Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/481

But I haven’t even begun to scratch the enormous material of the weekend. Before I do, one thought on Bob^[1] and myself, and why he was reluctant to analyze me. Deep in him he felt the crook in me. And I as the crook (knowing the destructive and the creative power the crook gives me) was furious at the thought of being analyzed by any old analyst who would take all my marvelous crookery, the H permitted me by society, and convert it to pappish S, dulling me. What the crook always fears is the honest man because the honest man is static, if the honest man wins the crook’s intense if crippled sense of life will be lost. His life force will be relocated in a higher region of the er, ergo a less sensitive region. Truly, he will be less a man.

So, I as the crook did not want to be taken, and what I sensed in Bob for what amazed me when I invited him to be my analyst is that much as I liked him, and I liked him tremendously—what-the-fuck loved him—I didn’t trust him one little bit. (I still don’t trust him completely. Good old Bob, he doesn’t even trust himself.) But what I sensed in him was a crook on the grand scale who would give me room to maneuver because he respected the crook in me—as viz his up-to-now perplexing and ambivalent feelings of helping and hindering me in the pursuit of JB.^[2]

So, I invited Bob, it was a challenge to me to con a big crook and do it lying on my back. But Bob sensed that, and the crook in him was scared—Was he going to be taken, he had to wonder. So, our “analysis” continues via the hournal (H journal). (Hour and whore) (H is society’s understanding of mystical concepts, or rather society’s trapping. The our becomes the hour.) Bob knows the hour is crookery—it is a fifty minute hour, but the analyst takes ten minutes himself although he charges for that.

And the journal is the only way we can do it, because in the journal we can express our love for each other and our distrust—we can accept the crook in each other because we know the crook brings life.

notes

↑ A prominent Baltimore psychoanalyst and writer, Robert Lindner (1914 – 1956) became acquainted with Mailer after reading Lindner’s 1952 sharp critique of current psychoanalytic practice, Prescription for Rebellion (1952), published by Mailer’s publisher, Rinehart. The letter, which contained both praise and criticism for Lindner’s ideas, led to a close friendship over the next four years, including many visits and the sharing of work, including Lipton’s. See extended note on entry 56.
↑ Unknown.

[1] A prominent Baltimore psychoanalyst and writer, Robert Lindner (1914 – 1956) became acquainted with Mailer after reading Lindner’s 1952 sharp critique of current psychoanalytic practice, Prescription for Rebellion (1952), published by Mailer’s publisher, Rinehart. The letter, which contained both praise and criticism for Lindner’s ideas, led to a close friendship over the next four years, including many visits and the sharing of work, including Lipton’s. See extended note on entry 56.

[2] Unknown.

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