The Incurable Romantic

by Frank Tallis

  ‘You must enjoy it. Surely we can say that much.’ Jim’s minute head tremor refuted my assertion. ‘You don’t?’ My incredulity was too evident, my voice too shrill.

  ‘It’s not that simple. Yes, I enjoy the sex—but not always—not every time. And afterwards, I always feel bad.’

  ‘In what way…?’

  ‘I feel as though I’m exploiting these women. I feel guilty.’

  Looking down at my notes, I discovered that I had written very little. Our conversations were frustrating. We discussed possible causes of his lack of self-control but failed to reach any firm conclusions. Eventually, Jim would steer us into a conversational blind alley by saying something like: ‘It’s kind of you to keep seeing me like this. I really appreciate it.’ And his gaze would slide away—his expression slightly troubled.

  I raised the subject of Jim’s vagueness with a psychiatrist colleague.

  ‘You won’t get to the bottom of his problem,’ she said, sipping her tea.

  ‘Why do you think that?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s lonely and he’s found someone to talk to. If you got to the bottom of his problem then he’d have to stop coming.’

  It was a possibility.

  Jim had grown up in a small town in Sussex. His mother was a primary school teacher and his father was an electrician. As far as he could remember his childhood had been happy and unremarkable; however, when he was seventeen he had had a breakdown, an episode of nervous exhaustion. ‘I became obsessed with exams—worked too hard, didn’t get enough sleep. I couldn’t cope.’ It took several months for him to fully recover, by which time, he had missed his exams. He decided to take a year off but at the end of that year he was still reluctant to go back into education. He went from one undemanding job to the next. Then he left home and drifted around London until he settled in an anonymous suburb.

  ‘What do you do now?’ I asked.

  ‘I work as a night porter in a mansion block.’

  ‘Are you happy doing that?’

  ‘It’s all right. Nothing ever happens… so I read. It’s like getting paid to read books.’

  ‘What do you read?’

  ‘All sorts. I quite like history.’

  Over the years he had lost contact with all of his school friends and he rarely went home to see his mother and father. ‘I know they’re disappointed in me.’ The overall picture was of a man who had become increasingly detached from the rest of society. He was living on the margins—living invisibly. He had even reversed his sleep-wake cycle.

  While breaking for lunch, I came across my colleague sitting in a café near the clinic.

  ‘How’s your difficult case?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not making very much progress.’

  ‘See…’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘He’s taking the piss.’

  Although Jim wasn’t ‘taking the piss’ exactly, he was certainly being very economical with the truth.

  When Jim arrived for his next session he was upset.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been again.’ I opened Jim’s file and wrote the date. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he repeated.

  ‘Let’s go over what happened: step by step.’

  He nodded and looked relieved. It was as though he had expected me to scold him. ‘I’d finished work,’ he began, ‘and I was walking back to the tube station and I passed by this telephone box and I could see that it was full of cards.’

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Nothing—it was automatic—almost like I wasn’t there. I looked at the cards—and one of them had this black and white photo… an Asian woman—smiling—and I just couldn’t resist.’

  He had taken the card home with him and as soon as he was through the front door of his flat he had made the phone call. That afternoon, he visited the Asian prostitute in an area associated with drug dealing and poverty.

  ‘Did you have protected sex?’

  ‘Yes. Although it was only because of her—she was the one who raised the subject.’ We had discussed numerous strategies that Jim might use to increase the likelihood of him using a condom prior to having intercourse, but he hadn’t remembered any of them. ‘I’m sorry.’ He massaged his temples with fingers yellowed by cigarette smoke.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’ve got a headache. I get lots of them.’

  ‘Do you want to continue?’

  ‘Sure.’ His brow creased and he winced.

  ‘I can get you some paracetamol if you want?’

  ‘No—I’ll be fine.’ He paused for a few moments and said: ‘I’m really sorry.’ He was looking distraught. ‘You’ve been trying to help me and I haven’t been entirely honest with you.’ I was looking into his eyes and he was holding my gaze. I was expecting him to look away, but unusually, he didn’t. His pupils were slightly dilated and I guessed he was about to confess a drug habit. ‘I never intended to mislead you, but some things—it’s hard—just saying the words…’ His disjointed speech wouldn’t bear the weight of his disclosure. I could hear the clock on my desk ticking. Jim changed position, inhaled—held his breath for a few seconds—and then said: ‘I visit prostitutes because I’m possessed. I’m a victim of demonic possession.’

  ‘Okay.’ I didn’t want to overreact and made a note in Jim’s file. When I looked up he was still staring at me. I wasn’t sure how to respond. While working on hospital wards I had spoken to many patients who claimed to have been taunted by the Devil. All of them had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, couldn’t function independently and showed signs of self-neglect. Such patients are not unusual. Jim, however, was nothing like those patients. He was a rational, clean-shaven young man who had been employed continuously for ten years. Apart from a little shyness and a tendency to be vague there was absolutely nothing about his presentation that had prepared me for his startling revelation. Perhaps he was joking? I dismissed the idea immediately.

  If I said the wrong thing, the session would end and I might never see Jim again. ‘You are possessed by a demon. And you visit prostitutes because of the demon’s influence.’ I was provisionally accepting his frame of reference—normalising our exchange. We were just two men, sitting in a room, having a conversation.

  Jim’s shoulders relaxed. ‘Yes. That’s right…’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’ We were both breathing more easily.

  Demons have a special place in the history of psychiatry. The very first ‘theory’ of mental illness was demonic possession, a fact well established from archaeological evidence. Some stone-age skulls have small holes in them surrounded by areas of healing. This suggests recovery from a primitive operation that involved perforating the bone plates. The presumed purpose of this procedure was to facilitate the release of evil spirits.

  Although cases of demonic possession can be classified in different ways, the most fundamental distinction concerns the degree to which the host knows of the demon’s activities. In cases of ‘somnambulic’ possession, the demon takes over the host completely and speaks in the first person. Afterwards, the host has no memory of the episode. In cases of ‘lucid’ possession, there are no absences or discontinuities of awareness; however, the host is conscious of an independent will, operating from within, and which he or she struggles to resist.

  Jim was a case of lucid possession.

  When I was fifteen years old, I was desperate to see William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. It was being described in newspaper articles as the most terrifying film ever made. Needless to say, it was X-rated (the equivalent of today’s ‘18’ certification) and I was a baby-faced teenager. When the film arrived at my local cinema, I went along with a taller and more mature-looking boy and managed to slip past the box office while he purchased the tickets. An indifferent usherette waved us into a smoke-filled flea-pit and I took my seat in a state of high excitement. Everything that had been written about the film was true. It was utterly thrilling. At one point, I had to close my eyes. I just couldn’
t look at the screen.

  How was I going to treat Jim? How was I going to exorcise his demon?

  The sound of rainfall and the clack of heels on concrete.

  In the basement of the genitourinary medicine clinic, the lamp on my desk produced an aura beyond which the darkness intensified exponentially. Jim was sitting just inside our cocoon of light, his peripheral position serving as a metaphor for his liminality. Most of the medical consultants and nursing staff had already left the building.

  ‘How long have you been possessed for?’ I asked.

  ‘Since my breakdown,’ Jim replied.

  ‘The breakdown you had when you were at school.’

  ‘Yes—I’m sorry—I underplayed what actually happened. It was more serious than I said. My doctor was considering having me hospitalised. I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t cope at all.’ Tyres hissed through water. ‘But it wasn’t because of the studying, the hard work. I couldn’t cope because I felt really bad; headaches, tiredness, odd sensations.’

  ‘Can you remember when it happened, the precise moment when you were possessed?’

  ‘Yes, although there was a sort of build-up beforehand.’ I invited him to elaborate. ‘The headaches started early in the summer—then I started to get blurred vision and nausea—so I went to see my doctor and he said I might be developing migraine. He prescribed some pills, which I took, but they didn’t work. If anything, the headaches got worse. I was feeling tired all the time and I couldn’t get up in the mornings. My mother used to think I was being lazy—but I had this deep, deep tiredness.’ He paused, touched the side of my desk and stared at his fingers. Every nail had been rounded with a file. Without looking up he added: ‘And I had dreams—horrible dreams.’

  ‘What were they about?’

  Eventually he roused from his reflective state and said, ‘They were sexual dreams—but they weren’t pleasant in any way. They were highly disturbing.’ I suspected that Jim didn’t want to discuss his dreams, the contents of which were—over a decade later—still making him feel uneasy—and my interest could easily be mistaken for prurience. Jim let go of my desk and his hand fell to his lap. ‘I knew something was wrong. I mean, very wrong, like—something was happening to me that was… unnatural. I felt like I was being influenced, that something was messing with my head. These dreams—these horrible dreams—it’s like they belonged to someone else.’

  ‘You weren’t feeling well… and you were having bad dreams. Even if they were unusually powerful, what made you think that your dreams required a supernatural explanation?’

  ‘My mum used to go to church on Sundays and occasionally my dad would go too. We were never devout Catholics; we didn’t pray together—we didn’t even own a Bible. I used to go to church regularly when I was a kid, but as I got older, I went less and less. My mum was fairly easy-going and she didn’t force me to attend services.’ He shook his T-shirt, as if it were a hot summer’s day and he wanted to cool down. ‘I hadn’t been for a while—for months, actually—then one Sunday, I’m not sure why, I decided to go. But the smell, the smell of candles and incense made me feel sick. I thought I was going to throw up. It was like I couldn’t stay there, it was like I was being forced out.’

  ‘That must have been very frightening.’

  ‘Yes… yes it was.’ I saw gratitude in his eyes. His experience had been recognised—understood.

  What must it be like, to live in a universe where demons exist, to wake every morning from feverish dreams in a state of bowel-loosening terror?

  ‘You said you can remember the precise moment…’

  ‘A friend of mine asked me if I fancied going for a drink. He’d just passed his driving test and was using his dad’s car. We drove out to a pub on the downs—a quiet place with a beer garden and views. It started to get overcast and there was this terrific storm. Thunder, lightning—a real deluge—I ran inside but still got completely soaked. I was back in my bedroom by ten, maybe ten thirty—no later. Even though the storm had broken, it was very humid. I opened the window and tried to get to sleep. I was drifting off when I sensed a presence in the room—I couldn’t move—I was paralysed. Then I got this awful stabbing pain at the back of my head.’ He twisted his arm over his shoulder and massaged his occiput. ‘Just here—you know? At the base of the skull where it feels like an arch of bone? It was as if something sharp had gone straight through. That was the moment. That’s when I think it happened.’ His eyes glinted as he leaned forward. ‘The dreams I had that night were awful, worse than any I’d had before. When I woke up my head felt heavy and tender. I managed to get out of bed late in the afternoon but I felt like I had the flu or something. I went to brush my teeth and when I saw myself in the bathroom mirror I was shocked—I looked different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘The shape of my face had changed.’

  ‘Did anyone else notice?’

  ‘No. It was subtle, a kind of lengthening.’ A brief silence passed. ‘When my mum got back from work she called the doctor immediately. He was quite concerned and came back to see me several times over the next few weeks. He said I was exhausted, that I needed rest, and that I might have to recuperate in hospital, but in the end that never happened. He put me on a new drug and I started to feel a bit better. I didn’t want to go back to school though. I didn’t want to go back to writing essays and cramming facts—I didn’t feel ready—so I got myself a job stacking shelves in a supermarket.’

  ‘Can you remember what the doctor prescribed?’

  ‘It might have been an antidepressant.’

  ‘Were you depressed?’

  ‘Perhaps.… I don’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t tell your doctor about the incident in the church? The presence you’d felt in your bedroom—the bad dreams you’d been having?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No. I’ve never talked about those things to anyone.’

  ‘How do you feel now—having talked to me?’

  ‘It hasn’t been easy. But I feel…’ He sounded surprised. ‘Okay.’

  I put my pen down and closed Jim’s file. ‘Why didn’t you seek help from the church?’

  ‘I’ve sought help from God. I’ve spent time in churches—praying. But I always feel bad. Even looking at a church makes me queasy now.’

  ‘What about priests? Why haven’t you ever spoken to a priest?’

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable with them. The priests at my mum’s church weren’t very impressive. One was old—doddery—and the other one had a temper. The parishioners used to gossip about him.’

  I glanced at my wristwatch. The session had lasted for over an hour. I made some concluding remarks and offered Jim another appointment. ‘Yes, I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ As he was leaving, he hesitated in the doorway. The fluorescent light in the corridor was bright and he became a featureless silhouette. He raised his hand—a final parting gesture—which I returned. I listened to his receding footsteps. The rain had stopped but I could still hear trickling and dripping. For some time, I stared at Jim’s empty chair.

  It is an unsettling experience to sit with a demoniac, to observe and to wonder—and to feel the faint stirrings of atavistic fear. I placed Jim’s file in my briefcase and grabbed my coat.

  ‘Does he speak to you?’

  ‘I don’t hear voices…’

  ‘Then how does he tell you what to do?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. He doesn’t tell me to do anything.’

  ‘Then how does he make you see prostitutes?’

  ‘When I walk past telephone boxes it’s me who makes the decision to look at the cards inside; it’s me who looks at their photos; it’s me who finds them attractive. Desirable.’

  I was puzzled. ‘Does he make you call their numbers?’

  ‘No,’ Jim continued. ‘He stops me from considering what’s right and wrong.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he talk to you?’

  ‘I don’t think he can. I don’t th
ink he’s powerful enough.’

  ‘If he isn’t very powerful, why can’t you resist his influence?’

  ‘He doesn’t get tired. He wears me down. Sometimes, I’m determined not to call—but my resolve weakens. I start to think things like: What harm would it do? Just one more time, then I’ll stop.’

  ‘Does he influence your behaviour in other ways?’

  ‘No. His influence is quite restricted—the prostitutes—nothing else.’

  ‘He’s never made you do anything violent.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When you’ve been with a prostitute, have you ever had any violent thoughts or urges?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Violence disgusts me, especially sexual violence.’

  ‘Couldn’t he insert violent thoughts into your mind?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that. He influences me by interfering with my conscience. I’d have to want to be violent—you know—like I want to be intimate with the women on the business cards. And then he’d have to confuse my sense of what’s right and wrong, so that I’d actually be violent.’

  Jim’s understanding of how the demon influenced his behaviour was remarkably consistent with both neuroscience and psychoanalysis. For primitive impulses to find expression, it is necessary for inhibitory mechanisms in the frontal lobe of the brain to fail. In psychoanalytic terms, this would correspond with an underdeveloped and permissive super-ego.

  ‘Do you have any idea what he looks like?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes in my dreams I see a face. It could be him.’

  ‘What kind of face?’

  ‘You know.’ He raised his hands to the side of his head and made horns with his index fingers. It might have been an amusing reversion to childish caricature, but Jim’s expression was serious and I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathetic dread. What must it be like, I asked myself again, to feel so profoundly violated? I was trying to record the essential details of our conversation when Jim said: ‘I know his name.’