The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [149]
The slow tempo of Leon’s changes is undoubtedly also related to his need to appear consistent. He changed gradually in order not to appear capricious either to himself or to us. We had the strong impression that he was busy with his thoughts all the time, compulsively trying to fit the pieces together in an internally consistent manner.
Let us turn now to the content of the many changes that Leon’s beliefs underwent as a result of the confrontations, changes which culminated in his public transformation into Dr. R. I. Dung. What can be said of the psychological meaning of these changes to make them more understandable?
We have assumed elsewhere that all systems of belief, delusional as well as non-delusional, serve a twofold purpose:
To understand the world insofar as possible, and to defend against it insofar as necessary. We do not agree with those who hold that people selectively distort their cognitive functioning so that they will see, remember, and think only what they want to. Instead, we hold to the view that people will do so only to the extent that they have to, and no more.[15]
We have already commented on Leon’s need to understand his world in rational terms. This need predisposed him to change his beliefs whenever change enabled him to cope better with his perception of reality. But he had other needs as well, complex conflicting needs which required also that he defend himself against knowing the truth about himself and the outside world. He needed to remain in the group not only because it afforded him companionship, but also because it relieved the relentless boredom of hospital life. He needed to find a way to minimize the conflict with Clyde and Joseph and with us over the identity issue. He needed to remain mentally ill—the reasons for his becoming sick originally continued to exist. He needed to remain isolated from his fellow men. He needed to defend himself against his powerful sexual and aggressive impulses and at the same time satisfy them as best he could. He needed to defend himself against the anxiety and guilt arising from these sexual and aggressive impulses. And he needed to degrade himself in order to atone for these feelings and thereby make himself more worthy. And this list does not necessarily exhaust the whole range of needs that may have been operating within him, side by side with his pervasive need to understand better all the things, internal and external, that were happening to him. But perhaps our list is now long enough to suggest the simultaneous and ambivalent needs toward and away from the truth that were driving Leon to seek a quieting solution.
The Power of Positive Authority
It is clear from our description of Leon’s delusional system that he was obsessed by the need for a loving and protecting mother. He had, after all, been raised by a psychotic, fanatically devout woman whose husband left her while Leon was still an infant. We have seen what Leon thought of this woman. When she came to visit him in the hospital, he refused to see her. She was not his mother; she was the Old Witch.
In Leon’s delusional system, the good Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth replaced the bad figure of the Old Witch as mother, and after Leon’s reincarnation, he married her. Here we see the classical drama of Oedipus Rex re-enacted in fantasy, but with Christ instead of Oedipus playing Rex—in terms so plain that we hardly need a psychoanalyst to interpret it for us.
When Leon could no longer claim the Virgin Mary as his wife, as he proceeded to transform himself publicly from Christ to Dung, he retained her as his mother but replaced her as his wife with Madame Yeti Woman—who played the dual role of wife and mother. Although there are enormous differences in the images evoked by Leon’s description of the two women—descriptions themselves rich in psychodynamic meaning—it is clear that both women represent Leon’s desperate search for the loving, protecting mother.
We know far less about Joseph’s relationship with his