A PHYLOGENETIC FANTASY:
OVERVIEW OF THE TRANSFERENCE NEUROSES


BY SIGMUND FREUD, EDITED BY ILSE GRUBRICH-SIMITIS , TRANSLATED BY AXEL HOFFER AND PETER T. HOFFER, THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS AND LONDON, ENGLAND; 1987.
 

TIME: 1,000,000 B.C.
SCENE 1: The Garden of Eden

AYLA: This paradise!

THURG: Everything perfect! Me well adjusted and happy,
 

TIME: Six eons later
SCENE 2: The Garden of Eden

AYLA: What that big white thing?

THURG: That my power stick.

AYLA: No, not that big white thing--that one.

THURG: I’se cold,

AYLA: Ice?

THURG: OK, ice.

AYLA: Fruit no grow on trees, Ayla hungry.

THURG: Garden of Eden sucks.

AYLA: Thurg having negative thoughts.

THURG: Thurg no sleep at night, bite nails all day.

AYLA: You getting really neurotic, Thurg. You have anxiety hysteria.
 

TIME: One eon later
SCENE 3: Mesopotamia (formerly Garden of Eden)

AYLA: Baby hungry, Thurg.

THURG: Baby eat too much, Ayla. Kill baby, then we have enough food .

AYLA: Ayla no want kill baby, Thurg. You no use power stick, Ayla no have babies.

THURG: If Thurg no use power stick, Thurg get really frustrated.

AYLA: Agghh!  My arm no move! No feeling in it!

THURG: Ayla have conversion hysteria. You getting really neurotic, Ayla .
 

TIME : One eon later
SCENE 4: Babylon

ZOG: Father, me use power stick with Ayla?

THURG: No way.

YURT: Me use power stick tonight, Dad?

THURG: Forget it, kid.

ZOG (aside): Thurg only one can use power stick .Zog and Yurt call other brothers and kill Thurg. Then we use power stick.

YURT (aside): Kill Thurg? Patricide give us castration anxiety...make us paranoid...cause obsessional neurosis and schizophrenia. Then we be really depressed and neurotic.
 

TIME: September, 1983
SCENE 5: An attic in London

ILSE GRUBRICH-SIMITIS: This trunk of Ferenczi's is bottomless. There’s more than enough here for a book that will revolutionize psychoanalytic theory. What's this? This is not Ferenczi's handwriting. Mein Gott! It’s Freud’s! What is this? I've never read this before. An unpublished draft of his metapsychological papers! Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny--what does that mean?  Primitive man develops neuroses in response to the rigors of the ice age.  What a find!
 

TIME: August, 1987
SCENE: Jungle in Borneo

ZOG: Father, me use power stick on Ayla?

THURG: No, and no again.

YURT: Dad, you fill us with sadistic and incestuous fantasies.

THURG: Tell it to your analyst.

YURT: You know my analyst spends August in welfleet.

THURG: Mine too.

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