The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [120]
Two additional items regarding Leon’s delusional changes are worth reporting. The first concerns his uncle, the second his real mother. Late in February we noted with considerable interest the beginnings of an increasing disillusionment with his delusional uncle. He claimed he saw his uncle on television, having sexual intercourse with his foster sister. “This truth hurts, but I have to accept it.” Two weeks later, Leon reported, he saw his uncle get beat up on television. He deserved the beating. Leon’s uncle gradually faded away until we heard no more of him.
In May of 1961 I asked Leon if there was any news of the lady who claimed to be his mother.
“Concerning that G. M., as far as I’m concerned, is dead, was buried over here, going on two years, this coming Christmas. She’s wherever the sanity of God permits.”
After a silence, he added: “As far as I know, you’re up-to-date on that.”
Going It Alone
The delusional changes reported above can be thought of as a series of projections which describe symbolically Leon’s inner struggle. But we need not rely solely on these projections to trace the main directions that struggle took. Leon himself on various occasions told us, often quite explicitly, how he perceived and interpreted his conflict-ridden, ambivalent relationship with Miss Anderson; also, how he perceived his relationship with the outside world, and, in addition, the direction in which he was planning to move in order to resolve his relationship with Miss Anderson and the social world she represented. Taken as a whole, the account which follows may be said to represent Leon’s philosophy of life—and, more generally, the philosophy of schizophrenia. November 21, 1960. Leon talks about a Dung Chapel in the Sahara Desert where he intends to live for the next five to seven years.
December 23. When Miss Anderson asks Leon what he did while in the army, he replies: “In the service I lived for positive nothing. I didn’t care to go out with WAC’s; didn’t go out with the fellows. I had my prayers.”
February 6. “G. M. Anderson, please. I have mentioned from my earliest remembrances was persuasion through sex, living my life against my will, and I don’t go for this stuff. It’s better to live alone, relating to positive nothingness. There is no better. I’m trying to bring out that that’s the focal point of human behavior—the way they mistreated me. I cannot forget that. I was trying to give one hundred per cent love with pure intent. What did I get in return? Cheat, steal, belittle, suppress! What’s the sense of living with society? That’s what I found out in most of my life. Trying to turn me inside out.
“I’m looking forward to living alone. My love is for infinity and when the human element comes in it’s distasteful.”
February 22. “This particular body cannot have direct attachments to no person, place, or thing, except through the medium of truth.”[1]
“I want positive-idealed love without attachment. That’s what my femaleity wants. Nobody offered it to me so my maleity offered it and I married myself.”
March 27. “I’ve found out whenever I receive something, there’s always strings attached and God bless I don’t want that.”
May 12. Leon responds to the news that I will be leaving before the fall. “I have to take things in stride,” he comments. “I live from moment to moment; I find that is the best. Living in the present correctly forms the future and does not bring about remorse of the past. It adds up.”
May 16. I ask Leon how he would feel if we were to call him Rex instead of Dung. He retorts: “I prefer Dung. That’s the way I became invisible.”
May 17. Leon elaborates on his invisibility. He became completely invisible in 1932, and speaks of three stages of invisibility: (1) invisible to others, visible to self; (2) invisible to others and invisible to self, but can feel self; (3) invisible to others and to self, and cannot feel self.
May 19. Leon elaborates further