We earlier recalled the tragic
memories of der kleine Hans.
Now here, a mini-distaff version, recalling a summer visit by Dr. Sigmund
Freud, to the Jones family, vacationing in Grinzing :
He surprised my little girl, aged
five, by taking hold of her nose between two fingers; but, ignoring this castrating symbolism, she won his
heart by immediately offering him
her doll.
-- Ernest Jones, Freud: The Last
Phase (1957), p. 196
And this (vaguely, stirring)
brings something back, from my own fifth year, staying with my grandmother in
Garden City.
Some avuncular wag, probably of
the good-hearted sort whose repertoire of native wit is not large, but who is
delighted at the opportunity to épater
les gosses,
did likewise (as I sat on the
front-porch swing, not a care in the world, really)
snip at my button-nose, with his
two first fingers: yet then (here
comes the good part), between these same two larcenous fingers,
display a wiggling nubbin (which
later scientific investigation revealed to be merely the first joint of his own
thumb), proclaiming:
“Got your nose! Got your nose!”
(In defense of the Viennese
doctor, we must concede, that the resultant demi-protruding member was
not a little glans-like, at least for those of us who rejoice in our membership
in the brit milah.)
Rare was the child who did not
check, with a hand, to make sure that the member was still there. Non-existent was the child, who did not
then heartily laugh, and ask to see the trick again.
(Contrary to what you might expect
from the alleged supremacy of the unmanning-complex, these events were not accompanied
by any anxiety that I can recall.)
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