Dream of the Botanical Monograph

Prefatory Comments:
Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German
writer and anti-war and antifascist activist. Zweig had written a book about
antisemitism titled Caliban which he dedicated to Freud. Arnold Zweig
was an associate of Freud’s.
Stefan Zweig was a writer who collaborated with the composer Richard
Strauss on the opera, Die Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman). Perhaps
Strauss’s most famous opera is Der Rosenkavalier which features a silver rose
(a token of love) — the opera takes place in Vienna. Because Zweig was a Jew,
the opera was banned by the Nazis.
In January 1991 I was in a car accident and suffered a fractured wrist and
head concussion that caused a 2-hour coma (brain issue); I was
hospitalized at GW. The doctor was John White, M.D. It was the
beginning of the Gulf War in the Middle East. At the firm where I
worked (Akin Gump Strauss) someone sent me a plant or flowers — the
sender was not identified. Later that year I was terminated by the firm
under cloudy circumstances.
In January 1977 I worked at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. In
about January 1977 I had given two white roses to a coworker named
Sharon White at The Franklin Institute where I was employed, together
with a poem I had written. At that time I worked in an office with Silba
Cunningham-Dunlop (she once mentioned that she was born on April
23, “Shakespeare’s birthday,” she said). Her Jewish father (Paul
Frischauer), a writer, lived in Vienna (the city of his birth) at that time and
had emigrated to Brazil during World War II to escape the Nazis. Silba’s
father died four months later, in May 1977 of a brain tumor (astrocytoma
— astoria?). He was a terminal cancer patient.
In the spring of 1983 I helped Silba move from her apartment. She had
her belongings packed in boxes. One small cardboard box contained a
collection of numerous books. They were books that had been authored
by her father, who wrote historical novels, including Beaumarchais:
Adventurer in the Century of Women. I was astounded at the collection – the
prolificity of his work. I suppose I was envious of Silba's father. Cf.
Palombo, S.R. “Day Residue and Screen Memory in Freud's Dream of the
Botanical Monograph” (Freud's dream recapitulated a series of Freud's
earlier conflicts concerning his father and the power of books).
The inauguration of Jimmy Carter took place on January 20, 1977. Carter
was advised by Bob Strauss—the founder of the law firm where I worked
years later, in January 1991.
In 1938 Freud wrote to Zweig from Vienna: “Everything is growing ever
darker, more threatening, and the awareness of one’s own helplessness
ever more importunate.” (I quoted this in my book, Significant Moments.)
On Saturday June 4, 1938, Freud, his wife, Martha, and their daughter Anna left
Vienna forever. On the same day, Freud sent a note to his friend, Arnold
Zweig. In it he wrote, briefly, “Leaving today for 39 Elsworthy Road, London
NW3 . . . ”.
In 1977 Silba Cunningham-Dunlop and I worked on a monograph on the
carcinogenic properties of ionizing and nonionizing radiation.
June 11 was the birthday of composer, Richard Strauss. That evening,
June 11, 2017, I had the following dream:
I am in the living room of the house where I grew up. Although it is daytime, the
room is dimly lit. (In fact the room was always dark; the living room had only one
small window). Someone has left a floral arrangement on a table. They are deep
red astorias. In fact, there is no such flower. Someone has left a note attached to
the flowers. It says, “Dark forces have overtaken Vienna, but the forces of light will
someday return. Farewell, my beloved Vienna.” The note is signed Arnold Zweig. I
sense that the note refers to the Nazi takeover of Austria in March 1938. I have
the sense that sad events are happening elsewhere, but that I am safe in the living
room of the house.
Every student of Freud’s will be familiar with the following dream:
Freud’s Dream of the Botanical Monograph is a short and sweet little
ditty that goes a little something like this:
I had written a monograph on a certain plant. The book lay before me and I was
at the moment turning over a folded colored plate. Bound up in each copy there
was a dried specimen of the plant, as though it had been taken from a herbarium.
Freud’s interpretation of this dream is complex, and he returns to it
multiple times throughout The Interpretation of Dreams. The most
important symbolic significance that he teases out of it relates to the
meaning of the “certain plant” that he studies in the dream.
Because Freud “really had written something in the nature of a
monograph on a plant,” the monograph in the dream reminds him of his
work on the coca-plant. So, the “certain plant” in the dream becomes a
symbol of Freud’s work on the medicinal properties of cocaine—as well as
a symbol of his mixed feelings about that work.
Freud viewed his work on the coca-plant with both positive and negative
associations: positive, because he prided himself on having made
important contributions to anesthesiology; and negative, because his
recommended use of cocaine as a painkiller led to the death of his friend
and colleague Ernst Fleischl von Marxow. With this in mind, the symbolic
significance of the “certain plant” in the dream doesn’t just relate to the
coca-plant itself, but to a whole slew of Freud’s professional ambitions and
anxieties as well.
The important fact for me about Freud and cocaine was that Freud had
experimented on himself with the substance. The following associations
come to mind:
ASSOCIATIONS TO THE GIFT OF RED FLOWERS:
Poison Ivy – The Red Rash
In the spring of 1965, when I was 11, the following events transpired. I
had the idea that I wanted to be a world-famous scientist. I wanted to win
a Nobel Prize in medicine. My first recollection of the Nobel was in the
fall of 1964 (age 10), months earlier. Martin Luther King, Jr. had won the
Peace Prize and my mother was incensed: “So now a convict gets a Nobel
Prize!” My mother had strong racist convictions.
I had the idea that I would infect myself with poison ivy, a flowering
plant, and then find a cure for the resulting rash. I stripped off the leaves
(a twig? The German word Zweig means twig) of a poison ivy plant and
rubbed them all over my face. I came down with a horrible rash and
suffered terribly. When I went to school my sixth grade teacher (Olga
Kaempfer), fearing that I had an infectious disease, sent me to see the
school nurse (Rose Heckman). Mrs. Heckman said I had a poison ivy
infection and told me to apply calamine lotion. Thus, my hopes of a
brilliant future as a research scientist were dashed! I would be forced to
find another road to world historical glory ! That road would turn out to
involve my fantasies about my relationship with Bob Strauss at the law
firm where I worked. I imagined in fantasy that my writings had come to
Strauss’s attention and that he developed a special interest in me; my
paranoid fantasy about Strauss gratified my need to come to the attention
of a powerful figure (just as the concentration camp prisoner, Bruno
Bettelheim had come to General Eisenhower’s attention through his
writings).
Freud’s dream of the botanical monograph related, in Freud’s analysis, to
his earlier work on cocaine, derived from the coca plant. Like me, Freud
had experimented on himself with cocaine. Like me, Freud had a lifelong
desire to win a Nobel Prize; he was nominated for 12 years, but the
nominations ceased forever when the Nobel committee engaged an expert
who said that Freud’s work was of no proven scientific worth.
So my dream seems to relate to my narcissistic need for fame and my idea
of experimenting on myself. These issues seem to be at play in my letter
writing in which I record and analyze my therapeutic sessions – as if I were
doing important scientific work.
There is an aspect of dissociation here, or ego splitting, in which I am
both the patient suffering from a mental disorder as well as the scientific
researcher investigating that very disorder. In my therapy sessions it is as if
I have taken on the role of both the patient undergoing treatment as well
as the psychoanalyst analyzing a patient.
Scarlet Fever
At age 3 I came down with scarlet fever. My mother had indulged my taste
for spoiled milk that I drank from a baby bottle. Scarlet fever causes a
deep red rash, comparable, I suppose, to a poison ivy rash. When my
pediatrician (Joseph Bloom, M.D.) diagnosed scarlet fever, he attributed
the infection to the spoiled milk I had been drinking. Dr. Bloom scolded
my parents in my presence in my bedroom: “Why is a three-year-old still
drinking from a baby bottle? A three-year-old should not be drinking from
a baby bottle.” I remember laying in my crib, mortified and severely
embarrassed. My secret was out! On top of that I was forced to relinquish
my bottle (which may have been a transitional object for me); I
experienced the loss of the bottle as notably distressing.
Our house had to be quarantined by the Philadelphia Department of
Health (scarlet fever = deep red astorias = Dr. Bloom = poison ivy rash). Dr.
Bloom explained to my parents that he was required to report my scarlet
fever to the Health Department because it was considered a serious public
health concern. (One wonders whether there was a connection in my
mind between Dr. Bloom (“flower”) communicating with the Health
Department and Freud writing to Zweig (“twig”)). This was a major
emotional event from my childhood; the illness, which was blamed on my
mother, caused a lot of tumult centering on my mother's parenting and
the embarrassment to my family caused by the Health Department
quarantine. The Health Department posted a notice on the front door of
our house – a kind of scarlet letter. “You may not enter this premises.”
Undoubtedly, at age three, I could not have processed the tumult in the
household concerning the “Philadelphia Health Department.” At the very
least, I suppose, these events might have contributed to my sense that I
was impactful — that my private affairs (my oral gratifications and
associated fantasies) could influence the wider environment. These events
might have confirmed my sense of omnipotence and my conviction in the
power of my magical thinking: the notion that my mere thoughts or
sensations could arouse a response by remote objects (such as the Health
Department).
I see a parallel between, on the one hand, my childhood illness (scarlet
fever) and my transitional object (the baby bottle) coming to the attention
of the Governmental authorities (The Philadelphia Health Department)
under traumatic circumstances at age 3 and, on the other hand, my adult
fantasy that my writings (a creative transitional object) had come to the
attention of Bob Strauss (a friend of Presidents) who thereafter took a
special interest in me. There is a further parallel with my fantasy at age 12
that a poison ivy rash I had caused – or my fantasied cure of that rash –
would bring me to the attention of important people (The Nobel Prize
Committee) who would recognize me as a great scientific researcher.