K IS FOR MISUNDERSTANING?

“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
- Rudyard Kipling
As soon as Jung left, Freud returned.

"Finally that misguided zealot who wished me dead is gone.  Sad case.  Sad case."

I shook my head in sadness. 
  
At the beginning, he had been close to Jung but when Jung disagreed with him, Freud would faint.

 Once after interpreting a comment to mean Jung wanted to kill him, Freud fainted. 

He then fainted again when Jung continued to disagree on the diagnosis. 

Freud admitted that fainting was a defense mechanism for unconscious anxiety.

Freud interrupted my reflections,

"Jung's homosexual tendencies got the better of him I am afraid."

I sighed. We tend to think of theory development as emerging out of an objective, scientific attitude. 

Wrong. 

 All theory is autobiography. 

 The person the theorist really wants to understand, more than anyone, is himself.

 The subjective can never be elbowed aside. It hovers inescapably, like an off-stage voice, whispering, whispering, whispering...

Twain looked at Freud, his arsenic grey eyes suddenly sad.


Freud turned to me.  "So at last we come to the letter K.  What do you think of upon hearing that letter?"

"Kipling," I cried.

Freud frowned, then his eyes fell on the young ghost who sat beside Mark Twain, and Kipling cocked his head at the psychiatrist.

“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” 

Freud stared at him uncomprehending, and Kipling sighed, "You really do not see it, do you?" 

"See what?" snapped Freud.

Kipling rose, shaking his head.  
"I sat down hoping to leave with laughter,  But alas, I see it is not to be."

He gripped my shoulder.
“The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.  

But, Roland, remember -- no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

He gave one last look of sadness to Freud and walked into the engulfing shadows.