The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

by Milton Rokeach

  General Reactions to Confrontation

  At various times, in group sessions and individual interviews, the three Christs had occasion to express their attitudes toward one another, toward me, and toward the meetings. In general they did not think too highly of one another.

  “I don’t care for either one,” Clyde said. “They’re no good. One of them looks like a Purcell, the other is a Catholic. Rex is one of those knick-knackers. I’m ’way up. I’m saved. Why should I monkey with such low characters as that? You better believe me. He’s no such thing as Christ. He hasn’t got the shape. He never had a woman. He’s a criminal. Jesus Christ was a Jew and the Jews wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Joseph must know that he doesn’t tell the truth. He’s got Canada, Detroit, and Ohio all mixed up. He isn’t alive, anyway. He’s the son of God and he’s done an awful lot of travel. He had a woman. I like the meetings all right, except for Catholic readings.”

  There is no question that Clyde enjoyed and looked forward to the meetings, if for no other reason than that they provided attention and human companionship. Actually he was on fairly good terms with both the other men; apparently he admired them for their education. The least accessible of the three, the least easily aroused, he was content to sit back and watch the other two interact. Neither especially friendly nor especially hostile to either, he seemed to like being physically close to them. For example, he often asked them for a cigarette light.

  Joseph vouchsafed: “I don’t dislike the meetings. It is advantageous to iron out the hostilery [sic]. Rex isn’t a bad fellow, and the old man is all right too. They can’t hurt me. You’ve been doing wonderful work because of the effect on my opposition. If you keep ironing out like this, in time there is nothing left for the opposition about what I am—God. They won’t believe they’re God; they’ll believe that they’re just mortals. They will believe that I am God. Then I will be able to do my work better. I will be more tranquil. I want to do this work without being disturbed.”

  —Would you be disappointed if the sessions were discontinued?—

  “I have already told you that I came from England for a purpose and if you want to dismiss me from the hospital, I will be glad. If you want to continue the discussions with different subjects, for example, drama, literature, authors, poets—but every time we talk about religion we go into a discussion about God.” Joseph laughed.

  —Do you think that’s funny?—

  “I think that Rex and Clyde talk too much. If I wasn’t God, and I am, by golly, I wouldn’t be wasting my time. I would look forward to getting out of the hospital and getting a job. Every time they talk religion they go crazy; that is, the old man and Leon, not me. I use my head. I use Leon and Clyde, too.”

  Joseph’s dislike of Leon was obviously far greater than his dislike of Clyde, and he asserted this dislike more openly as their quarrels reached greater intensity. At the same time, paradoxically, he also displayed an affirmative attitude toward his present situation.

  “I want to tell you one thing,” he said. “When I was outside, the scene of my life was disappearing and I was forgetting about being God. And a man has to face life. A man has to avoid dangers so he won’t perish.”

  —How do you feel now?—

  “I feel better since I’m back in D building. I was too long in C building.” Apparently he felt that he was better off now, in spite of the daily conflicts, than he had been on the back wards.

  Leon’s responses were, as usual, more intellectual and more subtle. “No, sir, I do not hate them, I do not, on the merits that they who hate another person are murderers of their own personality. I respect Mr. Benson at times more. I mean the ideology of Mr. Benson more than I do Mr. Cassel’s. Mr. Cassel adheres more to the evil ideal. That man is set in his ways. You are not going to change him.”

  As Leon himself said, he was closer to Clyde than to Joseph; he was somewhat paternalistic, protective, and patient toward Clyde and tried as best he could to find grounds of agreement with him. This was not too difficult because Clyde, more confused than the other two, was not really capable of holding his own. Leon was able to get him to agree on many points, at least on the surface. At the same time, the breach between Leon and Joseph appeared to grow, and manifested itself outside as well as during the group sessions. Even when they were not having battles, an almost open hostility existed between them.

  When Leon was asked which of the others was more mentally ill, he replied: “It varies. At times one is lesser and then the other is lesser, but neither of them cares to be cured. Duping is the name of the illness. Dr. Freud died in 1948 and didn’t know about duping.”

  Their reactions toward me also showed characteristic differences. Clyde said that he was the boss, not I. He said that I “pick quite a bit”; that I was “looking for something—I don’t know what”; that I was a Catholic: “quite a few foreigners are Catholic, but you can’t hardly tell. Take the Swedes—they’re quite Protestant.” Whatever personal feeling he might have had, he saved for Joseph and Leon. He never addressed me by name and I suspect he did not even know my name, or the names of the other research personnel.

  Joseph, on the other hand, was unable to criticize me and always defended me against Leon’s attacks. He steadfastly maintained that I was there to “iron things out”; that I was helping him, but that he wanted to do his work undisturbed and wished I wouldn’t say some of the things I said. “I know that I am God, but you go to the other fellows and ask them if they are God and these fellows are tempted to say ‘yes.’ ”

  Leon, of course, had the most to say. “When one person is used to suppress another person, discussion ends and ridiculism begins. Clyde, I know that you are being used through duping and I know the goon who is behind it. It’s very possible that he is here in the same room with us. I know the tactic of electronic tuning in on the three persons here, and it could very well be that it is Mr. Rokeach who is pre-imposed on all three of them and at his pleasure makes one agitate against the other. Deviation from the word of God is sentimentality and says ‘you’re right’ to this one, and ‘you’re right’ to that one, and the guy in the middle is an ass-hole. The bringing up, the knowing what agitates this man and what agitates that man! You can’t use one patient against another to agitate, to deplore, to besmirk.”

  Occasionally, he spoke to me directly: “You come under the category where a person who knows better and doesn’t want to know is also crazy to the degree he does not want to know. Sir, I sincerely believe you have the capabilities to cast out negative psychology. I believe you can aid yourself.” He said of me, once: “He wants to get me under his power, to use the power that was invested in me by God. He wants to turn me into a disfigured midget.”

  Another time he proclaimed: “There’ll be a showdown, Mr. Rokeach [Only once, at one of our very early meetings, did Leon refer to me as Doctor], and you’re going to become dung when my uncle gets through with you, and I don’t mean maybe. One bolt of lightning is all you need and your electronic duping and the rest of your cohorts are going too, with one bolt of lightning. That’s my sincere belief. The warped psychology you’re carrying on. I was sent to this place to find out some inside information. Yes, sir, Mr. Rokeach, the breaking day isn’t far away. I’m telling you sincerely, man to man. I don’t hate you. I’m sorry for you. I believe I’ll have the privilege of making out the corpus delicti papers on you. I will request that of my uncle right now.

  “If I may say something about you, sir. My uncle talked about your case and I sincerely believe you are the reincarnation of the Jewish High Priest, Caiaphas. It’s very befitting to you, with that Jewish nose, and you have admitted that you’re of Jewish nationality. I do believe you’re the reincarnation of Reverend Caiaphas. Your foster father is a donkey. However, I believe you have a human soul. May I be personal, sir? My uncle said to me about you: ‘Doesn’t he have a large head on his penis?’ My other uncle said: ‘Yeah, that’s true,’ and it’s also true that a donkey
has a large-headed penis. In the Philippine Islands I was a soldier. I was walking on a cobblestoned street, and a man with a cart and a donkey came along and that donkey, due to the fact that it didn’t have sexual release, it had a hard on. Oh, man! It had a piece as long as my arm. His penis was hitting up against his stomach and I just couldn’t help but admire the fact that the donkey prayed in a cold physical fashion.”

  Leon’s vivid portrait reveals not only the hostile attitude he harbored toward me but also the strong sexual basis for his hostility. It also reveals how Leon justified his aggressive and sexual feelings toward me by reinterpreting them within the framework of his neatly worked out delusional religious system.

  Positive Interactions

  It may be difficult to imagine the three Christs showing any positive feelings toward one another but, paradoxically, they did so from time to time. My research assistants and I often saw the three of them sitting near one another in the spacious recreation room, which was large enough to seat a hundred men around its periphery. The men were free to wander aimlessly about or to sit wherever they wished. They could watch television, play ping-pong, listen to the radio, read, play cards, or just sit and do nothing. There was a large table against a wall, with one chair at the end, its back against the wall. Joseph would always sit in this chair. There was a second chair immediately around the corner of the table, facing in the same direction as Joseph’s chair. Leon sat in this chair, next to Joseph but with his back to him.

  Clyde more often wandered about the room, but when he settled down he would pick a chair near Joseph’s and Leon’s, often the chair next to Leon, which faced in the same direction. The three men rarely spoke to one another at these times, but they borrowed and loaned state-issued tobacco, cigarette papers, and lights more frequently among themselves than with anyone else. Leon would say: “Mr. Benson, could I beg a cigarette from you? I’m out of cigarette paper—unless you could help me out with that…. Thank you, sir.” Once when Clyde broke his pipe Leon gave him his.

  In addition to sharing tobacco supplies with one another at these times, the three men also shared at mealtime. Once Joseph’s wife brought him a bag of fruit. At suppertime Joseph emptied the bag on a tray. He offered Leon first a banana, then a peach, then an apricot, each of which Leon declined in turn. Joseph then rose from his seat, approached Clyde, and offered him the fruit. Clyde mumbled favorably and Joseph placed some of the fruit on his tray. A few moments later Joseph offered Leon the food on his own tray, which was almost untouched. Leon at first refused; then he accepted the cabbage salad.

  I would often walk into the recreation room to call the men together for their daily meeting. I rarely had to search for them among the hundred men—there they would be, physically close, Joseph at the end of the table, then Leon, and then Clyde, as if they needed one another’s companionship, as if they needed to cling to someone familiar. Often they would emerge from a meeting where they had been going at each other hammer and tongs, and return to the recreation room and sit in their usual places, together. This behavior pattern began during the first week of the meetings and persisted for six months, until they were moved to another ward, where they had their own private sitting room. One day we deliberately removed Leon’s chair from its usual place in the recreation room. When he entered and saw there was no chair, he walked across the large room, selected a heavy chair just like his own, carried it back to the original spot, and sat down. Another day we removed Joseph’s chair, with the same results. When I asked Leon why he sat in the same chair all the time, he replied that it was convenient for watching television—although in fact it was a bit too far from the set.

  Joseph had another explanation. “I get the feeling,” he said, “that England will not be invaded. Rex and Clyde sit near me. They help me to protect the stronghold. They are not against England. They are patients in the hospital, that’s all.”

  CHAPTER IV

  THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

  “I AM a born genius among geniuses and I want to be a leader among men,” Leon said. Through bilocation he could be in two places at once and through translocation he had the power to go instantaneously from one place to another. Leon also claimed to be able to perform miracles. He had once commanded a table to lift itself off the floor—and it had obeyed. When I expressed disbelief, he volunteered to repeat the miracle for me. He went into the recreation room and picked out a massive table. He then turned his back to it and, in a loud affirmative tone, commanded it to lift itself.

  —I don’t see the table lifting.—

  “Sir, that is because you do not see cosmic reality.”

  Leon’s lack of insight into himself was reflected in his attitude toward his sickness. He said, on different occasions, three contradictory things about his condition. First, he was not sick; the duping was making him sick. He would be cured as soon as he was able to shake off all the interferences. Second, although Leon had feelings of grandiosity, he regarded himself as the weakest creature on earth. For this reason, he could not express hostility directly toward others, but instead had to have “uncles” to take care of him. He claimed that he hated no one, only the “evil ideal” in people. “If I hate another person, I rip myself apart. I undermine my own self. Hating because of hate is the yardstick they use in hell. It’s the negative form of love.” It was therefore necessary for him to assign those of “evil ideal” to his uncle’s “dung list.” I once asked him how many people were on this list. He replied that there were millions.

  Finally, there was his deterministic, or fatalistic, interpretation, as expressed in his frequent references to the habeas corpus in front of one’s face. He claimed that he could not read the habeas corpus but that it told everything about a person. Whatever happened in life—and this included his stay in the hospital—was dictated by what was written on one’s habeas corpus. There was no way to escape from one’s habeas corpus. Even trees had a habeas corpus. “I know for a fact that each tree has a habeas corpus in front of it, telling how many dogs urinated on it, how many people made love under it, and so forth. The habeas corpus tells everything about that tree,” Leon explained.

  Clyde too had feelings of omnipotence and grandiosity. “I can go through walls,” he said, “if I seen fit to. I can go straight through stone. I made the Bible and I am the Bible. I have two churches and if you go to Heaven there is two sides. Rome is quite a problem now; it fell once and I think it is going to fall again. My spirit—you can’t see it—stays around the water line in Palestine.”

  Joseph, too, had immense delusions of grandeur that came out on many occasions. He claimed to be not only God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost, but other important personages as well. Once, during a discussion of the navy, he said he going to correct the situation at Annapolis. When asked what situation he referred to, he replied: “Oh, they’re my secrets. I don’t want to reveal my secrets. Stones and pebbles talk.”

  Moreover, Joseph claimed to have been all over the world, including Shangri-La. Once he said he had talked with Adlai Stevenson. From there he went on to say that he was governor of Illinois himself.

  —Were you governor of Illinois, or God?—

  “God, and I was also governor of Illinois.”

  —You were both?—

  “Yes, I have to earn my living, you know.”

  On other occasions, he claimed to have been in the French Foreign Legion, a soldier of fortune in Central and South America, a general in the U.S. Army Air Force, a G-man, President Eisenhower’s adviser, a naval officer.

  At the same time Joseph, like Leon, was a weak God. He had an enormous feeling of inferiority and a low self-esteem which became manifest in many ways: “God doesn’t want to be kissed or worshipped. God just wants the respect that is due.” “I was over six feet tall in those days.” “Faust is a symbol of one who studies too much, who wants to know too much, and the price is insanity. A man who is capable doesn’t have to sell his soul to the Devil for anything.” “Where is all
the power that I had before? That’s what I’m trying to do, deport myself to England. I can’t do it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m the God that took a psychiatric. Later on I’ll be a different God when I get my power back.”

  Joseph saw himself as a great writer; this was a central theme both in his delusional system and in his everyday behavior. He told us that he liked to read good literary criticism, history and biography, and essays on art and architecture. Once, in a discussion of Madame Bovary, I asked Joseph who wrote it. “Flaubert,” he said. And when? “Around 1874.” And in answer to the question: “What is it about?” he was able to give a quite accurate account of the story. The discussion lasted about ten minutes and proceeded on an entirely realistic level. Then Joseph said: “You know, I really wrote Madame Bovary.”

  —You did? I thought you just got through saying that Flaubert wrote it.—

  “No, I did. Flaubert stole it from me. He took it to France.”

  Yet with all his delusions, Joseph impressed us with his knowledge of literature and his developed literary tastes. Once during a meeting he pulled three books from his pocket, walked over to the window, and tossed them out, saying: “There isn’t a good line in the whole bunch.” Then, pulling Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea out of another pocket, he exclaimed: “This is a good book!”

  A partial list of the books Joseph brought with him to the meetings, and which he had apparently read in whole or in part, included Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan, Durant’s Story of Philosophy, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico. When asked whether Prescott’s work was about the conquest of the Aztecs, Joseph replied: “Yes, but actually the Aztecs supplanted the Toltecs.” He was able, too, to discuss the history of Napoleon I and Napoleon III in quite realistic terms. But as soon as he had finished, he said: “In the War of 1870, I told the French to quit fighting or the Germans would ruin France completely.”