Wipple indicated concern over the effect of Rhinehart’s association with the sordid death of a former dicestudent, noted that the police and press were artificially using this accidental incident to malign Rhinehart. Wipple appealed to him directly to try to moderate his behaviour, and to defend himself before PANY with all the skill he had.
But after this speech—which seemed to be eminently sensible—it became clear that Wipple didn’t have support from the others, who seemed to feel that the image of the DICELIFE Foundation and dicepeople in general would have to take their chances with everything else. When Rhinehart urged that if he were expelled by PANY that the Foundation also issue a statement condemning him and thus keep its name clear, Ecstein suggested that it would be simpler if the Foundation issue one formal statement dissociating itself from any and all evil acts of any and all dicepeople throughout the earth and adjoining planets—to save the trouble of having to issue new statements “every other day.”
The young hippie Joe Fineman noted that since two green dice had been found in a prominent place near the bombing of the Army munitions depot in New Jersey and Senator Easterman’s attack in the Senate on Dice Centers and dicepeople, there had been a sudden flood of incompetent dicetherapists creating stupid and dangerous options for dicestudents; he suggested that the FBI might be infiltrating and trying to discredit the movement. Dr. Ecstein squashed this dangerous speculation by noting that dicepeople could do perfectly all right discrediting themselves without outside help.
The discussion then shifted momentarily when Mr. Wipple complained that the Internal Revenue Service was trying to deny the DICELIFE Foundation its previously granted tax-exempt status on the grounds that the religion of the Die doesn’t fall within the generally accepted continuum of religions, that the foundation’s educational programs seem aimed at unlearning of generally accepted knowledge, that their scientific studies seem often to contain fictional material and fictional research as evidence (Ecstein remarked here, “Well, nobody’s perfect”), and that their nonprofit Dice Centers can’t be conceived of as therapeutic in any traditaional sense since their successfully treated dicestudents, as they themselves claim, are often maladapted and subversive of the society. When Mrs. Rhinehart and Ecstein indicated a lack of interest in what IRS did, Wipple noted that he deducted three hundred thousand dollars a year from his income, which partly accounted for his generous contributions to the foundation. He added that according to the latest treasurer’s report, prepared by a reliable diceaccountant whom the dice had permitted to be accurate, the foundation’s failure to charge reasonable fees for presence at the Dice Centers, for group dice therapy, for their children’s dice games, for Ecstein’s book The Case of the Square Cubed and their magazine.The See of Wbim was meaning a net loss of over one hundred thousand dollars a month (several voices interjected “Bravo” and “Right-on!”).
[We begin our verbatim report at this point (HJW behboulivrm:4.17.71.7:22-7:39.)]:
“[The voice of Wipple] Sooner or later we’ve simply got to start getting some more income. Don’t you people realize that other businesses throughout the country are cashing in for incredible amounts on Diceboy and Dicegirl T-shirts, green-dice sport shirts, cufflinks, necklaces, tie clips, bracelets, bikinis, earrings, diaper pins, love beads, candy bars? That dice manufacturers have quadrupled their sales in the last year?”
“So what!” said Jake Ecstein.
“But what about us?” Wipple exclaimed. “Other dicelife games, selling for four times what we charge for ours and, or so you tell me, totally missing the whole point of diceliving, are making millions, while we sell ours for less than cost. And bars and discotheques with a five-dollar cover charge are advertising dice-dice girls who strip at random, while our Dice Centers’ Sodom and Gomorrah are practically free. Everyone’s making money out of the dice except us!”
“That’s the way the cubes cool,” said Ecstein.
“We keep giving the Die options to make us some profit and It keeps turning us down,” said Mrs. Rhinehart.
“But I can’t keep covering these losses.”
“No one’s asking you to.”
“But the Die keeps telling me to!”
[The sound of laughter.]
“So far we’re the only religion in world history that’s losing money hand-over-fist,” said Ecstein. “I don’t know why, but it makes me feel good.”
“Look, H. J.,” said Miss Reichman. “Money, power, Diceboy T-shirts, green-dice love beads, the Church of the Die—everything people are doing with the dice—all are irrelevant. Diceliving is only a game to promote multiple game-playing, a theater to promote multiple theater. Profits aren’t part of our act.”
“You’re playing the saint, Linda,” said Ecstein. “If we’re beginning to take pride in our poverty, I’m for trying to loot the public.”
“I tell you we’ve got to do something about this IRS business or I’m through,” said Wipple. “We must hire the best lawyers in the country to fight this ruling—to the Supreme Court if necessary.”
“It’ll be a waste of money, H. J.”
“Still,” said Mrs. Rhinehart. “It might be educational to have the issues debated in the courts. ‘What is religion?’ ‘What is therapeutic?’ ‘What is education?’ I’m fairly certain I could make a strong case that the IRS would be the last organization likely to have the answers.”
“I suggest we hire you to appeal the IRS decision.” said Ecstein.
“We need the best lawyers money can buy,” said Wipple.
“We need a dicelawyer,” said Ecstein. “No one else would know what he was frying to defend.”
“Dicepeople are unreliable,” said Wipple.
[Again there is laughter, in which a nervous guffaw of Wipple can be heard too.]
“By the way, Joe,” Dr. Rhinehart said. “Eric Cannon and his friends have become my fans. He asked me to get them tickets for next Sunday’s TV show.”
“They’re probably going to be there to heckle you,” Fineman said.
“You people have got to grow up,” Wipple exclaimed sharply. “Luke needs a good lawyer at that hearing or we’re all going to be down the drain.”
“By the way, Luke,” said Mrs. Rhinehart, “what do you plan to do at your defense?”
“I haven’t thought about it, Lil.”
“Well, it’s time we all did some thinking,” said Wipple.
“Create the options, shake the dice,” Ecstein said from the sand. “I don’t know why we’re talking about it.”
“But Luke’s theories are important,” said Wipple. “They must be defended.”
“One of the options might be that Luke giggle throughout the proceedings,” said Joe Fineman.
“But I like you people,” Rhinehart said. “I’m not sure I want our Foundation and Centers and diceliving broken up.”
“That’s a hangup, Luke baby,” Ecstein said. “You gotta fight it.”
“So give good odds to appearing cool and rational.” said Mrs. Rhinehart. “Or good odds for taking me in as your lawyer. That’ll get you off.”
“He’s got to consider his image,” said Wipple. “Both before PANY next week and on that TV program the following Sunday. The Father of diceliving has an obligation to always shake true.”
“Dicedung,” said Ecstein, “If he’s worried about his image he’s just another man.”
“He has to help people.”
“Diceshit. If he thinks he’s gotta help people, he’s just another man.”
“But I sometimes want to help people,” said Rhinehart.
“Dicedust,” said Ecstein. “If you want anything, you’re just another man.”
“What’s with these new obscenities?” Miss Reichman asked.
“Diced if I know.”
“You’re being silly,” said Wipple.
“Not half as silly as you’re all being.” Ecstein replied. “Create the options. Shake the dice. All else is nonsense.”
79
>
Insofar as anything is certain in this Die-dictated universe, it was certain that the executive committee of PANY would find Dr. Rhinehart guilty. Not one of the five members of the committee was likely to be sympathetic. Dr. Weinburger, the chairman, was an ambitious, successful, conventional genius who hated everything that took time away from his glory-producing activities at his Institute for the Study of Hypochondria in the Dying. He had never heard of Dr. Rhinehart before his brief brush with him at the Krum party and it was clear he would hope never to hear of him again.
Old Dr. Cobblestone was a fair, rational, open-minded and just man who would thus naturally vote against Dr. Rhinehart. Although Dr. Mann had been trying to get the fellow members of the committee to agree to force Rhinehart to resign quietly from PANY, after he failed in this effort he would naturally vote to condemn everything he detested. Namely Dr. Rhinehart.
The fourth member of the committee was Dr. Peerman, who had initiated the proceedings against Rhinehart when two of his brightest young psychiatrist interns—Joe Fineman and Fuigi Arishi—had suddendly deserted him and begun practicing dice therapy under Rhinehart’s random tutelage. He was a slight, place, middle-aged man with a high-pitched voice, whose fame rested securely on his widely acclaimed research demonstrating that teenagers who smoked marijuana were more likely to try LSD than teenagers who did not. His vote in Rhinehart’s favor seemed doubtful.
Finally, there was Dr. Moon, an ancient body in the heavens of New York psychoanalysis, a personal friend of Freud, the creator, in the early 1920s, of the widely discussed theory of the natural, irreversible depravity of children and a member of the executive committee of PANY since its origin in 1923. Although he was seventy-seven years old and one of the leading subjects in Dr. Weinburger’s Institute for the Study of Hypochondria in the Dying, he still tried to take vigorous part in the proceedings. Unfortunately, his behavior was sometimes so erratic that it seemed he might be a secret diceperson, although his colleagues attributed his “slight eccentricities” to “incipient senility.” Although he was reputed to be the most reactionary member in all of PANY, his was the only vote that—because of his unreliability—didn’t seem certain to go against Dr. Rhinehart.
The meeting of the executive committee took place early in the afternoon of March 31, 1971, in a large seminar room at Dr. Weinburger’s Institute for the Study of Hypochondria in the Dying. That afternoon, Dr. Weinburger, a bushy-haired, thickset man in his late forties, sat impatiently behind a long table with Doctors Peerman and Cobblestone on one side of him and old Dr. Moon and Dr. Mann on the other. All the gentlemen looked serious and intent except for Dr. Moon, who was sleeping quietly between Chairman Weinburger and Dr. Mann, occasionally sliding slowly sideways to rest against the shoulder of the one, and then, like a pendulum that badly needs oiling, after a hesitation, sliding slowly back across the arc to rest against the shoulder of the other.
The table at which the five sat was so long that they looked more like fugitives huddled together for mutual protection rather than judges. Dr. Rhinehart and Dr. Ecstein, who was present as friend and personal physician, sat on stiff wooden chairs in the middle of the room opposite them. Dr. Ecstein was slumped and squinting, but Dr. Rhinehart was erect and alert, looking extremely professional in a perfectly tailored gray suit and tie.
“Yes, sir,” Dr. Rhinehart said before anyone else had said a word.
“One moment, Dr. Rhinehart,” Dr. Weinburger said sharply. He looked down at the papers in front of him. “Does Dr. Rhinehart know the charges being brought against him?”
“Yes,” said Doctors Rhinehart and Ecstein at the same time.
“What’s all this about dice, young man?” Dr. Cobbleston asked. His cane lay on the table in front of him as if it were a piece of evidence relevant to the proceedings.”
“A new therapy I’ve developed, sir,” Dr. Rhinehart replied promptly.
“We understand that,” he said. “What we mean is that you should explain.”
“Well, sir, in dice therapy we encourage our patients to reach decisions by casting dice. The purpose is to destroy the personality. We wish to create in its place a multiple personality: an individual inconsistent, unreliable and progressively schizoid.”
Dr. Rhinehart spoke in a clear, firm and reasonable voice, but for some reason his answer was greeted by a silence, broken only by Dr. Moon’s harsh, uneven breathing. Dr. Cobblestone’s stern lower jaw became sterner.
“Go on,” said Dr. Weinburger.
“My theory is that we all have minority impules which are stifled by the normal personality and rarely break free into action. The minority impulses are the Negroes of the personality. They have not enjoyed freedom since the personality was founded; they have become the invisible men. We refuse to recognize that a minority impulse is a potential full man, and that until he is granted the same opportunity for development as the major conventional selves, the personality in which he lives will be divided, subject to tensions which lead to periodic explosions and riots.”
“Negroes must be kept in their place,” said Dr. Moon, his round, wrinkled face suddenly coming alive with the appearance of two fierce red eyes in its ravaged landscape. He was leaning forward intensely, his mouth, after he had finished his short sentence, dangling open.
“Go on,” said Dr. Weinburger.
Dr. Rhinehart nodded gravely to Dr. Moon and resumed.
“Every personality is the sum total of accumulated suppressions of minorities. Were a man to develop no consistent pattern of impulse control he would have no definable personality; he would be unpredictable and anarchic, one might even say, free.”
“He would be insane,” came Dr. Peerman’s high-pitched voice from his end of the table. His thin, pale face was expressionless.
“Let us hear the man out,” said Dr. Cobblestone.
“Go on,” said Dr. Weinburger.
“In stable, unified, consistent societies the narrow personality had value; men could fulfill themselves with only one self. Not so today. In a multivalent society, the multiple personality is the only one which can fulfill. Each of us has a hundred suppressed potential selves which never let us forget that no matter how mightily we step along the narrow single path of our personality, our deepest desire is to be multiple: to play many roles.
“If you will permit me, gentlemen, I would like to quote to you what a dicepatient of mine said in a therapy session which I taped.” Dr. Rhinehart reached into his briefcase beside his chair and drew out some sheets of paper. After leafing through them, he looked up and continued:
“What Professor O. B. says here seems to me to dramatize the crux of the problem for all men. I quote:
“I feel I ought to write a great novel, write numerous letters, be friendly with more of the interesting people in my community, give more parties, dedicate more time to my intellectual pursuits, play with my children, make love to my wife, go hiking more often, go to the Congo, be a radical trying to revolutionize society, write fairy tales, buy a bigger boat, do more sailing, sunning and swimming, write a book on the American picaresque novel, educate my children at home, be a better teacher at the University, be a faithful friend, be more generous with my money, economize more, live a fuller life in the world outside me, live like Thorean and not be taken in by material values, play more tennis, practice yoga, meditate, do those damn RCAF exercises every day, help my wife with the housework, make money in real estate, and … and so on.
“And do all these things seriously, playfully, dramatically, stoically, joyfully, serenely, morally, indifferently—do them like D. H. Lawrence, Paul Newman, Socrates, Charlie Brown, Superman, and Pogo.
“But it’s ridiculous. When I do any one of these things, play any one of these roles, the other selves are not satisfied. You’ve got to help me satisfy one self in such a way that the others will feel that they are somehow being considered too. Make them shut up. You’ve got to help me pull myself together and stop spilling all over the goddamn
universe without actually doing anything.”
Dr. Rhinehart looked up and smiled. “Our Western psychologies try to solve O. B.’s problem by urging him to suppress his natural multiplicity and build a single dominant self to control the others. This totalitarian solution means that a standing army of energy must be maintained to crush the efforts of the minority selves to take power. The normal personality exists in a state of continual insurrection.”
“Some of this makes sense,” added Dr. Ecstein helpfully.
“In dice therapy we attempt to overthrow the totalitarian personality and—”
“The masses need a strong leader,” interrupted Dr. Moon.
The silence which followed was broken only by his uneven breathing.
“Go on,” said Dr. Weinburger.
“All I’ve got to say for now,” replied Dr. Moon, closing the shutters on the red furnaces of his eyes and beginning to swing in a slow are toward the shoulder of Dr. Mann.
“Go on, Dr. Rhinehart,” said Dr. Weinburger, his face expressionless but his hands crumpling up the papers in front of him like octopi demolishing squid.
Dr. Rhinehart glanced at his wristwatch and went on.
“Thank you. In our metaphor—which has the same admirable degree of scientific precision and rigor as Freud’s famous parable of the superego, the ego, and the id—in our metaphor, the anarchic chance-led person is governed in fact by a benevolent despot: the Die. In the early stages of therapy only a few selves are able to offer themselves as options to the Die. But as the student progresses, more and more selves, desires, values and roles are raised into the possibility of existence; the human being grows, expands, becomes more flexible, more various. The ability of major selves to overthrow the Die declines, disappears. The personality is destroyed. The man is free. He—”
Dice Man Page 35