Ketchup Decantation - An Urban Skill
How To Pour Ketchup
DrHGuy’s Decadent Qualifications
One should first understand that DrHGuy is exclusively interested in the skill of ketchup-pouring, and then only on a conceptual and dilettantish basis. In fact, were it not for his compassion and concern for those ketchup-cravers in the Heck Of A Guy audience, DrHGuy would have no objection to 100% of all ketchup remaining in its designated bottle, thus precluding its contamination of innocent and otherwise potentially tasty food.2
Far from being a ketchup aficionado, DrHGuy is, in reality, ketchup-avoidant, thus eliminating self-interest from today’s task, the elucidation of strategies for socially appropriate yet efficacious extraction of ketchup from its traditional container. This selflessness not only allows for dispassionate evaluation and assessment of techniques but paradoxically endows this quest with a certain purity and sanctity, not unlike the Arthurian search for the Holy Grail.
If you erroneously assumed this post was the consequence of the author’s ketchup lust, you needn’t take it hard; it’s an easy mistake to make. Perhaps, for example, you were thinking of DrHGuy’s father, who started every morning with a plate of scrambled eggs slathered in ketchup.3
DrHGuy is, on the other hand, all about performing every task, great and small, with elegant competence,4 especially if doing so involves eighth grade level science.
And, notwithstanding his genuine admiration and enjoyment of Carly Simon’s hit song, Anticipation, both as a concert number and, more pertinently to this discussion, in its reincarnation as a Heinz Ketchup TV advertisement, DrHGuy, it may surprise you to learn, is not a patient fellow. Watchful waiting may be the appropriate medical recommendation in some cases and serene forbearance may be necessary in raising offspring but these are not acceptable tactics, in the author’s view, for condiment availability and application.
The Task
To eliminate trick answers, I am officially defining the mission at hand as
So you smartypants folks who were planning to allow me to go through my usual prolix and complex explanations (which I indeed will) only to then trump my recommendation with “Why not just squeeze the ketchup from one of those handy-dandy plastic squirt bottles?” can put away those smirks.
We’re talking about the all-American, classic, narrow-neck glass bottle which provides a suitable challenge for the true dining sportsman.
We are not talking about squeeze bottles, bottles designed to stand on their lids, fast-food condiment dispensers, overhead dispensers, pump dispensers, wide-mouth jars, and such, which yield their contents to any wuss who can locate its point of egress.
Time In A Bottle
The Heinz classic ketchup bottle was by no means a casual or random design. The narrow neck simplified pouring and minimized the content’s contact with air, which could darken the sauce. Most importantly, the clear glass bottle, demonstrated the purity and quality of the contents, especially at a time when other manufacturers packaged their product in barrels that obscured the use of cheap fillers (turnips were a popular choice).
This bottle design reigned until the 1980s when plastic squeezable containers, which were safer as well as more convenient, became available and soon outsold the glass bottles. In fact, these days Heinz sells ketchup packaged in glass bottles only to foodservice establishments.
This limited distribution of glass ketchup bottles does not, however, lessen the need for the upcoming generation to develop the skills necessary to extract the condiment from the container. In fact, today’s whippersnappers, lacking experience with this task in the home environment, need instruction all the more if they are to avoid a public faux pas and consequent humiliation.
Of course, glass ketchup bottles will eventually be eliminated altogether. For a vision of ketchup dispensing in that brave new world, check out this must-be-seen-to-be-believed video of a mechanized Ketchup Krapper wrought by those wacky MIT kids.
The Science
The inhibition of ketchup flow through narrow neck bottles involves two interactive scientific concepts:
1. High static shear strength. Ketchup is, as any schoolchild knows,5 thixotropic, i.e., it has a consistency that is gel-like at rest, but fluid when agitated.6
Our problem is that, unless the restaurant hired the Flying Karamazov Brothers to entertain the diners by juggling, in addition to their everyday repertoire of chain saws, bowling balls, cotton balls, and bananas, any ketchup bottles not currently in use, the ketchup has probably been at rest and is consequently in its gel state, blocking the bottle neck. Our goal is the inducement of shear thinning, transforming the ketchup from a more or less solid state to a liquid form.
2. Air blockage. To pour anything from any container under ordinary conditions, the substance (in this case, the ketchup) has to be displaced by another substance, which is typically air. If one is pouring a simple liquid, say, oh … vodka, that’s not a big deal – because vodka, at room temperature, has no significant static shear strength and when poured, easily surrenders a channel for air to enter the vessel the vodka is departing. On the other hand, if one is pouring a thixotropic substance, like nail polish or whipped cream or ketchup, then getting air through the plug blocking the container’s opening may be more challenging.7
The Solution(s)
The desired facilitation of ketchup flow can be effected by overcoming either the ketchup’s static shear strength or the air blockage or both.
1. The Bump
Remove the cap. Hold the bottle horizontally (i.e., with the long axis of the bottle parallel to the floor).
Then rotate the open end downward 10-45 degrees.
Rotating the bottle more than 45 degrees or inverting it such that the opening is pointed directly at the floor is counterproductive. The idea is to induce a sideways flow since, as it turns out, sideways forces are the most likely to induce shear thinning.
Tap the
lower surface of the bottle’s neck (the encircled “57″8 on the neck label of the Heinz Ketchup bottle is a convenient target) repeatedly with the heel of your hand.
If you are right-handed, this is most efficiently accomplished by holding the bottle in the left hand (palm down) and bringing the hands together as though applauding – politely.
This mild agitation is sufficient to liquefy a portion of the ketchup, propel it obliquely toward the bottom of the bottle, and allow air to enter the bottle, thus fulfilling the conditions necessary for flow.
1A. The Horizontal Bop (The Jiggle Variation Of The Bump)
With the cap on the bottle, force the ketchup from the neck of the bottle by holding the bottle vertically with the cap pointed up and striking the bottom of the bottle against the palm of the hand. Then, remove the cap and rotate the bottle just past the horizontal plane. Jiggle the neck of the bottle in a plane parallel to the floor. The sideways forces induces shear thinning and, with it, ketchup flow. Once flow begins, gravity will cause the flow to continue as long as an air path exists between the outside and inside of the bottle.
2. The Sole Shake
With the cap on, shake the bottle a few times. Then take off the cap and rotate the open end downward just past the horizontal. The shaking causes shear thinning of the thixotropic ketchup.
3. The Western Swing
With the cap on, hold the bottle such that the long axis of the bottle is along your forearm with the cap of the bottle pointing away from you. Swing your arm and the bottle together as a pendulum (to create centrifugal force) for a few seconds. Stop swinging, open the bottle, and pour.
If transforming oneself into a centrifuge to extract ketchup from its bottle seems a bit over the top, there is an alternative methodology that uses the same principles without requiring the public arm swinging:
1. Apply for and be accepted into the astronaut training program
2. When placed in a centrifuge similar to that pictured below as part of the training, smuggle aboard the bottle of ketchup
3. Hold the ketchup bottle such that the capped end is pointed away from the center of the centrifuge
4. Spin
5. Stop
6. Open and rotate the bottle to taste
7. Pour
4. The Mr. Wizard (AKA Turkey With A Straw)
This method requires 
a flexible plastic drinking straw, AKA a “bendy straw,” (no, there is no slurping involved; this is The Mr. Wizard Method, not The Animal House Tactic), which may or may not be available at a restaurant. In any case, users of The Mr. Wizard Method seem the sort to bring along two of three in their plastic pen protectors.
With the ketchup bottle upright and uncapped, place your thumb over the end of the straw, and insert it into the ketchup as far as possible. Remove your thumb, and bend the straw over the neck of the bottle, taking care to keep the lumen of the straw open. Hold the bottleneck and the portion of the straw sticking out of the bottle neck with one hand.
The straw provides a channel for air to enter the bottle.
Invert the bottle-and-straw unit. Pour. Graciously acknowledge the adoration of your audience.
An Inspirational Moment
The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle is a 170 feet tall water tower in Collinsville, Illinois built in 1949 for the G.S. Suppiger catsup bottling plant, bottlers of Brooks catsup.
Footnotes
- This sage observation, formatted as delightful doggerel, is properly ascribed to Richard Willard Armour. The frequently seen attribution to Ogden Nash is inaccurate but does have an historic basis. A few years before Mr. Armour’s ditty became known wherever condiments are revered, Oggie wrote
The Catsup Bottle
First a little
Then a lottle
Mr. Armour, it appears, then borrowed Mr. Nash’s rhyme, transformed the title into a first line, and thus earned his place in this country’s populist poetry pantheon. ~back~ - DrHGuy’s interest in ketchup-pouring thus parallels his appreciation of caber tossing; both undertakings are undoubtedly difficult to execute and thus worthy of admiration when done well, but, all the same, DrHGuy cares not a whit if the cabers and condiments in question are actually transported from one location to another ~back~
- Fun Fact: only 4% of people in the US use ketchup on their eggs although this practice is widespread in Russia. Also, many Swedes put ketchup on their pasta. From: Anticipation, Monte Burke, Forbes December 12, 2005 ~back~
- To grasp the notion of performing a task with elegant competence, it may be helpful to envision the stylish, efficient, almost cavalier manner in which James Bond – the James Bond as played by the young Sean Connery rather than the later pretenders – vanquished villains and bedded babes. Can you imagine the tuxedoed James, dining at a four-star, all night diner in Paris, pounding his fist on the bottom of a ketchup bottle to apply a dollop of that sauce onto his Veau à la persillade? I didn’t think so. ~back~
- Assuming that schoolchild had Mr. Maupin as his science teacher ~back~
- Other thixotropic comestibles include yogurt, mayonnaise, cottage cheese, and whipped cream. Thixotropy is a also a factor in earthquakes (certain clays that are stable at rest liquefy under certain, sideway stresses), quicksand, epoxies, and paints. Theoretical physicists and the folks at NASA spend a good deal of time pondering this phenomenon. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/07jun_elastic_fluids.htm ~back~
- Consequently, it is unsurprising that the Catsup Cosmopolitan has never achieved the popularity during the cocktail hour as the Vodka Martini. ~back~
- The “57″ in “Heinz 57″ is derived from the number of varieties of pickle the company once carried ~back~
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How To (Correctly) Not Take Medications As Prescribed
Want to improve your healthcare and the healthcare system at large?
… and, in the process, decrease medical costs?
… without changing doctors, moving into an ashram, or giving up any of your disgusting vices?
Remember this promise from Take Your Blog Reader To Work Day?
Finally, sometime in the next few days, I’ll let you know about a particularly vicious cycle caused by inadequate patient-physician communication vis-à-vis noncompliance and offer some free advice, guaranteed to be worth the price, about how to protect yourself from falling prey to this potentially expensive and health-endangering trap.
Well, it’s been more than a few days, but here it is. So, pay attention.
The Background
First, it’s important that you understand these facts:
1. Although patients who take medications1 as prescribed will, as a group, have a statistically significant better outcome than the patients who refuse the medications altogether or patients who take the medications but not as prescribed, a significant number of patients (a 20-80% range of noncompliance would cover most cases and a 50% noncompliance rate would be a fair estimate of an overall average) will not take medications as prescribed – regardless of the disorder being treated, the severity of the potential outcome, the medication prescribed, the age, education, experience, or demographics of the patients. Patient noncompliance has been a pervasive and persistent healthcare phenomenon despite the best efforts of the healthcare community to combat it since at least the time of Hippocrates (born 460 BC; died 377 BC).
2. Most of those patients who do not take medications as prescribed do not inform the prescribing clinician of this and may even claim that they have taken the medications as prescribed. In the overwhelming majority of such cases the prescribing clinician never discovers that the medications were not taken as prescribed.
3. Clinicians cannot efficaciously deal with treatment failure caused by noncompliance if they do not know that the patient did not follow the treatment plan. At best, the physician will be less efficient in providing appropriate care; at worst, they may modify the treatment with disastrous results.
4. The currently prevalent models of noncompliance management have a final common pathway: their objective, their only measure of success, is that the patient follows the prescribed medication regimen, whether this goal is attained by coercion, persuasion, incentives, moral appeals to responsibility or concern for ones family, patient education, or other methods. Even so-called “patient empowerment” has come to mean “the patient empowered to choose to take the medication as prescribed.” Consequently, patients who do not take their medications as prescribed are powerfully but covertly encouraged to actively or passively mislead clinicians about the noncompliance, perpetuating this vicious cycle.
That wasn’t so bad, was it? Is everybody still with me? OK, now we come to
The Incredibly Revolutionary Idea
1. We quit pretending that noncompliance will disappear if patients are properly educated, persuaded, empowered, informed, motivated, coerced, bribed, threatened, influenced, or reminded. We acknowledge the obvious – that except in a few cases,2 the patient makes the final choice about following a prescribed treatment.
2. Rather than continue the unrequited efforts to eradicate noncompliance, we try, as a first step in breaking the vicious cycle, fixing that part of the healthcare system that multiplies the damage caused by noncompliance: the miscommunication between clinician and patient about noncompliance.
If you and your clinician have a treatment alliance
And How Do We Do That?
Well, the easiest and best way would be for everyone to read the Heck Of A Guy and AlignMap blogs, acknowledge the wisdom and power of this idea, and change overnight.
Just in case that plan inexplicably fails, there is a Plan B, but it’s a tad more complex. Plan B involves adjusting the interaction between clinician and patient to reinforce rather than discourage open communication about noncompliance. This will require the cooperation of some significant players from the healthcare field, those who pay for healthcare, and government bureaucracies as well as patients and their families. It probably won’t happen overnight. This is what my work at AlignMap is all about.
In The Meantime
If this concept appeals to you, you can take a baby step or two toward opening communication with your medical team on your own and at your own risk by simply informing your prescribing clinician if you didn’t take your medications as prescribed, whatever the reason (e.g., you lost track of the prescription schedule, the medication caused side-effects, it didn’t seems as though the medication was working).
Here’s the catch. While telling your physician that you aren’t following his or her prescribed treatment seems rather straightforward (after all, what objection can there be to a patient telling the doctor the truth?), the risk is that your clinician could respond to your efforts in a suboptimal manner3 because, for example, of personality conflicts, fears of malpractice lawsuits, misinterpretation of your motivation, or pressure from peers, third party payers, or administrative overseers.
The possibility of a negative outcome from this interaction, while incalculable, does exist and precludes my enthusiastic endorsement and encouragement of patients taking unilateral action.
Here’s an interesting question for your primary doctor/nurse practitioner/physician’s assistant that might help you assess his/her attitude: “Say, Dr. _______, I was wondering. If you prescribed some pills for me and I called you a week later to tell you I had taken them for a while but became convinced they weren’t going to help and quit taking them, what would happen then?”
Footnotes
- This post focuses on treatment with medication only because that is a familiar concept and one that is relatively easy to understand; the same principles apply to treatment plans featuring prescribed diets, exercise programs, screening tests, etc. ~back~
- E.g., cases involving children or adult patients incompetent to handle their own healthcare and cases in which forced compliance with treatment is legally sanctioned and is pragmatically feasible ~back~
- ”Your clinician could respond to your efforts in a suboptimal manner” is code for ” Your clinician could be a jerk,” ” Your clinician could find a reason to refuse to treat you,” or “Your clinician could retaliate against what he or she sees as ungrateful, uncooperative, or crazy behavior.” ~back~
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The Way Cool Booty Song
The [Booty Got] Back Story
Fact #1: In the beginning, at least as far as this topic is concerned, was Found Magazine, and Found Magazine’s raison d’etre was — and still is
Anything goes.
These finds are published with minimal annotation and, with amazing frequency, evoke passion, pathos, and poignancy. Often, they are also pretty funny. Even if you aren’t in the market for a way cool booty song, which I find difficult to believe, knowing you as I do, you should check out the Found Magazine web site.
Fact #2: One of the items Davy Rothbart, the creator of Found Magazine, found1 on the streets of Ypsilanti, Michigan was a demo tape someone had thrown away – for good reason. It consisted of a batch of rap songs that – well, they sucked. Mr. Rothbart bestowed upon the then-unknown band that created the tape, the memorable moniker of The Ypsilanti All-Starz and began distributing reproductions of the tape to friends.
Fact #3: Although it appeared at first that the tape was a serious effort by a band hoping to hit it big, Found Magazine worked through conflicting stories about its origin and determined that the songs were originally recorded by one Tim Schreiber, then a teenager, who, on an impulse, decided to put together a self-consciously bad tape because – I guess because it seemed like a good idea at the time. While it’s true that it would be a better story if the band were delusional enough to think they had recorded a tape of chart-toppers, the music, regardless of intent, is — er … special.
Fact #4: Davy’s brother, Jason, and Jason’s band, The Poem Adept, produced an acoustic cover of all the tracks on the Ypsilanti All-Starz tape, including an especially mellisonant, coffee house version of of one of the songs, “The Booty Don’t Stop,” AKA “Your Booty Don’t Stop,” AKA “Damn, The Booty Don’t Stop.”2
Fact #5: The Poem Adept version of “The Booty Don’t Stop” is, at once, ludicrous, sweet, sexist, self-mocking, funny, cynical, heartfelt, and seductive.
Fact #6: “The Booty Don’t Stop” is the perfect transition track for that seduction mix CD as the tone of the music shifts from romance to lust — or so I’ve been told. I also recommend it for wedding receptions, bar mitzvahs, solstice celebrations, anniversary bashes, first birthday parties, New Years Eve Dances, those tender pre- and post-coital moments, and ordinations.
Fact #7: You too can possess and listen to an MP3 [4.0MB, 128kbps] of a live performance of “The Booty Don’t Stop,” the finest booty song ever — for free. The first link is a direct download. If it doesn’t work, use the second link which will take you to the download page, form which you can do the right-click/Save Target As thing.
Booty Won’t Stop Direct Download
Poem Adept Music Download Web Page
Footnotes
- Well, Davy knew somebody who knew somebody … who actually found it, but the important thing is that Davy got his hands on it ~back~
- ”The Booty Don’t Stop” CD is for sale at the Found Magazine web site for the low, low cost of $10. Its playlist follows:
1. Wave Yo’ Booty in the Air (Bounce)
2. Yo’ Ass is So Fine
3. Ass-Whomp Bustin’ Out of Yo’ Back Pocket
4. Yo’ Shit Be Up In My Face
5. Wiggle On the Flo’
6. Booty Time
7. Taste That Booty Flava’
8. Booty Shake (a capella)
9. Your Booty Don’t Stop
10. (She Got a) Big Fat Booty
11. Wave Yo Booty in the Air (remix)
12. Yo’ Ass is So Fine (heartfelt remix)
13. Ass-Whomp (re-dux)
14. Yo’ Shit Be Up in My Face ~back~
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The Sexy Microsoft Windows XP Ad
No, that’s not a typo. This is a sexy ad promoting the soon to be outdated Microsoft operating system, not the latest Apple iWhatever. Of course, unless you hang around the internet too much, you’ve never seen this ad.
Who else — if not DrHGuy — is gonna tell you about this stuff?
The Production
In June 2001, Chris Niemeyer, a director based in Zurich, was hired by an ad agency to produce a 30 second commercial to be shown on Swiss TV promoting Windows XP password protection.
Kinky, eh?
The ad was shot on the cheap, in 16mm in less than a day.
It just gets better and better.
As far as I can determine, the ad never officially ran on any commercial venue. Apparently, a fan who saw the raw video posted it online somewhere, somehow. According to Niemeyer, someone at Microsoft saw it and Gates had it pulled.
Naturally, that led to multiple postings of the video on several web sites.
The Content
The content is sexy but not lewd, especially by European standards. In fact, I have to wonder if the commercial was banned, as the director implies, because Bill Gates or someone else at Microsoft was that prudish or if there may have been another reason, such as Microsoft didn’t think it would effectively sell software, or Microsoft was miffed that the ad they paid to produce was hijacked online, or that some vice-president’s brother-in-law opened a video production unit in Zurich and thus became Microsoft’s vendor of choice, or … .
Anyway, as a story line, you’ve got your basic cool
(especially for 2001) European dude and dude-ette getting busy. Things are moving along nicely until they reach one of those classic tests of manhood, the brassiere disengagement or, as the Swiss might put it, the dégagement de soutien-gorge. Even though the guy opts for the conservative, efficient, better-safe-than-sorry, two-handed release (see illustration), his efforts are unrequited and his desires, presumably, thwarted.
The tie-in to Windows XP password production is made (this is, after all, a commercial) and everyone — except perhaps the young man — lives happily ever after.
By my lights, the video’s winning moment (cognitive dissonance precludes my use of the more familiar “money shot” terminology) occurs about halfway through the sequence; watch the sly, nuanced expression on the girl’s face as she realizes what is going on, literally, behind her back.
The Video
The 30 second video is available these days on several sites. [Update: Originally, this post listed two URLs for the video. These were replaced by this on-site video player 01 February 2008.]
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Get Wet
The Prelude
I’m especially parsimonious about recommending blogs.
For one thing, it feels at least a tad presumptuous for me to tell anyone else to read another blog. But, I have every confidence that I can overcome the obstacle of ostentatious humility.
And, I do worry about making so many recommendations that any impact such suggestions might carry would be attenuated. I know that once a blogroll extends beyond my browser window, it becomes too daunting to try out a few entries. On the other hand, Heck Of A Guy has been pimped by some gracious blog-buddies. and it would be ungracious not to extend that same courtesy to other writers.
It’s more difficult to circumvent another hurdle – that although the number of blogs is growing at an astounding rate,1 the number of hours in the day has remained remarkably constant and, by extension, the amount of time available for folks to read blogs, assuming they continue to work, raise kids, sleep, eat, etc., is severely limited.
Anyway, I tend to hold off advocating a blog unless it’s clearly so outstanding that readers would clearly miss out on something wonderful if they didn’t have a look.
The Recommendation
Writing As Jo(e) is a gorgeously written blog dealing with family life, nature, literature, love, and much, much more. The craftsmanship of the writing is invariably high and sometimes better than that. The final nudge that sent me over the recommendation cliff was her lushly erotic, sexy, intensely romantic, almost but not quite raunchy poem, Shining Wet posted in the most recent of her Friday Poetry Blogging columns. As I said, you may be missing out on something wonderful if you don’t have a look.
Credit Due Department
Mindspinner not only turned me on to Writing As Jo(e) originally, but also alerted me to Shining Wet
Footnotes
- There are, at last count,
77, 328,332,93477, 328,332,93577, 328,332,936 77, 328,332,937a bazillion blogs ~back~
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- No related posts
He’s OK; She’s OK
In yesterday’s post, I cavalierly raised some worrisome issues without resolving them.
Porter & Dolly
For example, Then, I speculated on Dolly’s feelings about Porter Wagoner after their professional split and tried to recall if Porter were still alive.
According to the Dead or Alive? web site, Porter Wagoner is still alive and will celebrate his 79th birthday on August 12 2006.
And, if one reads between the lines of this excerpt from a 2004 interview , it would seem that Dolly is still happy about having left one of the most popular and most successful singing groups in the Country & Western pantheon.
Interviewer: Maybe you should’ve stayed with Porter. Who knows how many more great songs that would have inspired?
Dolly No, I shouldn’t of either. I’d of been dead and wouldn’t of wrote nothing! One of us would have been dead!
My Breakfast, My Mom, RuPaul, & Freud
To wrap up the other loose ends from yesterday’s post, I can report that
- The milk was spoiled
- My mother was awake when I called
- RuPaul is still the one and only RuPaul
- The remaining Freud anecdotes, two of which involve Sigmund’s bodily fluids,1 will probably be posted next weekend.
Sorry to have left you all hanging like that. My bad.
Footnotes
- No, not those bodily fluids, but they’re still pretty good stories. ~back~
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Freud and His Damn Dog
On a rainy Sunday in northern Illinois, ones thoughts naturally turn to Freudian anecdotes.
Well, first they turned to 
“I wonder if that milk we bought before vacation is still OK to drink?” And then they turned to the complexities of deciding if I should call my mother this early and risk wakening her or wait a while and risk missing her if she were at church. That led to ruefully remembering why I usually call on Saturdays rather than Sundays. Of course, once I use any variant of the word, “rueful,” I reflexly think of RuPaul, the 6 ft 4 in drag queen, who popularized the observation that “we all came into this world naked, the rest of it is all drag” and whose cover of Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas (from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) was the standout track on my 2005 Christmas Mix CD. Then, I speculated on Dolly’s feelings about Porter Wagoner after their professional split and tried to recall if Porter were still alive.
Anyway, after a dozen or so such concerns, I began pondering a Sunday post. My thoughts then turned to the realization that nothing that had thus far crossed my mind could be easily expanded into even a C-minus sort of post.
Then, my thoughts turned to Freudian anecdotes. Your thoughts may now be turning to “Why 
would I want to spend even five minutes of my Sunday reading a few pointless stories about Freud?”
Well,1 as Matthew Arnold famously pointed out in his essay, Literature and Science “All knowledge is interesting to a wise man.”
If that’s not enough reason, (and, by the way, that Arnold is one weird looking dude, even for a Victorian), these have proven, in the right hands (or, more accurately, I suppose, the right mouth) handy conversation starters at urban cocktail and dinner parties.
Besides, you’ve already invested this much time and effort; aren’t you curious about where this is all heading?
I certainly am.
The Source
The head of the psychiatric program at Michael Reese during my residency was Roy Grinker, Sr, MD, who was quite a hot-shot in psychiatry for a number of accomplishments. Our interest today, however has to do with the fact that he was analyzed by Freud – on a 1932 Rockefeller Fellowship, no less.2
Grinker would, on occasion, relate a few stories about his analysis with Freud in his talks and lectures, especially those addressed to the residents and his colleagues. That’s where I heard them.
The Stories
It’s a cliché in psychoanalytic circles that Freud was not a Freudian, i.e., Freud didn’t maintain the sterile, silent session environment for which analysts sometimes strive to prevent contaminating the transference by becoming a real person to the patient rather than a blank screen onto which feelings can be displaced. Grinker’s descriptions seem to bear this out.
According to Grinker, when Freud was excited, he would pound on the arms of his chair and, not infrequently, the head of the patient’s couch.
Freud and his daughter, 
Anna (also an analyst), both kept dogs (Freud had a chow named Yofi and Anna had a giant wolfhound) that had the run of the offices and shared waiting room. Both dogs would start barking whenever anyone rang the doorbell. The wolfhound (an example of the breed is pictured on the left) would immediately start sniffing Grinker’s genitals. Grinker reported that, as a consequence, he always entered Freud’s office “with a high level of castration anxiety.”
At Freud’s seminar, the wolfhound once lay next to him and barked, causing Anna Freud to tell Grinker that the dog was “perfectly safe.” After a pause, she went on to point out that, of course, when the dog was younger, he had a habit of eviscerating sheep. Then she repeated that now he was perfectly safe. Finally, she advised Grinker to pull his tail to make him stop barking. Grinker opted not to follow that suggestion.
Yofi, Freud’s 
Chinese Chow (Yofi is pictured at right), would sit alongside Grinker’s couch and, as dogs are wont to do, eventually scratch at the door to be let out. Freud would let the dog out, and, on his return to his chair, note that Yofi hadn’t thought much of what Grinker had been talking about. When the dog would later scratch to get back in the office, Freud would comment that Yofi had decided to give Grinker another chance.
In another episode, Grinker was emoting with intensity when, as Grinker explained it, “The damn dog jumped on top of me.” Freud immediately responded — by commenting that Yofi was excited that Grinker had discovered the roots of his anxiety. During this interpretation, Grinker, by his own report, lay quietly with eyes closed, as one is taught to do when attacked, for example, by wild bears.
We’ll leave Doctors Freud and Grinker, as well as the mighty Yofi, there for now. Another handful of Freud & Grinker anecdotes, none of which feature dogs or other animals, will be posted in the next few days.
Updated: A Freudian Trip
Footnotes
- At this point, I have compassionately forgone interpreting the pathological defensiveness of such a question. ~back~
- The following are excerpts of letters from Freud to Grinker negotiating the terms of the analysis:
April 16, 1933 (in English)
Dear Dr. Grinker,
I expect to have free hours in the fall this year and will be ready to undertake your analysis provided my health continues as it is now. My fee is $25.00 per hour but in consideration of the special interest in your case I would agree to a reduction. Yet, I cannot give a definite promise until I have got your kind information about three points: 1) what your age is 2) how much time you intent to spend on your analysis 3) whether by some chance you speak German and can perform your analysis in that language although the negative is no obstacle. If you find it inconvenient to stick to me, you have the choice among several other analysts, well known to your friend, Dr. Alexander. Sincerely
Yours-
FreudMay 15, 1933 (translated from the German)
You are right to assume that my greedy instincts will be strongly influenced by your future career in America. But, in addition, there are material needs to be considered. I am still forced to make a living. I cannot do more than five hours of analysis daily and I do not know how much longer I shall work at all. Thus a fee of 15 dollars is my lowest rate per hour. The amount of $1500 which you have proposed for your analysis would cover 100 hours, that is four months. Even if for you I were to decrease this to $10.00, this would result in 150 hours, which would be about 6 months. I can make no other arrangements. Please consider the situation and let me know. With best wishes, Yours,
FreudJune 8, 1933 (translated from German)
I am glad to hear that it has been easier for you to be in analysis with me since I myself care about it. The first of September would be a good time to start; in August I would like to have a rest. As concerns the fee you are rather too discreet about it which is unjustified among analysts. You mention no figure. I do not recall whether I have made you a positive proposal; I think I have only illustrated the shortcomings of your calculations. Also the circumstances have changed since then. The dollar has lost much of its value and will perhaps drop further within the next few months. Thus we have reached no agreement on this point. I expect to hear from you.
Yours Truly
FreudAt the end, on the other hand, Freud told Grinker “Your analysis was one of my last remaining pleasures in life.” ~back~