The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
Page 32
He goes on with a disjointed discourse that he is sticking with England, that this hospital is an English stronghold, and so on. Leon laughs, and then explains: “I was laughing at the engrams presented, not at the individual. I feel sorry for the individual.” Clyde agrees with Leon, saying that there are some English here but that Ypsilanti State Hospital is not an English hospital.
Later in the day, Joseph writes:
My dear dad,
About this hospital being an English stronghold, I must write that this hospital is in the United States and it is difficult to believe for anyone that this is an English stronghold. All I can say, now, is that the hospital is what it is, but it is in United States …
Yours truly,
Joseph Cassel
Still later, he receives the following reply:
Dear Joseph;
If I understand you correctly, I have to form the conclusion that potent-valuemiocene is not doing you a bit of good since you still feel the way you do about this hospital. I am, therefore, seriously considering withdrawing this medication as it isn’t doing you as much good as I had hoped it would do you.
Enclosed is the usual token.
Sincerely,
O. R. Yoder, M.D.
This letter gives rise to frantic efforts on Joseph’s part to stave off the threatened withdrawal of the potent-valuemiocene. He replies with three long letters on May 17 and 18, all designed to prevent this from happening, but he sticks to his guns and insists that the hospital is an English stronghold. The third letter is more conciliatory than the first two.
My dear dad,
Yesterday I wrote you two letters in one envelope; and in afterthought, I realized that many entities written in the two letters were turned around. As I understand it, this is an American Hospital, supported by the taxpayers of the state of Michigan. I hope that this makes it clear; and I am sure there is nothing wrong between us.
Of all the subjects written anent the controversy of this hospital, I am sure that this hospital is what it is and is what it should be. I have worked for this hospital and this stronghold, and I am certain that I have nothing to reproach myself … and that things are what they are and will be what they ought to be.
Yours very truly,
Joseph Cassel
P.S. This letter makes everything clear between the two of us. There is nothing wrong. Everything is O.K. We are not in odds and ends. And, as for me, I have no wish to argue with you. Things are only what they are, and one continues to work for the benefit of what it is. As for what I am, I am what I am. Yes, I am only what I am!
May 19. At the group meeting, Joseph says: “I haven’t the slightest idea of how I’m going to get out of here. I used to have but my ideas didn’t work.”
—What ideas?—
“Well, your parents would do something about it.”
He goes on to say: “Dr. Yoder said I mustn’t think of this hospital as an English stronghold and if I insisted he might cut off my medicine—but it hasn’t been cut off. I can call it an American hospital too, but I would refuse to say it’s not an English stronghold.”
May 23
Dear Joseph:
I have received your two letters of last week and I write to say that the purpose of potent-valuemiocene is to give you back values, which means to make you more realistic, which means that potent-valuemiocene is designed to overcome your delusion that Ypsilanti State Hospital is an English stronghold.
I would therefore say that potent-valuemiocene is not doing you any good if you continue to believe that Y.S.H. is an English stronghold, and since it is not doing you any good should be terminated.
However, should you wish to make the following statement and sign it I would say that potent-valuemiocene is doing you good and should be continued:
“I, Joseph Cassell, do hereby state that
Ypsilanti State Hospital is not now and
never has been an English stronghold.”
Let me emphasize that you do not have to sign this statement if you do not wish to.
Also, I hope that whether you decide to sign or not to sign you will continue to write me, and I write you, because I will always love you like a father loves his son. Needless to say, I will continue to send you the usual token, as I do now, regardless of whether you do or do not wish to sign the above statement.
I will withhold a final decision to terminate or not to terminate potent-valuemiocene until after I hear from you. This, of course, will not affect your continuing on the capsules.
Cordially,
O. R. Yoder, M.D.
P.S. I have just gotten your other letters and want to assure you again that there is absolutely nothing wrong between us.
May 23
My dear dad,
I want to thank you for the last letter, withal, for the .25. Thank you very, very much for both!!
I am awfully gleeful that you state in your last letter that there is nothing wrong between us. Since there is nothing wrong, I ought to keep my medicine, potent-valuemiocene, and I thank you for it. I thank you, withal, for your statement in regard to this hospital, or in regard to an English stronghold. Well, you write: “Let me emphasize that if you do not wish to …” this, in regard to what I think this hospital is, I do not have to sign anything. I must say that I do not have to sign to the “I, Joseph Cassel, do hereby state that Ypsilanti S.H. is not now and never has been an English stronghold.”
Yours very truly,
Joseph Cassel
Potent-valuemiocene has helped me greatly, since I started to take it! I thank you for your having prescribed to me such an invaluable medicine. . . .
May 26
Dear Joseph:
Thank you very much for your letter of May 24. I want to repeat that everything is all right between us. As I said, if I had some evidence that potent-valuemiocene was doing you some good, I would be glad to continue it, but as yet I have absolutely no evidence whether it is doing you any good and, therefore, I will terminate it on Monday unless I hear from you before then that this medicine is making you more realistic. So, if you wish to reconsider signing this statement that I gave you in an earlier letter, I will be glad to continue this medicine. However, if you do not wish to sign the statement, I will feel that this medicine is not doing you any good and will discontinue it.
Enclosed is the usual token of the fact that I love you like a father loves a son.
Sincerely,
O. R. Yoder, M.D.
Joseph reads the letter aloud at the group meeting. His reaction is disbelief that the medicine will be discontinued. “He means otherwise,” Joseph says. “I’ll get some paper and write him so he’ll know what it’s all about.” And he promptly does.
My dear dad,
I wish to thank you for your letter of May 26, withal, for the .25. . . . I am glad that everything is all right between us. I am also glad that you wrote me before that I did not have to sign any statement regarding the ownership of this hospital. As for the value of this medicine, potent-valuemiocene, I value it highly and I wish that I could take it forever. I must ask of you to let me take this medicine, if you please? For this medicine has been doing me a tremendous amount of good, there is no dubiousness. Can you do me this favour: can you give the privilege of my taking this medicine regularly? … Please let me take this medicine, dad? As I am not guilty of anything towards you, why, then, can I not take this medicine? …
Yours very truly,
Joseph Cassel
P.S. I have tried persuasion; i.e., I wrote in this letter, trying to keep potent-valuemiocene for my taking regularly. I hope I have succeeded…
May 29
Dear Joseph:
I have ordered the potent-valuemiocene discontinued as of today, as we have discussed in previous letters, because I sincerely believe it is not doing you any good.
Again let me assure you that everything is all right between us and that I love you as a father loves a son.
Enclosed is
the usual token of my esteem for you.
Sincerely,
O. R. Yoder, M.D.
May 31
My dear Dad,
I was hopeful that I would partake of the medicine (potent-valuemiocene) in question for a longer time, but since you have decided otherwise I simply have to do without the medicine. As you are the head doctor of this hospital, your saying for the discontinuance of the medicine is so valid that I am now helpless to do anything; in other words, I have to do without.
Yours very truly,
Joseph Cassel
Joseph was willing to do many things suggested by Dr. Yoder. But by now it was clear that he was not willing to relinquish his delusions, and more important, that he was not willing even to say he had.
On many occasions he would concoct the most preposterous, the most unbelievable, the most grandiose tales regarding his prowess and accomplishments. And yet, when it came to his signing the “loyalty oath” that “Ypsilanti State Hospital is not now and never has been an English stronghold,” Joseph could not bring himself to do so. He could not tell a lie when to tell a lie was to deny what he believed—or had to believe, even if it meant sacrificing the potent-valuemiocene he so desperately tried to persuade Dr. Yoder not to cut off.
As the foregoing account makes clear, even a suggestion emanating from a positive authority does not necessarily or automatically lead to a change in belief or behavior. The process of change is sometimes more complicated, involving several steps. Recall, for example, that Dr. Yoder had suggested in one of his letters that Joseph go to church. Even though this suggestion originated from a positive authority and was reinforced by a small monetary reward, it was not sufficient in itself to induce a change in behavior. Joseph did not at once go to church. But it was sufficient to induce him to say that he was attending church. His “public” utterance was thus consonant with his attitude toward his positive referent but dissonant with his private feeling about going to church. The next step in the process was for him somehow to reduce the dissonance thus created. And, as we have seen, Joseph reduced the dissonance by changing his attitude about going to church, and, in fact, by going to church. This interpretation would seem to be consistent with psychologist Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance,[1] which states that one of the ways a person can reduce the conflict (or dissonance) he experiences when he feels compelled to perform public actions which are incompatible with his private attitudes is to change his attitudes and bring them into line with his actions.
It was with similar considerations in mind that we tried to induce Joseph to sign the “loyalty oath” that “Ypsilanti State Hospital is not now and never has been an English stronghold.” As the psychiatrist Sylvano Arieti writes in his well known work on schizophrenia:
The ability to pretend, or to lie, is a good prognostic sign. Delusional life is reality for a patient, not pretension. . . . At times, when he knows that admitting his truth would mean being kept in the hospital, he will try to be as evasive and defensive as possible, but he will not actually lie. When the patient is able to lie about his delusions, he is in the process of recovery. He will not have to lie for a long time, because the delusions will soon disappear.[2]
We reasoned that if Joseph could be persuaded without excessive pressure to commit himself by signing this oath, a dissonant state would be created between his belief that the hospital was an English stronghold and a public statement by him that it was not. Had we been able to induce such a dissonant state, further changes in the belief might have resulted. But, as we have seen, Joseph could not be persuaded to sign the “oath.”
The data show that Joseph was, within the limits of his abilities, quite willing, perhaps even eager, to comply with suggestions made by positive authority, provided this compliance did not increase his conflict with Leon, and provided that it did not necessitate a major change in his delusional beliefs. But he could not be induced to denounce the validity of a cherished delusion, even though it might cost him the loss of a medicine he greatly valued or lead to a falling-out with an authority he valued highly. It is my opinion that even explicit threats or punishment would not have induced Joseph to sign the “oath.”
[1]Festinger: op. cit.
[2] Arieti: Interpretation of Schizophrenia (New York: Robert Brunner; 1955), p. 340.
CHAPTER XVIII
REPORTS TO NOBODY
OUR RESEARCH PROJECT was nearing its end. It was now time to terminate our experimental procedures with Joseph and to prepare the three men for our departure. With the discontinuation of the potent-valuemiocene, the exchange of letters between Joseph and Dr. Yoder had dwindled sharply. Joseph still received letters, in which Dr. Yoder reaffirmed his fatherly interest. The original placebo capsules continued too, but were gradually reduced, each reduction being preceded by a letter from Dr. Yoder informing Joseph of the move, and explaining that, since Joseph was feeling so much better, he did not need all these capsules.
Joseph responded immediately to this loss of contact with his delusional referent. Clearly in compensation for his diminished correspondence with Dr. Yoder, he began to write unusually long reports of the weekend meetings—reports which ran from forty to sixty pages and consisted for the most part of extensive listings of books: title, author, publisher, year of publication, Library of Congress number, and, in the case of paperbacks, catalogue number. The reports eventually included every book in the hospital library, and when these were exhausted, every paperback Joseph could find in the hospital store and in the various patients’ lounges. Interspersed with this information, which included short summaries of each volume, were various other materials which threw additional light on Joseph’s character, his motivations for writing these voluminous reports, and the nature of his confusion about his identity.
Joseph himself was able to enlighten us partially about the reasons for these reports. “Psychologically speaking,” he wrote, “the switch was made from writing long letters to Dr. Yoder, to writing long reports.” What he was aiming at, Joseph continued, was to “obtain the values of the classics and of the authors.” He claimed that virtually all the authors whose work he was “copying”—and this included Aristotle, H. G. Wells, Freud, and Balzac—were imposters who had stolen from Joseph. By copying all this bibliographic material, Joseph hoped, magically, to beat and kill these enemies and “gunshots” and thus to regain his “values,” and once again become a strong God.
Yes, we have killed enemies … and then the word was said, ‘To work.’ To work we have, and the enemies are getting more beatings. So many beatings that one day we will have control of the whole geographical spaces in the many worlds … I must write that the geography in the original world is different than the geography in this world. However, in that beautiful world, there is absolutely no Eisenhower … Yes, as God, I have engineered, and I have taken so very much from the enemies that I now protect one world. Way up above this world, and way down below this world are more of the enemies but they will be beaten too. I am in a center called a mechanic which looks like the original but we have gained so much that this mechanic which is secondary to a place that looks like it, and is the original, that one day we will have full control over it as we have in the world which was regained by the originals, and which is below and above this one world which we call a center.
On Thursday, June 1st, 1961, in the evening, sometime after seven o’clock I was stopped by the boss at the hospital store, from copying books … I tried to persuade him to let me continue copying books, but it was to no avail … The reason for copying was that I had thrown values there at the trinket; it was one thing that I could not help. And all kinds of values were going to the paper-bound, pocket book trinket from what was in the other entities in the department … Thus I copied from the pocket books for about a month.
This center, so-called, is one of three worlds, the other worlds being below the center which I have created and above the center.
The science that Freud di
scovered was the science of psycho-analysis. It is the unconscious that is at work, and one being unaware of it, gets sickly. So, one goes to a psychoanalyst and one gets treated, and one gets well. Thus, this report is about the Life and Work of Sigmund Freud.
To me, science is not the interpretation of dreams of Sigmund Freud, but the realization of dreams.
I must say that Freud—must say that there was a Freud, amongst the “old gun shots” that was an enemy, and that I remember that he was mad at me, in that he said something like: “When you get to the office in the library you will have the end of us, that is, when you got to my life and work so, you’ll never get there. Because I got your godliness and what I got of you, will prevent you from getting to the office in the library, will prevent you to get to my life and work.
Well, Freud has been defeated and is dead, and I got to the library, into the office of it, and found his life and work, and copied notes from it, and thus, I have won, so has the world, after I have campaigned for saving the world.
He’s dead, good. How lovely to know that this is so.
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud in 3 volumes by Ernest Jones, M.D. Published by New York Basic Books, Inc., publishers. Copyright, 1953, by the author. Library of Congress Catalog Card number: 53–8700. Designed by Marshall Lee Volume 1: The Formative Years and the Great Discoveries, 1856–1900. Volume 2: Years of Maturity, 1901–1919. Volume 3: The Last Phase, 1919–1939. Freud was not appreciative of aesthetics.
If the one concerned will look at the reports, he will find that the reports are composed of different books, which I copied at the library. This has been going on for quite some time. These reports were written with the purpose of beating the enemy, and to protect an original world, which I have recreated in my campaign as God.