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my fate, then at least in my behavior at the time, that I furtively produce, verbally create, the situation and role of the mother’s rejected son, presumably on account of the accompanying very singular—and, were I not a little ashamed, I would say gratifying—pain, which, from the viewpoint of my work, it seems I absolutely require (naturally, along with
freedom
, which is my prime requirement). Yes, because it appears that in my pain I end up hitting on creative forces, no matter what the price, and no matter that it may just be ordinary compensation finding an outlet in creativity, what is important is that it nonetheless finds an outlet and that through the pain I live in some sort of truth, and if I did not live in it, perhaps the simple truth might—who knows?— leave me cold; as it is, however, the notion of pain is intimately and permanently interwoven within me with the aspect of life, the (I am quite certain) most authentic aspect of life. And in this I then also spotted an explanation for the phenomenon that I was talking about previously, namely, why, when I am in possession of my complete freedom, my stimulus to work is reduced, whereas when I am in the thick of fighting for my freedom and in all sorts of mental turmoil, it is increased, for obviously the way the neurosis induced by my complex (or which induces my complex) affects me is that, if it is in its receding phase, then my desire to work also subsides, but if some new trauma arrives to rekindle the neurosis dormant within me, my desire to work is also ignited. That’s perfectly clear and simple, so now one might think all one needs is to provide for continual triggers to keep the fires of my work incessantly burning—and I formulate it in this pointed manner precisely in order to underline its absurdity to myself, because as soon as I had completed this self-analysis I also squared accounts with my complex, indeed, I instantly took a natural aversion to it, or to be more accurate, not only to my complex but also to myself for building up the complex even as I was concealing it from myself and playacting, precisely this idiotic infantile complex, attesting to intellectual immaturity and betraying inadmissible vulnerability, when there is nothing I hate more than infantilism. I was thus cured at least of that particular complex, or to be more precise, I pronounced myself cured, not so much in the interests of regaining my health of course but more my self-esteem, so that when, not long after that, I entered into a relationship with another woman, I laid down the possibly harsh-sounding but nevertheless highly practical condition that the word “love” and its synonyms should never be uttered between us, or in other words, that our love could last only as long as we were not in love with one another, whether mutually or unilaterally was neither here nor there, because the moment that this misfortune should happen to overtake either or, perchance, both of us, we would have to terminate our relationship instantly; and my partner, let me put it that way, who also happened to be recovering from a fairly severe amatory mishap, accepted this condition without demur (at least so it seemed) though the untroubledness of our relationship, I don’t doubt it, evidently soon troubled her and would have eroded our relationship had I not in the meantime made the acquaintance of my ex- (or at that time still future) wife, which in the end (at least for me) represented the radical solution. Around this time, moreover, I was still living in a sublet room, which undeniably seemed absurd, so to say, under the circumstances of a consolidation that by then was heading into its second decade, at a time when— albeit usually at the cost of myocardial infarcts, diabetes, chronic gastric ulcers, psychosomatic breakdowns, moral and financial ruin or, in the better cases, merely the total disintegration of family life—nearly all my