The Compass Rose

by Ursula K LeGuin

  My guess is that Ana Jest is in menopausal depression and hormone therapy will be sufficient There! Now let’s see how bad a prognostician I am.

  Will work with both patients under scope tomorrow. It is exciting to have my own patients, I am impatient to begin. Though of course teamwork was very educational.

  31 AUGUST

  Half-hour scope session with Ana J. at 8:00. Analyzed scope material, 11:00-17:00. N.B.: Adjust right-brain pickup next session! Weak visual Concrete. Very little aural, weak sensory, erratic body image. Will get lab analyses tomorrow of hormone balance.

  It is amazing how banal most people’s minds are. Of course the poor woman is in severe depression. Input in the Con dimension was foggy and incoherent, and the Uncon dimension was deeply open, but obscure. But the things that came out of the obscurity were so trivial! A pair of old shoes, and the word “geography”! And the shoes were dim, a mere schema of a pair-of-shoes, maybe a man’s maybe a woman’s, maybe dark blue maybe brown. Although definitely a visual type, she does not see anything clearly. Not many people do. It is depressing. When I was a student in first year I used to think how wonderful other people’s minds would be, how wonderful it was going to be to share in all the different worlds, the different colors of their passions and ideas. How naive I was!

  I realised this first in Dr. Ramia’s class when we studied a tape from a very famous successful person, and I noticed that the subject had never looked at a tree, never touched one, did not know any difference between an oak and a poplar, or even between a daisy and a rose. They were all just “trees” or “flowers” to him, apprehended schematically. It was the same with people’s faces, though he had tricks for telling them apart: mostly he saw the name, like a label, not the face. That was an Abstract mind, of course, but it can be even worse with the Concretes, whose perceptions come in a kind of undifferentiated sludge—bean soup with a pair of shoes in it.

  But aren’t I “going native”? I’ve been studying a depressive’s thoughts all day and have got depressed. Look, I wrote up there, “It is depressing.” I see the value of this diary already. I know I am over-impressionable.

  Of course, that is why I am a good psychoscopist But it is dangerous.

  No session with F. Sorde today, since sedation had not worn off. TRTU referrals are often so drugged that they cannot be scoped for days.

  REM scoping session with Ana J. at 4:00 tomorrow. Better go to bed!

  1 SEPTEMBER

  Dr. Nades says the kind of thing I wrote yesterday is pretty much what she had in mind, and invited me to show her this diary again whenever I am in doubt. Spontaneous thoughts—not the technical data, which are recorded in the files anyhow. Cross nothing out. Candor all-important.

  Ana’s dream was interesting but pathetic. The wolf who turned into a pancake! Such a disgusting, dim, hairy pancake, too. Her visuality is clearer in dream, but the feeling tone remains low (but remember: you contribute the affect—don’t read it in). Started her on hormone therapy today.

  F. Sorde awake, but too confused to take to scope room for session. Frightened. Refused to eat. Complained of pain in side. I thought he was unclear what kind of hospital this is, and told him there was nothing wrong with him physically. He said, “How the hell do you know?” which was fair enough, since he was in a straitjacket, due to the V notation on his chart. I examined and found bruising and contusion, and ordered X-ray, which showed two ribs cracked. Explained to patient that he had been in a condition where forcible restraint had been necessary to prevent self-injury. He said, “Every time one of them asked a question the other one kicked me.” He repeated this several times, with anger and confusion. Paranoid delusional system? If it does not weaken as the drugs wear off, I will proceed on that assumption. He responds fairly well to me, asked my name when I went to see him with the X-ray plate, and agreed to eat. I was forced to apologise to him, not a good beginning with a paranoid. The rib damage should have been marked on his chart by the referring agency or by the medic who admitted him. This kind of carelessness is distressing.

  But there’s good news too. Rina (Autism Study subject 4) saw a first-person sentence today. Saw it: in heavy, black, primer print, all at once in the high Con foreground: I want to sleep in. the big room. (She sleeps alone because of the feces problem.) The sentence stayed clear for over 5 seconds. She was reading it in her mind just as I was reading it on the holoscreen. There was weak subverbalisation, but not subvocalisation, nothing on the audio. She has not yet spoken, even to herself, in the first person. I told Tio about it at once and he asked her after the session, “Rina, where do you want to sleep?”—“Rina sleep in the big room.” No pronoun, no conative. But one of these days she will say I want—aloud. And on that build a personality, maybe, at last: on that foundation. I want, therefore I am.

  There is so much fear. Why is there so much fear?

  4 SEPTEMBER

  Went to town for my two-day holiday. Stayed with B. in her new flat on the north bank. Three rooms to herself!!! But I don’t really like those old buildings, there are rats and roaches, and it feels so old and strange, as if somehow the famine years were still there, waiting. Was glad to get back to my little room here, all to myself but with others close by on the same floor, friends and colleagues. Anyway I missed writing in this book. I form habits very fast. Compulsive tendency.

  Ana much improved: dressed, hair combed, was knitting. But session was dull. Asked her to think about pancakes, and there it came filling up the whole Uncon dimension, the hairy, dreary, flat wolf-pancake, while in the Con she was obediently trying to visualise a nice cheese blintz. Not too badly: colors and outlines already stronger. I am still willing to count on simple hormone treatment. Of course they will suggest ECT, and a coanalysis of the scope material would be perfectly possible, we’d start with the wolf-pancake, etc. But is there any real point to it? She has been a bakery packager for 24 years and her physical health is poor. She cannot change her life situation. At least with good hormone balance she may be able to endure it.

  F. Sorde: rested but still suspicious. Extreme fear reaction when I said it was time for his first session. To allay this I sat down and talked about the nature and operation of the psychoscope. He listened intently and finally said, “Are you going to use only the psychoscope?”

  I said Yes.

  He said, “Not electroshock?”

  I said No.

  He said, “Will you promise me that?”

  I explained that I am a psychoscopist and never operate the electroconvulsive therapy equipment, that is an entirely different department. I said my work with him at present would be diagnostic, not therapeutic. He listened carefully. He is an educated person and understands distinctions such as “diagnostic” and “therapeutic.” It is interesting that he asked me to promise. That does not fit a paranoid pattern, you don’t ask for promises from those you can’t trust He came with me docilely, but when we entered the scope room he stopped and turned white at sight of the apparatus. I made Dr. Aven’s little joke about the dentist’s chair, which she always used with nervous patients. F.S. said, “So long as it’s not an electric chair!”

  I believe that with intelligent subjects it is much better not to make mysteries and so impose a false authority and a feeling of helplessness on the subject (see T. R. Olma, Psychoscopy Technique). So I showed him the chair and electrode crown and explained its operation. He has a layman’s hearsay knowledge of the psychoscope, and his questions also reflected his engineering education. He sat down in the chair when I asked him. While I fitted the crown and clasps he was sweating profusely from fear, and this evidently embarrassed him, the smell. If he knew how Rina smells after she’s been doing shit paintings. He shut his eyes and gripped the chair arms so that his hands went white to the wrist. The screens were almost white too. After a while I said in a joking tone, “It doesn’t really hurt, does it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, does it?”

  �
�You mean it’s on?”

  “It’s been on for ninety seconds.”

  He opened his eyes then and looked around, as well as he could for the head clamps. He asked, “Where’s the screen?”

  I explained that a subject never watches the screen live, because the objectification can be severely disturbing, and he said, “Like feedback from a microphone?” That is exactly the simile Dr. Aven used to use. F.S. is certainly an intelligent person. N.B.: Intelligent paranoids are dangerous!

  He asked, “What do you see?” and I said, “Do be quiet, I don’t want to see what you’re saying, I want to see what you’re thinking,” and he said, “But that’s none of your business, you know,” quite gently, like a joke. Meanwhile the fear-white had gone into dark, intense, volitional convolutions, and then, a few seconds after he stopped speaking, a rose appeared on the whole Con dimension: a full-blown pink rose, beautifully sensed and visualised, clear and steady, whole.

  He said presently, “What am I thinking about, Dr. Sobel?” and I said, “Bears in the Zoo.” I wonder now why I said that. Self-defense? Against what? He gave a laugh and the Uncon went crystal-dark, relief, and the rose darkened and wavered. I said, “I was joking. Can you bring the rose back?” That brought back the fear-white. I said, “Listen, it’s really very bad for us to talk like this during a first session, you have to learn a great deal before you can co-analyse, and I have a great deal to learn about you, so no more jokes, please? Just relax physically, and think about anything you please.”

  There was flurry and subverbalisation on the Con dimension, and the Uncon faded into grey, suppression. The rose came back weakly a few times. He was trying to concentrate on it, but couldn’t. I saw several quick visuals: myself, my uniform, TRTU uniforms, a grey car, a kitchen, the violent ward (strong aural images—screaming), a desk, the papers on the desk. He stuck to those. They were the plans for a machine. He began going through them. It was a deliberate effort at suppression, and quite effective. Finally I said, “What kind of machine is that?” and he began to answer aloud but stopped and let me get the answer subvocally in the earphone: “Plans for a rotary engine assembly for traction,” or something like that, of course the exact words are on the tape. I repeated it aloud and said, “They aren’t classified plans, are they?” He said, “No,” aloud, and added, “I don’t know any secrets.” His reaction to a question is intense and complex, each sentence is like a shower of pebbles thrown into a pool, the interlocking rings spread out quick and wide over the Con and into the Uncon, responses rising on all levels. Within a few seconds all that was hidden by a big signboard that appeared in the high Con foreground, deliberately visualised like the rose and the plans, with auditory reinforcement as he read it over and over: keep out! keep out! keep out!

  It began to blur and flicker, and somatic signals took over, and soon he said aloud, “I’m tired,” and I closed the session (12.5 min.).

  After I took off the crown and clamps I brought him a cup of tea from the staff stand in the hall. When I offered it to him he looked startled and then tears came into his eyes. His hands were so cramped from gripping the armrests that he had trouble taking hold of the cup. I told him he must not be so tense and afraid, we were trying to help him not to hurt him.

  He looked up at me. Eyes are like the scope screen and yet you can’t read them. I wished the crown was still on him, but it seems you never catch the moments you most want on the scope. He said, “Doctor, why am I in this hospital?”

  I said, “For diagnosis and therapy.”

  He said, “Diagnosis and therapy of what?”

  I said he perhaps could not now recall the episode, but he had behaved strangely. He asked how and when, and I said that it would all come clear to him as therapy took effect. Even if I had known what his psychotic episode was, I would have said the same. It was correct procedure. But I felt in a false position. If the TRTU report was not classified, I would be speaking from knowledge and the facts. Then I could make a better response to what he said next:

  “I was waked up at two in the morning, jailed, interrogated, beaten up,, and drugged. I suppose I did behave a little oddly during that. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Sometimes a person under stress misinterprets other people’s actions,” I said. “Drink up your tea and I’ll take you back to the ward. You’re running a temperature.”

  “The ward,” he said, with a kind of shrinking movement, and then he said almost desperately, “Can you really not know why I’m here?”

  That was strange, as if he has included me in his delusional system, on “his side.” Check this possibility in Rheingeld. I should think it would involve some transference and there has not been time for that.

  Spent pm analysing Jest and Sorde holos. I have never seen any psychoscopic realisation, not even a drug-induced hallucination, so fine and vivid as that rose. The shadows of one petal on another, the velvety damp texture of the petals, the pink color full of sunlight, the yellow central crown—I am sure the scent was there if the apparatus had olfactory pickup—it wasn’t like a mentifact but a real thing rooted in the earth, alive and growing, the strong thorny stem beneath it.

  Very tired, must go to bed.

  Just reread this entry. Am I keeping this diary right? All I have written is what happened and what was said. Is that spontaneous? But it was important to me.

  5 SEPTEMBER

  Discussed the problem of conscious resistance with Dr. Nades at lunch today. Explained that I have worked with unconscious blocks (the children, and depressives such as Ana J.) and have some skill at reading through, but have not before met a conscious block such as F.S.’s keep out sign, or the device he used today, which was effective for a full 20-minute session: a concentration on his breathing, bodily rhythms, pain in ribs, and visual input from the scope room. She suggested that I use a blindfold for the latter trick, and keep my attention on the Uncon dimension, as he cannot prevent material from appearing there. It is surprising, though, how large the interplay area of his Con and Uncon fields is, and how much one resonates into the other. I believe his concentration on his breathing rhythm allowed him to achieve something like “trance” condition. Though of course most so-called “trance” is mere occultist fakirism, a primitive trait without interest for behavioral science.

  Ana thought through “a day in my life” for me today. All so grey and dull, poor soul! She never thought even of food with pleasure, though she lives on minimum ration. The single thing that came bright for a moment was a child’s face, clear dark eyes, a pink knitted cap, round cheeks. She told me in post-session discussion that she always walks by a school playground on the way to work because “she likes to see the little ones running and yelling.” Her husband appears on the screen as a big bulky suit of work clothes and a peevish, threatening mumble. I wonder if she knows that she hasn’t seen his face or heard a word he says for years? But no use telling her that. It may be just as well she doesn’t. The knitting she is doing, I noticed today, is a pink cap.

  Reading De Cam’s Disaffection: A Study, on Dr. Nades’s recommendation.

  6 SEPTEMBER

  In the middle of session (breathing again) I said loudly: “Flores!”

  Both psy dimensions whited out but the soma realisation hardly changed. After 4 seconds he responded aloud, drowsily. It is not “trance,” but autohypnosis.

  I said, “Your breathing’s monitored by the apparatus. I don’t need to know that you’re still breathing. It’s boring.”

  He said, “I like to do my own monitoring, Doctor.”

  I came around and took the blindfold off him and looked at him. He has a pleasant face, the kind of man you often see running machinery, sensitive but patient, like a donkey. That is stupid. I will not cross it out. I am supposed to be spontaneous in this diary. Donkeys do have beautiful faces. They are supposed to be stupid and balky but they look wise and calm, as if they had endured a lot but held no grudges, as if they knew some reason why one should not hold grudges. An
d the white ring around their eyes makes them look defenseless.

  “But the more you breathe,” I said, “the less you think. I need your cooperation. I’m trying to find out what it is you’re afraid of.”

  “But I know what I’m afraid of,” he said.

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  “You never asked me.”

  “That’s most unreasonable,” I said, which is funny, now I think about it, being indignant with a mental patient because he’s unreasonable. “Well, then, now I’m asking you.”

  He said, “I’m afraid of electroshock. Of having my mind destroyed. Being kept here. Or only being let out when I can’t remember anything.” He gasped while he was speaking. I said, “All right, why won’t you think about that while I’m watching the screens?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why not? You’ve said it to me, why can’t you think about it? I want to see the color of your thoughts!”

  “It’s none of your business, the color of my thoughts,” he said angrily, but I was around to the screen while he spoke, and saw the unguarded activity. Of course it was being taped while we spoke, too, and I have studied it all afternoon. It is fascinating. There are two subverbal levels running aside from the spoken words. All sensory-emotive reactions and distortions are vigorous and complex. He “sees” me, for instance, m at least three different ways, probably more, analysis is impossibly difficult! And the Con-Uncon correspondences are so complicated, and the memory traces and current impressions interweave so rapidly, and yet the whole is unified in its complexity. It is like that machine he was studying, very intricate but all one thing in a mathematical harmony. Like the petals of the rose.