Sophie's World (Part 8)

Freud

... the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her...

Hilde Moller Knag jumped out of bed with the bulky ring binder in her arms. She plonked it down on her writing desk, grabbed her clothes, and dashed into the bathroom. She stood under the shower for two minutes, dressed herself quickly, and ran downstairs.

“Breakfast is ready, Hilde!”

“I just have to go and row first.” “But Hilde... !”

She ran out of the house, down the garden, and out onto the little dock. She untied the boat and jumped down into it. She rowed around the bay with short angry strokes until she had calmed down.

“We are the living planet, Sophie! We are the great vessel sailing around a burning sun in the universe. But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes. When we have carried this cargo safely to the next harbor—we have not lived in vain...”

She knew the passage by heart. It had been written for her. Not for Sophie, for her. Every word in the ring binder was written by Dad to Hilde.

She rested the oars in the oarlocks and drew them in. The boat rocked gently on the water, the ripples slapping softly against the prow.

And like the little rowboat floating on the surface in the bay at Lillesand, she herself was just a nutshell on the surface of life.

Where were Sophie and Alberto in this picture? Yes, where were Alberto and

Sophie?

She could not fathom that they were no more than “electromagnetic impulses” in her father’s brain. She could not fathom, and certainly not accept, that they were only paper and printer’s ink from a ribbon in her father’s portable typewriter. One

might just as well say that she herself was nothing but a conglomeration of protein compounds that had suddenly come to life one day in a “hot little pool.” But she was more than that. She was Hilde Moller Knag.

She had to admit that the ring binder was a fantastic present, and that her father had touched the core of something eternal in her. But she didn’t care for the way he was dealing with Sophie and Alberto.

She would certainly teach him a lesson, even before he got home. She felt she owed it to the two of them. Hilde could already imagine her father at Kastrup Airport, in Copenhagen. She could just see him running around like mad.

Hilde was now quite herself again. She rowed the boat back to the dock, where she was careful to make it fast. After breakfast she sat at the table for a long time with her mother. It felt good to be able to talk about something as ordinary as whether the egg was a trifle too soft.

She did not start to read again until the evening. There were not many pages left

now.

Once again there was a knocking on the door.

“Let’s just put our hands over our ears,” said Alberto, “and perhaps it’ll

go away.”

“No, I want to see who it is.” Alberto followed her to the door.

On the step stood a naked man. He had adopted a very ceremonial posture, but the only thing he had with him was the crown on his head.

“Well?” he said. “What do you good people think of the Emperor’s new clothes?”

Alberto and Sophie were utterly dumbfounded. This caused the naked man some consternation.

“What? You are not bowing!” he cried.

“Indeed, that is true,” said Alberto, “but the Emperor is stark naked.” The naked man maintained his ceremonial posture. Alberto bent over

and whispered in Sophie’s ear:

“He thinks he is respectable.” At this, the man scowled.

“Is some kind of censorship being exercised on these premises?” he asked.

“Regrettably,” said Alberto. “In here we are both alert and of sound mind in every way. In the Emperor’s shameless condition he can therefore not

cross the threshold of this house.”

Sophie found the naked man’s pomposity so absurd that she burst out laughing. As if her laughter had been a prearranged signal, the man with the crown on his head suddenly became aware that he was naked. Covering his private parts with both hands, he bounded toward the nearest clump of trees and disappeared, probably to join company with Adam and Eve, Noah, Little Red Riding-hood, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Alberto and Sophie remained standing on the step, laughing.

At last Alberto said, “It might be a good idea if we went inside. I’m going to tell you about Freud and his theory of the unconscious.”

They seated themselves by the window again. Sophie looked at her watch and said: “It’s already half past two and I have a lot to do before the garden party.”

“So have I. We’ll just say a few words about Sigmund Freud.”

“Was he a philosopher?”

“We could describe him as a cultural philosopher, at least. Freud was born in 1 856 and he studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He lived in Vienna for the greater part of his life at a period when the cultural life of the city was flourishing. He specialized early on in neurology. Toward the close of the last century, and far into our own, he developed his ‘depth psychology’ or psychoanalysis.”

“You’re going to explain this, right?”

“Psychoanalysis is a description of the human mind in general as well as a therapy for nervous and mental disorders. I do not intend to give you a complete picture either of Freud or of his work. But his theory of the uncon- scious is necessary to an understanding of what a human being is.”

“You intrigue me. Go on.”

“Freud held that there is a constant tension between man and his surroundings. In particular, a tension—or conflict—between his drives and needs and the demands of society. It is no exaggeration to say that Freud discovered human drives. This makes him an important exponent of the naturalistic currents that were so prominent toward the end of the nineteenth century.”

“What do you mean by human drives?”

“Our actions are not always guided by reason. Man is not really such a rational creature as the eighteenth-century rationalists liked to think. Irrational impulses often determine what we think, what we dream, and what we do. Such irrational impulses can be an expression of basic drives or needs. The human sexual drive, for example, is just as basic as the baby’s instinct to suckle.”

“Yes?”

“This in itself was no new discovery. But Freud showed that these basic needs can be disguised or ‘sublimated,’ thereby steering our actions without our being aware of it. He also showed that infants have some sort of sexuality. The respectable middle-class Viennese reacted with abhorrence to this suggestion of the ‘sexuality of the child’ and made him very unpopular.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“We call it Victorianism, when everything to do with sexuality is taboo. Freud first became aware of children’s sexuality during his practice of psychotherapy. So he had an empirical basis for his claims. He had also seen how numerous forms of neurosis or psychological disorders could be traced back to conflicts during childhood. He gradually developed a type of therapy that we could call the archeology of the soul.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“An archeologist searches for traces of the distant past by digging through layers of cultural history. He may find a knife from the eighteenth century. Deeper in the ground he may find a comb from the fourteenth century—and even deeper down perhaps an urn from the fifth century

B.C.” “Yes?”

“In a similar way, the psychoanalyst, with the patient’s help, can dig deep into the patient’s mind and bring to light the experiences that have caused the patient’s psychological disorder, since according to Freud, we store the memory of all our experiences deep inside us.”

“Yes, I see.”

“The analyst can perhaps discover an unhappy experience that the patient has tried to suppress for many years, but which has nevertheless lain buried, gnawing away at the patient’s resources. By bringing a ‘traumatic experience’ into the conscious mind—and holding it up to the patient, so to speak—he or she can help the patient ‘be done with it,’ and get well again.”

“That sounds logical.”

“But I am jumping too far ahead. Let us first take a look at Freud’s description of the human mind. Have you ever seen a newborn baby?”

“I have a cousin who is four.”

“When we come into the world, we live out our physical and mental needs quite directly and unashamedly. If we do not get milk, we cry, or maybe we cry if we have a wet diaper. We also give direct expression to our desire

for physical contact and body warmth. Freud called this ‘pleasure principle’ in us the id. As newborn babies we are hardly anything but id.”

“Go on.”

“We carry the id, or pleasure principle, with us into adulthood and throughout life. But gradually we learn to regulate our desires and adjust to our surroundings. We learn to regulate the pleasure principle in relation to the

‘reality principle.’ In Freud’s terms, we develop an ego which has this regulative function. Even though we want or need something, we cannot just lie down and scream until we get what we want or need.”

“No, obviously.”

“We may desire something very badly that the outside world will not accept. We may repress our desires. That means we try to push them away and forget about them.”

“I see.”

“However, Freud proposed, and worked with, a third element in the human mind. From infancy we are constantly faced with the moral demands of our parents and of society. When we do anything wrong, our parents say

‘Don’t do that!’ or ‘Naughty naughty, that’s bad!’ Even when we are grown up, we retain the echo of such moral demands and judgments. It seems as though the world’s moral expectations have become part of us. Freud called this the superego.”

“Is that another word for conscience?”

“Conscience is a component of the superego. But Freud claimed that the superego tells us when our desires themselves are ‘bad’ or ‘improper/ not

least in the case of erotic or sexual desire. And as I said, Freud claimed that these ‘improper’ desires already manifest themselves at an early stage of childhood.”

“How?”

“Nowadays we know that infants like touching their sex organs. We can observe this on any beach. In Freud’s time, this behavior could result in a slap over the fingers of the two- or three-year-old, perhaps accompanied by the mother saying, ‘Naughty!’ or ‘Don’t do that!’ or ‘Keep your hands on top of the covers!’”

“How sick!”

“That’s the beginning of guilt feelings about everything connected with the sex organs and sexuality. Because this guilt feeling remains in the superego, many people—according to Freud, most people—feel guilty about

sex all their lives. At the same time he showed that sexual desires and needs are natural and vital for human beings. And thus, my dear Sophie, the stage is set for a lifelong conflict between desire and guilt.”

“Don’t you think the conflict has died down a lot since Freud’s time?” “Most certainly. But many of Freud’s patients experienced the conflict so

acutely that they developed what Freud called neuroses. One of his many women patients, for example, was secretly in love with her brother-in-law. When her sister died of an illness, she thought: ‘Now he is free to marry me!’ This thought was on course for a frontal collision with her superego, and was so monstrous an idea that she immediately repressed it, Freud tells us. In other words, she buried it deep in her unconscious. Freud wrote: ‘The young girl was ill and displaying severe hysterical symptoms. When I began treating her it appeared that she had thoroughly forgotten about the scene at her sister’s bedside and the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her. But during analysis she remembered it, and in a state of great agitation she reproduced the pathogenic moment and through this treatment became cured.’ “

“Now I better understand what you meant by an archeology of the soul.” “So we can give a general description of the human psyche. After many

years of experience in treating patients, Freud concluded that the conscious constitutes only a small part of the human mind. The conscious is like the tip

of the iceberg above sea level. Below sea level—or below the threshold of the conscious—is the ‘subconscious,’ or the unconscious.”

“So the unconscious is everything that’s inside us that we have forgotten and don’t remember?”

“We don’t have all our experiences consciously present all the time. But the kinds of things we have thought or experienced, and which we can recall if we ‘put our mind to it,’ Freud termed the preconscious. He reserved the term

‘unconscious’ for things we have repressed. That is, the sort of thing we have made an effort to forget because it was either ‘unpleasant’,’improper,’ or

‘nasty.’ If we have desires and urges that are not tolerable to the conscious, the superego shoves them downstairs. Away with them!”

“I get it.”

“This mechanism is at work in all healthy people. But it can be such a tremendous strain for some people to keep the unpleasant or forbidden thoughts away from consciousness that it leads to mental illness. Whatever is repressed in this way will try of its own accord to reenter consciousness. For some people it takes a great effort to keep such impulses under the critical eye of the conscious. When Freud was in America in 1909 lecturing on psy- choanalysis, he gave an example of the way this repression mechanism functions.”

“I’d like to hear that!”

“He said: ‘Suppose that here in this hall and in this audience, whose exemplary stillness and attention I cannot sufficiently commend, there is an individual who is creating a disturbance, and, by his ill-bred laughing, talking, by scraping his feet, distracts my attention from my task. I explain that I cannot go on with my lecture under these conditions, and thereupon several

strong men among you get up and, after a short struggle, eject the disturber of the peace from the hall. He is now repressed, and I can continue my lecture. But in order that the disturbance may not be repeated, in case the man who

has just been thrown out attempts to force his way back into the room, the gentlemen who have executed my suggestion take their chairs to the door and establish themselves there as a resistance, to keep up the repression. Now, if you transfer both locations to the psyche, calling this consciousness, and the outside the unconscious, you have a tolerably good illustration of the process of repression.’ “

“I agree.”

“But the disturber of the peace insists on reentering, Sophie. At least, that’s the way it is with repressed thoughts and urges. We live under the constant pressure of repressed thoughts that are trying to fight their way up from the unconscious. That’s why we often say or do things without intending to. Unconscious reactions thus prompt our feelings and actions.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Freud operates with several of these mechanisms. One is what he called parapraxes—slips of the tongue or pen. In other words, we accidentally say or do things that we once tried to repress. Freud gives the example of the shop foreman who was to propose a toast to the boss. The trouble was that this boss was terribly unpopular. In plain words, he was what one might call a swine.”

“Yes?”

“The foreman stood up, raised his glass, and said ‘Here’s to the swine!’ “ “I’m speechless!”

“So was the foreman. He had actually only said what he really meant. But he didn’t mean to say it. Do you want to hear another example?”

“Yes, please.”

“A bishop was coming to tea with the local minister, who had a large family of nice well-behaved little daughters. This bishop happened to have an unusually big nose. The little girls were duly instructed that on no account were they to refer to the bishop’s nose, since children often blurt out spontaneous remarks about people because their repressive mechanism is not yet developed. The bishop arrived, and the delightful daughters strained themselves to the utmost not to comment on his nose. They tried to not even look at it and to forget about it. But they were thinking about it the whole time. And then one of them was asked to pass the sugar around. She looked at the distinguished bishop and said, ‘Do you take sugar in your nose?’ “

“How awful!”

“Another thing we can do is to rationalize. That means that we do not give the real reason for what we are doing either to ourselves or to other people because the real reason is unacceptable.”

“Like what?”

“I could hypnotize you to open a window. While you are under hypnosis I tell you that when I begin to drum my fingers on the table you will get up and open the window. I drum on the table—and you open the window. Afterward I ask you why you opened the window and you might say you did it because it was too hot. But that is not the real reason. You are reluctant to admit to yourself that you did something under my hypnotic orders. So you rationalize.”

“Yes, I see.”

“We all encounter that sort of thing practically every day.” “This four-year-old cousin of mine, I don’t think he has a lot of

playmates, so he’s always happy when I visit. One day I told him I had to

hurry home to my mom. Do you know what he said?” “What did he say?”

“He said, she’s stupid!”

“Yes, that was definitely a case of rationalizing. The boy didn’t mean what he actually said. He meant it was stupid you had to go, but he was too shy to say so. Another thing we do is project.”

“What’s that?”

“When we project, we transfer the characteristics we are trying to repress in ourselves onto other people. A person who is very miserly, for example, will characterize others as penny-pinchers. And someone who will not admit to being preoccupied with sex can be the first to be incensed at other people’s sex-fixation.”

“Hmm.”

“Freud claimed that our everyday life was filled with unconscious mechanisms like these. We forget a particular person’s name, we fumble with our clothes while we talk, or we shift what appear to be random objects around in the room. We also stumble over words and make various slips of the tongue or pen that can seem completely innocent. Freud’s point was that these slips are neither as accidental nor as innocent as we think. These bungled actions can in fact reveal the most intimate secrets.”

“From now on I’ll watch all my words very carefully.”

“Even if you do, you won’t be able to escape from your unconscious impulses. The art is precisely not to expend too much effort on burying unpleasant things in the unconscious. It’s like trying to block up the entrance to a water vole’s nest. You can be sure the water vole will pop up in another part of the garden. It is actually quite healthy to leave the door ajar between the conscious and the unconscious.”

“If you lock that door you can get mentally sick, right?”

“Yes. A neurotic is just such a person, who uses too much energy trying to keep the ‘unpleasant’ out of his consciousness. Frequently there is a particular experience which the person is desperately trying to repress. He can nonetheless be anxious for the doctor to help him to find his way back to the hidden traumas.”

“How does the doctor do that?”

“Freud developed a technique which he called free association. In other words, he let the patient lie in a relaxed position and just talk about whatever came into his or her mind—however irrelevant, random, unpleasant, or em- barrassing it might sound. The idea was to break through the ‘lid’ or ‘control’ that had grown over the traumas, because it was these traumas that were causing the patient concern. They are active all the time, just not consciously.”

“The harder you try to forget something, the more you think about it unconsciously?”

“Exactly. That is why it is so important to be aware of the signals from the unconscious. According to Freud, the royal road to the unconscious is our dreams. His main work was written on this subject—The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, in which he showed that our dreams are not random. Our unconscious tries to communicate with our conscious through dreams.”

“Go on.”

“After many years of experience with patients—and not least after

having analyzed his own dreams—Freud determined that all dreams are wish fulfillments. This is clearly observable in children, he said. They dream about ice cream and cherries. But in adults, the wishes that are to be fulfilled in dreams are disguised. That is because even when we sleep, censorship is at work on what we will permit ourselves. And although this censorship, or re- pression mechanism, is considerably weaker when we are asleep than when we are awake, it is still strong enough to cause our dreams to distort the wishes we cannot acknowledge.”

“Which is why dreams have to be interpreted “

“Freud showed that we must distinguish between the actual dream as we recall it in the morning and the real meaning of the dream. He termed the actual dream image—that is, the ‘film’ or ‘video’ we dream—the manifest dream. This ‘apparent’ dream content always takes its material or scenario from the previous day. But the dream also contains a deeper meaning which is hidden from consciousness. Freud called this the latent dream thoughts,

and these hidden thoughts which the dream is really about may stem from the distant past, from earliest childhood, for instance.”

“So we have to analyze the dream before we can understand it.”

“Yes, and for the mentally ill, this must be done in conjunction with the therapist. But it is not the doctor who interprets the dream. He can only do it with the help of the patient. In this situation, the doctor simply fulfills the function of a Socratic ‘midwife,’ assisting during the interpretation.”

“I see.”

“The actual process of converting the latent dream thoughts to the manifest dream aspect was termed by Freud the dream work. We might call it

‘masking’ or ‘coding’ what the dream is actually about. In interpreting the dream, we must go through the reverse process and unmask or decode the motif to arrive at its theme.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Freud’s book teems with examples. But we can construct a simple and very Freudian example for ourselves. Let us say a young man dreams that he is given two balloons by his female cousin . . .”

“Yes?”

“Go on, try to interpret the dream yourself.”

“Hmm ... there is a manifest dream, just like you said: a young man gets two balloons from his female cousin.”

“Carry on.”

“You said the scenario is always from the previous day. So he had been to the fair the day before—or maybe he saw a picture of balloons in the newspaper.”

“It’s possible, but he need only have seen the word ‘balloon,’ or something that reminded him of a balloon.”

“But what are the latent dream thoughts that the dream is really about?” “You’re the interpreter.”

“Maybe he just wanted a couple of balloons.”

“No, that won’t work. You’re right about the dream being a wish fulfillment. But a young man would hardly have an ardent wish for a couple of balloons. And if he had, he wouldn’t need to dream about them.”

“I think I’ve got it: he really wants his cousin—and the two balloons are her breasts.”

“Yes, that’s a much more likely explanation. And it presupposes that he experienced his wish as an embarrassment.”

“In a way, our dreams make a lot of detours?”

“Yes. Freud believed that the dream was a ‘disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish.’ But exactly what we have repressed can have changed considerably since Freud was a doctor in Vienna. However, the mechanism of disguised dream content can still be intact.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Freud’s psychoanalysis was extremely important in the 1920s, especially for the treatment of certain psychiatric patients. His theory of the unconscious was also very significant for art and literature.”

“Artists became interested in people’s unconscious mental life?” “Exactly so, although this had already become a predominant aspect of

literature in the last decade of the nineteenth century—before Freud’s psychoanalysis was known. It merely shows that the appearance of Freud’s psychoanalysis at that particular time, the 1890s, was no coincidence.”

“You mean it was in the spirit of the times?”

“Freud himself did not claim to have discovered phenomena such as repression, defense mechanisms, or rationalizing. He was simply the first to apply these human experiences to psychiatry. He was also a master at illus- trating his theories with literary examples. But as I mentioned, from the 1920s, Freud’s psychoanalysis had a more direct influence on art and literature “

“In what sense?”

“Poets and painters, especially the surrealists, attempted to exploit the power of the unconscious in their work.”

“What are surrealists?”

“The word surrealism comes from the French, and means ‘super realism.’ In 1924 Andre Breton published a ‘surrealistic manifesto,’ claiming that art should come from the unconscious. The artist should thus derive the freest possible inspiration from his dream images and strive toward a ‘super realism,’ in which the boundaries between dream and reality were dissolved. For an artist too it can be necessary to break the censorship of the conscious and let words and images have free play.”

“I can see that.”

“In a sense, Freud demonstrated that there is an artist in everyone. A dream is, after all, a little work of art, and there are new dreams every night. In order to interpret his patients’ dreams, Freud often had to work his way

through a dense language of symbols—rather in the way we interpret a picture or a literary text.”

“And we dream every single night?”

“Recent research shows that we dream for about twenty percent of our sleeping hours, that is, between one and two hours each- night. If we are disturbed during our dream phases we become nervous and irritable. This means nothing less than that everybody has an innate need to give artistic expression to his or her existential situation. After all, it is ourselves that our dreams are about We are the directors, we set up the scenario and play all the roles. A person who says he doesn’t understand art doesn’t know himself very well.”

“I see that.”

“Freud also delivered impressive evidence of the wonders of the human

mind. His work with patients convinced him that we retain everything we have seen and experienced somewhere deep in our consciousness, and all these impressions can be brought to light again. When we experience a memory lapse, and a bit later ‘have it on the tip of our tongue’ and then later still

‘suddenly remember it,’ we are talking about something which has lain in the unconscious and suddenly slips through the half-open door to consciousness.”

“But it takes a while sometimes.”

“All artists are aware of that. But then suddenly it’s as if all doors and all drawers fly open. Everything comes tumbling out by itself, and we can find all the words and images we need. This is when we have ‘lifted the lid’ of the unconscious. We can call it inspiration, Sophie. It feels as if what we are drawing or writing is coming from some outside source.”

“It must be a wonderful feeling.”

“But you must have experienced it yourself. You can frequently observe inspiration at work in children who are overtired. They are sometimes so extremely overtired that they seem to be wide awake. Suddenly they start telling a story—as if they are finding words they haven’t yet learned. They have, though; the words and the ideas have lain ‘latent’ in their consciousness, but now, when all caution and all censorship have let go, they are surfacing. It can also be important for an artist not to let reason and

reflection control a more or less unconscious expression. Shall I tell you a little story to illustrate this?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a very serious and a very sad story.” “Okay.”

“Once upon a time there was a centipede that was amazingly good at dancing with all hundred legs. All the creatures of the forest gathered to watch every time the centipede danced, and they were all duly impressed by the exquisite dance. But there was one creature that didn’t like watching the centipede dance—that was a tortoise.”

“It was probably just envious.”

“How can I get the centipede to stop dancing? thought the tortoise. He couldn’t just say he didn’t like the dance. Neither could he say he danced better himself, that would obviously be untrue. So he devised a fiendish plan.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“He sat down and wrote a letter to the centipede. ‘O incomparable centipede,’ he wrote, ‘I am a devoted admirer of your exquisite dancing. I must know how you go about it when you dance. Is it that you lift your left leg

number 28 and then your right leg number 39? Or do you begin by lifting your right leg number 17 before you lift your left leg number 44? I await your answer in breathless anticipation. Yours truly, Tortoise.”

“How mean!”

“When the centipede read the letter, she immediately began to think about what she actually did when she danced. Which leg did she lift first? And which leg next? What do you think happened in the end?”

“The centipede never danced again?”

“That’s exactly what happened. And that’s the way it goes when imagination gets strangled by reasoned deliberation.”

“That was a sad story.”

“It is important for an artist to be able to ‘let go.’ The surrealists tried to exploit this by putting themselves into a state where things just happened by themselves. They had a sheet of white paper in front of them and they began to write without thinking about what they wrote. They called it automatic writing. The expression originally comes from spiritualism, where a medium believed that a departed spirit was guiding the pen. But I thought we would talk more about that kind of thing tomorrow.”

“I’d like that.”

“In one sense, the surrealist artist is also a medium, that is to say, a means or a link. He is a medium of his own unconscious. But perhaps there is an element of the unconscious in every creative process, for what do we ac- tually mean by creativity?”

“I’ve no idea. Isn’t it when you create something?”

“Fair enough, and that happens in a delicate interplay between imagination and reason. But all too frequently, reason throttles the imagination, and that’s serious because without imagination, nothing really new will ever be created. I believe imagination is like a Darwinian system.”

“I’m sorry, but that I didn’t get.”

“Well, Darwinism holds that nature’s mutants arise one after the other, but only a few of them can be used. Only some of them get the right to live.”

“So?”

“That’s how it is when we have an inspiration and get masses of new ideas. Thought-mutants occur in the consciousness one after the other, at least if we refrain from censoring ourselves too much. But only some of these thoughts can be used. Here, reason comes into its own.

It, too, has a vital function. When the day’s catch is laid on the table we must not forget to be selective.”

“That’s not a bad comparison.”

“Imagine if everything that ‘strikes us’ were allowed to pass our lips! Not to speak of jumping off our notepads out of our desk drawers! The world would sink under the weight of casual impulses and no selection would have taken place.”

“So it’s reason that chooses between all these ideas?”

“Yes, don’t you think so? Maybe the imagination creates what is new, but the imagination does not make the actual selection. The imagination does not ‘compose.’ A composition—and every work of art is one—is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process. You have to turn the sheep loose before you can start to herd them.”

Alberto sat quite still, staring out of the window. While he sat there, Sophie suddenly noticed a crowd of brightly colored Disney figures down by the lake.

“There’s Goofy,” she exclaimed, “and Donald Duck and his nephews ... Look, Alberto. There’s Mickey Mouse and . . .”

He turned toward her: “Yes, it’s very sad, child.” “What do you mean?”

“Here we are being made the helpless victims of the major’s flock of sheep. But it’s my own fault, of course. I was the one who started talking about free association of ideas.”

“You certainly don’t have to blame yourself...”

“I was going to say something about the importance of imagination to us philosophers. In order to think new thoughts, we must be bold enough to let ourselves go. But right now, he’s going a bit far.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I was about to mention the importance of reflection, and here we are, presented with this lurid imbecility. He should be ashamed of himself!”

“Are you being ironic now?”

“It’s he who is ironic, not me. But I have one comfort—and that is the whole cornerstone of my plan.”

“Now I’m really confused.”

“We have talked about dreams. There’s a touch of irony about that too. For what are we but the major’s dream images?”

“Ah!”

“But there is still one thing he hasn’t counted on.” “What’s that?”

“Maybe he is embarrassingly aware of his own dream. He is aware of everything we say and do—just as the dreamer remembers the dream’s manifest dream aspect. It is he who wields it with his pen. But even if he remembers everything we say to each other, he is still not quite awake.”

“What do you mean?”

“He does not know the latent dream thoughts, Sophie. He forgets that this too is a disguised dream.”

“You are talking so strangely.”

“The major thinks so too. That is because he does not understand his own dream language. Let us be thankful for that. That gives us a tiny bit of elbow room, you see. And with this elbow room we shall soon fight our way out of his muddy consciousness like water voles frisking about in the sun on a summer’s day.”

“Do you think we’ll make it?”

“We must. Within a couple of days I shall give you a new horizon. Then the major will no longer know where the water voles are or where they will pop up next time.”

“But even if we are only dream images, I am still my mother’s daughter. And it’s five o’clock. I have to go home to Captain’s Bend and prepare for the garden party.”

“Hmm ... can you do me a small favor on the way home?” “What?”

“Try to attract a little extra attention. Try to get the major to keep his eye on you all the way home. Try and think about him when you get home—and he’ll think about you too.”

“What good will that do?”

“Then I can carry on undisturbed with my work on the secret plan. I’m going to dive down into the major’s unconscious. That’s where I’ll be until we meet again.”

Our Own Time

... man is condemned to be free…

The alarm clock showed 11:55 p.m. Hilde lay staring at the ceiling. She tried to let her associations flow freely. Each time she finished a chain of thoughts, she tried

to ask herself why.

Could there be something she was trying to repress?

If only she could have set aside all censorship, she might have slid into a waking dream. A bit scary, she thought.

The more she relaxed and opened herself to random thoughts and images, the more she felt as if she was in the major’s cabin by the little lake in the woods.

What could Alberto be planning? Of course, it was Hilde’s father planning that Alberto was planning something. Did he already know what Alberto would do? Perhaps he was trying to give himself free rein, so that whatever happened in the end would come as a surprise to him too.

There were not many pages left now. Should she take a peek at the last page? No, that would be cheating. And besides, Hilde was convinced that it was far from de- cided what was to happen on the last page.

Wasn’t that a curious thought? The ring binder was right here and her father could not possibly get back in time to add anything to it. Not unless Alberto did something on his own. A surprise ...

Hilde had a few surprises up her own sleeve, in any case. Her father did not control her. But was she in full control of herself?

What was consciousness? Wasn’t it one of the greatest riddles of the universe? What was memory? What made us “remember” everything we had seen and experi- enced?

What kind of mechanism made us create fabulous dreams night after night? She closed her eyes from time to time. Then she opened them and stared at the

ceiling again. At last she forgot to open them.

She was asleep.

When the raucous scream of a seagull woke her, Hilde got out of bed. As usual, she crossed the room to the window and stood looking out across the bay. It had gotten to be a habit, summer and winter.

As she stood there, she suddenly felt a myriad of colors exploding in her head. She remembered what she had dreamt. But it felt like more than an ordinary dream, with its vivid colors and shapes ...

She had dreamt that her father came home from Lebanon, and the whole dream was an extension of Sophie’s dream when she found the gold crucifix on the dock.

Hilde was sitting on the edge of the dock—exactly as in Sophie’s dream. Then she heard a very soft voice whispering, “My name is Sophie!” Hilde had stayed where she was, sitting very still, trying to hear where the voice was coming from. It continued, an almost inaudible rustling, as if an insect were speaking to her: “You must be both deaf and blind!” Just then her father had come into the garden in his UN uniform. “Hilde!” he shouted. Hilde ran up to him and threw her arms around his

neck. That’s where the dream ended.

She remembered some lines of a poem by Arnulf 0verland: Wakened one night by a curious dream

and a voice that seemed to be speaking to me like a far-off subterranean stream,

I rose and asked: What do you want of me?

She was still standing at the window when her mother came in. “Hi there! Are you already awake?”

“I’m not sure...”

“I’ll be home around four, as usual.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Have a nice vacation day, Hilde!” “You have a good day too.”

When she heard her mother slam the front door, she slipped back into bed with the ring binder.

“I’m going to dive down into the major’s unconscious. That’s where I’ll be until we meet again.”

There, yes. Hilde started reading again. She could feel under her right index finger that there were only a few pages left.

When Sophie left the major’s cabin, she could still see some of the Disney figures at the water’s edge, but they seemed to dissolve as she approached them. By the time she reached the boat they had all disappeared.

While she was rowing she made faces, and after she had pulled the boat up into the reeds on the other side she waved her arms about. She was working desperately to hold the major’s attention so that Alberto could sit un- disturbed in the cabin.

She danced along the path, hopping and skipping. Then she tried

walking like a mechanical doll. To keep the major interested she began to sing as well. At one point she stood still, pondering what Alberta’s plan could be. Catching herself, she got such a bad conscience that she started to climb a tree.

Sophie climbed as high as she could. When she was nearly at the top, she realized she could not get down. She decided to wait a little before trying again. But meanwhile she could not just stay quietly where she was. Then the major would get tired of watching her and would begin to interest himself in what Alberto was doing.

Sophie waved her arms, tried to crow like a rooster a couple of times, and finally began to yodel. It was the first time in her fifteen-year-old life that Sophie had yodeled.

All things considered, she was quite pleased with the result.

She tried once more to climb down but she was truly stuck. Suddenly a huge goose landed on one of the branches Sophie was clinging to. Having recently seen a whole swarm of Disney figures, Sophie was not in the least surprised when the goose began to speak.

“My name is Morten,” said the goose. “Actually, I’m a tame goose, but on this special occasion I have flown up from Lebanon with the wild geese. You look as if you could use some help getting down from this tree.”

“You are much too small to help me,” said Sophie.

“You are jumping to conclusions, young lady. It is you who are too big.” “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“I would have you know I carried a peasant boy exactly your age all over

Sweden. His name was Nils Hol-gersson.” “I am fifteen.”

“And Nils was fourteen. A year one way or the other makes no difference to the freight.”

“How did you manage to lift him?”

“I gave him a little slap and he passed out. When he woke up, he was no bigger than a thumb.”

“Perhaps you could give me a little slap too, because I can’t sit up here forever. And I’m giving a philosophical garden party on Saturday.”

“That’s interesting. I presume this is a philosophy book, then. When I

was flying over Sweden with Nils Holgers-son, we touched down on Marbacka in Varmland, where Nils met an old woman who was planning to write a book about Sweden for schoolchildren. It was to be both instructive and true, she said. When she heard about Nils’s adventures, she decided to write a book about all the things he had seen on gooseback.”

“That was very strange.”

“To tell you the truth it was rather ironic, because we were already in that book.”

Suddenly Sophie felt something slap her cheek and the next minute she had become no bigger than a thumb. The tree was like a whole forest and the goose was as big as a horse.

“Come on, then,” said the goose.

Sophie walked along the branch and climbed up on the goose’s back. Its feathers were soft, but now that she was so small, they pricked her more than they tickled.

As soon as she had settled comfortably the goose took off. They flew high above the treetops. Sophie looked down at the lake and the major’s cabin. Inside sat Al-berto, laying his devious plans.

“A short sightseeing tour will have to be sufficient today,” said the goose, flapping its wings again and again.

With that, it flew in to land at the foot of the tree which Sophie had so recently begun to climb. As the goose touched down Sophie tumbled onto the ground. After rolling around in the heather a few times, she sat up. She realized with amazement that she was her full size again.

The goose waddled around her a few times. “Thanks a lot for your help,” said Sophie.

“It was a mere bagatelle. Did you say this was a philosophy book?” “No, that’s what you said.”

“Oh well, it’s all the same. If it had been up to me, I would have liked to fly you through the whole history of philosophy just as I flew Nils Holgersson through Sweden. We could have circled over Miletus and Athens, Jerusalem and Alexandria, Rome and Florence, London and Paris, Jena and Heidelberg, Berlin and Copenhagen . . .”

“Thanks, that’s enough.”

“But flying across the centuries would have been a hefty job even for a very ironic goose. Crossing the Swedish provinces is far easier.”

So saying, the goose ran a few steps and flapped itself into the air. Sophie was exhausted, but when she crawled out of the den into the

garden a little later she thought Alberto would have been well pleased with her diversionary maneuvers. The major could not have thought much about

Alberto during the past hour. If he did, he had to have a severe case of split personality.

Sophie had just walked in the front door when her mother came home from work. That saved her having to describe her rescue from a tall tree by a tame goose.

After dinner they began to get everything ready for the garden party. They brought a four-meter-long table top and trestles from the attic and carried it into the garden.

They had planned to set out the long table under the fruit trees. The last

time they had used the trestle table had been on Sophie’s parents’ tenth anniversary. Sophie was only eight years old at the time, but she clearly remembered the big outdoor party with all their friends and relatives.

The weather report was as good as it could be. There had not been as much as a drop of rain since that horrid thunderstorm the day before Sophie’s birthday. Nevertheless they decided to leave the actual table setting and decorating until Saturday morning.

Later that evening they baked two different kinds of bread. They were going to serve chicken and salad. And sodas. Sophie was worried that some of the boys in her class would bring beer. If there was one thing she was afraid of it was trouble.

As Sophie was going to bed, her mother asked her once again if Alberto was coming to the party.

“Of course he’s coming. He has even promised to do a philosophical trick.”

“A philosophical trick? What kind of trick is that?”

“No idea ... if he were a magician, he would have done a magic trick. He would probably have pulled a white rabbit out of a hat. . .”

“What, again?”

“But since he’s a philosopher, he’s going to do a philosophical trick instead. After all, it is a philosophical garden party. Are you planning to do something too?”

“Actually, I am.” “A speech?”

“I’m not telling. Good night, Sophie!”

Early the next morning Sophie was woken up by her mother, who came in to say goodbye before she went to work. She gave Sophie a list of last- minute things to buy in town for the garden party.

The minute her mother had left the house, the telephone rang. It was

Alberto. He had obviously found out exactly when Sophie was home alone. “How is your secret coming along?”

“Ssh! Not a word. Don’t even give him the chance to think about it.” “I think I held his attention yesterday “

“Good.”

“Is the philosophy course finished?”

“That’s why I’m calling. We’re already in our own century. From now on you should be able to orient yourself on your own. The foundations were the most important. But we must nevertheless meet for a short talk about our own time “

“But I have to go to town . .  “

“That’s excellent. I said it was our own time we had to talk about.” “Really?”

“So it would be most practical to meet in town, I mean.” “Shall I come to your place?”

“No, no, not here Everything’s a mess. I’ve been hunting for hidden microphones.”

“Ah!”

“There’s a cafe that’s just opened at the Main Square. Cafe Pierre. Do you know it?”

“Yes. When shall I be there?”

“Can we meet at twelve?” “Okay. Bye!”

At a couple of minutes past twelve Sophie walked into Cafe Pierre. It was one of those new fashionable places with little round tables and black chairs, upturned vermouth bottles in dispensers, baguettes, and sandwiches.

The room was small, and the first thing Sophie noticed was that Alberto was not there. A lot of other people were sitting at the round tables, but Sophie saw only that Alberto was not among them.

She was not in the habit of going into cafes on her own. Should she just turn around and leave, and come back later to see if he had arrived?

She ordered a cup of lemon tea at the marble bar and sat down at one of the vacant tables. She stared at the door. People came and went all the time, but there was still no Alberto.

If only she had a newspaper!

As time passed, she started to look around. She got a couple of glances in return. For a moment Sophie felt like a young woman. She was only fifteen, but she could certainly have passed for seventeen—or at least, sixteen and a half.

She wondered what all these people thought about being alive. They looked as though they had simply dropped in, as though they had just sat down here by chance. They were all talking away, gesticulating vehemently, but it didn’t look as though they were talking about anything that mattered.

She suddenly came to think of Kierkegaard, who had said that what characterized the crowd most was their idle chatter. Were all these people living at the aesthetic stage? Or was there something that was existentially important to them?

In one of his early letters to her Alberto had talked about the similarity between children and philosophers. She realized again that she was afraid of becoming an adult. Suppose she too ended up crawling deep down into the fur of the white rabbit that was pulled out of the universe’s top hat!

She kept her eyes on the door. Suddenly Alberto walked in. Although it was midsummer, he was wearing a black beret and a gray hip-length coat of herringbone tweed. He hurried over to her. It felt very strange to meet him in public.

“It’s quarter past twelve!”

“It’s what is known as the academic quarter of an hour. Would you like a snack?”

He sat down and looked into her eyes. Sophie shrugged. “Sure. A sandwich, maybe.”

Alberto went up to the counter. He soon returned with a cup of coffee and two baguette sandwiches with cheese and ham.

“Was it expensive?”

“A bagatelle, Sophie.”

“Do you have any excuse at all for being late?” “No. I did it on purpose. I’ll explain why presently.”

He took a few large bites of his sandwich. Then he said: “Let’s talk about our own century.”

“Has anything of philosophical interest happened?”

“Lots ... movements are going off in all directions We’ll start with one very important direction, and that is existentialism. This is a collective term for

several philosophical currents that take man’s existential situation as their point of departure. We generally talk of twentieth-century existential philosophy. Several of these existential philosophers, or existentialists, based their ideas not only on Kierkegaard, but on Hegel and Marx as well.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Another important philosopher who had a great influence on the twentieth century was the German Friedrich Nietzsche, who lived from 1844 to 1900. He, too, reacted against Hegel’s philosophy and the German

‘historicism.’ He proposed life itself as a counterweight to the anemic interest in history and what he called the Christian ‘slave morality.’ He sought to effect a ‘revaluation of all values,’ so that the life force of the strongest should not be hampered by the weak. According to Nietzsche, both Christianity and traditional philosophy had turned away from the real world and pointed toward

‘heaven’ or ‘the world of ideas.’ But what had hitherto been considered the

‘real’ world was in fact a pseudo world. ‘Be true to the world,’ he said. ‘Do not listen to those who offer you supernatural expectations.’ “

“So ... ?”

“A man who was influenced by both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche was the German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger. But we are going to concentrate on the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived from

1905 to 1980. He was the leading light among the existentialists—at least, to the broader public. His existentialism became especially popular in the forties, just after the war. Later on he allied himself with the Marxist movement in France, but he never became a member of any party.”

“Is that why we are meeting in a French cafe?”

“It was not quite accidental, I confess. Sartre himself spent a lot of time in cafes. He met his life-long companion Simone de Beauvoir in a cafe. She was also an existential philosopher.”

“A woman philosopher?” “That’s right.”

“What a relief that humanity is finally becoming civilized.” “Nevertheless, many new problems have arisen in our own time.” “You were going to talk about existentialism.”

“Sartre said that ‘existentialism is humanism.’ By that he meant that the existentialists start from nothing but humanity itself. I might add that the humanism he was referring to took a far bleaker view of the human situation than the humanism we met in the Renaissance.”

“Why was that?”

“Both Kierkegaard and some of this century’s existential philosophers were Christian. But Sartre’s allegiance was to what we might call an atheistic existentialism. His philosophy can be seen as a merciless analysis of the human situation when ‘God is dead.’ The expression ‘God is dead’ came from Nietzsche.”

“Go on.”

“The key word in Sartre’s philosophy, as in Kierkegaard’s, is ‘existence.’ But existence did not mean the same as being alive. Plants and animals are also alive, they exist, but they do not have to think about what it implies. Man is the only living creature that is conscious of its own existence. Sartre said that a material thing is simply ‘in itself,’ but mankind is ‘for itself.’ The being of man is therefore not the same as the being of things.”

“I can’t disagree with that.”

“Sartre said that man’s existence takes priority over whatever he might otherwise be. The fact that I exist takes priority over what I am. ‘Existence takes priority over essence.’ “

“That was a very complicated statement.”

“By essence we mean that which something consists of—the nature, or being, of something. But according to Sartre, man has no such innate ‘nature.’ Man must therefore create himself. He must create his own nature or

‘essence,’ because it is not fixed in advance.” “I think I see what you mean.”

“Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is—or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal ‘nature’ to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with

no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.”

“That’s true, actually. If one could just look in the Bible—or in a philosophy book—to find out how to live, it would be very practical.”

“You’ve got the point. When people realize they are alive and will one day die—and there is no meaning to cling to—they experience angst, said Sartre. You may recall that angst, a sense of dread, was also characteristic of Kierkegaard’s description of a person in an existential situation.”

“Yes.”

“Sartre says that man feels a//en in a world without meaning. When he describes man’s ‘alienation,’ he is echoing the central ideas of Hegel and Marx. Man’s feeling of alienation in the world creates a sense of despair, boredom, nausea, and absurdity.”

“It is quite normal to feel depressed, or to feel that everything is just too boring.”

“Yes, indeed. Sartre was describing the twentieth-century city dweller. You remember that the Renaissance humanists had drawn attention, almost triumphantly, to man’s freedom and independence? Sartre experienced man’s freedom as a curse. ‘Man is condemned to be free,’ he said. ‘Condemned because he has not created himself—and is nevertheless free. Because having once been hurled into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.’ “

“But we haven’t asked to be created as free individuals.”

“That was precisely Sartre’s point. Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we ‘must’ go to work, or we ‘must’ live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live ‘authentically’ or

‘truly.’ “

“Yes, I see.”

“This is not least the case as regards our ethical choices. We can never lay the blame on ‘human nature,’ or ‘human frailty’ or anything like that. Now and then it happens that grown men behave like pigs and then blame it on

‘the old Adam.’ But there is no ‘old Adam.’ He is merely a figure we clutch at to avoid taking responsibility for our own actions.”

“There ought to be a limit to what man can be blamed for.”

“Although Sartre claimed there was no innate meaning to life, he did not mean that nothing mattered. He was not what we call a nihilist.”

“What is that?”

“That is a person who thinks nothing means anything and everything is permissible. Sartre believed that life must have meaning. It is an imperative. But it is we ourselves who must create this meaning in our own lives. To exist is to create your own life.”

“Could you elaborate on that?” /

“Sartre tried to prove that consciousness in itself is nothing until it has perceived something. Because consciousness is always conscious of something. And this ‘something’ is provided just as much by ourselves as by our surroundings. We are partly instrumental in deciding what we perceive by selecting what is significant for us.”

“Could you give me an example?”

“Two people can be present in the same room and yet experience it quite differently. This is because we contribute our own meaning—or our own interests—when we perceive our surroundings. A woman who is pregnant might think she sees other pregnant women everywhere she looks. That is not because there were no pregnant women before, but because now that she is pregnant she sees the world through different eyes. An escaped convict may see policemen everywhere ...”

“Mm, I see.”

“Our own lives influence the way we perceive things in the room. If something is of no interest to me, I don’t see it. So now I can perhaps explain why I was late today.”

“It was on purpose, right?”

“Tell me first of all what you saw when you came in here.” “The first thing I saw was that you weren’t here.”

“Isn’t it strange that the first thing you noticed was something that was absent?”

“Maybe, but it was you I was supposed to meet.”

“Sartre uses just such a cafe visit to demonstrate the way we ‘annihilate’

whatever is irrelevant for us.”

“You got here late just to demonstrate that?”

“To enable you to understand this central point in Sartre’s philosophy, yes. Call it an exercise.”

“Get out of here!”

“If you were in love, and were waiting for your loved one to call you, you might ‘hear’ him not calling you all evening. You arrange to meet him at the train; crowds of people are milling about on the platform and you can’t see

him anywhere. They are all in the way, they are unimportant to you. You might find them aggravating, unpleasant even. They are taking up far too much

room. The only thing you register is that he is not there.”

“How sad.”

“Simone de Beauvoir attempted to apply existentialism to feminism. Sartre had already said that man has no basic ‘nature’ to fall back on. We create ourselves.”

“Really?”

“This is also true of the way we perceive the sexes. Simone de Beauvoir denied the existence of a basic ‘female nature’ or ‘male nature.’ For instance,

it has been generally claimed that man has a ‘transcending,’ or achieving, nature. He will therefore seek meaning and direction outside the home. Woman has been said to have the opposite life philosophy. She is ‘immanent,’ which means she wishes to be where she is. She will therefore nurture her family, care for the environment and more homely things. Nowadays we might say that women are more concerned with ‘feminine values’ than men.”

“Did she really believe that?”

“You weren’t listening to me. Simone de Beauvoir in fact did not believe in the existence of any such ‘female nature’ or ‘male nature.’ On the contrary, she believed that women and men must liberate themselves from such ingrown prejudices or ideals.”

“I agree.”

“Her main work, published in 1949, was called The Second Sex.” “What did she mean by that?”

“She was talking about women. In our culture women are treated as the second sex. Men behave as if they are the subjects, treating women like their objects, thus depriving them of the responsibility for their own life.”

“She meant we women are exactly as free and independent as we choose to be?”

“Yes, you could put it like that. Existentialism also had a great influence on literature, from the forties to the present day, especially on drama. Sartre himself wrote plays as well as novels. Other important writers were the Frenchman Albert Camus, the Irishman Samuel Beckett, Eugene lonesco, who was from Romania, and Witold Gombro-wicz from Poland. Their characteristic style, and that of many other modern writers, was what we call absurdism. The term is especially used about the ‘theater of the absurd.’ “

“Ah.”

“Do you know what we mean by the ‘absurd’?”

“Isn’t it something that is meaningless or irrational?”

“Precisely. The theater of the absurd represented a contrast to realistic theater. Its aim was to show the lack of meaning in life in order to get the audience to disagree. The idea was not to cultivate the meaningless. On the contrary. But by showing and exposing the absurd in ordinary everyday situations, the onlookers are forced to seek a truer and more essential life for themselves.”

“It sounds interesting.”

“The theater of the absurd often portrays situations that are absolutely trivial. It can therefore also be called a kind of ‘hyperrealism.’ People are portrayed precisely as they are. But if you reproduce on stage exactly what goes on in the bathroom on a perfectly ordinary morning in a perfectly ordinary home, the audience would laugh. Their laughter could be interpreted as a defense mechanism against seeing themselves lampooned on stage.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“The absurd theater can also have certain surrealistic features. Its characters often find themselves in highly unrealistic and dreamlike situations. When they accept this without surprise, the audience is compelled to react in surprise at the characters’ lack of surprise. This was how Charlie Chaplin worked in his silent movies. The comic effect in these silent movies was often Chaplin’s laconic acceptance of all the absurd things that happen to him. That compelled the audience to look into themselves for something more genuine and true.”

“It’s certainly surprising to see what people put up with without protesting.”

“At times it can be right to feel: This is something I must get away from—

even though I don’t have any idea where to go.”

“If the house catches fire you just have to get out, even if you don’t have any other place to live.”

“That’s true. Would you like another cup of tea? Or a Coke maybe?” “Okay. But I still think you were silly to be late.”

“I can live with that.”

Alberto came back with a cup of espresso and a Coke. Meanwhile Sophie had begun to like the cafe ambience. She was also beginning to think that the conversations at the other tables might not be as trivial as she had supposed them to be.

Alberto banged the Coke bottle down on the table with a thud. Several people at the other tables looked up.

“And that brings us to the end of the road,” he said.

“You mean the history of philosophy stops with Sartre and existentialism?”

“No, that would be an exaggeration. Existentialist philosophy has had radical significance for many people all over the world. As we saw, its roots reach far back in history through Kierkegaard and way back to Socrates. The twentieth century has also witnessed a blossoming and a renewal of the other philosophical currents we have discussed.”

“Like what?”

“Well, one such current is Neo-Thomism, that is to say ideas which belong to the tradition of Thomas Aquinas. Another is the so-called analytical philosophy or logical empiricism, with roots reaching back to Hume and British empiricism, and even to the logic of Aristotle. Apart from these, the twentieth century has naturally also been influenced by what we might call Neo-

Marxism in a myriad of various trends. We have already talked about Neo- Darwinism and the significance of psychoanalysis.”

“Yes.”

“We should just mention a final current, materialism, which also has historical roots. A lot of current science can be traced back to the efforts of the pre-Socratics. For example, the search for the indivisible ‘elemental particle’

of which all matter is composed. No one has yet been able to give a satisfactory explanation of what ‘matter’ is. Modern sciences such as nuclear physics and biochemistry are so fascinated by the problem that for many peo- ple it constitutes a vital part of their life’s philosophy.”

“The new and the old all jumbled together . . .”

“Yes. Because the very questions we started our course with are still unanswered. Sartre made an important observation when he said that

existential questions cannot be answered once and for all. A philosophical question is by definition something that each generation, each individual even, must ask over and over again.”

“A bleak thought.”

“I’m not sure I agree. Surely it is by asking such questions that we know we are alive. And moreover, it has always been the case that while people were seeking answers to the ultimate questions, they have discovered clear and final solutions to many other problems. Science, research, and technology are all by-products of our philosophical reflection. Was it not our wonder about life that finally brought men to the moon?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he said ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ With these words he summed up how it felt to be the first man to set foot on the moon, drawing with him all the people who had lived before him. It was not his merit alone, obviously.

“In our own time we also have completely new problems to face. The most serious are those of the environment. A central philosophical direction in the twentieth century is therefore ecophilosophy or ecosophy, as one of its founders the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess has called if. Many ecophilosophers in the western world have warned that western civilization as a whole is on a fundamentally wrong track, racing toward a head-on collision with the limits of what our planet can tolerate. They have tried to take soundings that go deeper than the concrete effects of pollution and environmental destruction. There is something basically wrong with western thought, they claim.”

“I think they are right.”

“For example, ecophilosophy has questioned the very idea of evolution in its assumption that man is ‘at the top’—as if we are masters of nature. This way of thinking could prove to be fatal for the whole living planet.”

“It makes me mad when I think about it.”

“In criticizing this assumption, many ecophilosophers have looked to the thinking and ideas in other cultures such as those of India. They have also studied the thoughts and customs of so-called primitive peoples—or ‘native- peoples’ such as the Native Americans—in order to rediscover what we have lost.

“In scientific circles in recent years it has been said that our whole mode of scientific thought is facing a ‘paradigm shift.’ That is to say, a fundamental shift in the way scientists think. This has already borne fruit in several fields. We have witnessed numerous examples of so-called ‘alternative movements’ advocating holism and a new lifestyle.”

“Great.”

“However, when there are many people involved, one must always distinguish between good and bad. Some proclaim that we are entering a new age. But everything new is not necessarily good, and not all the old should be thrown out. That is one of the reasons why I have given you this course in philosophy. Now you have the historical background, you can orient yourself

in life.”

“Thank you.”

“I think you will find that much of what marches under the New Age banner is humbug. Even the so-called New Religion, New Occultism, and

modern superstitions of all kinds have influenced the western world in recent decades. It has become an industry. Alternative offers on the philosophical market have mushroomed in the wake of the dwindling support for Christianity.”

“What sort of offers?”

“The list is so long I wouldn’t dare to begin. And anyway it’s not easy to describe one’s own age. But why don’t we take a stroll through town? There’s something I’d like you to see.”

“I haven’t got much time. I hope you haven’t forgotten the garden party tomorrow?”

“Of course not. That’s when something wonderful is going to happen. We just have to round off Hilde’s philosophy course first. The major hasn’t thought beyond that, you see. So he loses some of his mastery over us.”

Once again he lifted the Coke bottle, which was now empty, and banged it down on the table.

They walked out into the street where people were hurrying by like energetic moles in a molehill. Sophie wondered what Alberto wanted to show her.

They walked past a big store that sold everything in communication technology, from televisions, VCRs, and satellite dishes to mobile phones, computers, and fax machines.

Alberto pointed to the window display and said:

“There you have the twentieth century, Sophie. In the Renaissance the world began to explode, so to speak. Beginning with the great voyages of discovery, Europeans started to travel all over the world. Today it’s the opposite. We could call it an explosion in reverse.”

“In what sense?”

“In the sense that the world is becoming drawn together into one great communications network. Not so long ago philosophers had to travel for days by horse and carriage in order to investigate the world around them and meet other philosophers. Today we can sit anywhere at all on this planet and access the whole of human experience on a computer screen.”

“It’s a fantastic thought. And a little scary.”

“The question is whether history is coming to an end— or whether on the contrary we are on the threshold of a completely new age. We are no longer simply citizens of a city—or of a particular country. We live in a planetary civilization.”

“That’s true.”

“Technological developments, especially in the field of communications, have possibly been more dramatic in the last thirty to forty years than in the whole of history put together. And still we have probably only witnessed the beginning . . .”

“Was this what you wanted me to see?”

“No, it’s on the other side of the church over there.”

As they were turning to leave, a picture of some UN soldiers flashed onto a TV screen.

“Look!” said Sophie.

The camera zoomed in on one of the UN soldiers. He had a black beard almost identical to Alberto’s. Suddenly he held up a piece of card on which was written: “Back soon, Hilde!” He waved and was gone.

“Charlatan!” exclaimed Alberto. “Was that the major?”

“I’m not even going to answer that.”

They walked across the park in front of the church and came out onto another main street. Alberto seemed slightly irritable. They stopped in front of LIBRIS, the biggest bookstore in town.

“Let’s go in,” said Alberto.

Inside the -store he pointed to the longest wall. It had three sections: NEW AGE, ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES, and MYSTICISM.

The books had intriguing titles such as Life after Death?, The Secrets of Spiritism, Tarot, The UFO Phenomenon, Healing, The Return of the Gods, You Have Been Here Before, and What Is Astrology? There were hundreds of books. Under the shelves even more books were stacked up.

“This is also the twentieth century, Sophie. This is the temple of our

age.”

“You don’t believe in any of this stuff?”

“Much of it is humbug. But it sells as well as pornography. A lot of it is a

kind of pornography. Young people can come here and purchase the ideas that fascinate them most. But the difference between real philosophy and these books is more or less the same as the difference between real love and pornography.”

“Aren’t you being rather crass?” “Let’s go and sit in the park.”

They marched out of the store and found a vacant bench in front of the church. Pigeons were strutting around under the trees, the odd overeager sparrow hopping about amongst them.

“It’s called ESP or parapsychology,” said Alberto. “Or it’s called telepathy, clairvoyance, and psychokinetics. It’s called spiritism, astrology, and urology.”

“But quite honestly, do you really think it’s all hum-bug?”

“Obviously it would not be very appropriate for a real philosopher to say they are all equally bad. But I don’t mind saying that all these subjects together possibly chart a fairly detailed map of a landscape that does not exist. And there are many ‘figments of the imagination’ here that Hume would have committed to the flames. Many of those books do not contain so much as one iota of genuine experience.”

“Why are there such incredible numbers of books on such subjects?” “Publishing such books is a big commercial enterprise. It’s what most

people want.”

“Why, do you think?”

“They obviously desire something mystical, something different to break the dreary monotony of everyday life. But it is like carrying coals to Newcastle.”

“How do you mean?”

“Here we are, wandering around in a wonderful adventure. A work of creation is emerging in front of our very eyes. In broad daylight, Sophie! Isn’t it marvelous!”

“I guess so.”

“Why should we enter the fortune-teller’s tent or the backyards of academe in search of something exciting or transcendental?”

“Are you saying that the people who write these books are just phonies and liars?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. But here, too, we are talking about a

Darwinian system.”

“You’ll have to explain that.”

“Think of all the different things that can happen in a single day. You can even take a day in your own life. Think of all the things you see and experience.”

“Yes?”

“Now and then you experience a strange coincidence. You might go into a store and buy something for 28 crowns. Later on that day Joanna comes along and gives you the 28 crowns she owes you. You both decide to go to the movies—and you get seat number 28.”

“Yes, that would be a mysterious coincidence.”

“It would be a coincidence, anyway. The point is, people collect coincidences like these. They collect strange— or inexplicable—experiences When such experiences— taken from the lives of billions of people—are assembled into books, it begins to look like genuine data. And the amount of it increases all the time. But once again we are looking at a lottery in which only the winning numbers are visible.”

“But there are clairvoyants and mediums, aren’t there, who are constantly experiencing things like that?”

“Indeed there are, and if we exclude the phonies, we find another explanation for these so-called mysterious experiences.”

“And that is?”

“You remember we talked about Freud’s theory of the unconscious . . .” “Of course.”

“Freud showed that we can often serve as ‘mediums’ for our own unconscious. We might suddenly find ourselves thinking or doing something without really knowing why. The reason is that we have a whole lot of experi- ences, thoughts, and memories inside us that we are not aware of.”

“So?”

“People sometimes talk or walk in their sleep. We could call this a sort of

‘mental automatism.’ Also under hypnosis, people can say and do things ‘not of their own volition.’ And remember the surrealists trying to produce so-called automatic writing. They were just trying to serve as mediums for their own unconscious.”

“I remember.”

“From time to time during this century there have been what are called

‘spiritualist revivals,’ the idea being that a medium could get into contact with a deceased person. Either by speaking in the voice of the deceased, or by using automatic writing, the medium would receive a message from someone who had lived five or fifty or many hundreds of years ago. This has been taken as evidence either that there is life after death or that we live many lives.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I’m not saying that all mediums have been fakes. Some have clearly been in good faith. They really have been mediums, but they have only been mediums for their own unconscious. There have been several cases of me- diums being closely studied while in a trance, and revealing knowledge and

abilities that neither they nor others understand how they can have acquired. In one case, a woman who had no knowledge of Hebrew passed on messages in that language. So she must have either lived before or been in contact with a deceased spirit.”

“Which do you think?”

“It turned out that she had had a Jewish nanny when she was little.” “Ah.”

“Does that disappoint you? It just shows what an incredible capacity some people have to store experience in their unconscious.”

“I see what you mean.”

“A lot of curious everyday happenings can be explained by Freud’s theory of the unconscious. I might suddenly get a call from a friend I haven’t heard from for many years just as I had begun to look for his telephone number “

“It gives me goose bumps.”

“But the explanation could be that we both heard the same old song on the radio, a song we heard the last time we were together. The point is, we are not aware of the underlying connection.”

“So it’s either humbug, or the winning number effect, or else it’s the unconscious. Right?”

“Well, in any case, it’s healthier to approach such books with a decent portion of skepticism. Not least if one is a philosopher. There is an association in England for skeptics. Many years ago they offered a large reward to the

first person who could provide even the slightest proof of something supernatural. It didn’t need to be a great miracle, a tiny example of telepathy would do. So far, nobody has come forward “

“Hmm.”

“On the other hand, there is a lot we humans don’t understand. Maybe we don’t understand the laws of nature either. During the last century there were a lot of people who thought that phenomena such as magnetism and electricity were a kind of magic. I’ll bet my own great-grandmother would have been wide-eyed with amazement if I told her about TV or computers.”

“So you don’t believe in anything supernatural then.”

“We’ve already talked about that. Even the term ‘supernatural’ is a curious one. No, I suppose I believe that there is only one nature. But that, on the other hand, is absolutely astonishing.”

“But the sort of mysterious things in those books you just showed me?” “All true philosophers should keep their eyes open. Even if we have

never seen a white crow, we should never stop looking for it. And one day, even a skeptic like me could be obliged to accept a phenomenon I did not be- lieve in before. If I did not keep this possibility open I would be dogmatic, and not a true philosopher.”

Alberto and Sophie remained seated on the bench without saying anything. The pigeons craned their necks and cooed, now and then being startled by a bicycle or a sudden movement.

“I have to go home and prepare for the party,” said Sophie at last.

“But before we part, I’ll show you a white crow. It is nearer than we think, you see.”

Alberto got up and led the way back into the bookstore. This time they walked past all the books on supernatural phenomena and stopped by a

flimsy shelf at the very back of the store. Above the shelf hung a very small card. PHILOSOPHY, it read.

Alberto pointed down at a particular book, and Sophie gasped as she read the title: Sophie’s World.

“Would you like me to buy it for you?” “I don’t know if I dare.”

Shortly afterward, however, she was on her way home with the book in one hand and a little bag of things for the garden party in the other.