, and he said to me
(fetching a gavel, and imitating the judge slightly)
"You know, CCB, this desk here is the same desk as Cardozo."
Not exactly a Harvard man. You know what I said to him, Bob? I said, Judge, fifty years from now, it will still be Cardozo's desk.
He chuckles to himself.
He opens the envelope, pulls out the transcript; he is hoping for something good. His spirits sink as he reads/scans page after page, groping for something, anything. As he gets to the end of the transcript,
C.C. BURL
Oh, Jesus, Bob, Christ I'm glad at least you didn't have to live to see this kind of stuff.
C.C. BURL reads sarcastically out loud, from the transcript. He addresses his remarks, as is his custom, to his dead son.
C.C. BURL (CONT.)
Listen to this jackass in a black robe:
(imitating a judge)
"And we've got a bunch of lawyers and a judge who's trained as a lawyer trying to decide what's in the best interest of a child. And it just doesn't make sense to me when there are all kinds of -- of persons who have studied child psychology
(gavelling)
and not only psychology but lots of other people.
(more)
(CONTINUED)
58.
CONTINUED: (32) 0
C.C. BURL (Cont'd)
(gavelling; still imitating the judge, but finding the judge's sentence structure a bit hard to follow)
And there are probably more of them here than other communities of similar sizes. And there's got to be a competent, skilled, professional person in this area that can handle -- can talk to the people and do it better than lawyers can do it."
(gavelling; to himself)
Better than lawyers? Better than lawyers, eh, Judge?
(back to imitating the judge)
"And I'm willing to listen to anybody who is a professional in this field to have them set up some rules, parameters, procedures, for visitation and we'll get started with it. But I don't think that parents or lawyers or A JUDGE is the right person to make the decision in this case."
(to himself)
A judge is not the right person to render a decision? A judge!
(mocking the judge)
"I don't think a judge is the right person to make a decision."
(imitating the judge at his most judicial; gavelling)
"Yes Mr Jones, you want to say something?"
(imitating the defendant father in propria persona)
"Your Honor --
(pause, redistributing his voice to better embody the Defendant)
Your honor -- I'm asking for an hour with my kid. That's all. One hour, no more, no less. I want to see my kid, not a psychologist."
(more)
(CONTINUED)
59.
CONTINUED: (33) 0
C.C. BURL (Cont'd)
(back to imitating the judge)
"Thank you, Mr Jones.
(sternly; gavelling)
So all Motions for Visitation are Denied!
(gavelling)
And the Defendant is ordered to pay the Plaintiff Nine Hundred Dollars" ...
(truly astounded, to himself)
Nine hundred dollars!!
(gavelling; sternly)
The Defendant is ordered to pay the Plaintiff Nine Hundred Dollars in Attorney's Fees!"
(to himself)
That's enough for two brand new Chevrolets.
(skipping several lines, still imitating the judge)
"And the Defendant may not file any other and further motions with this Court,
(gavelling)
unless and until he undergoes six months of psychological counseling
(gavelling)
with a mental health professional approved by this Court".
(to himself)
Sentenced to that, for wanting to see his kid!!
(angry as hell)
Jesus H. Christ on a Cross! The man is crazy! He's out of his mind! By God, Bob, if that judge were standing in front of me right now
(No gavelling here; standing)
I'd rip his blasted robe off his back myself!
C.C.BURL slams the transcript on the desk, sits down by DR ROBT on the bench, folds his hands, and closes his eyes. A CARILLON sounds in the distance, followed by its GONG at six o'clock.
END ACT II
<A>
60.
Mabbie plays the piano. First she plays some angry classical music. Then she plays Mozart's Klarinetten Quintett, on the piano -- minus the clarinet.
MABBIE'S MONOLOGUE
And then one day I did find myself walking through a house where I didn't know the rooms of it. Just like in that dream I had, years before. It was my house. I lived there with my husband. I had been living there for years, and yet the rooms seemed so strange. It felt cold and scary. And then my husband was there, he wanted to guide me through our rooms, and when he got closer to me, I remembered that dream, where the man in the dream had one eye in the middle of his head. And he spoke to me and tried to tell me it was okay that he had only one eye in the middle of his head, but I didn't believe him. And I thought, right then, what the hell does that mean? And I looked at my husband, and I thought about ... his penis, and maybe it had something to do with that. I couldn't tell what was beautiful, and what was ugly. My husband wasn't ugly.
Maybe I couldn't even see him, because I was pumped so full of all of Aunt Anna's stuff about penises, and your mind, and your dreams. Maybe it was like my dad -- - I couldn't see him, and he wasn't ugly, and I couldn't see him even in my dreams.
<A>
61.
ACT III
The Freud house in London, 1948. Prominent Radio (silent).
Mabbie is playing the piano, still the Clarinet Quintet arranged for clarinet and piano. A pre-recorded clarinet answers her. After the first clarinet passage,
DOROTHY
(while Mabbie plays)
Mabbie, dear, I know how hard it is when a marriage is not doing so well. But really, what could we expect when that Ernst of yours would never seem to understand the Analysis? It's the most important thing to us, the most important thing in your life, certainly.
Mabbie's piano is answered by the clarinet, playing the second clarinet passage.
DOROTHY (CONT.)
Mabbie, dear, what time do you go to see Annafreud today?
(pause)
Mabbie?
Dorothy putters about.
DOROTHY (CONT.)
Dear, didn't you hear me? I asked you what time you go to see Annafreud today?
MABBIE
(still playing the piano)
At two o'clock, I think. Or maybe it's three o'clock. It was always two o'clock, but this was -- well you know, it was the first time in a long time.
DOROTHY
It has been such a long time. Nineteen thirty nine, then nineteen forty five, then my second paper on twins. How long it has been. So Annafreud made time for you. Yes, because Annafreud will be seeing Mikey at two o'clock. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and today is a Tuesday.
(CONTINUED)
62.
CONTINUED: 0
A pause. Mabbie stops playing abruptly.
MABBIE
Mikey? My child? Anna Freud will be seeing Mikey?
DOROTHY
Do you have another child? Is that so surprising? Annafreud's analysis has been good for you. It should be good enough for Mikey, don't you think?
MABBIE
Mother, I think ... Mikey shouldn't be in analysis.
DOROTHY
Nonsense, child, he will make very good progress. Annafreud was telling me just yesterday what clever tricks she will use to break down his resistance. And I know that when the transference comes, it will be a beautiful thing. Annafreud will be so gratified. Mikey - your little Michael - well, he will be gratified too.
ANNA approaches and begins eavesdropping.
MABBIE
He is my child. You want to analyze him? You want him to go through everything I went through?
DOROTHY
Yes, I already said that, Mabbie. You must be feeling very disturbed today to be questioning me like this.
The LATE DR ROB'T enters, hurriedly, wearing a black suit.
MABBIE
I don't want you to do it. I don't want her to do it.
(pause; very slightly menacing)
I want her to leave him alone. I want you both to leave him alone. I want all of you to leave him alone.
(CONTINUED)
63.
CONTINUED: (2) 0
DOROTHY
MABBIE!! Control yourself! That's what your father used to say, in his letters. You sound just like your father.
MABBIE
My father? Doctor Robert?
DOROTHY
Do you have any other father? Do you know what he used to do when you were little? Do you know what he used to do to me? He used to come back home, and then tell me that the nurse that I hired was not "good with the children." And now I have lived long enough that you are telling me what to do with Mikey. Just like your father!
MABBIE
That was a long time ago. That was so long ago, my father is dead now.
My father. I don't care what my father did to you. What you say my father did.
Enter ANNA.
MABBIE (CONT.)
I care about what you did to me.
DOROTHY
And what is that?
MABBIE
You took away my Dad!!
DOROTHY
Mabbie, dear, what are you saying? Your father was a sick man. He couldn't even take care of himself.
MABBIE
You took away my father and you gave me a mean old step ... father instead.
DOROTHY
You watch your tongue, young lady!
(CONTINUED)
64.
CONTINUED: (3) 0
MABBIE
My father was ... he was my father and you killed him!
DOROTHY
Let me tell you a thing or two about your father, little girl! You want to know what your father did to me? Do you want to know what kind of horrible disgusting things that man did to me? Do you know ...
THE LATE DR ROB'T
(reading from a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, accompanied by the Larghetto from Mozart's Clarinet Quintet)
There was a hole where my kids went. One day they were here and the next day they were gone. Every day that hole got a little bigger. Every day I needed to get a few more buckets of hope to shovel into that hole and try and fill that hole up. And every day that hole was just a little bigger and I was a little more tired. Maybe someday, I thought, it will be over, maybe someday when the kids are grown up, then I won't feel this way. I won't need so much hope.
DOROTHY
Let me tell you a thing or two about your father, little girl! You want to know what your father did to me? Do you want to know what kind of horrible disgusting things that man did to me? I'll tell you right now. Do you know - he used to belittle my budget and he had the nerve to tell me that I should spend more time with my children - and less time buying things! He never gave me enough money! Never! He never appreciated all the things I did for him.
(CONTINUED)
65.
CONTINUED: (4) 0
MABBIE
Shut up! Just shut up! I don't want to know what he did to you. I don't care what he did to you. I want to know - I only want to know - what you did to me! That's right, Dorothy. What you did to me. You took away my father. Was that supposed to be in my best interest? With all your stupid psychoanalytic talk about fathers and mothers and that's how you treat me and my father? That was my Dad! And you - you killed him. And I helped you kill him. You just killed him! And you gave me a disgusting old pervert instead.
(sobbing)
I hate you, and I'll always hate you, and I hope you die the most horrible and disgusting death there could ever be. You and that.. bitch Anna Freud! And her "best interest, best interest." You always kowtow and bow down to her; who the hell is she?
DOROTHY
Young lady, you're sounding just like your father, all full of hell and damn and such filth!
MABBIE
That's the trouble with you, and you - you're queer! You're just two old perverts! And you make me sick! Sick! Sick!
(beginning to take off her clothes)
You want more, Anna?
(taking off more and more of her clothes, one article of clothing per line,)
You want more.
And more. Don't you?
You raped me mentally. Don't you want the rest of me too?
Take the rest of me, too.
Take my child, too.
(CONTINUED)
66.
CONTINUED: (5) 0
Take the rest of me, like you took my mind. That's what you want. Take it.
What's the matter, Anna? Are your nipples getting hard, Anna?
You old pervert!
That's the problem with both of you, you're just two old perverts, going around calling other people crazy. And I'm sick of it.
Sick.
Sick.
MABBIE crosses the stage, not looking or glancing at ANNA or DOROTHY. She does not at first recognize her father, the LATE DR ROB'T.
The LATE DR ROB'T calms her down; hands his daughter his suit jacket; and she puts it on.
ANNA
Of course, she blames herself for her father's neurosis and fantasizes these terrible terrible events that she thinks she could have prevented. Mabbie, liebchen, I will see you at two o'clock.
DOROTHY
(airily)
And I have such a lot of work to do.
ANNA walks officiously away toward where a STAGEHAND in a white coat has, pushed onto the stage a shiny metal winged syringe the size of a couch, mounted on a warehouse cart. SIGMUND'S GHOST takes a chair - any chair - from the set [or better yet from a member of the audience, to whom he barks "Up! Up!"], and then places it in such a fashion that a person lying on the couch cannot see the face of the person sitting in the chair. All of Sigmund's movements are accompanied by SOUNDS derived from a 1940's telephone bell ringer, altered in pitch, etc. to be truly weird, but nonetheless a SIGNAL.
As soon as the arrangements are made to SIGMUND'S GHOST's liking, ANNA enthusiastically mounts the syringe and SIGMUND'S GHOST takes his place in the chair.
(CONTINUED)
67.
CONTINUED: (6) 0
ANNA
Ich hatte eine schreckliche...
SIGMUND'S GHOST
(turning to her)
Auf Englisch, bitte. In English.
(turns back)
ANNA
I had an awful experience. Unspeakable. When I was but a child, two men approached me, and began to speak to me. I took my clothes off, and they offered me to get dressed entirely in white. I put on all the white clothes and they asked me to lie down on a little bed.
ANNA humps the syringe.
SIGMUND'S GHOST sneaks across the stage to shoot up.
ANNA (CONT.)
One of the men had a sharp knife and he cut big holes in my face. Then I was unconscious, I think, and when I awoke, there was another man pulling my brains out of my head, while the same other man watched him and touched his penis. And then the first man, the man who had been touching the man-with-the-knife's penis, wanted to make love to me, and he did.
Lights Down on Anna.
THE LATE DR. ROB'T gathers up his daughter's things and takes his daughter by the hand.
PLAY Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, arranged for Clarinet and Harpsicord (the harpsicord plays the piano part of the arrangement for Bflat clarinet and piano; the clarinet is the A clarinet).
Lights Down on Dorothy.
Segue to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, prerecorded, string quartet and clarinet.
CURTAIN
(The Program = The Playbill)
A Play in Three Acts about Family Values
by Richard Katz
There will be One Intermission of Ten Minutes
Clair Brown & Richard Katz, Producers
Joan Eyles Johnson, Director
Bert van Aalsburg, Stage Manager
Appearing:
Mr Robert Hamm as Robert Burlingham
Ms Jane Carmichael as Anna Freud
Ms Linda Seabright as Dorothy Burlingham
Ms Ramona Layne as Mabbie Burlingham
Ron Klein, Esq as Sigmund Freud
Mr Ralph Miller as Charles Culp Burlingham
Premiere Performance March 19, 1993
Final Performance April 18, 1993
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM
Matinees Sundays at 2 PM
No Performances Easter Weekend
All Performances at the Berkeley City Club Ballroom
2315 Durant Avenue
Berkeley California
The Berkeley City Club was designed by Julia Morgan and built in 1927.
This Building is in the National Register of Historic Landmarks.
Playing Time is approximately 120 minutes,
including intermission.
ACT I &emdash; London. 1938. Parlor of Anna and Sigmund Freud's house.
ANNA and DOROTHY are planning MABBIE's wedding. MABBIE is very angry that her father, DR. ROB'T, is not being invited. DR. ROB'T is an observer. The soon-to- be-ghost of SIGMUND discusses the situation with DR. ROB'T.
TEN MINUTE Intermission
ACT II &emdash; New York City, after World War II. Charles Culp Burlingham's law office.
ANNA and DOROTHY go to see Mr Burlingham to get money from him, following DR ROB'T's death by suicide, for support of his minor grandchildren who live with DOROTHY (and ANNA).
PLEASE REMAIN SEATED FOR SCENE CHANGE
ACT III &emdash; London. 1950's. Freud house again.
Synopsis of the Play's Central Concerns and Basic Story
In the Best Interest of Anna Freud's central concern is family attachments, and how in this case they are filtered through a web of intervention by persons expressing good intentions. Poor MABBIE picks her way through this emotional minefield, and arrives at Act III a changed person.
THE PLOT: In the 1920's, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham (an uppercrust New Yorker) ups and takes her four kids to Europe so they can be psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud. The kids never get to see their Dad much after that.
When the oldest daughter, Mabbie, wants to get married, Anna and Dorothy decree that she can't even tell her Dad that she's getting married, much less invite him to come to the wedding.
By the end of the play, Mabbie figures out what's been wrong with her life: Too much psychoanalysis, and too little Dad.
TECHNICAL NOTES:
THE SOUNDS are all recorded on a Macintosh Powerbook in real life in the field, and then played back on a Macintosh in the theater.
The Producers wish to thank people who contributed authentic sounds:
Brian Esler, who took his twin (propellor) engine, twelve cylinder Dornier aircraft aloft at Schellville Aviation just so we could record it;
Captain John L Dwyer, Master; Patrick D. Callahan, Chief Mate; & The G.T. Chevron Louisiana who stopped offloading crude long enough to record the airhorn;
Captain Homer of Fort Mason's Jeremiah O'Brien -- the only surviving Liberty ship in the world -- who blew the steam whistle heard near the beginning of Act II;
Professor Ronald Barnes of the University of California, Director of the Campanile Carillon.
THE SCENERY The black and white scenery consists of well-dressed "interiors" scanned into a Macintosh and then "painted" by a PostScript® laser printer on a 16'x12' backdrop, life size. The paper "tiles" produced by the laser printer were plastered to the backdrop with the invaluable assistance of the Operations staff at Gannett Outdoor, Berkeley; we especially appreciate the non-toxic glue. The Freud living room is a room in the Camron-Stanford House. Charles Culp Burlingham, Esq's office is an interior graciously furnished by Melvin Belli. All images used with permission.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Theresa Ghilarducci and William O'Rourke for arranging an introduction to Dorothy Schmiderer; and Ms Schmiderer, for enlightening conversations about members of her family.
AND THANKS TO: Steve Schaffran for advice on marketing;
Ann Saunders of Terra Nova for advice on 1940's etiquette;
Heinz Rolnik for invaluable assistance on Viennese pronunciation;
Jürgen Dürsch for translations into German; Clifford Andersen;
Anna Olson, Ed Hunkele, the Members and Staff of the Berkeley City Club;
Bob Van Liski and the staff at Custom Process Labs in Berkeley;
James Conradi of Hololand for assistance on backdrops;
Lisa Hammond and the staff at Theater Bay Area, an invaluable resource for anyone putting on a play;
Jeanne Robertson, pianist; the staff at Canterbury Imagesetters, Berkeley.
THE PROPS:1942 LC Smith typewriter was a gift of the late Mr Edward Katz.
Telephone and Philco Radio supplied by Mr James Chesharack of Point Richmond.
The Physician's Assistant's coat was supplied by Dr Edward E. Penhoet of Chiron Corporation, Emeryville.
Mr Burlingham's carved boat is the work of the late Hermann Fuhrman.
THE COSTUMES were chosen by the Actors.
THE WINGED SYRINGE SCULPTURE IS THE WORK OF THE LATE ALAN J. RICE.
Other works by Mr Rice are for sale or lease. A Portion of the Proceeds go to the Alan J. Rice Memorial Scholarship Fund at the University of California, Berkeley for the education of students in the fine arts.
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