The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [60]
In general, the three men behaved far less delusively during their meetings after we relinquished control to them, and they spent the major portion of their time reading, or in “meditative silence,” as Leon put it. During the weeks and months that followed, however, Leon was to evince a strong need to bring up new delusional material. This he would do under the guise of “announcements” or “news items” in response to our standard question: “What’s new?” In time it became evident that one function of these new delusions was to reduce rather than increase the possibilities of interpersonal conflict.
More than anything else, it was by now clear that all three men wanted to avoid conflict, and keep the group together. Obviously it satisfied powerful needs in their empty, lonely lives, despite the conflict it had caused.
Yet it would be incorrect to infer that the metamorphosis in group atmosphere was anything more than a slight matter of degree, or that the issue of identity no longer existed. There were definite limits to the extent to which we could get these men to leave their delusional worlds, co-operate with each other, and be more outgoing toward us. Joseph, for example, despite his requests for two meetings a day, often went to the toilet just before the meeting, and stayed there an inordinately long time. Once I asked Leon to check on what he was doing there; Leon returned to tell me that Joseph was taking bicarbonate of soda. For several weeks Joseph made it a practice to go to the library to return books while Leon was in the middle of a story.
Leon, for his part, refused to have anything to do with receiving or passing out the weekly allowance, or the ready-made cigarettes, and no amount of pressure could persuade him otherwise. “If you are sincere,” he admonished us, “give one pack to this man, one pack to that man, and say: ‘Here, enjoy yourself.’ You are now suggesting indirect pressure from these two persons against me because of your choice of trying to force me to accept something against my free will.” He still had to go through various rituals to shake off “interferences.” And when Clyde went off on a weekend visit to his daughter, Leon explained Clyde’s absence by saying that he was dead, “struck dead by my uncle.” Twice he made a similar comment about Joseph: once right after the death of his mother, when he said he had been informed Joseph had died, and again a few days later, when Joseph was hospitalized at the end of December. At that time, Leon claimed that Joseph was dead, and subsequently maintained that he was a “false-idealed reincarnation of the Devil.”
The all-important issue of identity cropped up in other indirect ways, too, in contexts which would normally have been unlikely to produce interpersonal conflict. Within two weeks after the rotating chairmanship had been established, Leon became preoccupied with the apparent need to tell others—research personnel and other patients, but not Clyde or Joseph—his “full name.” “My card, sir,” he would say, showing the home-made calling card he had fashioned, on which was written: Dr. Domino dominorum et Rex rexarum, Simplis Christianus Puer Mentalis Doktor, reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. At the same time he began writing letters addressed to no one in particular, and handed them to the ward aides. Their purpose was evidently to reaffirm his identity:
September 5th, 1959
Respected Sir; Madam;
Devine justice has Ordered that the first creature Jesus Christ (of Nazareth) created