Abstract
Inspired by the book The Question of God, by Armand Nicholi Jr., the playwright Mark St. Germain has created a tour de force imaginary dialogue between the eighty-three-year-old Sigmund Freud and the forty-three-year-old C. S. Lewis, writer and professor of English. On September 3, 1939, the day England entered World War II and two weeks before Freud’s death, we are invited, along with Lewis, into Freud’s study in London. Like a psychoanalytic session, where no thought or feeling is taboo and the patient is encouraged to say whatever comes to mind, the two men freely exchange their views on God, atheism, sex, love, and the meaning of life. Entering Freud’s study, Lewis apologizes for being late due to evacuations. Freud responds, “I had given you up for lost. . . . if I wasn’t eighty-three I would say it doesn’t matter” (p. 8). From this moment on, we become immersed in their challenges to each other, their sense of irony, and their deeply held convictions. We are drawn into their point-counterpoint in what feels like a quasi-analytic hour between atheist-scientist/psychoanalyst and atheist–converted believer/writer. At times it is difficult to distinguish analyst from patient. Their interaction is particularly poignant when each man reminiscences about bitter disappointments with his father, and both glance at the couch, silently beckoning the other to use it.
How ironic—or perhaps not—that the backdrop to their session is the imminence of world war and the terminal stages of Freud’s personal war with oral cancer. How poignant that the anti-Semitism that fuels Hitler’s toxic beliefs and actions is the setting for a discussion about faith—whether a godly faith or a faith in science. How provocative that each man’s views about love and sex involve innuendos both about Lewis’s relationship with Mrs. Moore and about Freud’s special bond with his daughter Anna, whom he analyzed and who is the only one allowed to touch her father’s prosthesis. St. Germain does not miss any opportunity to draw on biographical material to convey how early developmental experiences, relationships, losses, longings, and bitter disappointments resulted in each man’s estrangement (or return, as is the case for Lewis) from biological fathers and a Heavenly Father. All of these dynamics are embedded in each man’s convictions about internalized authority, now projected onto God, religion, and science. Thus, a highly charged dialogue about faith, science, illusion, and disillusionment goes on between air raid sirens and intermittent BBC announcements.
Both the radio and the sirens serve important functions in the play. A BBC announcer’s voice is the very first sound we hear from the stage. Unseen and anonymous, he speaks of Hitler’s attack on Poland and feared bombings over England. The heard-but-not-seen radio announcer brings to mind an analyst’s voice behind the couch, as well as a mother’s voice trying to comfort a frightened child. This offstage voice also evokes an association to an invisible God and the unknown unconscious. Throughout the play, music typically follows the BBC updates. In the opening scene, Freud’s barking dog, Jo-Fi, described by the analyst as his own “emotional barometer” (p. 3) responds to Lewis’s arrival and interrupts the broadcast. Of note, every time music is played, Freud turns off the radio. Toward the end of the play, following a highly charged discussion of Freud’s plan to end his life without telling Anna, and Lewis’s counterargument that only God should give and end life, Lewis observes to Freud how he shuts off the radio (not just turns down the volume) whenever music is played:
You do that every time.
Pardon?
Turn off the music. You do it every time.
I’m waiting for news.
Then why not just turn the music down, why off? [p. 31]
At this point, St. Germain has Freud respond by changing the topic and not answering Lewis’s question directly.
You like music.
Very much so.
Sacred music, no doubt?
Actually, I hate hymns.
Really?
They’re like dipping a chocolate bar in sugar. Unbearably cloying. Hymns drive me out of church early every Sunday. I leave after communion and head across the street for a pint. There, I’m happy to listen to any music playing. Why can’t you?
Works of art have a powerful effect on me, but music mystifies me. Something within me, something rebels against being moved by a thing without knowing why it moves me. It’s like being spoken to in a foreign language and being asked to agree to a statement you can’t comprehend.
The attraction of music is its appeal to the emotions, not the brain.
I understand that.
But you’re saying that if you can’t process your feelings intellectually, they don’t exist for you. You object to simply being moved.
I object to being manipulated. To me, it’s all church music.
My objection to church music is that it trivializes emotions I already feel. I think you’re afraid to feel them at all [pp. 31–32].
Lewis continues, telling Freud, “The truth is that you’re terrified” (p. 32).
Recall that earlier in the play, when Lewis begins to explain his religious conversion, an air raid siren blares. As both men put on their gas masks, unable to escape to a shelter because of Freud’s frailty, Lewis turns off the lamp on Freud’s desk. The siren suddenly stops and the radio announcer declares it has been a false alarm. Lewis associates to his near-death encounter in World War I, losing his friend in an attack, and reacting instinctively to turning off the light. Freud reminds him that his instinct, fueled by his terror, compelled him to turn off the desk light, though it was not dark outside. This moving scene, as well as the occasions when Freud turns off the radio when music is played, raises questions about the terror and the defenses against it each man experiences—terror not only of bombings, but of internal bombardments, emotionally charged and ignited by unseen unconscious vibrations of affect and memory. What was it that neither man wanted to hear, see, or feel?
As the play accelerates to its powerful end (if not conclusion), Freud begins to cough and bleed profusely from the mouth. Shaken, Lewis rushes to get towels to assist. Freud pulls him closer, beseeching, “TAKE IT OUT! TAKE IT OUT! TAKE IT OUT!” (p. 32). Lewis wrenches out Freud’s prosthesis—an act of assistance Freud has made clear he entrusts only to Anna. This pivotal, powerful, and sexually evocative interaction transcends the spoken language of psychoanalysis, science, and religion. For a brief, petrifying moment the two men demonstrate a moving relationship that transcends their philosophical and theoretical differences—or, perhaps, stands as an example of them. Lewis’s actions rescue Freud temporarily and possibly help Lewis himself compensate for the death of his wartime buddy. Briefly, Freud becomes dependent on another man. I thought about the timing of Freud’s distress at this particular moment, which was immediately preceded by music and a conversation about his aversion to it. Becoming curious about the playwright’s creative process, I e-mailed St. Germain, inquiring about his thinking when creating this dramatic and psychologically powerful scene. With his permission, I quote his reply:
I hadn’t thought of it before writing the play. I was always concerned about putting as many “events” in it; to take advantage of any drama. Setting it on the day England entered the War, 2 weeks before FREUD’S death, etc. I think it came to me when Freud mentioned that he only let Anna help with his prosthesis. That guaranteed that Lewis would have to do it at some point, and the choking was valuable for realism, dramatic impact and bonding between the men (9/12/11).
What became clear for me is that this intense affective interaction, following heard but unseen dangers of music and sirens, was no accident for St. Germain’s sensitivities when he created this moment of “bonding” between Freud and Lewis. Their reactions viscerally speak to the need for emotional connection between two frightened human beings. Shaken, but regaining his composure, Freud comments that he has to think clearly after feeling deeply. He asks Lewis to leave.
Alone, Freud turns on his radio. King George VI’s voice is heard broadcasting from Buckingham Palace, informing listeners of “dark days ahead.” He asks for God’s blessings. Music, as always, follows the broadcast; Ballet of the Wood Creatures, by the English composer and organist Percy Whitlock, is played. This time Freud does not turn off his radio.
As the music continues and lights fade onstage, we too, essentially, are alone in our seats. St. Germain challenges us, as Freud and Lewis challenge each other, to question, to think, and to feel. One of these challenges is to consider the possibility that all of us are complex composites represented by our internal representations of both Freud and Lewis. This perspective suggests that the multiply determined conflicts expressed between these two men are universal psychic conflicts experienced within every one of us. In the final analysis, as well as the final session, we all are vulnerable, mortal, and fundamentally human.