Barrie:
re the startling knowledge on the wife's part about the caller's error:  O  instead of zero.  Could there be a relationship to Freud and Anna O, Breuer's patient.  The mistake of Freud and Anna was to believe they were curing Anna. Instead they were giving her zero, and one supposes Nabokov, had he been there, would have offered that opinion: "You are mistaking O for zero"  i.e. you are treating a person, like a zero, a nonentity.
   I found the following about the case of Anna O at www.richardwebster.net/freudandcharcot.html
Interesting is the famous painting which shows exactly what Nabokov would have objected to:  the objectification of a human being into a "patient" an it.

It seems extremely improbable to me that Nabokov intends any connection with Anna O. In any case, you shouldn't trust all you read in Richard Webster, or in most writings on "Anna O." The definitive (so far) account of the spurious scholarship (both pro- and anti-psychoanalytic) on the "Anna O." case is the book by Richard Skues, Sigmund Freud and the History of Anna O.: Reopening a Closed Case (2006). Dr Skues will be discussing his book at Inner Circle Seminar No. 129 on Sunday 22 June. (See the announcement of the "Signs and Symbols" seminar, and programme of future seminars, or contact me at stadlen@aol.com.)

 

Anthony Stadlen