The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [155]
Limitations In the Data
The study reported here is, as far as I know, the first in which several persons claiming the same identity have been brought together for experimental purposes. It is hardly necessary to point out that at best the study is exploratory, and that the results regarding fixity and change of systems of belief and behavior must therefore be interpreted with caution. The size of the sample is small; it is moreover a biased one; and we know relatively little about the early history of this small, biased sample. We are not able to assess the relative effects of heredity and environment, of age and length of hospitalization. And we do not know to what extent our very presence, behavior, and questions may have influenced the results obtained.
And, finally, we do not know to what extent the responses observed can be attributed to the vast amount of attention we showered on the three Christs, rather than to the experimental procedures employed. Never in the history of Ypsilanti State Hospital had three patients received so much sustained attention —the nearest being the attention given three women patients with the same diagnosis who served as a control group. We had studied them during the first six months in an effort to control for the variable of attention. One of the women believed she was Cinderella; a second believed she was a member of the Morgan family; and the third believed she was bewitched. These three were treated in about the same way as the men, except that their identity was never made an issue, and they received no messages from their referents. They too held daily meetings, ate together, worked together in the laundry room, and slept in adjacent beds on the ward. The results can be succinctly summarized: they engaged in no quarrels with each other or with us; there were no significant changes in behavior or delusions during the six months we observed them; their dealings with one another and with us had an even, monotonous quality from beginning to end. We disbanded this control group after six months, for several reasons: chiefly, boredom and fatigue on our part, and to conserve funds. It must be frankly admitted, however, that although we spent about the same amount of time during the first six months with these three women, our interests were directed elsewhere, and thus, from a technical point of view, the attention we paid them did not have the same quality or intensity as that we paid the three men.
Concluding Remarks
The present study represents, in Helen Merrell Lynd’s words, “a search for ways to transcend loneliness” and a refusal to accept the “finality of individual estrangement.” In the course of our study we learned many things. In addition to those already discussed we have also learned: that if we are patient long enough, the apparent incoherence of psychotic utterance and behavior becomes increasingly more understandable; that psychosis is a far cry from the happy state some make it out to be; that it may sometimes represent the best terms a person can come to with life; that psychotics, having good reason to flee human companionship, nevertheless crave it.
We have also learned, or rather relearned, some of the things Freud taught us a long time ago about the human psyche, except that this time our teachers were Clyde, Joseph, and Leon. Among other things, they were often able to explain to us, without benefit of psychoanalytic middlemen, the meaning of much of their symbolic utterances. Also, we have rediscovered the utility of Freud’s concepts of repression and the unconscious by just listening, especially to Leon as he would grind up his passions, his apprehensions, and his cognitions inside that remarkable contrivance—the squelch chamber.
And, finally, we have learned that even when a summit of three is composed of paranoid men, deadlocked over the ultimate in human contradiction, they prefer to seek ways to live with one another in peace rather than