Collaboration and Psychoanalysis – by David Galef

没有什么比疏远的父母更能鼓励孤独的追求了. I took early to reading as a silent companion. 我母亲在我十岁的时候去世了，我父亲更喜欢大人而不是孩子.

阅读是一种私人乐趣，写作最终也起到了类似的作用. In my late teens, when I began to write and publish my own work, 分享这个过程的想法只有在编辑阶段才有可能实现. 两个人以某种方式将他们的写作混合在一起的合作似乎透露了太多. 在我二十几岁的时候，我创作了很多故事和诗歌，过着幸福的孤独生活. My father, who had read some of my work with noncommittal approval, 在我成年后退居幕后. 我们相处得很好，但不常见面.

当我成为一名学者时，我的写作发生了重大转变. 我的一个想法是研究坎普美学的心理学, and I wanted a psycho-dynamic angle for the essay. I’d recently read Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’” 他不同意她的观点，即坎普源于一种“慷慨”的冲动和“对人性的热爱”.” My argument was that camp, like so much pointed humor, 从对社会价值和情感的激烈挖掘中获得能量. Beyond Freud’s Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious在美国，并没有太多关于我前进方向的文章. 我在大学里修了很多心理学课程，但显然我需要做更多的研究. On the other hand, my father, Harold Galef, was a psychoanalyst, always an avid reader, 一天下午，我们开始讨论夏令营的话题. Where I saw literary effects, he saw defense mechanisms; when I talked about the hip inside jokes that camp originated, 他把它们归结为对无聊的敌意, square world.

I found the colloquy stimulating. 虽然我和他的关系更多的是不在而不是在, I found myself making an offer. “你有兴趣和我合作写一篇文章吗??”

After a moment’s reflection, he said yes.

What followed was a lopsided but not unequal process. 而我在坎普的作品中贡献了艺术角度，从 Ronald Firbank’s The Artificial Princess to Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band在美国，父亲引导我研究奥托·费尼切尔和安娜·弗洛伊德的观点. 我们一边喝咖啡，有时喝白兰地，一边写文章，这对我们很有帮助, our outline and notes growing longer the more we met. 我的父亲不是那种被人称为热情奔放的人，但他对这个话题越来越有激情. 虽然他总是清晰而敏锐地陈述事情，但他不是一个天生的作家. 他喜欢把话记下来，一记不忘. 所以我写了我的那一半，修改了他的那一半，然后读给他听，记下他的评论. The grudges we held (power imbalance, 每当我们一起工作时，那些简短的交流和愤怒的沉默的记忆就消失了.

What I want to say, perhaps with some truth, is that the collaboration created a new connection, beyond the Oedipal conflict. 我们每个人都想展示自己最好的一面，也许会对自己和对方的表现感到惊讶. 这个联盟持续了几个月，期间我们写了一篇文章，叫《十大博彩推荐排名》?” Studies in Popular Culture 作为密西西比大学英语系和阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦医学院精神病学系的合作出版. We both regarded it as a success, 不仅是一起写文章，也是填补我们之间关系的空白.

Six months after its publication, the editor of Studies in Popular Culture 他联系了我，告诉我们我们获得了年度最佳论文奖. In congratulating me, the editor added, “有一天你一定要告诉我，和你哥哥这样工作是什么感觉. I could no more collaborate with my brother than fly.”

* * * *

十几年后，我获得了终身教职和晋升，萌生了写一篇分析文章的想法 Martha Bernays, Freud’s wife of over fifty years. It seemed to me that, for anyone pondering Freud’s views on women, surely Martha must have given Sigmund some ideas. 我再次求助于父亲，他的职业生涯已接近尾声. He was tired, 可能已经患有最终被诊断为帕金森病的症状. 尽管如此，他还是很高兴看到自己的名字出现在报纸上，并在那篇夏令营文章中被引用. 他也同意那个著名的问题的配偶，Was will das Weib?” (“What does woman want?”), was a subject worthy of analysis. He suggested a close look at Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality, among other sources.

我们采用了和上次一样的程序，讨论形成笔记和提纲. 不同的是，现在他更多地依靠我的权威. 我不想让他觉得受到威胁，所以我尽量淡化我的角色. 我把他领了出来，建议他走哪条路，然后把他的演讲分成几段.

这次合作的高潮出现在我们参观 Library of Congress together to view Freud’s Brautbriefe这是他和玛莎在恋爱四年期间交换的信件. In the end, our study, titled simply “Freud’s Wife,我查阅了大量的文字和传记证据，令父亲很满意, 他年轻时崇拜弗洛伊德，但现在有了更温和的看法. We placed it in 美国精神分析与动态精神病学学会杂志, where it slowly gained recognition. A few years later, Katja Behling’s Martha Freud came out, and an English translation emerged in 2005. But we’d staked our claim. 我父亲把我们的工作告诉了朋友和其他治疗师. I’d pleased him, and that made me guardedly happy.

Father-son collaborations are rare. 只有其中一人死亡，他们之间的权力关系才会结束, and even then it lives on in the other. Oedipal struggles are never quite resolved. 现在我有了一个儿子，他也写作，我更欣赏这种动态. 虽然我父亲在2012年去世了，但他一直活在引文中. It’s startling to see our names together in footnotes, 但这是合作的另一个方面:一种关系的证明.

– David Galef — fiction writer, critic, poet, 翻译和散文家，是十大博彩推荐排名州立大学的英语教授和创意写作项目主任. His third novel, How to Cope With Suburban Stress, was one of Kirkus’ 30 Best Books of 2007. His second short story collection, My Date With Neanderthal Woman获得了赞克图书首届短篇故事集奖. His most recent book is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook.