An analytic love story
Frances Partridge
BLOOMSBURY/FREUD: THE LETTERS OF JAMES AND ALIX STRACHEY 1924-1925 edited by Perry Meisel and Walter Kendrick
Chatto &Windus, 174.95 tee
T. here are some who find psychoanaly- sis a subject that searchingly illuminates !he human predicament; others see it as 'cod for hilarity. Both views can find suPPort in this book of letters between two c)f its earliest English practitioners, but Tuch of its interest for the general reader 1 es in the touching relationship it reveals. kt might be called an analytic love story ue.tween a couple whose language is seeded th expressions from the vocabulary of rroudianism, and to one of whom it is of 11,rgeot relevance. I should be sorry if this f"ccoont frightened away possible readers, 1..°.r James and Alix Strachey were both ,gighlY remarkable for intelligence, humour 'Id total integrity. Their marriage was close and devoted, but since they were hardly ever apart the only time they had occasion to write to each other was during 1924-5, when James was seeing patients in London and Alix was under analysis in Berlin.
In 1920 James Strachey and his newly married wife (née Alix Sargant-Florence) travelled to Vienna and were both analy- sed comparatively briefly by Freud him- self. The master was an anglophile, who especially loved our literature, from Milton to Lytton Strachey. He seems to have chosen James to be the John the Baptist to spread his doctrines in England, but a nearly fatal attack of pneumonia put an end to Alix's sessions. (The Stracheys were hard up and post-war Vienna was bleak.) She recovered, but since she was still suffering from fairly serious neurotic symp- toms James showed his dedication to the new faith by urging her to continue treat- ment under Karl Abraham in Berlin, while he himself returned to London with Freud's blessing.
There were curious differences between the two. Alix had the more remarkable mind: she could do pretty well whatever she wanted — understand philosophy, draw and paint, or play in the boys' first cricket eleven at Bedales. She also had a passion for such things as ice-cream and champagne, motor-bicycling and ballroom dancing! James was somewhat overshad- owed by his brother Lytton and family pride in general, but he was a clever man and a superb and scholarly translator of the complete works of Freud in 22 volumes — no mean achievement. He wrote to Lytton about his analysis by Freud: 'The Prof himself is most affable, and as an artistic performer dazzling . . . almost every hour is made into an organic aesthetic whole.'
The editors' excellent introduction takes up 50 pages; the rest of the book is devoted to the almost daily correspondence be- tween husband and wife. Herein lies the emotional drama, for the parting had been a painful wrench between two people deeply in love. Their great honesty makes Alix's letters moving. There was something rock-like in her nature. 'Dearest, dearest James,' she writes in her first letter, 'what I wanted to say most I never could in the end, which is how perfect you have always been to me. No one else ever could be like you.' James, more of an Edinburgh rock maybe, was composed of layers of self- mockery or arrogance enclosing deep inex- pressible emotion. `Do you know what a splendid person you are?' he writes. 'It's you that makes everything worth while.' Alix's letters describe intrigues among Freud's apostles, or dancing all night in louche Berlin night-clubs, while James writes about the civilised life of Gordon Square — music, the ballet, books and politics. The letters of both are concerned with developments in Freudian theory, and are decorated with references to 'the reality-principle', 'penis-envy', or 'narciss- ism as big as a house'.
Gradually the tone of the letters changes, and one is aware that their so different surroundings are drawing the writers apart. James still hankers painfully for Alix, but she meets his suggestion of a visit bluntly: 'I don't want you to come to Berlin. Please don't think of it . . . I'm only certain of one thing, which is that I must be alone here until April or perhaps longer . . . All my love nevertheless.' It is clear that the third party in the eternal triangle is Karl Abraham, and goodness knows how things would have turned out for the Stracheys had not Abraham fallen gravely ill that summer and died on Christ- mas Day.
These letters between two unusual peo- ple contain wit and anecdote in plenty, stories about Maynard Keynes, Frank Ramsey and the Woolfs, a comic account of Lydia Lopokova learning to ride a bicycle. It is a book that can be read on several levels, like Spenser's Faerie Queene, according to whether the reader is interested in the Stracheys, Freud's theories, or the rich comedy of life in Bloomsbury and Berlin, extracted (like beauty) by the eyes of two beholders.
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