Advisory: the following post contains merely trace elements of history of economics content.
That said, the curator of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has returned from a month of visiting friends and family and is eager to bring you more of the kind of original content you have come to expect. This post is one to amuse and to provoke reflection. Who dare say that a similar hoax as recounted here could not occur in economics?
Just over one hundred years ago, the wife of the newly inaugurated fourth president of Cornell University, Margaret Kate Farrand (pronounced “Fair-And”) née Carleton, along with a first year graduate student in architecture, Charles Morse Stotz, the psychology professor Harry Potter Weld, and other co-conspirators, was able to pull off an academic hoax, news of which apparently even reached the ears of Professor Sigmund Freud of Vienna for comment. Read below to vicariously experience the faux lecture “The Freudian Theory with Later Developments” held by Professor Herman Vosberg, as performed by Charles M. Stotz.
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A Gratuitous History of Economics Preface
Serendipity struck as I was tracking down the sequence of distinguished careers of economist Dexter Merriam Keezer, a Brookings Graduate School Ph.D. (1925). Keezer’s autobiography turns out to be available as a $2.99 Kindle download from Amazon: Along an Entertaining Way: The Autobiography of Dexter M. Keezer, 1895-1991 by Dexter Keezer (Author), Ted Ladd (Editor).
The following passage from Keezer’s autobiography caught my attention:
As I shifted gears from newspaper reporting to a concentrated study of economics, my interest in reporting did not evaporate. And I wasn’t long at Cornell before I had an entertaining opportunity to indulge this interest. Mrs. Livingston Farrand, the wife of the Cornell president, conspired in perpetrating a hoax (if this is what you do with hoaxes) on members of the Women’s Faculty Club and their guests. It consisted of a lecture on “Analyzing Dreams” by a Dr. Vosberg of Vienna, “a distinguished disciple of Sigmund Freud,” who was in real life a student in the Cornell College of Architecture. Made up to look every inch an Austrian professor, unloosing floods of English words highly tinctured with a convincing Viennese accent, rushing to a blackboard to produce the most striking diagrams and equations, the student imposter gave a lecture that was a smash hit. With its startling and sometimes shocking revelations about the significance of dreams, it was the talk of the campus. It was not until the following week that Vosberg, pretending to be en route back to Vienna, sent a farewell message that was redolent of fakery. It had been a marvelous hoax, fooling a company including what their possessors would have regarded as among the best minds in the community.
I expected the Cornell student newspaper, the Cornell Sun, would have a field day with the story but it printed nothing. And neither did any other local paper. So I wrote a story of Vosberg’s (and Mrs. Farrand’s) triumph and sent it to the New York World, where it ran as a column on the first page and on into the inner pages of the paper. The story was also picked up by some newspapers overseas. No one ever asked me if I wrote it and I never had occasion to tell anybody. I simply enjoyed the experience.
Source: Keezer, Dexter. Along an Entertaining Way: The Autobiography of Dexter M. Keezer, 1895-1991 (pp. 95-96). Kindle Edition.
I confess Dexter Keezer had me at the word “hoax”. Immediately I thought of the so-called Sokol affair in the mid-1990s that resulted from a mathematical physicist’s prank article that he had submitted and which was dutifully reviewed, accepted, and published by Social Text in its Spring/Summer issue of 1996. I wondered, might the Dr. Vosberg hoax at Cornell on December 3, 1921 have been a Sokol precursor in the balloon popping of scientific pretension?
Executive summary:
From the two accounts written by Charles Stotz, transcribed and included below, one contemporaneous and the other just over forty years after the fact, we can glean that as far as intentionality of the conspiring agents is concerned, nothing more than collegiate mischief was involved. These folks regarded themselves as merely playing a confidence man’s game for the fun of it. They could have rightfully posted a note on the door leading from the scene of the crime stating that no dogmas were hurt in the making of their hoax. In comparison Alan Sokol’s essay was a masterpiece of satirical assassination. However, as far as reception of the hoax is concerned, one can discern a distinct resemblance between the hoaxes when one sees how the reports and interpretation of the facts of the Dr. Vosberg hoax were to made to fit clearly held preconceptions.
Before we glance behind the scene at Cornell’s Women’s Cosmopolitan Club in December 1921, let us examine the text with accompanying lantern-slides of Dr. Vosberg’s lecture as published by Charles Stotz in 1964.
Incidentally Stotz’s senior year portrait along with the sole photograph taken of him dressed and made-up to play Dr. Vosberg are displayed at the beginning this post.
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The Hoax Lecture
THE FREUDIAN THEORY
With later developments
by Dr. Herman Vosberg
“Dreams”, as Dr. Freud tells us, “are that bodily process above which the world-soul and immortality are raised as high as the blue ether above the lowest sandy plain.”
The world has only two-thirds of our life. During the other third our interest is suspended in the outside and we live another existence—the psychic life.
Why then, dear friends, do we ignore, or at most ridicule, that chief activity which occupies one-third of our mortal existence; namely, dreams—
This afternoon I shall attempt to justify the viewpoint of a new school of psychoanalysts— giving the dream its proper significance and value.
A study of history will do much to give us faith in this study. Is there anyone who does not know of Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph’s interpretation and the consequences? Has anyone forgotten the dream of Pilot’s wife and its disastrous results? Are we not told that Alexander the Great never undertook any great campaigns without his most trusted dream interpreters; it would have been as impossible as a campaign today without aviation scouts.
In contrast, interest in dreams in modern times has deteriorated into superstition and asserts itself only among the ignorant. As Dr. Freud himself says, “The study of dreams is regarded with suspicion as a fantastic mystery study and is left to laymen, poets, natural philosophers, mystics, and nature-cure fakirs.” He said to me in warning when I confided my intention to pursue this work, “I will tell you now that by so doing you will ruin your chances of success at any university and when you go into the world you will be regarded as a fanatic and fakir.”
So is it any wonder that when this man appeared, strong enough to speak his convictions, in a society which does not understand his aims, which regards him with suspicion and hostility, and which turns loose upon him all the malicious spirits which lurk within it, I say, is it any wonder he should be little appreciated? I refer to my revered master, Dr. Sigmund Freud, a persecuted pioneer.
FIRST SLIDE: a portrait of Dr. Freud
[not necessarily the portrait projected]I cannot, in the short time given me this afternoon, digress with a eulogy on Dr. Freud, but will give a single instance to indicate his scientific fortitude. When a young student and very poor, he lived in Vienna with his brother in the garret of a tenement. His brother took sick and became steadily worse. One day Freud was nearing the end of a long experiment, the result of years of conscientious effort and his brother in the next room was dying of fever. Late into the night he kept calling “Water, water.” But Freud could not hear him so vitally interested was he in the solution of an experiment which would revolutionize science. Finally he achieved success, concluded his experiment, and, going into the next room, closed the eyes of his dead brother. Such sincerity of purpose could not fail to produce marvelous results.
I shall now proceed to give you the chief elements involved in dream interpretation, avoiding all technical terms and omitting many phases of psycho-analysis itself, in which I am sure you would not be interested this afternoon. To make these lectures possible in this country, this step has been necessary. I will now bother you with a definition which will make the following matter plainer.
Psychiatry is the treatment of mental disorders. Psycho-analysis gives to psychiatry the omitted psychological foundation.
I would say here that it is not possible to give public dream interpretations, as you may have expected; because, first, you would be constrained from speaking your true mind because of the audience; secondly, you would, very probably, either be embarrassed or insulted by my analysis. Hence, no one has ever heard a true public dream analysis. Absolute privacy and confidence between the psycho-analyst and the patient are necessary —so do not expect me this afternoon to interpret your particular dreams.
I shall, rather, give you the key to the analysis of your own dreams which you may easily use yourself, provided you do not ignore the following idea. I quote this from Dr. Freud in his well known book on psychoanalysis. This is the keystone of our science.
“The dreamer does know what he dreams, but does not know that he knows, and therefore believes he does not know.”
You will not, at first, admit dreams even to yourself. As Freud says, “It is a pre-disposition to consider an unpleasant idea untrue.” We must realize some truth in Plato’s statement, “The virtuous person contents himself with dreaming what the wicked person does.” So the first step is to admit the truth to yourself. If you obey that impulse without any hesitation you have made the first step.
I shall now, before taking up Wish-Fulfillment, show you a few of the happy results obtained in the laboratory from the application of Calculus to the Dream. This will materially simplify the dream mechanism itself and enable you to grasp the essence of the dream content.
In our dreams appear various symbols which scientists have accepted as having a relation to earthly life. I shall not bother you with a description of them and mention this only to say that these graphs were developed from the comparison of these symbols with everyday objects.
Professor Schraum of Budapest says, “the content of the dream is analogous to tones which the ten fingers of a musically illiterate person would bring forth if they ran over the keys of the instrument.” It is our purpose here to collect these scattered elements and arrange them in their proper harmony.
Patients usually say when awakened, Freud tells us, “I could draw it but cannot say it.” So we see dream experiences are preeminently pictures.
So we searched for a long time to find a medium which would make all this evident without the burdensome mass of technical explanation. Calculus finally filled this need and I shall now show you the principal dream types described by graphs.
This graph is plotted with relation to two axes—the horizontal one, the axis of time, and the vertical one, the axis of intensity or degree of unconsciousness. In this first example, the troubled dream, we have three areas: the spiritual area, the nebulous or blurred area, and the area of actuality. The troubled dream includes all types of dreams disturbed by unpleasant happenings, the sensation of being confronted by terrible images, murders, and includes what is commonly called the “night-mare.”
SECOND SLIDE
It is a very common dream and indicates the improper motives in daily life. As you see, the graph proceeds through the common point of the two axes, or the point of dropping asleep, and passes into the nebulous, the foggy area between the sleeping and the waking life. It wavers, unable to pass into the area of rest, returns several times to wakefulness and then passes for a short time into the spiritual life, is disturbed again by disagreeable experiences and then, due to some suddenly introduced cause, plunges through the nebulous area—and the terrified dreamer awakes.
This is the normal dream of one who is beyond psycho-analytical treatment. Being happy and contented, all the factors are nicely adjusted and a beautiful smooth curve results, parabolic in contour. The greatest intensity of the unconscious is attained at a point approximately three-fourths of the way through the dream after which a more sudden but gradual decrease is detected.
THIRD SLIDE
The keen observer will notice that this curve has a remarkably great number of applications. It well symbolizes life itself, if we regard the area below the horizontal axis as the prenatal state and that above, life itself. The person is born, or crosses the life line at the zero point, progresses with uniformly increasing intensity of consciousness to the critical point of maturity and then, through the failing of the senses, more quickly, but still uniformly, declines to the second point of crossing, or death. In musical composition we find this curve symbolic of the best symphonies. The degree of interest in the music increases to crescendo at this point and then dies away.
This graph represents the inspired dream. It is the symbol of the vision seen by the Hindu. The degree of consciousness passes into the spiritual area, wavers a moment and then passes off into infinity, finally becoming tangent to the axis at infinity and then returning to the area of actuality, carrying with it the inspiration of communion with the great heart of the spiritual or mystic world itself.
FOURTH SLIDE
This was the mechanical action of the prophetic dreams of history to which I referred before.
This slide represents the graph of the sleeping sickness. If anything has encouraged me in the development of the analogy between dreams and the calculus it is the experimentation upon the cure of this terrible disorder. As you plainly see, the sleeper has a tendency to return to the horizontal axis and return to waking life, but the curve extends far out on the time axis before this is accomplished.
FIFTH SLIDE
So we have effected a cure in the following manner. The patient is induced to sleep under favorable conditions and by the operation of outside agencies he is caused to dream. This, of course, introduces a break in the sleep curve and he passes across the axis into wakefulness. I shall quote a little from Freud to show how these dreams are induced. These experiments were conducted in Budapest in conjunction with Professor Friml. I quote from his Psycho-analysis: “The dreamer was induced to sleep. We placed a bottle of perfume under his nose. He soon awoke and told us he had been walking through the poppy fields at Cairo and the strong pungent odor had suffocated him. Another patient was pinched by the nape of the neck. He later awoke telling us he had dreamt someone was applying a mustard plaster to him and the pain had almost overcome him. A third time we placed a few drops of water on the brow of the patient. He soon awoke telling us he had dreamt of rowing a boat in a stormy sea, until perspiring, he had succumbed to exhaustion.”
So much for calculus and its invaluable addition to psycho-analysis.
Let us proceed to our third and last consideration— that of wish-fulfillment. Let me give you the essence of the Freudian theory. Let us assume that for some reason or other a terrible idea occurs to us; for instance, the first sin of man, the desire to kill our brother. What do we immediately do? Our conscience tells us it is a wrong idea and we suppress the fiendish desire. Soon, we entirely forget it and if anyone should suggest it to us, we laugh at them. We say, “Why such a terrible thing would never occur to me!” But here is the point—we have not forgotten it after all. It secretes itself in our inner subconsciousness and then some night in our dream when our conscience, or as Freud has it, “the censor” does not operate, we dream of killing our brother and awake horrified and proceed immediately to throw the idea from our mind. This is where I give you the key to the whole matter. Do not reject these dreams that seem absurd or terribly impossible to you. Take them and ponder over them and you will find that the most ridiculous dream has often the greatest significance. Why do you laugh when you tell someone of how you dreamt you were falling from some great height? Reflect. Do you never remember of having stood on some building or precipice and looking down, saying to yourself, “What if I should jump? With one movement of my foot I could end this whole world that seems too serious to me. What a sensation it would be!” Then your saner mind said to you, “Fool—step back. Do you wish to be a suicide?”
And again in dreams we struggle to attain our ideals or ambitions. We have often watched birds soaring and wished to experience what we imagine to be a blissful sensation. But our sordid everyday selves say, “You were made to keep both feet on the ground. Don’t waste time imagining an impossibility.” Then what do we do? We go home and dream of flapping our arms and soaring off into space with absolute ease. The early aeronauts took this thing seriously and were derided, but yet today, right over our very heads we see man flying in machines of his own creation.
So look in your dreams for that serious idea which may decide your life. Take it, ponder on it, admit everything to yourself, withhold nothing, do not allow it to become buried within you, only to recur time after time, the object of ridicule. Then through our dreams we come to know ourselves as we really are.
Let me close after first giving you a glance at this picture which is the symbol of our science. It is the frontispiece of Dr. Freud’s inimitable work on psycho-analysis.
SIXTH SLIDE, The prisoner’s dream
[by Moritz von Schwind, 1836]Here is the prisoner, symbolic of ourselves shut up in our puny earthly frame, dreaming of escape which he knows, when he is awake, is impossible. These little figures represent the help of psycho-analysis pointing out the way of escape, pushing aside the bars of prejudice and intolerance, and pointing the way to the great eternal comprehension of the universe where our spirits may dwell untrampled by life’s vicissitudes.
Tomorrow morning when you come down to the breakfast table with what you think is a foolish dream on your lips, before you tell it, before you laugh—stop—think!
Source: Cornell Alumni News, Vol. 67, No. 5 (December 1964), p. 10-11.
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Fake News
Dec 5, 1921
RISLEY STIRRED BY H. VOSBERG’S FREUDIAN IDEAS
Famous Psycho-analist [sic] Reveals Key to Interpretation of Cornell Dreams.
THE CALCULUS GIVES CUE
Exhaustive Scrutiny of Subconsciousness Necessary to Realize a Fuller Life.
WILL ANSWER QUESTIONS
Revered Scientist Deeply Interested in Students — To Reply to Queries by Mail.“Tomorrow morning when you come down to the breakfast table with what you think Is a foolish dream on your lips, before you tell It, before you laugh — stop! think!” Such were the concluding words of Dr. Herman Vosberg’s address at the Women’s Cosmopolitan Club bazaar Saturday afternoon and evening. At the beginning of his speech, Dr. Vosberg was introduced with an appreciation by a prominent member of the faculty, subdued the restlessness of the audience, resulting from his striking and highly individual presence, by the following remark: “The world has only two-thirds of our life; dreams have the other third. Why then, dear friends, do we ignore or at most ridicule that chief activity which occupies so much of our mortal existence?”
Proceeding with a short resume of the great dreams of history, from Joseph to Alexander the Great and Pilate, he proved the importance of dream Interpreters in all ages. It was not possible for him to analyze the subconsciousness of his audience, as he believed that such would be embarrassing. He stated, however that it was easy for the individual to interpret his own dreams by recognizing this fundamental truth in the Freudian Science: “The dreamer does know what he dreams, but he does not know that he knows, and therefore believes that he does not know.”
Scientists Have Fortitude.
Illustrating the scientific fortitude of psycho-analysts, the speaker gave an anecdote from the life of a great Austrian scientist. While this scholar was nearing the end of a long experiment which was to revolutionize Thought, his brother in the next room was dying of a fever. Late into the night he kept calling, “Water, water!” But the Doctor, occupied with the solution of his problem, could not hear him. In the early morning he successfully concluded his experiment and going into the other room, closed the eyes of his dead brother. Such sincerity of purpose, said Dr. Vosberg, could not fail to produce marvelous results. Going deeper into his subject, the scholar said that The Calculus was found after much research to be the best medium by which to clarify the dream mechanism and avoid the burdensome mass of technical explanation. He proceeded to show the three principal dream types by lantern slide diagrams. They were the troubled dream, the normal dream, and the inspired dream. This point in the lecture aroused not a little adverse criticism on the part of those who thought his statements somewhat radical, but no one doubted the sincerity of the man.
Calculus Cures Sleeping Sickness.
Dr. Vosberg justified the introduction of Calculus into his science by describing its use in the cure of sleeping sickness. In this case the graph of sleep is shown to pass across the time axis into the area of the spiritual, reaches a high point on the axis of intensity, and gradually approaches again the horizontal or time axis. As this is not always accomplished, the sleeper is in danger of death before awaking; so dreams are injected into his sleep which cause a break in the graph with the result that it passes over the time axis, awaking the patient. “This treatment,” he said, “is obviously quite simple.” He gave as a tried method of inducing dreams, the following: A few drops of water were placed on the brow of the sleeper; he soon awoke, telling that he had dreamed of rowing a boat in a stormy sea, until, perspiring, he had succumbed to exhaustion. Summing up his discourse. Dr. Vosberg advised his hearers to look into a dream for that serious idea which might decide the destiny of their lives. “Take it, ponder on it, admit everything to yourself, withhold nothing, do not allow it to become buried within you, only to recur time after time, the object of ridicule. Then through our dreams we come to know ourselves as we really are.”
Dr. Vosberg was entertained at a meeting of the Manuscript Club immediately after his evening lecture, and left for New York on a night train. In the Metropolis, he will spend ten days, and according to his letter printed elsewhere in this issue, will answer any questions on his subject before sailing for Vienna.CORRESPONDENCE
Lehigh Station.
11 P.M., Dec. 3, 1921.Editor CORNELL DAILY SUN—
Through you I wish to thank my good friends at Cornell. I have seldom enjoyed talking to such an appreciative audience, and as I now board the steam cars for New York and then the boat for dear old Vienna I realize what your hearty support has meant to me. If I have only done a little to simplify Cornell dreams I am deeply repaid.Yours in haste,
HERMAN VOSBERG.P.S.— I will be in New York about ten days before sailing and will gladly answer any questions submitted to me through your paper.
Source: The Cornell Daily Sun, Vol. XLII, No. 64, Dec. 5, 1921.
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Hoax Revealed
Dec 6, 1921
Dr. Vosberg Was Not Himself
During Talk
To the amazement of this intellectual community, and those students of psycho-analysis who constituted the rapt audience in Risley Hall on Saturday, it has been disclosed by a local daily that Dr. Herman Vosberg, alleged disciple of Freud, in reality was not Dr. Vosberg at all. In fact, a perusal of the Austrian “Who’s Who” does not discover the name of any such celebrity. According to our source of information the lecturer was C. M. Stotz ’21, a student of Architecture, but not of Freud. If this is true there has been exploded the greatest hoax foisted upon a trusting community of intellectuals since the visit to this city of Col. G. H. Hardly ’68 in the spring of 1919.
Source: The Cornell Daily Sun, Vol. XLII, No. 65, Dec. 6, 1921.
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An early report of the hoax
A NEW THEORY OF DREAMS
Doctor Hermann Vosberg, who discussed “Dreams and the Calculus, or the Freudian Theories with Later Developments by Vosberg,” at the bazaar of the Women’s Cosmopolitan Club last Saturday, perpetrated one of the most stupendous hoaxes that Cornell has seen. It far exceeded the exploits of the great Colonel Hardly, whose name was used in describing the “Hardly Fair.”
Doctor Vosberg, ostensibly hailing from the University of Budapest, and with an accent that partook of all the languages of continental Europe, was none other than Charles Stotz ’21, with a make-up that defied detection, although at dinner in Risley Hall he was fearful lest his putty nose would slip off into the soup. He mystified many of the highbrows with his quotations from Freud, and some of them confessed that they were thrilled although they admitted that some of it was over their heads.
Professor Weld of the Psychology Department introduced Dr. Vosberg, and it is rumored that Mrs. Farrand had something to do with getting the doctor to come to Cornell.
Source: Cornell Alumni News, Vol. XXIV, No. 11, December 8, 1921, p. 122.
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Stotz’s own Account,
January 1922
Confessions of a Psycho-analyst.
The Noted Vosberg Explains the Secret of His Rise to Fame
By Charles Stotz
The Era asked me to write something about this man Vosberg. I had almost succeeded in getting him out of my mind and so was not particularly delighted at the prospect. But since the papers have so miserably painted the whole thing out of its true proportions and people in general on the campus seem little better informed, I shall lay out the main facts of the case, from the viewpoint of my old friend, the Doctor, himself.
The Management of the Women’s Cosmopolitan Club asked me to give a stunt at their annual bazaar. They suggested a bogus lecture and recommended something Freudian. The idea seemed to have possibilities so I began reading a little psycho-analysis. Before long I had plenty and then wrote a lecture which brought me back to myself again. We started a little publicity in the Sun. I read, with many vague premonitions, that Hermann Vosberg had done more than any other to “clarify the dream mechanism,” that he had written a book— “Dream and the Calculus,” and that he would speak twice in Risley next Saturday. I hardly recognized myself.
I told everyone I was leaving town over the week-end and retreated to my room Friday night to polish up the lecture and practice modeling a putty nose. I was quite skeptical about getting away with any delusions in the way of make-up. Early in the morning the haircut occurred. The barber had no sense of humor, but with a little reassurance he finally produced a masterpiece. We followed a photo of Anders Zorn, the etcher, but missed it a little. Anyway, it was a good “Heinie” haircut, and doggone scientific. The rest of the morning was spent on the nose, gestures, pacing the floor with all manner of limps and eccentricities till we found a good one, and general first-aid on the accent which had a tendency to wander from the German into French, Wop, negro, and all the dialects I have heard in Vaudeville. Promptly at 1:30, Merrill started on the beard and mustache. No one knows the high and low spots we touched until that last hair was glued on. I felt like an animated plate of spinach. We used only the best sources in this make-up, working from reproductions of the great paintings of the best beards of history. We owed most to Albrecht Dürer’s “Head of Himself.” At quarter to five, I hopped into an automobile and started for Risley. I didn’t smile again that day. We picked up Professor Weld on the way and sneaked thru the side door into the room behind the stage of the Recreation Hall. Beyond the curtains was the hum of people and music. The enormity of my proposition swept over me. Why spoil all the fun? They were having a good time. How inappropriate psycho-analysis seemed just then. But the papers had advertised and— My thoughts were interrupted by my nose. The sudden change from cold to warm air had started irritation. I dared not touch it with my handkerchief. Just then the curtains rustled open and all was quiet. What if I should sneeze and blow it off. Professor Weld nudged me and we walked out, he to the center of the stage and I to my chair, with head on one side, right arm limp, and a slight strut like a rooster. It felt quite unnatural. Professor Weld launched into a technical introduction which was far over my head, even if I had been in a condition to listen. I think parts of it were over his own head, too. The audience seemed satisfied, though. I hoped it would be good and long because I had many, many premonitions of just what reactions and reflexes would occur when I started to speak. After talking nearly two years, Professor Weld finally said— “He will speak for himself.” He looked at me, they applauded, and I rose, magnified nine diameters, bowed to him awkwardly and then to the audience, holding one hand over the toweling with which I had made my stomach.
I walked to the reading desk, rustling out the papers and acting as mystical as I knew how. A little pause, with blinking of the eyes to stop the twittering, and I was off, with all doubts thrown to the winds; I was Hermann Vosberg and the greatest scientific prophet of modern times. I was proud of my nose and my beard and even of my haircut. It was a condescension to speak to hoi-poloi and their twittering irritated me….
[long direct quotations from the lecture omitted here]
…Then a gruesome story, just to sober things up well, about the poor scientist and his brother in the garret. His brother was dying of fever but the patient was so occupied in concluding safely an experiment which was the result of years of experiment and study, that he ignored his brother’s cries. Here was the critical point in the lecture for me as I had never gotten past this story before without laughing when I said— “Late into the night he kept calling— ‘water—water’.” To add to the trial I just then caught the eye of the man in the front row whose shirt and collar I was wearing. My voice caught, I hesitated and went on. It only added a pathetic note, as though my voice had nearly failed me upon the relation of so sad an occurrence. “Such sincerity of purpose could not fail to produce marvelous results.”
The impossibility of giving public dream interpretation was then explained. The patient would not speak his true mind before the crowd and would probably be either insulted or embarrassed by the interpretation. The audience twittered a little here but we got right down to brass tacks again with this abstruse idea— “the key-note of our science.” “The dreamer does know what he dreams, but does not know that he knows, and therefore believes he does not know.” Another twitter. It is a curious thing that this remark in the speech was quoted in papers all over the country and in the London Times as the best nonsense of all, and yet it is a direct quotation from a book on psycho-analysis.
Then I gradually worked up to Calculus with reference to the dream which was the rawest of all. I hardly hoped to survive it. As the Sun article had stated— “His greatest contribution to psycho-analysis is his book, ‘Calculus and the Dream,’ which will be soon put on sale, after translation from the German.” I dared not think what they expected. I shall describe two of the most flagrant of the dream graphs of which lantern slides were thrown on the screen—the Troubled Dream and the Graph of the Sleeping Sickness….
[long direct quotations from the lecture omitted here]
…A little twittering occurred here. There were some skeptical people among the audience and I was keenly aware of the same. I stopped and blinked my eyes, even taking off the spectacles and tapping on the desk until these disrespectful, thoughtful few had finished. Then we went on, telling about wish-fulfillment, giving the true essence of the theory, which involved many delightfully indelicate things, such as killing one’s brother, etc….
[long direct quotations from the lecture omitted here]
..I was gaining attention. Then followed a few flowery tributes to this grand science, ending in this climax— “These little figures represent the help of psycho-analysis, pointing out the way of escape, pushing aside the bars of prejudice and intolerance, and pointing the way to that great, eternal comprehension of the universe where our spirits may dwell untramelled by life’s troubles and vicissitudes.”
Then, leaning over the desk with my most insidious expression, and menacing them with my spectacles, I spoke the last line with all the mystic power at my command— “Tomorrow morning, when you come down to the breakfast table with what you think is a foolish dream on your lips, before you tell it, before you laugh, stop—think.”
There was a distinct pause. Then clapping, the curtain, and the atmosphere in my immediate neighborhood lowered some eighty degrees. There were some in the audience who caught on at the first, either recognizing my voice or disguise or using their general common sense—there was a second class who swallowed the thing whole, and there was a third and largest class of those who didn’t know what to think and didn’t care.
A few went to the committee and apologized for those who had no better manners than to twitter thru a scientific lecture. One lady said— “I was opposed to having a lecture here by an Austrian so soon after the war but after I heard it I be came reconciled.” One man heard the lecture, thought it was poor logic but was so interested that word reached me he was coming in the evening to meet me and to hear the lecture again. So my fun had only begun. I stayed back-stage until the crowd had gone and then we all went to supper in the Main Dining Hall. This was my first appearance at close range and my putty nose wasn’t standing up very well under the strain. The walk down the aisle to the head table, past the crowd, who stood till we were seated, seemed several miles long. I strutted like a rooster—head cocked to one side, one arm dangling loose, and feeling like an ass. Finally we were seated— Mrs. Farrand, Miss Nye, Professor Weld and Mrs. Weld, and a few guests invited to meet me. The first thing, I found myself confronted by a bowl of soup. I could not manipulate the spoon with out drinking some of my mustache. I wonder how Albrecht Dürer did it. And, strange as it may seem, I was forever getting crumbs in my beard. And, together with this, we were carrying on a highly colored conversation for the sake of our impressed guests. The subjects for talk ranged everywhere from the psycho-analysis of a toothpick to the deplorable American habit of chewing gum and the hopeless jazz. We carried thru pretty well although a giggle would break thru now and then. We held in, however, until the crowd had dispersed and then treated ourselves to a spell of hysterics. After dinner I held a little informal reception in Miss Nye’s room—scraping bows and jabbering nonsense. The gentleman appeared who so wished to meet me and I had a lively five minutes. He couldn’t see Calculus and Dreams. I dragged out every possible argument, about the staff of Calculus experts in the insurance offices, the broad general interpretation of Calculus, etc., but there wasn’t much of a definite nature to say, I soon found. When I was pressed for an answer I waited a long time, seeming to think but really stalling for time and trying to give him the impression that his puny little views irritated me. Well, finally he asked me if I had ever read the works of Stephen Leacock. [Curator’s Note: Canadian humorist who was a Veblen student, awarded a Ph.D. in political economy by the University of Chicago in 1903] Evidently he was sounding bottom. I said— “I think little of that man. He is one of those kind of men that mix sense with nonsense so that you can’t tell when they’re talking sense. That, in my opinion, is the greatest fault a human being can possess.” This helped tremendously, and, as luck would, have it, someone else shortly came in to meet me. This individual started in German—one little difficulty I had feared would occur. “But wouldn’t it be more considerate to speak the language we all understand? Then there will be no embarrassment.” This was alright until she began talking about Vienna, our common birth place. I winked to a friend, who extricated me. One person confided to another— “That’s what Charlie Stotz is going to look like when he grows up.” This sort of thing kept up until it was time for the evening lecture.
We went thru the crowd to the stage. Professor Weld laid it on a lot thicker for things had leaked out a little since afternoon. But the ones who knew were considerate and formed some of our most interested spectators. He succeeded in calming down the others pretty well. I staggered thru the thing again, having to stop frequently to gain absolute silence, without which I refused to speak. After the lecture, Professor Weld announced that there would be an informal reception for me immediately following. I came off the stage with many fears aroused. The last glance in a mirror revealed a terribly red and disfigured nose. The bridge of the spectacles had worn a little groove which looked strange to say the least. However, I was feeling rather prime, with the last lecture off my chest and took a chance. A couple of ladies earnestly requested me to write down, for them, the names of a couple of good books on Psycho-analysis, which I did, not disparaging my own. Then I saw a playful group of young Collech fellas coming my way. I knew that here’s where somebody was going to grab me by the beard and say— “Take off your whiskers, Foxy Grandpa, we know you.” I extricated myself with some difficulty, only to have someone introduce me to three Austrians whose names I couldn’t even repeat. I excused myself and soon made an informal farewell by the back door.
That is the story of Herman Vosberg. I make no moral of it all, draw no inferences, and leave it to you and the Associated Press. All I say is— it was the rarest and richest adventure in my young life.
Source: The Cornell Era, vol. 54, January 27, 1922
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Stotz’s Expanded Account,
December 1964
The Vosberg Hoax
by Charles M. Stotz ’21
A hoax is defined as “a deception for mockery or mischief.” This hoax was designed solely for mischief. However successful as a hoax, it did accomplish the purpose of the prime conspirator, the late Mrs. Livingston Farrand, “to enliven the campus.” Some may think this an extraordinary project for the wife of Cornell’s fourth president, less than three weeks after his inauguration. But she was an extraordinary woman, whom Morris Bishop describes in his book, A History of Cornell as “a great and vivid person who imposed upon the community her robust vigor, humor and charm.” Her role in the episode is here recorded for the first time as, at her request, I did not involve her in the account that appeared in the Cornell Era of January, 1922.
As the hoax appeared to the campus, the facts are these. On Saturday, December 3, 1921, the Cornell Women’s Cosmopolitan Club held an International Carnival in Risley Hall. The Cornell Daily Sun announced that the chief feature would be a lecture by a young Viennese psycho-analyst and pupil of Freud, named Dr. Herman Vosberg, who would speak on The Freudian Theory as modified by his book Dreams and the Calculus. This article quoted Professor Harry Weld of the Cornell department of psychology, of course of the inner circle, as saying, “Vosberg has with this work clarified the hitherto complicated dream mechanism.” Some objections were raised to bringing a German savant to the campus only three years after the war, but many were titillated at the prospect of hearing first-hand the new and daring revelations of psychoanalysis dealing with sex and dreams.
The good doctor appeared as advertised, bewiskered, speaking with halting accent, and walking with a limp acquired in the late war. There was an afternoon lecture followed by a dinner in Risley for a few carefully chosen guests at which Mrs. Farrand and Miss Gertrude Nye, dean of Risley Hall, presided as hostesses. Receptions for Dr. Vosberg were held in Miss Nye’s parlor before and after a second evening lecture.
Reactions in the audience varied from the suspicious to the credulous, from the indifferent to the enthusiastic, but apparently Vosberg was generally accepted by students and faculty alike as a bona fide, if eccentric, apostle of his formidable master in Vienna, Dr. Sigmund Freud. Some inevitably recognized behind the painstakingly careful disguise the voice and lean form of a campus graduate student and would-be entertainer. The campus buzzed over the weekend.
Mrs. Andrew D. White let it be known that the University had compromised itself in permitting a vulgar German to speak on its campus. A gracious review appeared Monday in the Cornell Daily Sun with a word of gratitude from Vosberg for the consideration shown him as he “boarded the steam cars for New York.” This review, as well as the announcements preceding the lecture, had been carefully arranged with the editor of the Sun who had been pledged to secrecy until the Tuesday morning edition. He was understandably disgruntled to have the Ithaca Journal-News scoop him with the denouement of the hoax in their Monday evening edition. An Associated Press correspondent, (Judge Elbert Tuttle ’18, then a law student) broadcast an account of the hoax, with photographs of Vosberg which received front page banners and editorials in most of the newspapers in the United States and Europe.
Mrs. Farrand sweeps in
As viewed from the inside, it must be admitted that there was no hope or intention on the part of the conspirators of making this an international affair. For my part, there had been no thought of giving a hoax at all. The sequence of events that led to this bizarre experience are as follows.
After graduation in 1921, I returned as a Fellow in Architecture of the Cornell Graduate School. At the request of the faculty of the College of Architecture, I had written and directed a play for the Semi-centennial of the College. This play, “The Purloined Thumbtack,” was duly presented at the celebration in October. At a repeat performance for a campus audience in November, the Farrand family were guests of honor. After the performance, Mrs. Farrand swept into our improvised dressing room to offer her compliments and ask me to tea the following day. Then, with sparkling eye, she said she had just had “a simply wonderful idea” to discuss.
The hoax shapes up
I was staggered to learn the next day that Mrs. Farrand’s “idea” was to hoax the university. Mr. Farrand, sitting nearby with his suave smile, made no comment that I can remember, but I wondered how he felt as president in hoaxing a campus on which he had just set foot. Apparently he had no more resistance than I to this formidable personality, who launched merrily into plans and details. The Women’s Cosmopolitan Club’s International Carnival, just three weeks away, offered an appropriate setting for a foreign lecturer. After deciding that the hoax was to deal with psycho-analysis, then a subject of popular interest, the services of Professor Harry Weld of the department of psychology were enlisted. He readily agreed to make the formal introduction to the lectures and provided me with several books on psycho-analysis as well as a briefing on the subject. I then concoted a fairly plausible treatise, with legitimate quotations, and an equal amount of original material on the Calculus as applied to dreams. The name, Herman Vosberg, was chosen out of thin air.
In the meantime, we organized the coterie of faithfuls needed in the execution of the hoax. This must include Lucy Owenstein, the president of the Cosmopolitan Club, Ruth Seymour (Mrs. Stayman Reed, Grad) who ran the slides and a few other officers and, of course, Miss Gertrude Nye, dean of Prudence Risley Hall, where the lectures were given. The editor of the Cornell Daily Sun agreed to let me write the preliminary notices and the review on Monday morning to insure a consistent story.
As to my personal disguise. Following a photograph of Anders Zorn [cf. Zorn’s 1911 painting of the economist, A. Piatt Andrew at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston], I grew my hair longer than usual on the back and sides and had an unamused barber trim it very short on top and front. When he said “You look like a ‘heine’”, I knew we had succeeded. The beard and mustache were applied by Merrill, make-up expert of the Dramatic Club, so well as to defy detection at close quarters. I applied face putty to the small depression in the ridge of my nose, a prominent feature that I thought might otherwise be recognized. Pince-nez glasses with a long black cord lent a professional [Curator’s note: sic, ‘professorial’ intended?] air.
The long half-hour
My wardrobe consisted of a full dark tie with a gates-ajar collar, striped trousers borrowed from Louis Fuertes and a frock coat loaned by my fellow graduate student, Lake Baldridge. I paid dearly for this clothing by having Louis and Lake sit in the very front row, broadly grinning and, to add one more hazard to a perilous experience, they had brought President Farrand with them.
My dialect was a compound of German and Jewish, acquired in entertaining over the years. Some time was spent in establishing a routine of gestures and a limp in my right leg.
At 5:30 on the afternoon of December 3rd, my classmate Tokisuke Yokogawa picked me up at Founder’s Hall with his automobile, one of the few on the campus, and, after stopping for Professor Weld, delivered us to the rear stage door of the Recreation Hall of Prudence Risley.
We could hear beyond the curtains the sound of what was then called a “tea dance” which was shortly interrupted to assemble the audience for the lecture. How inappropriate a lecture on psychoanalysis seemed just then! This was a long half hour for us both as we were not at all confident that we would not be promptly unmasked. The curtains finally rustled open. Weld walked briskly to the podium and spoke so calmly and convincingly of the speaker and his subject that I felt a degree of reassurance. After bowing awkwardly to him and the audience with one hand held over the toweling that made the stomach I lacked, I limped to the desk. As always the first few words dispelled the uneasiness that precedes the plunge and I lived another’s life for the next few hours, a sort of self-hypnosis. Vosberg was a man of tense earnestness who never smiled.
“The dreamer does know”
As pre-arranged, the room was darkened after the introduction with only the reflection from the papers on the reading desk and light from the screen to illuminate my features. This was not only a defense against recognition, but gave an atmosphere suitable to a discussion of dreams and the sub-conscious. The use of lantern slides further diverted the attention of the audience.
Any speaker is keenly aware of the reactions of his audience, but it was puzzling to find a relatively calm acceptance of the fictitious dream graphs and active tittering at the authentic quotations; especially, “The dreamer does know what he dreams, but does not know that he knows, and therefore believes he does not know.” This was quoted as prime nonsense in most of the newspaper accounts.
“Hi, Charlie”
It was difficult to assess the degree of acceptance of the lecture. A poll of the audience would probably have yielded few candid answers. Undoubtedly, many considered the speaker and his ideas suspect, but others, uninterested or uninformed on the subject, were merely content to be there among the intelligentsia. At any rate, except for a few ripples of laughter, there was respectful attention. The text of the lecture, reproduced in full elsewhere in this issue, will permit the reader to make up his own mind about the subject matter. After the curtains closed, Weld and I exchanged glances of relief, content that we had not been openly challenged.
We remained backstage until the room had cleared and then joined Mrs. Farrand, Mrs. Weld and Miss Nye for dinner with a few guests who had been invited to meet me. We proceeded down the center aisle to the head table of the dining hall with the girls standing at their places. One of these, Gert Lynahan, whispered as I passed, “Hi, Charlie.” It was apparent my disguise could not fool those who knew me well. As the head table was somewhat removed and included but a few persons not yet in on the hoax, Mrs. Farrand could not resist the desire to ply me with leading and provocative questions. She was having a very good time. But I was preoccupied with new and unanticipated problems, how to keep the soup out of my mustache and the crumbs out of my beard.
Mrs. Farrand to the rescue
Following dinner an informal reception was held in Miss Nye’s parlors. Mrs. Farrand introduced the guests with fitting ceremony and listened to the interviews with great relish. I soon realized that we had indeed risked everything with these face-to-face encounters. For instance, my first was a man who had heard the afternoon lecture and came back for the reception solely to challenge my application of Calculus to the dream. Having had a full year of Calculus, I was as well aware as he that my theories were too superficial to be defended. As we talked, I could see the light dawn in his face. When he asked, “Have you read Stephen Leacock?” I made some lame remarks about those who could not distinguish sense from nonsense. He withdrew like a gentleman so as not to disillusion the others waiting to talk to me. Mrs. Farrand who had been listening with great glee, agreed to forestall any more long interviews. As a matter of fact, she retrieved me adroitly from several ventures on thin ice such as the moment when she brought forward a young co-ed who spoke to me in German. I said that it would be impolite under the circumstances to speak in German. The girl then asked me in English just where I lived in our common birthplace, Vienna. At this juncture Mrs. Farrand mercifully came forward with a large group who had just arrived for the evening lecture and who were introduced separately without being given an opportunity to talk. They were asked to return for the later reception as I must leave to prepare for the evening lecture.
Professor Weld in his second introduction laid it on somewhat thicker, as we assumed there had been some “leaks” since the afternoon lecture. In fact, we now realized our temerity in repeating the lecture. However, if the evening audience included any disillusioned persons, they were considerate and things moved along with only a little more disturbance. I would stop occasionally and tap my spectacles on the podium to gain absolute silence.
— and again
After the lecture, when Dr. Weld announced that another reception would be held, I came off the stage with fears fully aroused. A glance in the mirror revealed a terribly red and disfigured nose in which the bridge of the spectacles had worn an unnatural groove. Hasty first-aid in the lavatory helped a little. My first encounter was with two elderly women who asked for names of some good reference books on psycho-analysis and the publisher and date of appearance of my own work on Dreams and the Calculus. They were so earnest I felt like a common forger. Then three Austrian students spoke to me in a flood of German. Mrs. Farrand adroitly put out this fire by interrupting them to take me away for a series of innocuous introductions and handshakings. At this point I saw an unmistakably mischievous group of young students making their way across the room. Whether or not they were bent on unmasking me, I signaled Mrs. Farrand, who, as pre-arranged in such an emergency, announced that I must leave immediately to pack for the late train to New York. I escaped by the rear door.
Dr. Vosberg had lived the four hours of his brief life in the tense atmosphere of the espionage agent, or at least confidence man. Making my way across the campus, it was fine to breathe the cold night air and to realize that Vosberg no longer existed and that I still had a whole skin. I tested my disguise on an old friend, a drug store proprietor from whom I frequently bought tobacco. He insisted on taking my picture with a great burst of old-fashioned flashlight powder. This is the picture that was used by the newspapers and put on sale in the campus store—and the only one taken.
Newspapers delighted
It was not too late to stop at Martin Sampson’s house for the weekly meeting of the Manuscript Club where I gave the only repeat performance of the hoax lecture. Two of the members of the Club reported the lecture many years later, E. B. White in the New Yorker, and Morris Bishop in his A History of Cornell. Later, Martin Sampson bet me a hundred dollars that no matter what I did, I would never again get an editorial in the Boston Transcript.
However complete its deception was on the campus, the hoax was an unqualified and sweeping success in the newspapers. Tuttle’s Associated Press story was reasonably correct in its details but the account acquired apocryphal form as it traveled and was invariably written as a laugh at the expense of the faculty. “Cornell University, at least an important intellectual portion, is recovering from one of the severest shocks in its existence. Venerable professors and aged residents are raising a cry, ‘What are we coming to’” (New York World). “Culture camp ‘goes cuckoo’ when it learns great psycho-analyst is mere student” (Boston Traveler). “When teacher gets fooled there is rejoicing in the classroom” (Brooklyn Eagle). “But may not a valuable educational lesson be learned from this outrageous performance? . . . Why not select the most imaginative and mendacious among the pupils and let them do the lecturing and invent all the ‘experiments?’” (Baltimore Sun).
Freud interviewed
Psycho-analysis as a new science was derided. “Psycho-analysis . . . imposes no obligation upon the thinker. One may drift into the spaces of irresponsibility, while he or she yet retains his or her standing as a sane person” (Cincinnati Enquirer). “It may be folly to be wise on a subject where ignorance permits free play to fancy.” Such stuff as dreams are made of “either defies analysis or the task becomes too delightfully easy” (Brooklyn Eagle). “What is the difference, the students are now asking, between psycho-analysis and hocus-pocus if a mere student can put on a false beard and pass for a famous scientist?” (New York Evening Mail). A man named Bradford Wester wrote me: “Hearty congratulations on your service to general sanity and Americanism by your satire on the pervert breed of psychic jack-asses!”
The editors moralized on the value of such hoaxes. “The health of the mind, as well as the body, demands a good purgative occasionally. Such a hoax . . . pricks the professional bubble of self-esteem” (Pittsburgh Sun). “The brain . . . needs an escape valve. When it becomes surcharged with intellectuality, it needs a way to blow off the excess . . . the large audience . . . was vastly in need of a mental cathartic. If they can laugh at their own stuffiness they are safe.” (Louisville Courier). The Brooklyn Eagle’s representative in Vienna interviewed Dr. Freud himself, who stated “Like every inquiry into abberations of the human mind, it carries with it an element of danger for gullibles; who are the ready victims of amateur exponents.”
The London Times took a sober view: “The Freudian psychology is both exciting and difficult to understand; it is therefore misunderstood by many people who wish for excitement. . . The remedy is in hoaxes like that of Ithaca, and also in a realization of the fact that the new psychology is not easily understood, and still less easily practiced, though, as the lecturer in Ithaca has proved, it is very easily parodied, whether consciously or unconsciously.” Incidentally, only three months later a similar hoax on psychoanalysis was carried out at Oxford University.
Dr. Faust, professor of German at Cornell, received from a friend in Germany an account of the hoax from the Berlin Allgemeiner Zeitung. Across the clipping his friend had written “Ist dass ein Hallowe’en Scherz (joke)?“ Dr. Faust, who considered the hoax a slight on German culture, was indignant and was persuaded with great difficulty to give me the clipping.
“Daisy” the magnificent
The climax came when I found a letter from Germany in my mailbox one night two weeks after the lecture. Was Freud himself on my trail? As I could not read German, I spent an anxious 24 hours until it was deciphered as merely a request from a minister in Russow, Germany, named Herbert Vossberg, a family-tree hound who had read an account of the hoax in the Rostock Buntes Allerlei and wanted to know why and how I chose the name Vosberg as an alias. About this time, the disturbing and distracting effects of publicity, verging on notoriety, led me to cut short any further correspondence or public contacts relating to Vosberg and his ideas about dreams.
This account, made for the record at the request of former President Deane future presidents’ wives who yearn “to enliven the campus” but it is most improbable that any campus will ever again see the likes of Mrs. Margaret K. (“Daisy”) Farrand.
Source: Cornell Alumni News, Vol. 67, No. 5 (December 1964), pp. 6-11.
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Margaret Kate “Daisy” Farrand,
née Carleton
Source: 1929 portrait of Daisy Farrand painted by Olaf Martinius Brauner in the Cornell portrait collection.
Image Sources: Senior year portrait of Charles Morse Stotz from The Cornellian, 1921, p. 127.