Two weeks before I met the inimical Sandor Ferenczi I ran into Alfred Alder and Rollo May, both of whom were wearing slip-on loafers, Doctor May a pair of ecru Hushpuppies and Doctor Adler a pair of orthopaedic lifts, the heel on the right shoe considerably superior to the left, which he dragged behind him like a jury mast, his teeth clenched to biting. When I asked Doctor Adler, which I did, against my better judgment, how he’d come up with the inferiority complex, he answered, ‘look at my damn foot, it’s a god awful mess.’ Doctor May, who at the time was busying himself with a fly that had alit on the bridge of his nose, swatting at it with great force of habit, said, ‘for the love of Oedipus, man, can’t you see the man is deformed?’ I considered swiping both Doctors’ hats, Doctor Adler’s a felt Panama with a wren’s foot hatband, and Doctor May’s, a less austere fedora with a silk pell-mell brim, but kicked Doctor Adler’s leg from under him, causing a great kafuffle and gesticulating of hands, and continued on down the sidewalk as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. I am a Freudian, after all, a preschooler without a bobbin or string, an eye-gouger, a Fort/Da gone terribly wrong.
