The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [136]
I cannot tell you how happy I am that I can make these special drugs available to you, and you alone! Let me hear from you—soon!
Enclosed is 25 cents, a small token of my warm esteem for someone I love as a father loves his son.
Cordially,
O. R. Yoder, M.D.
April 13
My dear Dad,
I want to thank you for your letter of April 12, withal, for the 25¢ which you have both sent to me! I want to thank you also for your interest on your knowing that I had gotten my capsules back. It is quite a care and an interest, this medicine!
Yes, sir, I did obtain 2 tablets today called potent-valuemiocene; I got them as soon as I showed the mention of them which was your letter to Dr. John Donahue! … Yes, they are small as you say, but I believe as you write that they are powerful. . . . This is swell—I sure need this drug! I do not know how to thank you!! Thank you awfully much for this new medicine.
And you write that “in view of your present status as a patient it would be unlikely that the Canadian authorities would agree to deportation proceedings.” I should like to know what my present status is. Does it mean that I am caught in the net of 3 jesus-christs? I tell you, Dr. Yoder, that I am only what I am, in nature, in the world. However this “present status” means, I most certainly am not going to worry anent it.
Yours very truly,
Joseph Cassel
P.S.
Sometimes I cry because I am at the mercy of Dung and Benson. Dung has T.B., Benson has pains of stomach, etc. However it may be, here I have to do the meeting with these 2 men! But I must say that the medicine you prescribe to me is good, thus the warding off from the ills of these 2 men! You certainly cannot blame me for my trying to obtain a dismissal from this hospital. But you give me this medicine by writing that it gives me self-confidence and courage, thus a hope for my better living. Thank you!! I am thus grateful to you! Thank you!
This was the first time Joseph had used the phrase “caught in the net of 3 jesus-christs.” But the idea was not new. Joseph suffered severely from feelings of depersonalization—an experience common among schizophrenics, in which the boundary between the self and not-self is extremely blurred—and he was afraid of being “caught in the net of 3 jesus-christs” because he would then not know which one of them he was. He expressed this fear at other times: when he spoke of the “double” and when he pleaded with President Kennedy: “And nobody else is to be picked up in my place.”
I did not understand what depersonalization meant until I myself experienced it under LSD. At certain times I could not tell where I ended and my physical surroundings began. Nor could I tell whether I was I or whether I was the two other people who were attending me. To find out, I had to explore the contours of my own face, arms, and shoulders, and then theirs.
April 20
Dear Joseph:
By now you should be feeling much better in many ways because of all the medicine you are taking, and especially because of the new drug, potent-valuemiocene which, as you know, I have prescribed for the purpose of giving you back what belongs to you—your values, your head, your self-confidence, your courage.
You say in a recent letter that you sometimes feel at the mercy of Dung and Benson. This will no longer be so! Potent-valuemiocene will make you feel otherwise. You say that you sometimes feel “the ills of these 2 men!” This will no longer be so! Potent-valuemiocene will make you able with courage and self-confidence to ward off these ills.
In other words, potent-valuemiocene will make you feel that you are no longer “caught in the net of three jesus-christs.” Rather, you will be able to view Benson and Dung (who is really Leon Gabor) for what they are—mental patients in a mental hospital. Of course, as head doctor I have the responsibility to help them in any way I can