The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [148]
Joseph, too, defended his delusional system of belief mainly by denial. Recall how he “laughed off” the early confrontations. Recall his saying about truth: “If it hurts too much man is wise to turn away from it.” Recall how he reacted to the first newspaper clipping about the three delusional Christs. He found it interesting: the three men were clearly insane; they belonged in a mental hospital; they should be treated for their craziness. But he did not know the three men described in the story!
Clyde was, however, generally more “successful” than Joseph in his use of the denial mechanism. This may be because he was perhaps further along in his psychosis—that is, he was more regressed. Clyde could for the most part sit back on the sidelines and let the two “dead men” fight it out; at the same time he could and did enjoy their companionship when things were more peaceful. But Joseph’s denial mechanism was a bit more faulty. With repeated confrontation it seemed to break down. Recall, for example, his saying: “I’m not laughing it off any more,” and his admission, when shown the second news clipping, that he, himself, was one of the “Three Men Named Jesus.”
These differences between Clyde and Joseph notwithstanding, the two men were essentially alike in their use of denial as their main defense against the identity confrontations. And herein lies a major difference between Clyde and Joseph on the one hand and Leon on the other. As I have already pointed out, Leon’s defenses were more intellectualized and systematized in character. He did not typically deny the facts; rather, in order to account for them, he tried to explain them in terms of his systematized delusions. In this way he was able to preserve his self-image as a rational, logical, consistent person, something Clyde and Joseph never tried to do. Whereas Joseph denied the purpose of our research by reversing it (we were his allies, come to convince the others that they were not Christ), Leon perceived it more realistically. “I love truth even though it hurts,” Leon said. He did not deny that the others were Christ, but explained what kinds of Christs they were. And he did not deny, as did Joseph and Clyde, that there were three persons at Ypsilanti claiming to be Christ, as was set forth in the news clipping. Instead, he angrily attacked the motives and competence of those responsible for the story.
Both Leon and Joseph were capable of describing an object as white one moment and black the next. But there was an important difference between them. Joseph would handle the contradiction by denial. “Did I say that?” he would ask. But Leon, when asked to explain, would reconcile the contradiction, saying that the object had merely changed from a white phase to a black phase. His ego was still sufficiently intact that he would at least try to maintain contact with reality and strive for cognitive consistency. Joseph and Clyde, on the other hand, had lost or given up their striving for consistency. Leon, but not Joseph or Clyde, took pride in understanding, explaining, and reconciling in terms which seemed reasonable enough to him, however unreasonable they might seem from an objective standpoint.
If we employ the striving for consistency as a yardstick, Leon is less psychotic than either Joseph or Clyde. The reason may be that he is twenty to thirty years younger than they. Perhaps as Leon “deteriorates” with age, he too will resort to denial and give up his attempt to explain the world in systematic terms.
But, whether or not this happens, it is reasonably clear that a good part of the reason the identity confrontations produced changes in Leon’s delusional system, but not in either Joseph’s or Clyde’s, is precisely that the latter two resorted so heavily to the denial mechanism—itself