Alben & Lieder

My Psychoanalyst Is An Idiot

1947, Text/Musik: Georg Kreisler

Jarvis, scratch my back again
and pour another Rye!
If things continue on like this,
I'm surely going to die.
Business is falling off, you know,
and prices getting horrider,
I hardly have sufficient funds
to pay for a short stay in Florida.
And after all, a bank account
can only pay your way.
But nonetheless, with all my woes
I'd still be toujours gai
and forget about my troubles
that I have ad infinitum.
Oh, I could stand it all,
if it were not for one small item:

My psychoanalyst is an idiot.
The fellow has no feelings for my woes.
He asks about my childhood days,
and certain of my childhood ways,
but why I'm so distressed, he never knows.

My psychoanalyst is an idiot,
who never fails to get me all upset.
He makes me count from one to ten
and than from ten to one again.
Then feels my nose, to see if it is wet.

There's one thing that I must admit
regarding this affair:
Analysis has taught me things
I never knew were there.
I struggle now with concepts
that some genius invented.
Neurosis and psychosis
have me morbid and demented.

I'm serious, delirious,
I'm almost schizophrenic,
I'm notional, emotional
and highly neurasthenic.
My libido gets torpedoed
every hour and at length.
More perversions than the Persians'
keep on eating at my strength.

I enjoy a paranoia
that is simply homicidal.
Self-expression and aggression
just refuse to leave me idle.
I sit back at my haunches,
while he tears at my subconscious.
And he combs my super-ego,
while I watch another fee go.

He slams my ideology
with never an apology
and psychoanalytically
he handles me quite critically.

He dresses me, undresses me
and measures my reactions,
he badgers me unnaturally
and tears my soul to fractions.

He feels my head, he slaps my face,
he hits me on the knee,
he gives me tests, he draws my blood,
than wants another fee.
He pulls my ear, he tears my hair,
he throws me on the bed,
he pokes me ribs, he tabs my chest
and stands me on my head.

And when he's through investigating,
depredating, irrigating,
desecrating, contemplating,
irritating, estimating,
lacerating, iterating,
mediating, meditating,
aggravating, ennervating,
overrating, underrating,

and when he's got me fluidized
and alkalized and brutalized
and victimized and analyzed
and oversized and undersized
and ionized and mechanized
and totally demoralized
and when he’s almost murdered me
in manner quite informal,
he rubs his forehead thoughtfully
and says: I think your normal.