Born in Vienna in 1888, Theodor Riek was a pupil of Sigmund Freud, a pioneer of psychoanalysis. He was a veteran of the trench warfare of WWI, and fled Austria when the Nazis overran it. He and his family emigrated to the USA in 1938. I'm privileged that a copy of
The Secret Self, published in 1952, came my way via a donation to the floating book shop. 329 pages, it is comprised of 20 essays, many having to do with his speculation about the underlying thoughts behind the work of literary titans such as Shakespeare, Goethe and Ibsen. He proposes that it is unlikely that even these vast intellects were aware of the deeper meaning of parts of their work. He reveals his method, which involves thought bridges. A patient will make a comment that triggers something in the analyst's mind, sometimes a personal memory, often a literary reference. For instance, a man troubled with racing thoughts comments: "Our mind is an insult to our intelligence," and it sends Reik on a quest to find related clues that will shed light on the patient's woes. Even now, in my 68th year, I occasionally suffer negative mental jags, and the fact that they occur after all these years and life experience makes them more frustrating, as I should know better by this time. The author is not immune himself. Late in the book he writes: "I had behaved irrationally under the influence of an unconscious, obsessional anxiety which expects punishment for evil thoughts." Similar to a detective, he delves into his mind to find links, and encounters road blocks along the way, describing it beautifully as: "Our initial assumption that we had found the key to the secret chamber was not correct. We have only entered the antechamber, the preconscious, not the unconscious." Of course, the subject often is sex. One instance had me laughing aloud. He recalls
I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair from the musical
South Pacific and suggests that the great Oscar Hammerstein, probably unbeknownst to himself, was not talking about the hair on the character's head but the region just below the equator. Whether one believes that is bunk or not, no one can refute it definitively, not even the songwriter, and it is a fascinating and hilarious interpretation. In my literary infancy, a co-worker found hidden meaning in one of my short stories. I didn't buy it. To this day, I'm not sure there is anything hidden in any of my work. Although
The Secret Self is a tad overwritten and by no means an easy read, the prose is solid and accessible. There are only rare injections of obscure words. One would never guess that English was not Reik's first language. Reik passed away in 1969. He wrote several other works of non-fiction. It looks like mine will be the first review of
The Secret Self at Amazon. More than 60 years after its publication, it is still valuable - and entertaining.
RIP Harlan Ellison, 84, prolific author of speculative fiction, mind on fire. According to his profile at Wiki, he wrote approximately 1700 pieces across a wide spectrum: short stories, novellas, screenplays, comics, teleplays, essays and criticism. He also edited two speculative magazines. His most famous work is
The City on the Edge of Forever from the first season of the original
Star Trek, the Joan Collins episode. The script was revised by Gene Roddenberry and company, to the chagrin of Ellison, who sulked despite the fact that it won him awards. He argued constantly with editors and publishers. Here's a telling quote that Stephen King requested of him for
Danse Macabre, the horror master's non-fiction work on writing: "My work is foursquare for chaos. I spend my life personally, and my work professionally, keeping the soup boiling. Gadfly is what they call you when you are no longer dangerous; I much prefer troublemaker, malcontent, desperado. I see myself as a combination of Zorro and Jiminy Cricket. My stories go out from here and raise hell. From time to time some denigrater or critic with umbrage will say of my work, 'He only wrote that to shock.' I smile and nod. Precisely." He was married five times, which is not surprising. Although he doesn't seem a person one would want to associate with, there's no denying his success in his field. Kudos.
My thanks to the kind folks who bought and donated books on day one of the heat wave.
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