This is a fictional dialog between Doctor Freud and a disturbed modern woman named Sandra. The year is 1930. Sigmund Freud, cigar in hand and watch in pocket, has just won the Goethe Prize for his contributions to psychology. He will have to leave his apartment at 19 Berggasse in eight years to move to London, but he doesn’t know it yet. Today, he has on his famous couch someone who has traveled across oceans and across time to have him psychoanalyze her. This is the sixth time Sandra has traveled across time and space to see  Dr. Freud, so she is comfortable with him.

Sandra: Hello Doctor Freud.

Freud: Hello Sandra.

Sandra: Thank you for meeting with me today. (Sandra pulls out a piece of gum from her purse. Then she lies down on the couch so she can’t see Dr. Freud directly).

Freud: Is that gum you’re chewing?

Sandra: Oh. Yeah. I started chewing it to stop the smoking.

Freud: Hm.

Sandra: I chew probably a pack every other day.

Freud: That is a lot of gum.

Sandra: Yeah, really? I didn’t get know it was a lot of gum at all?! I mean, obviously I know it’s a lot of gum! C’mon! Geez! What does that have to do with anything?

Freud: Calm down, Sandra. I was just commenting.

Sandra: Well, I don’t need you to comment on anything! I can do it on my own! Just like I learned to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to feed myself when I was six-years-old. I don’t need anyone! 

Freud: I think you may have what I call an “Oral-Aggressive Personality.” Your mother probably weaned you off of the breast too early and too quickly. You were traumatized because you realized that you can’t have everything you want. You are aggressive and self-reliant. You chew gum so often because you have an oral fixation.

Sandra: I don’t know doctor. You might just be a quack!

Freud: It’s very simple really. All people have what I call psychosexual phases. People have erogenous zones which change throughout their lifetimes that give them the most pleasure, or a pleasure motivational force called a libido. For an infant, like you were when you probably developed this personality, the libido is housed in the mouth. Infants put everything in their mouths. The libido moves from the mouth to the anus to the phallic stage to the genital stage. I am right about you, you know.

Sandra: Maybe. Keep going. 

Freud: All right, let’s try some free association and let’s release your unconscious. Just relax and say whatever comes to mind about your childhood.

Sandra: I never think about this. I was an obese teen. I remember always loving food. When I was a teenager, I just ate and ate. Cakes and pies and whatever I could get my hands on it. I remember once, even earlier, when I stole my friend’s hamburger from our school lunch because I wanted to eat so much. My parents used to have to hide their car keys and pennies and change when I was even younger because I wanted to test everything out by putting it in my mouth. After I started gaining a lot of weight, I started smoking and when that got to be too great of a health risk, I turned to obsessively chewing this gum.

Freud: I am almost sure of my hypothesis now! You surely were weaned off the breast too early and compensated with this oral fixation. You were just too young to remember it. As for the other things you just told me in the free association, you repressed them because they were too painful. Time is up now, Sandra. Why don’t you scoot back to 21^st century America and I’ll return to speaking German.

Sandra: Thank you Dr. Freud!