The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [153]
All this suggests that the three Christs discarded their original identities and suffered from paranoid delusions of grandeur, not as a defense against homosexuality but as a defense against confusion about sexual identity. It a person is confused about his sexual identity, he will indeed in certain instances manifest homosexuality. But, in these instances, homosexuality is actually part of a broader picture of confusion about sexual identity.
What does it mean to say that a person is confused about his sexual identity? And why should such a confusion play an important role in the extreme psychotic states seen here? Is it sex per se or is it something else which is troubling these men? And how does becoming God or Christ alleviate whatever it is that is gnawing away at them?
As we look at our three Christs, we notice a basic difference in the grandiose delusions of Clyde and Joseph on the one hand and Leon on the other.[21] In Clyde and Joseph the dominant theme of sexual confusion seems to be tinged with a sense of shame over feelings of incompetence as a male. These are not guilt-ridden Christs, they are more preoccupied with being great than with being good. And the religious element is not especially prominent. Clyde is Christ because he needs to be “the biggest one.” He is preoccupied with the carloads of money, land, and women he owns. And Joseph is God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost because these are the biggest personages one can be. If there were a super-God, Joseph would have been super-God.
In Leon, however, the dominant theme is not shame about incompetence but guilt about forbidden sexual and aggressive impulses. He is obsessed with the issue: Am I a man or am I not? He is forever tormented with inadmissible longings for persons of both sexes, with his need to prove to himself that he is a potent male, with feelings of wrongdoing about his masturbatory efforts to test and prove his potency, and with feelings of projected hostility toward others. There is an overriding religious coloration in his Christ delusion. Leon is a guilt-ridden Christ who strives more to be good than great; he is suffering not so much from a delusion of greatness as from a delusion of goodness.
To understand better these differences in the functions served by the identity delusions of the three men, let us look once more to their earlier lives. In his work as a farmer, Clyde had at best the responsibilities and skills of an overprotected hired hand rather than those of an independent entrepreneur. After he had acquired his several farms, through inheritance and remarriage, he was unable to manage them properly. Within a few years he had squandered his fortune away through drink and neglect of his enterprises, and in the process lost as well the wife he needed. It would seem that Clyde became the grandiose Christ and God he now was, not so much through a sense of guilt, as through a sense of shame about his incompetence as an effective male, and about his passive dependence on others. Clyde was incapable of disciplined work, of earning a living, and of supporting a family—roles required of all competent males in Western society. In his delusions Clyde recaptured the lost properties, money, and women he was not able to hold on to in real life.
As for Joseph, the data we have about him suggest that he felt deeply his shame at having to be a lowly clerk when he aspired to be a great writer. Recall how anxiously he behaved when Dr. Yoder tried to encourage him to write. Recall how apprehensive he became of failure, and of the consequent exposure as incompetent, when he prepared for Carnival Day. And recall how he claimed for himself all the great ideas and writings in literature, history, and science, accusing as enemies and “gunshots” such persons as Aristotle, Freud, E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells, and Flaubert. He, not they, was the author of the works attributed to them. In his reports, addressed to nobody, Joseph wrote:
Psycho-analysis has reference to what one is