I thought of Archie—the psychiatrist to whom Tom had sent me for analysis. "Archie taught me psychology—Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian—and let me work out my own problems, aloud. He was a great teacher."
"He died of cancer," Tom mused.
"'—too'?"
He looked at me and grinned gently. "Masochism takes funny forms in you."
"In us all." I went back a little way in the discussion. "When I was a young guy, I formed the habit of listening to, and looking at, everything that happened in my mind. Ruling out nothing. Trying to relate everything to everything else. That's a good habit. That's the natural mind. There are too God-damned many prohibitions and taboos in the life of a Presbyterian minister's son to keep track of. So I started—as a game—ignoring all of them, in my head. Plenty of people do. I arrived—in that poem—at a pretty complete formulation of instinct and the laws of instinct—as Jung sees it working. As Toynbee sees it working collectively, on civilizations. As Northrop glimpses it. As Jesus tried to define it. As Aristotle didn't even guess it."
"So you think you really never underwent a philosophical change?"
"No. I lost sight of what I'd felt—when I was a dizzy, drunk Hollywood writer. But when Archie taught me Freud and Jung—I got back the insight—in contemporary terms and scientific formulations. That's all. And it isn't very much."
"Are you ever frightened?"
"I'm protoplasm, for God's sake!"
He chuckled. "That's a relief! I've wondered what are you scared of. Sometimes—you seem haunted. Most of the time, I could swear you were afraid of nothing."