Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [244]
“Most definitely.”
“Can you explain it?”
“Well-” Bird smiled and settled back in his chair. “Let’s say a man has some deep-seated psychological disturbance buried in his unconscious. It will drive him to do strange things and will keep him in a constant state of tension, but he’ll never know why. He can compensate by finding outlets for his peculiar drives, by will power, by daydreams, by any one of a thousand conscious devices. He can never adjust without undergoing psychoanalysis and bringing the disturbance up from the unconscious to the light of day.”
“Has Commander Queeg ever been psychoanalyzed?”
“No.”
“He is, then, a disturbed person?”
“Yes, he is. Not disabled, however, by the disturbance.”
“Dr. Lundeen testified that he was adjusted.”
Bird smiled. “Well, you’re in terminology again. Adjustment has a special meaning in Freudian technique. Dr. Lundeen used it roughly to mean that the patient has compensated for his disturbance.”
“Can you describe the commander’s disturbance?”
“Without an extensive analysis I could not describe it accurately.”
“You have no idea of what it is?”
“Of course the surface picture is clear. Commander Queeg subconsciously feels that he is disliked because he is wicked, stupid, and personally insignificant. This guilt and hostility trace back to infancy.”
“How has he compensated?”
“In two ways, mainly. The paranoid pattern, which is useless and not desirable, and his naval career, which is extremely useful and desirable.”
“You say his military career is a result of his disturbance?”
“Most military careers are.”
Greenwald glanced up surreptitiously at Blakely. “Would you explain that, Doctor?”
“I simply mean that it represents an escape, a chance to return to the womb and be reborn with a synthetic blameless self.”
Challee stood. “How far is this totally irrelevant technical discussion going to be pushed?”
“Are you objecting to the question?” Blakely said, scowling. “I am requesting the court to set limits to time-wasting by the defense in confusing irrelevancies.”
“Request noted. Proceed with cross-examination.”
Greenwald resumed, “Doctor, did you note any peculiar habit Commander Queeg had? Something he did with his hands?”
“Do you mean rolling the marbles?”
“Yes, did he do that in your presence?”
“Not for the first week or so. Then he told me about it and I recommended that he resume the habit if it made him more comfortable. And he did so.”
“Describe the habit, please.”
“Well, it’s an incessant rolling or rattling of two marbles in his hand-either hand.”
“Did he say why he did it?”
“His hands tremble. He does it to steady his hands and conceal the trembling.”
“Why do his hands tremble?”
“The inner tension. It’s one of the surface symptoms.”
“Does the rolling of balls have significance in the Freudian analysis?”
Bird glanced at the court uneasily. “Well, you go into technical jargon there.”
“Please make it as non-technical as possible.”
“Well, without analysis of the person you can only guess at the symbolism. It might be suppressed masturbation. It might be fondling poisonous pellets of feces. It all depends on-”
“Feces?”
“In the infantile world excrement is a deadly poison and therefore an instrument of vengeance. It would then be an expression of rage and hostility against the world.” The court members were exchanging half-amused, half-horrified side glances. Challee protested again about the waste of court time, and Blakely again overruled him. The president was squinting at the Freudian doctor as though he were some unbelievable freak.
“Doctor,” Greenwald went on, “you have testified that the commander is a disturbed, not an adjusted, person.”
“Yes.”
“In laymen’s terms, then, he’s sick.”
Bird smiled. “I remember agreeing to the rough resemblance of the terms disturbed and sick. But by those terms an awful lot of people are sick-”
“But this trial only has Commander Queeg’s sickness at issue. If he’s sick, how could your board have given him a clean bill of health?”
“You’re playing on words, I’m