VINCENT: It’s beautiful.
EMILY: That’s just what he had written in his will.
VINCENT: Only for you?
EMILY: No, for his children. “And to my children, my undying love.” It’s very sick, but it’s also very beautiful.
VINCENT: I don’t think it’s sick at all. And if you do, you’re crazy. It’s a beautiful, abstract thing, a very substantial, complex thought. And do you know something? It’s all that remains with you of him. If he had left you a hundred thousand dollars, you would have spent it like that girl did, Sick Joan. But he left you his undying love. It’s a fantastic thing, something you hold.
EMILY: Yes, darling, but undying love from a father who didn’t love you the right way when he was alive is very dangerous.
VINCENT: I’ll tell you something about a child’s reaction to his father’s or his mother’s love. As an adult, one looks back on the love of his parents as a child, and that child, I am sorry, does not know what love is about. That’s what’s wrong with most adults, they’re judging whether or not their parents have been good to them in terms of a child looking at his parents.
EMILY: No, in terms of an adult looking at his parents.
VINCENT: No, because what they’re analyzing are their childhood responses. It’s not facts they’re looking back on but feelings and remembrances.
EMILY: But that’s what’s true. Facts don’t mean anything, darling. On that level, facts mean very little.
VINCENT: You’re wrong. Truth is involved with facts, I’m sorry. If you say to me the sun is out now and I look and it’s cloudy, then it’s not sunny.
EMILY: Of course not.
VINCENT: So what I’m saying is how the parents were to the child is not necessarily, underline necessarily, as the memory of it is, because the memory was through the child’s eyes.
EMILY: Of course, of course. That’s what I said about chemical states and perceiving reality, about the nature of it being subjective. My problems do have a lot to do with my father. Now Marsha, you see — I’ve thought about this a great deal from what I know about psychoanalytic theory, I mean in the Chekhovian sense I know, I know how the present and the past are like life and art, how they’re so much a part of each other — Marsha’s relationship with her father, I would say, was permanently damaging.
VINCENT: You mean cannot be undone.
EMILY: Cannot be undone and will not be undone. At some point, at the crucial threshold of becoming a woman, her father rejected her, or, as you would say, she felt he rejected her, so she shut him out and shut herself off. So now, when she has someone like Tim Cullen, she can seduce him, get him into bed, and get the intimacy, but then she arranges for him to shut it off, just at that moment where nuance, identity and relationship start. Her relationships are all beginnings, they never get past that.
VINCENT: That’s where I disagree. I think they’re all conclusions, I don’t think there are any beginnings or growth.
EMILY: Well it’s exactly the same thing, just as what happened with her father was either a conclusion or a beginning, however you want to interpret it.
VINCENT: No, no, with her father it was a conclusion because there had been a beginning — that’s why it was so painful and there was the shutting off. So what she does now is begin at the conclusion, where the father left off, the point of intimate love relationship and deep intense feelings. You know I’m saying something very profound.
EMILY: I’m listening, I’m just getting my cigarettes.
VINCENT: I didn’t know you had them there. Is that where you hid them, you bitch?
EMILY: I didn’t hide them; they were on my bed and someone kicked them off. I’m listening, darling.
VINCENT: It’s true, you need someone to treat you badly, you all do.
EMILY: All right, go ahead, darling.
VINCENT: The thing is this, Marsha begins at the point where her father let her down. She gets him though, now in the form of a lover, into bed, and then she starts to devour him.
EMILY: Does she really?
VINCENT: Yes. She’s outside so I better whisper — she’s probably within earsight if she keeps this quiet.
EMILY: I think she’s in the car.
VINCENT: No, they came in.
EMILY: Can I look out the window and see? Go ahead, I’m listening to what you’re saying because I’m actually amazed by it.
VINCENT: It’s absolutely brilliant.
EMILY: They’re still out there in the car.
VINCENT: She begins to devour these men, she clings, she hangs on, she’s inseparable, she sucks, she’s parasitic.
EMILY: Does she care?
VINCENT: She panics.
EMILY: Does she care?
VINCENT: And she does all this not to win the man, but to lose him. It happened at such a crucial point, the thing with her father, that it’s not something she can get over, she wants it repeated because she’s a masochist.
EMILY: You know what masochism is, don’t you? It’s a striving for pleasure.
VINCENT: Do you know what sadism is?
EMILY: It’s a striving for pleasure, they both are. Masochism has nothing to do with pain; pain is recognized as an area of pleasure. In other words, Marsha gets pleasure from rejecting the man and being rejected by him — you have to understand that.
VINCENT: Here she comes — she’s listening. I wouldn’t listen to this if I were you, because it’s the truth about you, Marshie.
EMILY: Being rejected is love, it’s as simple as that, it’s the way the father showed love.
VINCENT: Exactly. However, it’s neurotic because she thinks she doesn’t want it and it becomes unpositive and clogged as a flow. It’s not a love flow.
EMILY: It’s not, it’s a need flow.
VINCENT: A hate flow, a way of getting even.
MARSHA: What are you saying about me?
EMILY: Shall we play her the last part of the tape?
MARSHA: Play it — I can take it.
EMILY: Okay.
VINCENT: The thing is this, Marsha begins at the point where her father let her down. She gets him though, now in the form of a lover, into bed, and then she starts to devour him.
EMILY: Does she really?
VINCENT: Yes. She’s outside so I better whisper — she’s probably within earsight if she keeps this quiet.
EMILY: I think she’s in the car.
VINCENT: No, they came in.
EMILY: Can I look out the window and see? Go ahead, I’m listening to what you’re saying because I’m actually amazed by it.
VINCENT: It’s absolutely brilliant.
EMILY: They’re still out there in the car.
VINCENT: She begins to devour these men, she clings, she hangs on, she’s inseparable, she sucks, she’s parasitic.
EMILY: Does she care?
VINCENT: She panics.
EMILY: Does she care?
VINCENT: And she does all this not to win the man, but to lose him. It happened at such a crucial point, this thing with her father, that it’s not something she can get over, she wants it repeated because she’s a masochist.
EMILY: You know what masochism is, don’t you? It’s a striving for pleasure.
VINCENT: Do you know what sadism is?
EMILY: It’s a striving for pleasure, they both are. Masochism has nothing to do with pain; pain is recognized as an area of pleasure. In other words, Marsha gets pleasure from rejecting the man and being rejected by him — you have to understand that.