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Memoires 1979-B (2011)

Memoires 1979-B

(2011)–Willem Oltmans–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

New York

13 september 1979

Belde Peter gisteren al op het vliegveld. Edwin van Wijk is op Amerbos bij hem. Alles is okay.

Nam een kamer in het Van der Bilt ymca, mijn favoriete plek, goedkoop en met privacy. En een enkele keer een acceptabel ventje op de koop toe.

Vandaag begint in het American Museum of Natural History een Margaret Mead Film Festival. Het wordt voor de vierde maal georganiseerd. Zou alles willen zien, maar daar is dus helaas geen beginnen aan.

De opgeklopte rel rond Cuba duurt voort. The Wall Street Journal voorspelt een hele serie crises à la Cuba in de wereld, omdat de sovjets blijven proberen de overheersing van de vs in te perken. Richard Burt meent dat wellicht de nieuwe confrontatie met Cuba langs diplomatieke kanalen in Moskou kan worden teruggedraaid. Er wordt in Washington gevreesd dat het kabaal rond Havana dermate werd opgeblazen dat gezichtsverlies voor de vs niet kan worden voorkomen. Bernard Gwertzman schrijft in The New York Times134 dat de regering Carter nu denkt dat de sovjetmilitairen op Cuba zijn om Cubanen op te leiden voor de strijd in Afrika.

Zelfs The New York Times produceerde een absoluut misselijk en kleinerend hoofdartikel over de negentig niet-gebonden landen die in Havana bijeen zijn geweest.135 Het slotcommuniqué wordt omschreven als ‘a record for woolly silliness’. Men zou hebben besloten tegen alle vormen van overheersing in de wereld te zijn ‘except those promoted by the Soviet Union’. De arrogantie kan niet op. Ik voeg het hier bij.136 Het zegt alles over de houding die de Amerikanen jegens ontwikkelingslanden zullen blijven innemen. Ze denken dat zij zich dit van eeuwigheid tot zaligheid zullen kunnen blijven permitteren. Ik denk dus - vandaar Amerika valt - dat dit niet het geval zal zijn. Het is toch eigenlijk een ramp, dat dankzij de sabotage

vanuit Den Haag, ik nergens, als andere journalisten, mijn mening in Nederland kan verkondigen.

Ontmoette Lloyd deMause, directeur van het Psychohistorisch Instituut in New York, als altijd interessant. Ik vertelde hem over het intelligentieprogramma in Venezuela en vroeg of hij dacht dat dit mogelijk was. ‘Or is it crazy?’

‘You know me. I think, intelligence is the last thing that makes any difference. The emotional side, to me, is far more important than the intellectual side. No matter how smart you are, it all depends on how your emotions function. The Nazis had some awfully smart people around inside the party. It's the heart that matters. Where is the heart?’

‘You go that far?’ vroeg ik verbaasd.

‘Gee, I really do. I got to the point, that I have become more and more radical in terms of where your heart directs your intelligence.’

‘But do we know anything pertinent about the interaction between thinking and feeling?’

‘Sure, we know a lot. Psycho-analytical theory is based on exactly that. Recently a book was published about the scientific value of psycho-analysis, even in two volumes. It lists an enormous number of experimental psycho-analytic testing. It comes to the conclusion that psycho-analytic theory, though everybody says it is not tested, is in effect more tested than any theory in the history of psychology. Most of the tests are positive. Anyway, we know a lot. The same way, we are beginning to know about historical groups and group-fantasies, to understand that it does not matter how smart or intelligent you are. What did they call the Vietnam fiasco? The best of the brightest. Right. Here were our best and brightest people at work. Walt Whitman Rostov, and all the others, all of Harvard went those days to Washington.’

Hij vervolgde: ‘For decades Americans have been saying: “if we could only get the intelligent people out of Harvard to work for the Government, our problems would be solved.” John F. Kennedy got most of his people from Cambridge and what did they do? They went to war in Vietnam for a dozen years.137 It was a damn thing to do for an intelligent bunch of people. Their hearts were screwed up.’

‘When you say hearts, you mean, emotions?’

‘Yes. Take Jimmy Carter. He has a higher iq than any president in history of the United States, I guarantee you. If you

take an aptitude test on this man, you will discover he has the highest iq and is brighter than anyone we ever had before him in the White House.’

De Mause meende dat Carter onder enorme druk stond vanuit het publiek om zich macho op to stellen namens de vs.

‘The cartoons, the headlines, the metaphors and opening paragraphs, that we have been analyzing in Time or Newsweek point into one direction, one kind of imagery, “collapse”, “death”, “destruction”. I describe the inside of American heads right now in a state of collapse paranoid being. It is full of destruction and collapse, and of ego boundaries, collapse of confidence in ourselves and in our leader. There is hatred, rage, and what we are asking him to do is to handle that rage. We want Carter to find some place for an outlet. If he does not find a way to handle that rage, we are going to direct it towards him. So far, he has failed over and over again to find us a place to dump that rage into.’

‘Carter is too intelligent to start a war?’

‘Maybe he is. Maybe he has got some sense. Eisenhower did the same thing. He did not go to war during the eight years of his reign. But when everybody was screaming at him, like: “We have got to get into Dien Bien Phu, we have got to throw atomic bombs on the edge of China because Quemoy and Matsu islands were so terribly important to us”, Eisenhower would go out on the White House lawn and we would scream at him that he was a dumbbell. We are doing that to Carter right now. We are pressing Carter to throw his weight around about Soviet troops on Cuba right now, be tough, tough, tough.’

‘What will happen next?’

‘He has got to find a way to handle our rage. Look at the cartoons in the media. The death images are directed towards him. Why did Carter go to the mountain top during his vacation? Remember Moses went there, when everything was collapsing around him, when he did believe in God, and received God's message and came down. Watch the people now who are full of libidinal and sexual dancing around golden calves. We have new orgies around gasoline pumps. The people who draw up these cartoons are normal people, but they don't realize that they give vent to all these widespread feelings of frustration and rage.’

‘When is your next project available, the one in which you maintain that all children are unhappy. Perhaps that's why we have in Holland Mother Juliana as Queen?’

I do not quite understand the imagery the Dutch use for their Queen. I am sure it is maternal. Do they hate her? Is it repressed hate or rage?’

‘No, it's boundless joy and love for her majesty. She represents God and says so herself: The job is given to her by the Lord, of course. Completely cuckoo.’

‘Sheer love? Idealized?’ wilde Lloyd weten.

‘I think it goes back to the pharaoh's. The queen has the function in the collective psyche of the ideal mother, without faults, who loves us all, and is protecting all children.’

‘A totally idealized good mother image. Where does the splitoff hatred disappear to in the political system in the Netherlands?’ vroeg hij me.

‘To the prime minister and the cabinet or political leaders in general. But are you sure that the hatred needs to be there?’

‘The political system is there to keep apart your real mother,’ meende Lloyd. ‘You have to both love and hate at the same time, you have to stand the guilt, that you hate her, while it is the same person that you did in fact love, because she took care of you, so that's very hard to take. Feeling guilty about one's hatred, it is hard to love fully. But in politics, you can split this stuff apart and keep the hatred away from the love.’

‘We have now one hundred years queens at the top in our kingdom, and while satellites circle Venus, can you tell me how this symbol still survives?’

‘How do we take a lot of other things serious? We put these mortals up as puppets to fill fantasy needs. First, we have a fantasy in our heads, and next we pick someone to embody it. It doesn't matter what kind of people they are. If Hitler had been shot in 1932, Germany would have gone into the same direction and become a fascist state. They would have put up some other puppet there. They still would have wanted to kill the Jews. This had nothing to do with Hitler's personality.138 Of course, Adolf had a perfect personality for all these things. You usually find a very crazy person to do very crazy things. But then, there are lots of crazy people to pick from.’

‘At random galore.’

‘You need mentally stable people at another time. It all depends in what phase, what cycle you are in.’

‘But why does Germany get into such a phase, and for instance Holland and Sweden not at all?’ vroeg ik me nu af.

‘I have not studied as yet long periods of peace in any country.

I have studied various periods where they threw out bad leaders and killed them. In the parliamentarian system you can throw a bad leader out. Here we would have to impeach a leader, if he is bad, in order to get him out. But to do this is difficult. When Richard Nixon was collapsing and we needed either to go to war or to kill him, we directed him through our fantasies to commit political suicide by paying off the Watergate conspirators. Therefore, we could end up killing him by forcing him to give up his leadership position. In the parliamentary system you shift leaders by voting them out of their jobs.’

‘But is there a clear explanation why the world still embraces thirteen kings and three queens?’

‘I really do not understand this myself. You will have to figure that out. Discover first what the imagery is. Actually, you will have to sit down and do a fantasy analysis of somebody talking about the queen. Discover what images are used, what metaphors are used, what strong feelings are expressed, what the body language is. Just circle them and you will be surprised how awful that circling turns out to be.’

‘Lenin is a similar totem,’ zei ik.

‘I am not sure that your queen plays that kind of image. It may be more like a representative of the group or a substitute for the feminine group who is being conquered, I don't know. Do political leaders win the confidence of the queen?’

‘The queen perhaps does but in the end it is irrelevant, because the queen is a puppet and not supposed to open her mouth.’ ‘Is she always portrayed as watching the political process? With big eyes, like a Mummy, always watching? The political process is going on like a play-group. Mummy is off here, on one side of the play-ground, watching whether the subjects are good or bad. If they are bad they are being spanked,’ verbeeldde Lloyd.

‘I received a letter,’ gaf ik als voorbeeld, ‘from Rabbi Marvin Antelman, Chief Justice of the Supreme Rabbinic Court of America139 in which he confirmed that Henry Kissinger had been excommunicated. There you have another aspect of totemism.’

‘If you want a real splash, find out what he writes in his memoirs that are about to be published,’ was Lloyds reactie.

‘Each historical group,’ vervolgde hij, ‘each area or country, has to get rid of this rage somehow, which essentially is direct-



illustratie

ed to their leader. It is the function of certain groups to be delegate groups, thus delegates of the main group. Jews have been the eternal delegates for European rage for two thousand years.’

‘You are now speaking of the group fantasy of Judaism?’

‘Through fantasy the leaders are becoming aware that religion is dying. God is dead. Who takes religion any longer into account anymore anywhere in the world?140 The notion of the Westbank belonging to Israel is crazy, just because some prophet back in the desert decided it had to be that way. I see the religiosity of Israel being delegated by the rest of the world. The non-jews have said to the jews that they will be allowed to be religious. We will all nod at them. We won't attack them. We give them permission to be religious. Be religious and be super-patriotic, because if you antagonize the world, antagonize the Arabs, antagonize America of Jimmy Carter, as you are as nasty as you can be, as super nationalistic as you can be, we at least have one last religious playground for our irrational emotions. We will encourage you to act out, what we ourselves can no longer do. We have atomic bombs, we cannot fuck around with our own nationalism, we can't push the Soviets around that much anymore, because they have atomic bombs too and so on. This is all very dangerous. In Israel we created a play-ground for our irrational group-fantasies. That is too, why we pour so many arms in there. Eight billion dollars in modern arms to guarantee peace. Somewhere along the line somebody has to wake up.’ ‘You are saying, that human beings need a proper outlet for their irrational fantasies?’

‘It seems we do have these fantasies.’

‘Can't we find other ways to act out fantasies, that anyway have nothing to do with reality?’

‘I don't know. That is our problem to do it non-violently.’

‘How do these irrationalities get into our heads in the first place?’

‘They originate in our emotionally laden bad and confused childhood.’

‘Then we are back in Caracas and the Machado program. As Jose Delgado says: “Avoid coding the nonsense accumulated in a few thousand years of history into children's heads.”’

‘Yes, but instead of programming children's minds, I would phrase it a little different. So far we programmed hatred in children's minds, because the family is a cauldron of hatred. Kids essentially grow up infantile. It is infantile to simply act out group fantasies. We have to have a revolution in the family atmosphere. Instead of hatred we have to pour love and good health in. Then you will act rational. If we continue to pour hatred in, then kids will be growing up irrationally.’

‘And remain irrational throughout life,’ trok ik zijn verhaal door.

‘Well, that's a simplified version. We are in a hate culture. We are trying very hard to overcome it. If I were to be asked: “Where do you apply the world's resources as the greatest leverage towards future rationality, towards the future in general?’ I would say: apply them during those first six years that the young person's mind is growing, and being shaped. You apply love, health and understanding.141

‘You feel that paren ts are doing that, aiming at that result?’

‘They are. But they are certainly not trying to do it socially, or as a group. Our government expenditures, the social input, do not start prior to a child being six years old. In 1864, a bunch of people were sitting around like you and me now. They were saying: “I have a dream. What if there were a million teachers in the usa? Would it not be wonderful if the entire country became literate?” Now we know that that's not enough. Now we know that literacy is only one tenth of the whole story. The other nine tenth, those first six years we virtually ignore. I imagine, that one day, their might be one million psycho-analytic social workers or helpers. That families, when the child goes into the home when it returns from the birth clinic, will be guided four times a week for one hour a day by visiting psycho-analytical social workers. They have them already in a few areas as a try out. They are going in to help the mother. Because, after all, if the mother feels, that she is loved, she can give more love to the child.’

‘Now, that is exactly what dr. Machado and his teams are doing right now in Venezuela,’ riep ik uit.

‘You have got to get into homes.’

‘They do that right now in Venezuela via television. Mothers are being told via tv-ads what not to do in order not to damage their offspring irreparably.’

‘That is part of the story, sure. But what you are saying is not enough either. You have got to get inside the home.’

‘What better way then through the television screen?’

‘To do it intellectually is not enough. The worker has to see the mother with the child and see that the mother lets the baby cry perhaps too long, or that the mother is smothering the child on her breast, because the mother is clinging to the child too much in order to satisfy her own breast or unfulfilled breast needs. There are dozens of things that mothers do wrongly. Parents should be helped and behavior at the source of the child's life during those first six years has to be corrected. It costs too much effort to undo the damage later. Crises occur 30 or 40 years later and then they need ten years of psycho-analysis. Who can afford this? It costs much less to bring social psycho-analytical workers into homes early on, then to have to pay at a later date for guards at penitentiaries, or to have to quell riots and burned down areas, set afire by people running wild, or name all the other neurotic problems you have.’

‘Including war,’ voegde ik toe.

‘Fortunes are spent on wars. If we could direct defense budgets to the social helpers in the family, that is leverage. Intelligent emotional approaches have to be followed. We don't need more teaching, more knowledge or book learning. The best way for Venezuela to do it is through life person-to-person interpersonal contact.’

‘In other words, instead of training an army of one million soldiers, who know how to shoot and destroy, you would raise an army of psycho-analytic medics.’

‘That is right. It took us in America one generation to educate and train one million teachers. This was just before the turn of the century. By enormous expenses we poured money into training teachers. Do you realize, that the International Psycho Analytic Society has perhaps 6.000 members in the entire world of 4,2 billion people?’

‘Yes, in Japan there are only a few dozen psycho-analysts on a population of 130 million.’

‘If you want to know where to put the leverage in stopping wars, in stopping irrational and random behavior, or violence, we have to put the leverage in those six first years that the mind of the child is being shaped. That is my own personal Utopia.

Every thinker has an Utopian vision of how to change things and make a better world.’

‘I was rereading some Nietzsche these days, who wrote many ideas so essential to our discussion. Can you explain why one hundred years later he is largely unknown and ignored?’

‘When we publish in our Journal of Psycho History an article on group-fantasy, it is just too much for people to digest. It's too wild for them, too crazy, too commonsensical to believe that what is happening in the world, is just that. People are constantly going to war for internal reasons. They split-off their rage at their leaders. And you ask about Nietzsche who is even much more difficult to understand. All I am doing is take my readers by the hand and tell them to look at this but it is too difficult for them.’

‘But Nietzsche is not that hard to understand either.’

We spraken één uur samen. Flarden van ons gesprek waren interessant als altijd met Lloyd.

Eindelijk beseffen de sovjets dat Iran in de handen van gekken is gevallen. Izvestia publiceerde een commentaar, dat de zogenaamde Islamitische Revolutie van ayatollah Khomeini een schoolvoorbeeld is van uit de hand gelopen religieus fanatisme.142

Bijna was ik St. Patricks Cathedral binnengegaan, uit macht der gewoonte, om twee kaarsen te branden. Ik kwam bij de ingang op mijn schreden terug, want die handeling verrichten zou in strijd zijn met wat ik denk en zeg. Nietzsches invloed?

Op het Nederlandse Consulaat werd geheimzinnig gedaan en overleg gepleegd - deuren eerst gesloten - over mijn verzoek een extra dik paspoort te kunnen krijgen in verband met mijn vele reizen en visa. Walgelijk.

Kwam op weg naar een restaurant met Mora Henskens de Indonesische diplomaat Abdullah Kamil tegen, met vier landgenoten. Hij was zeer hartelijk, maar ik zei hem het buitengewoon triest te vinden dat Indonesië in Havana werd gerangschikt onder de conservatieve ontwikkelingslanden. Hij antwoordde met de hand op het hart: ‘All that matters is how we feel.’ Hij was zelf ook in Cuba geweest.

14 september 1979

Peter schreef een brief. ‘I want to spend another week at least in Tilburg. It did me so much good to be with my Mother. It's like it soothes my subconscious. She surprises me more and

more like her strength of thinking and her mild outlook on life. Getting me another bike really moved me and she treats me with so much respect.’

Hij heeft op mams sterfdag, zoals ik heb gevraagd, ‘een beautiful groen takje dat ik ergens plukte, in het vaasje voor je Moeder gezet. Het staat er nog in. It looks so green and pure. Burned a candle in het Begijnenhof terwijl men het rozenhoedje aan het bidden was, dat ik zelf ook duizenden malen heb opgezegd. In die paar seconden kwamen allerlei flarden van mijn katholieke verleden terug gevlogen,’ aldus Peet.

Ontmoeting met H. Shirley Amerasinghe, president van de derde conferentie inzake unclos (vn-zeerechtverdrag). ‘The untapped mineral riches of the sea represent great temptations to the technically advanced nations,’ schreef The New York Times.143 Ook de ontwikkelingslanden zullen alles in het werk stellen om uit de zee rond hun landen een slaatje te slaan. ‘The life and other treasures in the sea have become vital to millions of people. The political problems involved in mining minerals and drilling for oil and gas have become critical,’ aldus de Times. Voor de vs bemoeit Elliot Richardson zich er mee, dus een van de beste mensen die zij hebben. Het gesprek met de heer Amerasinghe begon 45 minuten te laat. Ik schreef net een briefje dat ik weer vertrok. Rode roos in de revers, een Sri Lankees van de oude koloniale stempel. Hij verontschuldigde zich wel, maar begon met een telefoongesprek dat twaalf minuten duurde. Het ging over problemen met zijn auto. Veel bijzonders had de man me niet te vertellen, en eigenlijk had ik mijn werkelijke belangstelling al verloren.

Mijn volgende gesprek was met rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president van de Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Aardige man, in een sweater, informele ontmoeting.

Er bestaan niet al te hartelijke betrekkingen in de vs tussen joden en negers. Negers vinden dat de joodse zakenwereld gewoon doorgaat met zaken doen in Zuid-Afrika, in plaats van rekening te houden met een onmenselijke behandeling van zwarten in dat land.144 Elf Amerikaanse joodse organisaties hebben nu stelling genomen. Schindlers club heeft 1,2 miljoen leden met 750 aangesloten synagogen. Hij is bevriend met Menachem Begin en heeft contacten met Anwar Sadat en het Witte Huis.

De rabbi vertelde dat toen Andrew Young als prominente neger werd weggewerkt als ambassadeur bij de vn - omdat hij

contacten met Palestijnen zou hebben gehad - dit de joodse lobby in de schoenen geschoven werd. ‘Dat is absolute nonsens. Geen enkele joodse organisatie heeft bij het Witte Huis aangedrongen op de vervanging van Andrew Young.’ Volgens rabbi Schindler ging het er in werkelijkheid om de plo van een terreurorganisatie om te buigen naar een aanvaardbare onderhandelingspartner.

‘Toch is er een golf van antisemitisme onder negers hier opgestoken.’

‘We hebben nota genomen van deze schandelijke trend in onze betrekkingen met de zwarte gemeenschap. Het is duidelijk dat Young als invloedrijke man uit de affaire naar voren zal komen.’

‘Khadaffi zegt nu, dat hij de Amerikaanse zwarten zal gaan financieren.’

‘Dat zou inderdaad een gevaar zijn. Vergeet niet, dat de joodse steun voor de rechten van zwarten in niet-materiële zin even belangrijk was. In 1964 was bij de demonstraties in Mississippi de helft van de betogende studenten joods. Drie van de toen door de politie vermoorde studenten waren joden.’

‘Hoe verklaart u het gewijzigde prestige van de plo in de wereld?’

‘Dat het prestige van de plo is gestegen, is betreurenswaardig. Het is een feit dat men uiteindelijk geen overeenkomst kan bereiken zonder hen er bij te betrekken. Maar er bestaat in de vs, ook onder de zwarten, veel verwarring over de strijd van de plo en de zaak van de Palestijnen.’

Tot mijn verbazing vond Schindler het dus ook geen verstandige politiek van Israël om op dit moment juist door te gaan met het bouwen van nederzettingen in Arabisch gebied. Ik vond de rabbi een schrandere en liberale figuur.145 Hij noemde overigens rabbi Antelman en Co. ‘a bunch of lunatics’.

15 september 1979

Had last night the longest blowjob in history. Sliep daarna in de ymca als een blok.

De actrice Jean Seberg (40) heeft vorige week zelfmoord gepleegd door een overdosis barbituraten. Thans is bekend geworden dat de fbi in 1970 toestemming vroeg en kreeg van J. Edgar Hoover om bekend te maken dat zij zwanger was, zodat dit ‘would cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the general public’. Dat vond de fbi nodig omdat

Seberg de Amerikaanse zwarte beweging steunde. In 1970 was zij zwanger van de Franse diplomaat Romain Gary. Toen zij dus de via het zogenaamde cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program) van de fbi, leugens las over haar en een Zwarte Panter, raakte zij er dermate van overstuur, dat zij moest worden opgenomen en het kind verloor. Gary heeft nu in Parijs gezegd dat de fbi er in was geslaagd haar leven te vernietigen. Luns en zijn kornuiten proberen met mij al jarenlang hetzelfde te doen. Ze zullen toch van goede huize moeten komen willen ze er bij mij ooit in slagen.146

Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, de Zwitserse psychiater, de pionierster op het gebied van begeleiding van stervenden, heeft zich nabij San Diego gevestigd in een villa genaamd Shanti Nilaya - wat Home of Peace in Sanskriet betekent - om zich aan spiritualisme te gaan wijden. Thanatology betekent dus: de studie van de dood. Geleidelijk aan is zij overtuigd geraakt dat ‘there is no death, but life after life, a happy existence in which all the physical ailments and mental problems of the body disappear.’ Hoe komt ze er aan? Hoe weet zij dit zo zeker? Haar stelling heeft heel wat wenkbrauwen doen fronsen in de wetenschappelijke wereld. Zij zegt ‘to have encountered materialized supernatural spirits’ waardoor nog meer wetenschappers zich blijkbaar van haar afkeren.147

Nu heeft zij haar ‘workshops for the dying’ ook nog samengevoegd met een onduidelijke Church of the Facet of Divinity, opgericht door een voormalige fabrieksarbeider en diens vrouw. Ik zal nooit begrijpen hoe verondersteld intelligente mensen in de soep terecht komen of naar spiritualisme grijpen, als ze het niet meer zien zitten. Lex Poslavsky schijnt nu ook op zijn oude dag tot de Roomse kerk te zijn toegetreden, zij het onder invloed van zijn tweede vrouw: Onbegrijpelijk.

Stendhal overleed als gevolg van een hartaanval toen hij uit het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken in Parijs kwam. Een jaar eerder had hij zich eens laten ontvallen: ‘I find there is nothing ridiculous in dying in the street, as long as one does not do it deliberately.’148

Er is een nieuwe biografie over Stendhal verschenen.

Ik wist niet dat hij in Napoleons leger meevocht en Moskou heeft zien branden. Hij moet in Napoleon hebben geloofd, en overleefde nauwelijks de terugtocht uit Rusland.

‘The calculating and timid Stendhal was given to something

like seizures of romantic feeling which dissolved in tears, before the moment of achievement,’ schrijft V.S. Pritchett in The New York Review of Books.149

‘He was driven to brothels,’ dat is dus Stendhals manier van wat ik altijd noem to keep the plumbing running. Dan vind ik Thermos toch wenselijker en acceptabeler.



illustratie

Storm over cuba staat op de omslag van Time vergezeld van portretjes van Fidel Castro en minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Cyrus Vance, wat dus nergens op slaat. Het gaat dus maar steeds over die paar duizend sovjetmilitairen op het eiland. Carter wordt als vastberaden macholeider afgebeeld. Dat is andere koek, dan de in Christus herboren voormalige colporteur van Bijbels. Een volkomen kunstmatig opgeblazen verhaal om de Conferentie van Niet-Gebonden Landen een ‘tegenwicht’ te bezorgen.150

In een aanvullende reportage wordt die conferentie nog verder belachelijk gemaakt, bijvoorbeeld door te vermelden dat bij het afhalen door Castro van president Saddam Hoessein van Irak, het Egyptische volkslied ten gehore werd gebracht, terwijl Irak zeer kritisch staat tegen over Anwar Sadat.

Newsweek gaf een overzicht over de politieke oriëntatie van de niet-gebonden landen zoals Washington dit ziet. Indonesië als conservatief is mij een doorn in het oog.



illustratie

Taxi

Peter: zou jij er op willen toezien dat mijn brieven, die ik je al sedert 1967 schrijf, worden uitgegeven parallel aan mijn dagboeken?

Museum of Natural History, 10:30 uur

Eigenlijk heb ik al die jaren dat ik al - sedert 1948 - in Manhattan heb rondgelopen, dit gebouw (van binnen) gemist. De Margaret Mead-films werden in het souterrain vertoond. Ik passeerde absoluut magnifieke vitrines. Rhoda Métraux, Margarets beste vriendin - we lunchten eens met z'n drieën in haar flat aan de Westside - en ook dochter Catherine Bateson zijn aanwezig. Margaret en Gregory Bateson maakten de eerste films samen over de opvoeding van kinderen op Bali in de jaren dertig. Catherine vertelde dat Freuds uitspraak: ‘You can ruin your child's life during the first week of his life,’ toen al bekend was. Men hechtte er groot belang aan. Dat is dus wat Delgado, Machado en deMause uitvoerig met me hebben besproken. Ik heb Margaret Mead zoveel jaren gekend en over dit werk en onderzoek uit haar leven weet ik niets.

Ontmoette Eqbal Ahmad van het Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. Hij schreef in The New York Times151 over de neiging van derdewereldlanden in de wapenhandel terecht te komen en daar vervolgens in te verzanden. Tussen 1964 en 1975 is de aankoop van wapens in ontwikkelingslanden met vijfhonderd procent toegenomen, namelijk van 1,5 miljard dollar naar 9,9 miljard. In 1978 hebben de derdewereldlanden voor 20 miljard dollar aan wapens ingekocht. Amerika neemt vijftig procent van deze bedrijvigheid voor haar rekening. Prettig gesprek over een wanstaltig onderwerp.

16 september 1979

Kan niet wachten Peter weer in mijn armen te houden.

Heerlijk zonnig en koel weer. Wandel zo naar de 99th street voor een gesprek met psychiater Charles Socarides, die zich specialiseert in homoseksualiteit.152 Ik verheug me op dit gesprek. Eerder dit jaar schreef hij bovendien een artikel voor het Journal of Psycho-History met de titel why sirhan killed robert kennedy: psychoanalytic speculations on an assassination.153

In deze analyse vertelde Socarides dat Sirhan Sirhan vijandig en

geïrriteerd reageerde op onderzoek naar zijn seksuele leven. Zijn broer Sharif vertelde dat zijn leven om boeken draaide en hij meestal in zijn eigen kamer zat. ‘I don't know whether he ever went to date a girl,’ aldus Sharif. In zijn dagboek werd een aantekening van Sirhan gevonden: ‘Let me make love to a boy if I don't find a nice clean girl to make love to.’

Wanneer de psychiater Bernard Diamond uit Berkeley, Californië, Sirhan Sirhan in trance brengt - onder hypnose dus - ‘and Sirhan relived the moments immediately preceding, and synchronous with the pulling of the trigger (killing rfk) the defense psychiatrist chose to overlook completely the significance of Sirhan's grabbing at his pants during the hypnotic state as he became increasingly excited up to the moment of pulling the trigger.’ Dr. Socarides vervolgde: ‘Whew! Now Sirhan was grabbing for his gun again, but instead of grabbing his left hip, he was grabbing at the front of his pants, his penis. Sirhan was trembling violently, half hissing, half panting like someone approaching a sexual climax.’

Ik vroeg de psychiater om nadere gedachten rond de homoseksualiteit van Sirhan Sirhan, en of dit bewezen kon worden.

‘He has given in to these homosexual impulses while in prison, we know that. He was not forced to have sex with men in prison. He was terribly afraid of women. Had he found an outlet prior to this assassination, rfk might be alive today.’

‘How much can we say about this in your newspaper?’ wilde Socarides weten.

‘In Holland you can write anything.’

‘We have tried to document what Sirhan said in prison. I spoke at length with Robert Kaiser, who wrote rfk must die!154

Kaiser spent weeks and months with Sirhan for this book. Maybe Sirhan lied, but he seemed not to have been forced into homosexual acts.’

‘Maybe one gets forced once, but if it is not your line, you won't do it twice.’

‘Right. Kaiser concluded over and over again, that there was no real explanation for the murder of Robert Kennedy. The defense said Sirhan was suffering from a hysteroid kind of feud like state. He went into a dissociative state, hypnotic prone as he is. Still, this does not provide any understanding of what happened there. The prosecution said, Sirhan killed rfk because he sent fifty Phantom jets to Israel. But Sirhan did not even know about that. All this is ridiculous.’

Hij vervolgde: ‘To my mind, Sirhan had a kind of grievance. He should not be in prison at all, but in a psychiatric hospital. In essence he was psychotic when he fired at Kennedy. He still sticks to the idea, that he killed because of these jets. He is prone to psychotic episodes. He vented his aggression to an idealized object.’

‘If he ever leaves prison, he will become a full time homosexual’

‘If he does, that is fine. But Sirhan does not admit to such relations.’

‘In freedom he will reach that stage let's hope, because it would normalize him.’

‘If Sirhan could have made some kind of relationship to a friend or a lover, he would have been relieved of the need to destroy the omnipotent object that he found in rfk. After all, he committed one of the major crimes of the century.’

‘And nobody figured out the origin in Sirhan's mind where it all came from.’

‘No, you are the only journalist who contacted me on my article in the Bulletin of Psycho-History on Sirhan Sirhan.’

‘There is a passage about this psychiatrist who brought Sirhan in prison under hypnosis. Is that allowed?’

‘Obviously. Kaiser was present when I submitted my paper on Sirhan to the American Psycho Analytical Association. The audience was spellbound.’

‘What disturbs me is that when homosexuals are discussed in the media, it is always in terms of extreme cases, transvestites or people who paint their faces. Don't you agree that the far majority of homosexuals live normal and inoffensive lives?’

‘A great many of them try to.’

‘When there is a gay march, television shows the crazy ones, the screaming faggots, who go half naked and make fools of themselves.’

‘The New York Times has been very pro-gay, as you know.’

‘I think journalists should not be either pro nor against gays. Their task is to objectively and factually report, as truthfully and calmly as possible.’

‘It is obligatory for clinical forms of homosexuality to have men. If they don't have men, they can get sick.’

‘Yes, then the plumbing gets screwed up.’

‘No, not only the plumbing, but in their heads too, like many of them do. It is a necessity for many forms of homosexuality for men to have other men or else anxiety develops.’

‘But that goes for heterosexuals as well.’

‘No, you don't get this kind of anxiety in hetero sexuality. As a hetero you can feel down, irritable or somewhat depressed. But anxiety in homosexuals occurs in the structure formation, in terms of forming the cell. This is my field of research investigation. What I am talking about is limited to the clinical forms of homosexuality. I am not talking about variational homosexuality, where for a variety of reasons homos engage in sex with any kind of object and find pleasure in it. Nor am I talking about situational homosexuality, under certain conditions. Such forms are non-obligatory and not stereo-type. These are not fear induced, but a matter of consciously delivered choice. Maybe, some of the sex in ancient Greece was like that during certain periods of peoples lives. But there are forms of homosexuality which are really forms of neuroses and which can be considered serious deficiencies, but which are at the same time necessities for a person to function better in the rest of his life. Now, depending upon the structure of the ego, individual experiences in child upbringing and so on, there are all kinds of homosexuality, like there are all kinds of productive, creative, violent, artistic behavior.’

‘Homos can adjust beautifully to virtually all conditions in life.’

‘They can, certainly some of them. But others want to change and become heterosexuals after all. Here the problem comes out. In the recent ruling of the American Psychiatric Association (apa) a terrible injustice was done to homosexuals and their families who want to change. Because in reality the apa pronounced the alternative homo-lifestyle was fine.’

‘And you are still convinced that homosexuality is abnormal?’

‘I am saying certain types of homosexuality are abnormal. There are clinical forms of severe developmental disorder that go back to early childhood. This does not mean at all, that somebody should not be a homosexual if that is the only thing he can do. In that case he should be protected. Civil laws should protect homos against prejudice and persecution. This has been the position of researchers in sexual deviation all along. Even long before the gay rights movement came to the fore. What happens is, that the gay rights movement says: “We cannot tolerate even research into the idea that there are such things as cause and effect for homosexuals.” So we have a confrontation here. It is between legitimate scientific research and people in the civil rights movement aided and abetted by of all institutions the apa’

‘They don't want you to interfere.’

‘They say, the only “sick” homosexual is the one that wants to change, the one who is dissatisfied being homosexual. This attitude places a terrible burden on the homo who does look at the biological reality around him and sees that men and women mate with each other and not with members of the same sex. He, who wants to change says: “My God, I cannot stand this. I must change.” Now, what happens is, that a terrible clash develops. He says: “I must find some help.” In the mean time the apa comes out with articles saying that a review of psychiatric literature shows terrible bias against homosexuality, because traditionally it is called a psycho-sexual disturbance. Therefore, a battle among scientists is waged. We, who are critical of this ruling, are being driven to the wall.’

‘But it is idiotic to lump all homo problems together,’ meende ik.

‘There are difficulties even organizing symposia or arranging scientific panels on these matters dealing with the causation of homosexuality. I have already been trashed twice by the Academy of Medicine for instance. In other words, there is an allout attempt to squash all research on homosexuality as far as therapies are concerned that want to deal with the cause and effect of homosexuality. I am seen as a therapist who believes homos can be cured. That is the fall-out of all this. In the mean time, they continue to show films at our schools to the pupils that portray both hetero and homo lifestyles. In the San Francisco area a law was adopted that schools should teach both hetero- and homosexuality. These are some of the consequences of the apa ruling. Then, they say, no child will be influ‘enced by showing these films one way or the other. That is not true.’

‘Here I agree with you, because I went through the process myself.’

‘Others say, what does it matter if someone becomes a homosexual? Pre homosexual signs can be detected at 6 or 8 years old. But there is still a chance he may become gay or not. Maybe what we are going to create is a kind of facultated homosexuality. A young man who finds his first orgastic experience with the same sex partner, a boy growing up, then one of the major steps is the establishment of heterosexuality, which involves as the consequence of maleness and femaleness, and the reciprocity that exists. It is a very complex step being taken by a young man. The way we feel when we go to High School is different then the way we feel when we go to College, certainly as regards to the world, as regards to women, as regards

to yourself as a man. If you then introduce, at an age when you are shaky, adult male homosexual experiences or male orgastic pleasurable experiences for that matter, you create a serious problem. If that is easier to go to than the complex conquest of women, then why not go to a male? All this causes disruptions. What happened was that the apa took one of the most devastating steps taken in mental health over the last fifty years. The apa declaration is psychiatric nonsense and social recklessness in the most extreme degree. What is happening today is in part the result of the development of egalitarianism that exists everywhere. It is not at all the fault of the organizers of the apa motion alone. Nowadays everything is supposed to be equal. But to tamper in the male-female design in such a way, invited many, many difficulties for the individual lives of our citizens. Many say: “Oh what does it matter how we feel, we feel good, homosexuality has been liberated which was needed and long overdue. Finally homos have rights.” Everybody has, also homos. Of course they do. But homos have also psychiatric rights. They react, that we therapists call them sick to deprive them from these rights. That is not true. I don't agree. Many people, throughout the centuries were looked down upon, schizophrenics, epileptics, lepers, you name it. Even cancer victims were looked upon as dangerous. But then, public health and general knowledge lifted all that. Therefore, the question comes up: how far should we go giving true rights to homosexuals in terms of negating entire spheres of psycho analytic knowledge?’

‘What do you mean by true rights for homos?’ vroeg ik hem. ‘First of all,’ verklaarde Socarides, ‘persecutory laws should be eradicated. A man should not be penalized for a sexual object choice over which he has no control, while it causes no-one difficulties, except himself.’

Dr. Socarides vertelde over ouders die zich wanhopig bij hem melden. Hun zoon was thuis gekomen uit Cornell University met de mededeling dat hij homoseksueel was. De ouders waren perplex, geschokt, zwaar beproefd, radeloos.

‘But wasn't it the right thing to do for the boy to inform his parents?’ meende ik.

‘I told them, that they had to accept the fact. But then they asked advise. The son announced his gayness as if it was perfectly normal.’

‘So be it. I assume the guy is perfectly happy being gay by now,’ zei ik nuchter.

‘Maybe he is, but the parents are desperate in the mean time.

Also when you accept homosexuality as “normal” you negate that the boy became gay following certain anxieties, guilts and fears within himself, that probably originated in childhood. He might not be as happy as he says he is, being gay. Don't forget, homosexuality causes the neutralization of profound conflicts within himself. The price is very high.’ ‘In what way?’

‘Because for the rest of his days his life is extraterritorial. Alvin Toffler predicts in Future Shock that within a number of years there may be entire sectors of the community that may have become homosexual, as high as perhaps forty percent of the people. Such developments are really not in the best interest of society.’

‘Do you think so? For one thing, gays help to lower the overpopulation figures.’

‘A chemical is much easier to change than the lives of men and women. If you disrupt the evolutionary scale of male-female pairs which always has been with us - as it stands, perhaps four to eight percent of the population is gay at present - the damage to society is incalculable. The child will be unable to handle the separation-individuation phase in human development. Between two and a half and three years, the proper gender identity should be formed. You find details about this in Margaret Mahler's work. She wrote about the failures resulting from gender confusion, that set the stage for homosexuality, similar to the Oedipus complex, that leads to certain disturbances which are quite universal. The failure to traverse this vital stage in development to form an appropriate sexual identity is the causation of homosexuality.’

‘Okay, assume it is as you say, then what happens next?’

‘The production of more and more individuals with confused gender identity, who do not care what gender they are, can also increase the numbers of gays.’

‘Why is that bad?’ vroeg ik hem licht geraakt. ‘What damage does it do to society? I am writing. I am travelling. I am making radio and television programs.’

‘Are you saying you are homosexual?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Oh, fine. I didn't know that. It doesn't matter.’

‘Of course, it does not. I tried women. I was married. But being gay I find the most acceptable style for my way of looking at life. I am in perfect health. Have regular sex. I do not want a so-called relationship, let alone a love-affair with a man either. I have but one subscription: The New York Times.’

‘But if you have no relationship with a man, what makes you say you are gay?’

‘Because when I have sex, I do it with another guy. I go to the Club Bath, blow my nose, take a shower, forget about it and go back to my work, that interests me.’

‘You have no relationships at all?’

‘No so called “love relationships” no, not with a man, not with a woman. In the mean time, I keep the plumbing running, that is my solution to getting rid of hormone production, not down the clitoris with chemicals, or the anus with a rubber, just plain emptying the plumbing.’

‘I have many gay friends. Some of my patients became very dear to me. Only by acceptance I can really work with them.’

‘Yes, but you want to turn them into heteros. Why? What is wrong if the homo population were to increase?’

‘There would be a parallel disturbance in society. All societies since time immemorial have been based on a male-female design. It affords the greatest possibility for the growth of children, for the nurturing of welfare emotions such as love, tenderness, joy, pride and the growth of a proper sexual identity.’

‘Why do you call only male-female sexuality proper?’

‘Perhaps the greatest problem today is this attitude that everything is possible and that there are no fixed boundaries.’

‘Who says there are boundaries? The universe is boundless. Why should we be fixed in our choices? Let's be free to decide whether to multiply or to wash our hormones away.’

‘What you are really suggesting is throwing out one of the basic evolutionary schemes of all time and that was the male-female design which began when we put aside meiosis to mitosis. Two different individuals copulate with each other to produce an individual. This was the whole answer to human evolution, the development of sexual reproduction.’

‘I am fully aware of it. But perhaps the current epidemic of glorified apes should be brought to a halt one way or the other. The gay lifestyle is one ideal solution.’

‘The male-female design is also culturally engrained, is anatomically outlined, psychologically prepared and all this is being encouraged by traditions, mores and laws in society. You are suggesting the fostering of male-male and female to female pairs. It is a very interesting suggestion, perhaps it will happen. But, I think, with the destruction of the family unit - which all this implies - you allow for a totalitarian dictatorship, that will eventually tell people what to do. Without male-female pairs and the institutional marriage, you create a situation, where the

state will come in to tell citizens what to do, how to behave and so forth, to bring order to everything. This was beautifully pictured by Robert Anderson in a play Solitaire in which he pictured the wave of the future for man. Man is alone. He is divided in this play in heteros and gays. Families are banned. What is really going on is a dictatorship on every level of your life, even deciding when you die, depending on your sperm count, and so forth.’

‘What is the Vatican other than a dictatorship? They even forbid abortion, which is mere lunacy in this day and age. The pope is a dictator in the extreme,’ wierp ik hem toe.

‘Many crimes are being perpetrated.’

‘Look at the ayatollahs in Iran. There women are not allowed to show men their faces. Homosexuals are executed. The other extreme,’ zei ik hem.

‘Sure.’

‘Perhaps we are finally sliding away from fairy-tale images of Adam and Eve and other stereotype nonsense,’ stelde ik vast. ‘Now, we are talking about the future,’ zei Socarides. ‘I am not an expert here. I am saying that certain things being done today show already consequences. All I know is that I have a lot of confused adolescents coming to my office who engage in sex practices with the same sex partners. They are very upset about it.’

‘Yes, that's why they come and see you, but what about thousands of others who like to have sex with guys?’

‘The ones I see are often very upset about it. They might even not be homosexual at all. Alfred Kinsey was right at one point. He said, give me a young man and let me provide him with a gay man. If that guy gives him a full orgasm, he will be stuck with homosexuality for life. Even if the boy was basically heterosexual, he will be a homo. That was a very interesting finding by Kinsey. The homosexual lifestyle leads to an easy availability of partners, and a disinclination to assume a male-female role in society, which is governed by family life. I say, if you destroy the family, another force will come in. Are we going to accept a radical shift in values, in affection, in the care of the young, in the father's attitude towards the male child, to help him grow like himself? All these things are learned behavior. Just as crime, promiscuity and delinquency or violence are learned. These things are taught by parents. If a man has no interest in raising his son to learn to feel masculine or to feel pride in himself - I don't mean a foolish macho pride, I am talking of legitimate pride, not false pride - if these values are no longer

taught, if it does not matter if a husband feels like a man and the state takes these virtues over, he neglects to teach his son that way. These developments carry the potential for even greater disunity, lack of harmony, lack of development of affective welfare, emotions, all this versus emotions of rage, fear, hatred, greed, destruction, emotions derived from pain versus emotions derived from love, joy, trust, reciprocity and hope. In other words, we are tampering with vital signs. Of course, we can ask whether the issue of gayness is that important. May be not. I am not going to say more about this.’

‘What I am really concerned with,’ vervolgde hij, ‘is the clinical treatment of people, who come to me, and say: “I can not longer tolerate that I am a homosexual,” or, “that I am a pedophile,” or “that I am a fetishist,” or “that I can only have sexual intercourse with a piece of clothing, I cannot take it any longer.”’

‘Obviously you see men, rather patients, in utter distress, like perhaps leather boys and masochists who operate with locks and chains, Nazi boots, whips and rings through their tits, but, after all, that is a tiny minority. Perverts you find everywhere, among heteros as well.’

‘Certainly.’

‘Alright then: I am not talking here about extremes. I have been asked: “Do you have leather pants, lets go home and fuck.” I have been asked: “Let me piss in your mouth.” I point at my forehead and tell them to look elsewhere for a volunteer to madness. Sex to me is an utter nuisance, however pleasurable the act itself might be. If you abstain, you become physically uncomfortable. I am 54 years old now. The other day I kept track for a while of my orgasms. I discovered that every 3 to 6 days, I have a full session. It's easy these days. All major cities in the us, I discovered during my lecture tours, have Club Baths in a chain, like Hilton or Hyatt hotels.’

‘All this is fine. I agree.’

‘And it never poses a problem. In Caracas last week I was too busy to have sex. Arriving in New York I first went to the Club Bath on First Avenue, plenty of attractive gays to chose from, got a blow job and the entire operation took two hours, plus a sauna and a shower and I went back to work. I completed eight interviews in five days.’

‘Marvelous,’ zei Socarides.

‘I am inclined to think about all this in different direction than you do. I am also supporting a salt-ii Treaty with the Russians, but I begin by interviewing admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Paul

Nitze or Eugene Rostov who are against it, because I discovered in an early stage of journalism, that you learn a lot from talking to and listening to people you might disagree with.’

‘If you know how to listen.’

‘I do. That is number one. Second: give people you disagree with a fair and honest account of what they had to say. I publish a one page interview each month in Gallery for instance.’

‘A porno-magazine?’ zei Socarides verbaasd.

‘Unfortunately, Gallery has that reputation and of course, it does have large collections of nude women in full color. I penetrate there with other information, like this month a conversation with Indira Gandhi. They also carried a six-page interview with journalist William Buckley. We should now have a six-page conversation with dr. Charles Socarides.’

‘With you, I will do it. Remember, I am known as the leader of the group of psychiatrists in this country that strongly disagrees with the apa decision on homosexuality. How far do we go? Stalin went pretty far when he threw out Trofim Lysenko.155 A similar thing is now happening in science and psycho-analysis. Many psychiatrists essentially feel like I do, but too many really do not care. Most psychiatrists don't care anyway what the devil happens to gays. I do care. I care for a long time. I have treated gays for 25 years. I have the largest list of gay patients of any psychiatrist or psycho-analyst in any country of the world. So, when the apa passed this resolution without consultation, declaring homosexuality normal, they have been confusing many people and countless parents in America and all over the world. Actually, the international nomenclature never really followed suit in this matter. But I was the leader of the movement that took issue with the apa. I ended up with seven psychiatrists who demanded the ruling to be overturned. To do that, we had to have a referendum. It is really silly to vote on a scientific issue. But we felt that we had to call attention to the matter and stop the corruption, that was taking place in the name of civil rights. What they were actually saying was, that all concepts of psycho-sexual development that have taken 75 years of psycho-analysis to develop in terms of male-female pairing would be thrown out of the window if gayness from now on was going to be an acceptable alternative lifestyle.’

‘What did you actually say to the parents of the boy from Cornell who had turned gay?’ vroeg ik.

‘I have seen cases of suicide because parents were trying to make their sons give up homosexuality, so the most important thing was to calm down the upset parents. I convinced them that coercion and revenge, or cutting the boy off were the worst attitudes imaginable, since it usually drives young men even deeper into gay life styles. Next I tried to convince the young man, that what he really was engaged in, was the product of unconscious losses. Of course, he must do what he has to do. He can either elect to try to do something about it and investigate the sources or he can do nothing. In the mean time, I tried during treatment to develop all other aspects of his personality to the utmost ability. I do find, that some homosexuals are magnificently put together in all other areas of their lives and are able to function at the highest levels. We have many such examples. My initial contact with gay young man in distress opens up the feeling that he is not in this alone. And, that instead of a hostile psychiatry waiting out there, who wants to force him to change, that this does not exist. So it often is an interesting experience for them to meet with me. In the mean time I tell the parents, accept it for now, lay low, perhaps come in for a little therapy yourselves. Then we discuss feelings of shame, or whatever they feel. Gayness is no vice by it self at all. It is something to which no blame is attached. And, to draw a wedge between the young man and his parents, that is the worst imaginable thing and courts disaster for all of them. Usually, after a few sessions, parents catch on to this.’

‘How did you get involved in the homo-scene in the first place?’

‘When I was a student at Columbia University I worked in the Psycho Clinic for Training & Research. I then came across a student with a gay problem for the first time. I told this to my supervisor analyst. He advised not to get involved. I was stunned. I said: “This boy's difficulty in living is very intense. He cannot relate to women while he wants to. Something must be interfering, unless this is organic.” But I was still told not to get involved. “We have found,” they said, “that the treatment of homosexuality is extremely difficult.” I replied: “I feel we should investigate what is the meaning of the need for a male to partner with a gay guy. He was complaining about it. He was distressed about it.” I finally was allowed to go ahead.’

‘It's often a pose that gays say that they really would like to pair with a woman, especially vis à vis strangers, or doctors like you. Are you saying that you discovered in 25 years of research

where the disruption originated that gays are for male bonding?’ vroeg ik hem.

‘Yes. We can finally locate the point of fixation.’

‘And it goes back, of course, to the earliest childhood development,’ zei ik.

‘An undue fixation to the mother or problems with the father, and sometimes both, are the fixation point in many cases. The consequence is that the boy in question has been unable to make an adequate separation from the mother, in order to achieve and establish his own identity, his own autonomy in a complete sense. Some of these cases are much milder than others.’

‘I came to you after reading your shocking article in the Journal of Psycho History on Sirhan Sirhan. I came by instinct to you.’

‘You have no idea how much opposition there is to my work, my writings or books.’

‘That is utterly ridiculous.’

‘Even by terrorist organizations, who do not hesitate to threaten me,’ specificeerde Socarides.

‘How intolerant. Insane.’

‘Many of us are simply afraid to speak out. I got a call from a lesbian mother on a court case. The woman wanted to keep her child. I was called in for an opinion. I counseled, that unless the two women called in some masculine help to raise the child, a purely lesbian setting would be detrimental to the kid.’

‘A young boy needs father input like he needs vitamins.’

‘Yes, but in court it was said that the lesbian mother could do anything she pleases with the boy.’

‘I have come to the conclusion to be unable to establish a true love relationship with neither a man nor a woman. I cannot. It is all too imperfect. We have little or no control over our brain.’

‘You are a fascinating man.’

‘We are like that movie, where both pilots of a jumbo plane are being killed and the stewardess has to land the machine via instructions from a tower. Who knows what he is doing with his life, and what for, going where? I have an uncle, Alexander Poslavsky, who is a psychiatrist. Once he had a gay pair as patients. He asked me what to advise them. I replied: “Sleep with them, otherwise you will never be able to help them.” What I meant was, and this goes for you as well, how can non-gays ever help homosexuals? It is entirely different when you have gone through this transformation from heterosexuality to ho-

mosexuality. You possess different assets of experiences and information. The feelings and emotions of gays are a world apart.’

‘I think the closest you come to the gay mind is in psychoanalysis. You come close to every aspect of the emotional and sexual life of the homo-patient when he talks to you right here in my office on the couch.’

‘I don't believe a word of it,’ zei ik stellig. ‘When you reed the memoires of infancy of Sartre, The Words,156 you feel he is not sure at all about what he writes and recalls of early years. He invents things. Truth is vital in all this for the psycho-analyst to be able to work with reliable data. You get concoctions of what really happened on your couch. I have a record, from when I was eight years old, because I kept an accurate and disciplined diary every day of my life since I could write and properly think. I collected everything, conversations, experiences, letters, even today I do this as a journalist for 26 years. Don't ask me why.’

‘Really?’

‘The other day, professor Masaya Sato from Tokio, a psychologist, came to look at my wall with notebooks. He said, he was flabbergasted. My uncle Poslavsky says: “The entire diary should be given to a laboratory in The Netherlands for Individual Psychology.” It actually is a full growth of mind written out over a period of forty years up to now. It is undoubtedly more authentic then what gays think they remember on your couch.’

‘When did this burst of creativity start? All your life?’

‘The writing yes. But a great change came upon meeting a boy in 1967 on an Amsterdam terrace. He was reading a book, Analysis of a life157 “Do you realize Willem,” he said, “nobody understands the influence of thinking on feeling or feeling on thinking.” That really triggered not only my deep interest in this guy, who was to become my best friend - in a platonic sense now - but I turned away from Sukarno, Gandhi, Castro, Lumumba, from international political reporting and became heavily involved, first with the Club of Rome and gradually with the mind sciences and the larger questions of life and research. And, of course, my notes in my diary never stopped either.’

‘This is fascinating,’ vond Socarides.

Ik dacht: yes, it certainly is.

Lees in Time een reportage over de intriges rond de val van Andrew Young als ambassadeur bij de vn na een informele ontmoeting ten huize van de vertegenwoordiger van Koeweit, met de plo-man in New York, Zehdi Labib Tersi. Omgeven door spionnen, afluisterapparatuur en een opzettelijk lek van Israël over wat er was gebeurd, raakte Young zijn baan kwijt. Een ontzettend smerig, typisch Amerikaans verhaal over ‘secrecy, deception an pressure politics against Carter's friend’.158 Alan Riding schreef in The New York Times, dat de conferentie in Havana eigenlijk het einde betekende van Castro's isolatie in Latijns-Amerika. Tweeëntwintig landen van het westelijk halfrond zonden delegaties naar de door Washington ‘verboden stad’ Havana. Veertien van deze naties onderhouden permanente diplomatieke betrekkingen met Cuba. ‘Their presence marked the de facto end of Cuba's isolation in the area,’ aldus Riding. Daniel Ortega Saavedra van Nicaragua verwoordde de situatie (terecht) aldus: ‘For imperialism the people is nothing more than a grammatical expression. We saw this during our final offensive. Imperialism saw that Somoza had a stronger army, more soldiers, tanks and artillery, more rifles and ammunition: therefore, he had to win. But imperialism forgot that Somoza did not have the people and that the Sandinistas were the people.’159

17 september 1979

Gisteravond was ik bij Bertie Hilverdink.160 We lagen een uurtje op bed naast elkaar te praten. Het gaat hem bijzonder goed, als visagist. Ik heb de grootste bewondering, zoals hij zich in Manhattan weet te handhaven in zijn metier. Lola, zijn hond, gaat regelmatig naar de kapper en zag er schoon en opgepoetst uit. Hij vond het ook een drama dat zijn vriend Peter Voorn was vermoord ‘maar je kunt toch niet de hele dag huilen?’

Vanmorgen heb ik een onvergefelijke stommiteit uitgehaald. Ik had eindelijk een afspraak met professor Willard Gaylin, klinische psychiatrie aan de Columbia University School of Medicine, president van het Hastings Center en psychoanalyticus in New York. Zijn nieuwe boek Feelings: Our Vital Signs161 is een juweel.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt schreef over hem in The New York Times:162 ‘Gaylin's thesis is, that feelings are useful - that

even bad feelings, such as shame, guilt and anxiety, serve a function that helps people survive.’ Volgens dr. Gaylin zijn gevoelens ‘the instrument of rationality, not - as some would have it - alternatives to it.’

Ik wandelde naar 9 East 96 Street en arriveerde exact om 10:45 uur, terwijl de afspraak om 09:45 uur was. Hierdoor verspeelde ik één uur van de tijd van de psychiater en mijn eigen mogelijkheid hem te interviewen.

Ontmoette ook Nick Eberstadt bij de Rockefeller Foundation - een asshole om over te slaan - en vervolgens George Walsh bij MacMillan, die een contract voor een boek met Georgii Arbatov naar Ron Taft, de advocaat voor literaire zaken zal zenden ter inspectie. Hij wil overwegen me een voorschot van 2.500 dollar te geven.

Je ziet steeds meer idioten op straat in Manhattan. Waar je ook gaat of staat, in deze stad zie je afzichtelijke toestanden.

Mora Henskens vertelde dat een vriendin op het Nederlandse Consulaat-Generaal haar opnieuw had verzekerd dat ik als een oproerkraaier werd gezien, en zeer bevriend was met de sovjets, en dat bovendien de bvd me scherp in de gaten hield.163

18 september 1979

New York - Boston

Ik ben op weg om rabbi Marvin Antelman te ontmoeten op de luchthaven in Boston. Hij had me dus geschreven en mij op verzoek de uitspraak van de excommunicatie van Henry Kissinger doen toekomen. Nu ga ik hem zelf ontmoeten.

‘Feeling,’ aldus dr. Gaylin in zijn nieuwe boek, ‘is our subjective awareness of our own emotional state.’

‘Feelings can, like every other aspect of our humanity, be corrupted from their original purposes. Jealousy, which serves the struggle for survival, can deteriorate into the envy which draws defeat even from victory. Mental illness is usually mere disarray of the ingredients of survival.’

‘Feelings are internal directives essential for human life.’ Dit boek bevat een schat aan informatie.

Ik heb orthodoxe joden op straat in New York altijd voor lichtelijk mesjogge, en zelfs voor eng versleten. Nu ben ik op weg naar een super orthodoxe jood. Het zal me benieuwen.

Rabbi Antelman ontpopte zich als een alert, vriendelijk persoon, die oprecht, met de Torah in de hand, schijnt te geloven dat God in zijn vrije tijd de andere 24.000 planeten met mense-

lijke wezens bezoekt. We spraken veertig minuten en dat was genoeg, want veel langer had het niet moeten duren.

Ik vroeg hem of het niet bizar was Henry Kissinger een banvloek toe te zwaaien.

‘Ons Opperste Gerechtshof is een Beth Din, wat volgens strikt joodse weten tot stand kwam en rechtsgeldigheid bezit. We hebben de sectie Shulchan Aruch van de joodse wet gebruikt en hebben de voo rschriften stap voor stap gevolgd. We hebben een onderzoek naar Kissinger ingesteld dat geen enkele journalist zo diepgravend heeft kunnen uitvoeren. We hadden toegang tot bronnen die niemand ooit ter inzage krijgt.’

‘Ook wat het persoonlijke leven van de man betreft?’ vroeg ik hem.

‘Ja, wanneer je iemand wilt beoordelen, moet je de persoon in zijn totaliteit bestuderen. Ik kan weinig over de persoonlijke gegevens zeggen, behalve dat Kissinger als jongen duidelijk een kind met een nobele inslag is geweest. In zijn ontwikkeling is ergens iets mis gegaan. Soms komen we op een kruispunt in ons leven en slaan we het verkeerde pad in. Daarop komt een nieuwe kruising en slaat hij opnieuw het verkeerde pad in, dan culmineren al die foute beslissingen samen in een beeld, wat we in het geval van Kissinger moeten afwijzen.’

‘Uiteindelijk belandde hij bij Nancy,’ noemde ik.

‘Zijn nieuwe echtgenote behoort tot de Rockefeller kliek, terwijl Kissinger na zijn Witte Huis-periode bij Chase Manhattan van David Rockefeller terugkeerde. Trouwens, mag ik u er op wijzen dat de Chase Bank onlangs nog een belangrijke lening aan Israël heeft geweigerd?’

‘De Rockefellergroep heeft eigenlijk net als I.G. Farben, een uitgesproken joods bedrijf, met de nazi's in Duitsland samen gewerkt.’

‘Kissinger zat overal in,’ zei Antelman, ‘zoals de Rockefelleraffaires en de zogenaamde Trilaterale Commissie, waar hij nog deel van uitmaakt. In 1947 heb ik inzage gehad in een geheim regeringsrapport wat uiteenzette waarom de Amerikaanse luchtmacht I.G. Farben nooit bombardeerde. Ik las dat document in stomme verbazing. In 1930 verkocht de Rockefeller-groep aan de Duitsers het procedé om benzine uit steenkool te maken. De Duitse oorlogsmachine draaide op die formule. Kissinger was ook altijd aanwezig op Bilderberg Conferenties van prins Bernhard164 een zeer dubieuze lobby, waar we en passant aanzienlijk meer materiaal over hebben verzameld.’

‘U deed Kissinger in de ban en wat gebeurde er vervolgens?’ wilde ik weten.

‘Koppen in de kranten in Israël. De oudste patriarch van Israël, die wij als een wijze, oude staatsman beschouwen, rabbi Yehuda Cohen Kook in Jeruzalem schreef me naar aanleiding van onze uitspraak: ‘Kissinger heeft zich met zijn gedrag buiten de kern van het joodse volk geplaatst.’

‘Wat was zijn voornaamste misdaad?’

‘Bent u vergeten dat Kissinger Israël ervan heeft weerhouden bij de Yom Kippur-oorlog een preventieve militaire operatie uit te voeren? Kissinger hield militaire voorraden voor Israël tegen waardoor duizenden Israëlische militairen zijn gesneuveld. Het aanmoedigen van onze vijanden, en vooral het geen halt toeroepen aan moordenaars is een luxe, die misschien numeriek grote volkeren zich kunnen permitteren, maar voor het Joodse volk is dit niet mogelijk. Wanneer een jood zich met dit gedrag inlaat is dit zonder meer dom, arrogant en verraderlijk. Wij beschouwen Kissinger dus, ook in diens privéhoedanigheid van ambteloos burger, als een gevaar voor het Joodse volk.’

‘Hoe heeft hij zelf gereageerd?’

‘Of zijn neus bloedde.’

En tenslotte lanceerde de rabbi ook nog deze waterval: ‘Ik kan u één ding met zekerheid verklaren. Orthodoxe joden bezoeken zeer zelden een psychiater. Mozes is voor mij een man, die in direct contact met God stond. Voor mij heeft God direct tot het Joodse volk gesproken. God sprak tot Mozes. Ik geloof, dat God engelen gebruikte, die uit de ruimte buiten de aarde kwamen. Ik interpreteer de Bijbel in deze zin. Het is mijn absolute overtuiging dat engelen afkomstig zijn uit beschavingen, die lang voor onze beschaving werden ontwikkeld. Ik schaam mij allerminst voor deze overtuiging, want zij is regelrecht afkomstig uit de gedachten, die in de Torah werden uitgedrukt. U zult er bijvoorbeeld een deel in vinden dat bespreekt wat God in zijn vrije tijd doet. Hij zal in die vrije tijd bezoeken brengen aan de 24.000 planeten in het universum, die bovendien bewoond zijn.’ Aldus de opperrechter van het Opperste Rabbijns Gerechtshof in de vs.

Vloog meteen terug naar New York.

Ik kocht een exemplaar van Feelings voor Peter.

Ik ontmoette Max Westerman. Hij zag er prima uit en aantrekkelijk als altijd. Hij schrijft twee pagina's voor Privé over Hollywood voor 350 gulden. Hij zou 500 moeten vragen.165

19 september 1979

New York

Bezocht mijn oude vriend dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, de psychiater die eens Richard Nixon behandelde. Hij kreeg een bod van twee miljoen dollar als hij een boek over Nixon zou schrijven, maar dat kan dus niet. Het blijft een medisch geheim, hoe gek de man ook was.

‘How could I describe in a book how Nixon came to totally reply on two incompetent public relations people John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman. How he gave these men these enormous powerful positions?’ zei Hutschnecker.

‘But I read that fifty percent of the psychiatrists in this country were themselves slightly gaga,’ zei ik tegen hem.

‘Of course, many of these people choose the profession in the first place to solve their own problems. I was successful in internal medicine and took up later psychiatry in search for more, so I did not go into it for solving emotional problems.’

‘After Nixon, Ford and Carter we may get Edward Kennedy after all, but then he is faced with assassination too.’

‘What this country needs is stability,’ vond Hutschnecker. ‘We should find new ways to select healthy leadership. It will not be achieved the old ways. I would like to suggest that every person that enters college or the university automatically undergoes testing as to his mental stability. This would be to the benefit of the students themselves, because deficiencies could be treated in an early stage. Either eliminate mental cases, or see to it they get treatment and will be cured before they build an ambition by which they pursue a social position from which they later could grab and gain power. Later it is too late to do anything about it.’

‘Carter was a peanut farmer,’ benadrukte ik nog maar eens.

‘That man was like a flu in history, a cold, an accident. Watergate was a deep nightmare for the American people. It damaged the almost infallible image of the president and the White House. The people were upset, hurt and panicked. Here comes a guy, who says I am a farmer, not a politician.’

‘A former bible salesman reborn in Christ,’ versterkte ik het beeld.

‘Yes, but he did not stress that aspect too much in the beginning. Carter was such a contrast with the wheeler-dealers we had before him. This was just “an opening” in history for change. He seemed adequate, pushed by his wife, depending on her a great deal, because she has more brains than his own mother. Therefore Carter operates between two ambitious

women, but he is not a leader. He lacks imagination, the ability to create meaningful objectives that encompass a vast heterogeneous country. He is unable to master the various needs this nation has. He is a countryman from Georgia without any sophistication, as can be seen more clearly in his brother Billy. Carter does not understand or comprehend foreign policy. He is being told and presents the views of others. Therefore his initial security is gone. He looks drawn, insecure and frightened, he is falling apart. So, he shakes up his cabinet. Then he intends to prove how physically strong he is and collapses while running along, which is a dumb thing to do anyway.’

‘For one,’ meende ik to mogen stellen, ‘Carter obviously is not in touch with reality within his own head.’

‘Whatever anyone might feel about Richard Nixon,’ vervolgde Hutchnecker, ‘it was a stroke of genius that the same man who wanted to go to war over Quemoy and Matsu went to China. I discussed this once with former president Gerald Ford, when he came to see me.’

‘Ford too?’ zei ik verrast.

‘Well, yes. Gerald Ford came by a few times to discuss personal matters. He said to me: “We should never go to war. War cannot be conceived to result in anything but destruction and utter chaos.” The Cold War too was conceived by men with lack of foresight. It is an insane concept. I made it clear to both Nixon and Ford, that by encircling the Soviet Union with military bases and military might, we denied the various different nationalities within the ussr their freedom. Because they want out of the Soviet Union, like the Ukraine after the Second World War. But the encirclement drove them together. Perhaps the greatest fear thinkable is the fear of annihilation through nuclear attack. Those bases all around the ussr united them. It meant, get your scientists together, go to work and come up with the inventions needed for defense. In 1923 Pavlov was anti-Bolshevik. He was visited by Lenin and his commissars. He told them he wanted to be no part of the new order. “We are not interested in your political views,” said Lenin. “I want to know what laboratories you need.” Pavlov fell from his chair. He could get from them what he wanted. Lenin's policy was, the people went hungry for so long, they can go hungry a little longer. Science and only science will save us. Then the Cold War was designed to fight an idea. You do not fight an idea with blunt force. When Sputnik went up, it was clear that the ussr had reached scientific parity. Then, Nixon travelled to China and said: “Let's be friends.” That

placed the United States in the middle and helped determine what way things were to go. The days are past for radical solutions. Only when there is fear and hunger, then the oppressed are ready for radical solutions. Why is there no Communism in Holland or Scandinavia? Even in Italy, where they have a strong Communist party, people still go to church.’

Ik vertelde dr. Hutschnecker over het Venezolaanse project om het intelligentieniveua van de mensen te verhogen. Zijn reactie samengevat: ‘Fantastic.’

Ik ben aan het einde van mijn Latijn.

New York - Amsterdam

Feelings van Gaylin is bezaaid met waardevolle informatie.

‘We can even forget the original memory and still be stuck with the emotion.’

‘Often, what we see as the symbol of the danger is not a true prediction, but represents a distortion introduced by our own past and our own sensitivities.’

‘If, for instance, we were intimidated by a punitive father who terrified us, we may approach all authority figures with the bias of that early dominant memory.’

Welke invloed hebben mams gedwongen muzieklessen, toen ik vier jaar oud was, gehad op mijn kijk op vrouwen? Later zou muziek mijn voornaamste plezier zijn. En ik denk aan de gecompliceerde verhouding tussen Peter en zijn vader. Dit boek barst van de nieuwe gedachten.

‘We know, that of course, we are going to die, but operationally, we do not know.’

De kleuren bij de avondschemering (vanuit dit vliegtuigraam te zien) zijn wonderlijk schoon. Zoals mam eens antwoordde, toen ik opperde dat je minder tranen zou hebben gelaten wanneer je niet was geboren: ‘Maar dan zou je nooit iets hebben geweten of gezien.’ Toch geloof ik, nu ik veel weet van dit pakket uiterst broze gevoelens en emoties in onze hoofden, die we eigenlijk niet weten hoe correct te hanteren, dat het onverantwoord is om nieuwe mentale puinhopen in de wereld te zetten.

Kan niet wachten Peter te zien. Toen ik hem gisteren belde zei hij een stapel brieven uit Caracas tegelijk te hebben gekregen. In het gay-tijdschrift Christopher Street166 staat een prachtig artikel over Michelangelo. De grootsheid van zijn werk ‘derives ultimately from its overwhelming complexities and contradic-

tions, his ability to deal with the tensions between spirit and passion, male and female, appearance and reality’.

Op 57-jarige leeftijd had Michelangelo een vriendje, Tommaso dei Cavalieri - vierendertig jaarj jonger dan Michelangelo, Peter en ik schelen twintig jaar - die model kan hebben gestaan voor het beroemde beeld Victory (1527-1530), ‘in which a standing, muscular youth has brought to his knees by an older, bearded man - whose features are generally thought to be a self-portrait of the artist’.

‘The strangeness of the world remains as baffling and remote as the depths of the oceans,’ schrijft Lewis Lapham in Harper's.167 ‘If science doesn't know, and if the country is no longer rich enough to afford all the mistakes, then it is conceivable that the writers might regain a sense of their usefulness. The loss of courage follows from the failure of the imagination, or may be it is the other way around. Fewer than 100 generations separate the ayatollah Khomeiny from the Persian campaigns of Alexander the Great, a period so brief in the evolution of the human mind that it can hardly be measured on the scale of the biological time. In the first nine months of its life, the child in the womb makes a journey of 500 million years. Why then should anybody be surprised if the old darkness clouds the mind of man?’

Ook schrijft Lapham: ‘Alexander had been educated by Aristotle and raised by his father to a vision of political unity. But his mother was insane, haunted by serpents and Oriental religion, and from her the boy inherited a belief in magic. As a young man, brilliant in the arts of war, Alexander conquered the known world. Soon afterward his mind gave way to luxury and barbarism, and he proclaimed himself the child of an Egyptian God. If man still finds himself struggling with his ancient enemies of vanity, superstition, envy and greed, he has nothing to put in the field against them except the capacity to see, however dimly, note the nature and the consequences of those acts that he would prefer to hide from himself. We are likely to die as ignorant as we began. The Greek Gods did not demand correct opinions, explained nothing about the origin or destination of the universe, authorized no scripture, conferred no divine rights on kings and priests, and generally behaved in a manner unbecoming to an absolute. Odysseus knew that the universe was no prefabricated thing, but that it created and recreated itself in much the same way that a man makes and remakes his own destiny.’


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