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so it went, for weeks and months. The meetings, however, were complicated by other incidents, which, inevitably, interrupted their normal, even stereotyped pattern. Because Miss Anderson had other research commitments and duties at the hospital—which Leon knew about—her sessions with him were sometimes interrupted by a message, or terminated earlier than usual. Occasionally, something came up—her other projects, illness, a snowstorm—that made it necessary for her to cancel a meeting altogether, or to be absent for a day or longer. When this happened, she informed Leon, Joseph, and Clyde in advance or—if this was not possible—relayed a message to them through ward personnel. Clyde and Joseph, who also looked forward to the daily group meetings, accepted these messages with reasonably good grace. But not Leon. He always managed to convey the impression, mainly by protesting too loudly how much he couldn’t care less, that once again he had been abandoned or betrayed.

At the end of June, Miss Anderson left for a vacation. “Take care of yourselves,” she said to the three Christs the day of her departure.

“Truth will take care of me,” Leon replied.

A week later she returned and found him extremely tense and upset. Announcing that he would not commit adultery, he refused to see her alone after the group meeting. “Truth is my friend,” he asserted. “I have no other friends.”

And so it was that Leon, who had “to see the relationship to infinity,” ended his relationship with a woman who was not God.

[1] Leon’s use of the double (and sometimes the triple) negative is worth noting in this instance and in others.

CHAPTER XVI

DAD MAKES A FEW SUGGESTIONS

JOSEPH HAD many times referred to Dr. O. R. Yoder, the superintendent of Ypsilanti State Hospital, as his Dad. We did not know why he did this—he himself refused, or was not able, to enlighten us—but it had been going on for as long as we had known him. Moreover, it was to Dr. Yoder that he turned when he felt the need for any kind of assistance from above. On July 14, 1960, when he was agitating to be transferred to another ward, or “deported back to England,” he had even gone to see the superintendent to petition his intervention. During the interview he had also discussed his sexual difficulties with Dr. Yoder—something he had never talked about with us, although he did tell us about the interview afterwards. “I want to talk to you, man to man,” he said to Dr. Yoder. “I can’t get a hard-on. My sex was all right before. I was wondering if you could arrange the mind so that you wouldn’t have to think about getting a woman. A man must have a hard-on. He feels better all around. The libido doesn’t forget. Just the thought that you can’t hurts you.” This was virtually the only bit of information we were ever able to get about Joseph’s sex life, since he was very secretive in general and often gave us the impression of deliberately deciding to “keep his mouth shut,” as he said. But, with Dr. Yoder, Joseph would open up.

Between July 1960 and August 1961, Joseph received many letters from Dr. Yoder—I was the author of these letters, with Dr. Yoder’s full knowledge and permission. Joseph almost always replied promptly and lengthily, often within a few hours of receiving the letters. At first he delivered his letters personally to Dr. Yoder’s secretary, but this proved to be such a nuisance that it was arranged to have all his letters sent and received through Miss Anderson. During the daily group meetings, he would receive, open, read aloud, and comment upon the letters, in this way making it possible for us to “become familiar” with their contents and to note Joseph’s reactions to them firsthand.

The purpose of these letters was the same as in Leon’s case—to explore the nature and meaning of Joseph’s authority system and to determine to what extent changes in behavior and delusion might be brought about through messages emanating from a figure he accepted as a positive authority. They had therefore a twofold purpose; to make Joseph feel more secure and contented, and to persuade