by Brad Kelln
"Basically all psychotic disorders are at the end of a continuum of normal behaviour," Wenton continued.
He was seated behind his desk and Norma was seated across from him. They were discussing Wenton's recent involvement in the barricaded subject negotiation of Barry Boseman.
"The subject in this police standoff was diagnosed as depressed with psychotic features but might actually have been showing the prodromal signs of late onset schizophrenia. I don't know the whole history but apparently he had some kind of fixation on disease. He saw it in his house, at work, everywhere. Even during the police negotiation he was raving about disease being all around him. Not surprisingly, his fixation started shortly after his wife and son left him."
"Is that like the stress part of the diathesis-stress idea?" Norma asked, wanting desperately to seem competent in Wenton's eyes.
He nodded. "Diathesis is the biological portion of an illness, the part that is passed on by genetics. Maybe this guy had some odd characters in his family tree. A gene predisposing members of his family to mental illness can be passed along much like the gene for male pattern baldness is passed. The 'stress' part of diathesis-stress is the idea that even though a person has a genetic predisposition to a disorder, it still takes a stressful life event to finally push the person over the edge. For example, someone might be destined to be crazy but manages to fight it off for years right up until some- thing big happens that breaks them. Something like having your family pack up and leave you. But you need both parts: stress won't cause psy- chosis without the genetic predisposition, and your predisposition might not mean shit until your wife fucks off and leaves you."
"That's terrible," Norma said with a note of sadness.
"Shit happens. Anyway, as I was saying, mental illness is on a continuum. One of this guy's symptoms was seeing disease everywhere, a frequent symptom in obsessive-compulsive disorder. But just seeing disease or dirt does not constitute a psychotic condition. It's a matter of degrees. If a person starts to see disease everywhere to the point where it disrupts their normal functioning, that's a problem. Being able to tell the difference between what's real and what's not is what separates reality from fantasy. Psychotic people can't make that distinction." Wenton stood and peered over the top of his desk. "There," he said pointing, "Do you see that bug over in the cor- ner of the room. I think it's an ant. Right there, next to the rain stick."
She shifted around in her seat and looked. "Yeah, I see it. Do you want me to get it?"
Wenton looked at her like she'd just said something offensive. "No. I'm illustrating a point."
"Oh," she said shifting in her seat.
"Look at that ant again. This time, more carefully."
She turned back to the spot. "Okay."
"Is it an ant?"
"I don't know."
"Well the first time you looked you were sure, weren't you?"
"Yes, because you told me it was an ant."
"I told your brain it was an ant. I didn't tell your eyes what to see. Your brain told your eyes what it was looking at." Youfackin' idiot
"I think I get it."
"You probably don't," he said sarcastically. "The point is this: that's not an ant. That's a speck of dirt. From this distance it's difficult to know for sure, arid our minds easily filled in the missing details with whatever infor- mation we had access to. In this case, you were cheating your perceptual skills by relying too heavily on what I said. Your mind thought you already knew it was an ant, so when you looked at an ambiguous little speck of dirt, you didn't question your mind's preconceived judgement."
"Okay."
"Stop saying 'okay.' Just listen." He wondered if it was pointless to try and educate Norma on anything.
"Sorry," she said, feeling like she'd disappointed him again.
He nodded impatiently and continued. "What if your mind tells you things that aren't true arid your perceptions just follow along? Boseman's mind was telling him there was disease all around him. His perception was getting tricked, fooled into believing that everything was proof of what his brain was telling him.
"In other words, the process of becoming delusional is steady and insid- ious. It starts with an overvalued idea that seeks out validity. This Boseman guy tried to convince himself that he magically contracted herpes, that the disease must be more common, more easily contracted than anyone knows. He became obsessed with the idea and selectively searched out proof of what his mind had already decided was true. This way anything he saw proved him right. So Barry Boseman ended up convincing himself that his house was infested with herpes. Every speck of dirt, every imperfection in the floor, was proof of disease running rampant. His overvalued ideation turned to delusion and supported his hallucinations."
"And the more disease he saw the stronger his illness became," Norma added.
"Basically. The process feeds itself. Take another classic example: the Jesus delusion. A lot of mental patients believe they're Jesus. Why?" Wenton didn't wait for Norma to answer. "It starts with the idea of uniqueness. That's not psychotic. Most people have some degree of need to believe they are unique. But the uniqueness needs a basis, a justification. 'Why am I unique?' The answer: 'I'm special. There's something special about me that separates me from all others.' Thus, the overvalued ideation begins. The person needs to justify the belief in uniqueness, needs to prove that they are special. It preserves their ego, protects their fragile self-esteem.
"At some point the specific notion of being Jesus is introduced. The person latches onto this explanation because it so easily explains everything that has come before and will come in the future. Our minds are hard wired to search for quick and easy explanations to help us organize our experiences. If we are plagued by the question of what makes us unique, then I'm the Son of God' does a pretty good job of answering a few questions.
"And then proof comes from all over. Everything starts to take on special meaning. A man walks down the street and notices someone is looking at him. 'People stare at me because they know I'm Jesus,' he thinks. He picks up a Bible and his fingers tingle. He reads the newspaper and there's a story on religion. Everything has special meaning to him, a meaning that confirms he is Jesus."
Norma decided to risk asking a question. "But what if someone points out the differences? What if someone tells the guy he isn't Jesus because he doesn't perform miracles?"
"That's the most dangerous thing for people with delusions," Wenton responded. "Small challenges to the validity of the beliefs only provide opportunities to build on the layers. With each small challenge, the delusional person adds more depth to his story
, comes up with explanations for missing pieces in his story and the delusions become more fixed, more elaborate. It's the same as brainwashing techniques that were reportedly used in Japanese internment camps during World War II. Soldiers were made to do little things like write an essay condemning some aspect of American culture. Over time, these exercises wore them down and they started to believe what they Wrote."
"Wow. What can help then?"
"Almost nothing. Once the delusional system is intact and the layers are deep, there's very little that can be done. Psychotherapy is bullshit. You can't talk a person out of believing he's Jesus. Rational arguments don't work. The person is too defensive. Their whole personality, their whole sense of self, is based on the beliefs. If they give up those beliefs, then they're admitting that everything they believed was crazy, a lie, delusions. They lose themselves in the process. Suddenly they aren't unique or special-they're just a mental patient. No one is willing to let that happen.
"Besides that, delusional beliefs are almost always premised on bits and pieces of reality that can't be confirmed one way or another. For example, the person who thinks he's Jesus probably did have people staring at him on the street. He may have been wearing a bath towel at the time, but people were staring at him. It isn't so much the actual events but the interpretation of the events. Like that speck of dirt on the floor behind you. You looked at it and saw an ant. It's not an ant, but your mind told you that you were looking at an ant. But that doesn't mean the speck of dirt doesn't exist.
"The second reason delusions are hard to treat is that they can rarely be proved or disproved. Many mental patients have delusions that revolve around an event that only they were involved with. For instance, a guy might say he was visited by an alien who told him the world was going to end. The guy insists that the world is going to end, and if we argue with him, he says, 'You weren't there, you don't know,' and he's right."
"It's the same as if someone says they're Jesus," Norma said nodding.
"Right. How would we know if someone really was Jesus? Mental health professionals have become so accustomed to these kind of delusions that they automatically discount any story that sounds remotely psychotic. This rejection has become so automatic that it's doubtful they'd be able to recognize a legitimate far-out story from a delusion. But this way of thinking also simplifies our jobs. If we didn't trust this professional judgment, we might spend far too much time on a single patient, trying with little success to disprove a crazy story."
"And drugs? Wouldn't medication help the patient recognize that his belief is a delusion?"
Wenton smiled. "Depends on who you ask. A psychiatrist will tell you that drugs help. The drug company will tell you that they have a cure. Most other people working with the truly delusional patients will tell you it's all bullshit, psychotherapy doesn't work because it just teaches the patient to not talk about their delusions; drugs don't help because they just tranquilize the patient so they aren't as agitated as they continue to believe they're Jesus. A really intact delusion can only be suppressed, it will never disappear. Even the patients who seem to be better are really just hiding their delusion. If you dig a little you can normally find it."
"That's fascinating," Norma said, nodding.
"I don't know if it's fascinating" Wenton said coldly. "It's pretty dis- turbing. These ideas, these delusions can take the person over, control them, destroy them. Can you imagine believing something with every ounce of your self and then being told you're just crazy? Can you imagine explain- ing everything that you are and ever will be to someone and then having them tell you that you're 'delusional'? It destroys people. It invalidates them. It leaves them nowhere to turn. It leaves them suicidal."
Wenton was hoping to spend more time with Norma after their meeting, but she was irritating him. He found her mannerisms, her efforts to be interested and keen, really distasteful. He decided he couldn't look at her anymore.
"Anyway, I need to get some other stuff done."
Norma frowned. "Okay, do you want me to go?"
"Yeah," he looked away from her and opened his laptop.
She hesitated. She felt like she had somehow upset him or done something wrong.
"We don't need to meet again?" When she heard herself ask the question she suddenly felt awkward and pathetic, like a high school kid, and desperately wished she could suck her words back in. It was important to Norma that he respect her. She wanted Wenton to see her as a competent grad student.
"About what?" he said and looked at her deliberately.
He'd done this to her before and she hated it. He always picked up on her weakness and pushed it back in her face. He liked to make her feel silly.
"Nothing, I guess," she mumbled and stood to leave.
Wenton returned to his computer, barely noticing when the door clicked behind her.
TWELVE
I'm an idiot, Dr. Claric thought as he returned to his office. What the hell was I doing in the meeting? They must think I'm insane. I need to let this shit go.
He sat at his desk and stared at the login screen on the computer.
I need to keep some perspective here. There's nothing going on. That e- mail could have been anything. A glitch in the system. And there are white vans everywhere. The van I saw didn't even have the satellite dish or whatever the hell it was supposed to have.
He relaxed in his chair, a little.
I need to get back to work and forget about this shit. Catherine Mercer is a sick woman. A very sick woman who murdered her own family because of a mental illness. If there are electronic weapons, it doesn't mean they have anything to do with her illness and that's a pretty big "If! Just because some wacko knows how to put together a good Web site doesn't mean it's fact. Anyone can put a site on the Internet-whether it's true or not!
Dr. Claric nodded and leaned forward, resting his fingers on the key- board. He felt more confident now and typed in his login name.
On the other hand, he thought, there were specific names of people on some of those sites. Names of scientists at reputable universities who are doing research in this stuff.
The computer screen flashed and Windows ME came into view. After a moment of deliberation Dr. Claric dropped his mouse to the icon for his Internet browser.
He stared at the author bio listed at the beginning of an article entitled "Effectiveness of Non-nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse on Behaviour Modification."
The site offered both an e-mail address and phone number for the author, Dr. Byron Pincher, who was apparently a professor with the Stanford University Research Centre.
Dr. Claric stared at the phone number on the screen.
After a few minut
es, he picked up the phone and hesitantly punched the numbers. As he pressed the last number he glanced at his watch. With the four-hour time difference it was probably close to lunchtime there.
Someone picked up on the third ring. "Lab. Tracy."
Dr. Claric was so startled he almost hung up. "I'm sorry," he stammered. "I was looking for a…Dr. Pincher?"
"He's not here," the woman barked.
"Oh, oh, I see. Urn, is he going to be back soon?"
"Yeah, he's just out for lunch. Is there a message?"
"No, no I don't think…wait, I was given this number by a friend and told to get hold of Dr. Pincher. Exactly what kind of lab do you have there?"
"What?"
"I'm sorry. This is Dr. Brian Claric and I'm just following up on something." Damn, I shouldn't have told them my name! "I wondered what your lab is for? What does Dr. Pincher do?"
"You a reporter?" she asked bluntly. "Or are you really a doctor?"
It surprised him and he answered defensively, "No! Not at all. I'm a clinical psychologist."
When Tracy eventually responded it was with more than a trace of annoyance and superiority. Psychologists obviously didn't impress her and it was apparent that she assumed he wouldn't be able to decipher the complicated purposes of the research.
"Dr. Pincher's a physicist specializing in neurobiological applications. We're studying biological electromagnetic fields here. Who did you say you were?"
"That's okay. Thank you. Thank you very much," Dr. Claric said and hung up.
He covered his face with his hands. What was that? Why did I panic?
Why did I tell them my name?
The phone rang.
Dr. Claric jumped back from his desk. His heart pounded and his hands were shaking.