ABSTRACT
Before the events I am about to relate, two young men had been meeting regularly, four times a week, for four months – engaging, that is, in psychoanalysis. Years later, one of the two, the doctor, recalled little of their first encounter. After finishing his story, the other had asked for ‘order’. ‘I want more order,’ he said. Not that he had appeared to the young doctor to be particularly confused. In fact the doctor had been struck by his rigid comportment, a kindness he found excessive and, above all, his look. A white film covered one eye and gave him a fixed look, while the other eye, still filled with the melancholy of childhood, conveyed great gentleness. He claimed to be a Freudian Marxist long after that period in history had come to an end. He had taken a few exams at the faculty of psychology, found he couldn’t go on and then started working in the civil service. The doctor will always remember one thing about their first encounter. He thought, and indeed said to himself: ‘This man is going to study’, or rather ‘I’ll make him study.’
