—Well, why not? Jo has set you on your path; do you need her to take you on a tour of your inner labyrinth? Why not go by yourself?

—I’ve never thought of it—I wouldn’t know how.

—Then find out. Finding out is half the value. Jo is very good. I say nothing against her. But these analyses, Davey—they are duets between the analyst and the analysand, and you will never be able to sing louder or higher than your analyst.

—She has certainly done great things for me in the past year.

—Undoubtedly. And she never pushed you too far, or frightened you, did she? Jo is like a boiled egg—a wonder, a miracle, very easy to take—but even with a good sprinkling of salt she is invalid food, don’t you find?

—I understand she is one of the best in Zürich.

—Oh, certainly. Analysis with a great analyst is an adventure in self-exploration. But how many analysts are great? Did I ever tell you I knew Freud slightly? A giant, and it would be apocalyptic to talk to such a giant about oneself. I never met Adler, whom everybody forgets, but he was certainly another giant. I once went to a seminar Jung gave in Zürich, and it was unforgettable. But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a superprofessor. All men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character…. Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people’s troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don’t you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too?

—I’m no hero, Liesl.

—Oh, how modest and rueful that sounds! And you expect me to think, isn’t he splendid to accept his limitations so manfully. But I don’t think that. All that personal modesty is part of the cop-out personality of our time. You don’t know whether or not you are a hero, and you’re bloody well determined not to find out, because you’re scared of the burden if you are and scared of the certainty if you’re not.