The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [70]
As we have seen, it took many months for Leon to make the transformation into R. I. Dung. The process was slow and gradual. Where did Leon find the elements with which to construct his new delusions? Obviously, he did not pluck them out of thin air. Rather he wove them out of his past experience and out of the stimuli which his present situation provided. One source he looked to was the Bible: by putting his own interpretation on the Testaments, he was able to use them to justify his beliefs, no matter what direction these beliefs might take. A second source was the delusional material that Clyde and Joseph brought up. A third was his pre-occupation with his own identity and with the problems the confrontations with Clyde and Joseph produced. A fourth source was his preoccupation with sex, aggression, sin, the Ten Commandments, and allied topics. A fifth was the magazines and books which the men read to each other in the daily meetings: this, for example, is doubtless where he got the Yeti idea originally. And no doubt there were other sources which we have overlooked or of which we were unaware.
Leon was stimulated by all these factors as he cast about for material with which to reconstruct his system of belief. What was to be the function of this system? To serve better all his complex needs, ego and id, rational and irrational. Whatever the outcome, it must satisfy two broad sets of requirements. The revised system must explain just as well as the previous one, if not better, who he is, where he is, and how he got to be the way he is. At the same time it must make him impregnable to the threats implicit in every confrontation, while permitting him to remain in a social situation which he obviously found rewarding.
The solution? Take on a new public identity: Dr. R. I. Dung, the most humble creature on earth—without giving up the secret identity. This immediately removed him from the arena of identity conflict with the other two, and with us. But taking on such a public identity created new problems of internal consistency, a posture which Leon—the overintellectualizer—found it necessary to preserve at all costs. How could one claim to be Dung and at the same time claim to be married to such an exalted person as the Virgin Mary? He must get rid of her, marry her off somehow. How? Leon invented a light brother. And when the light brother had served his purpose, he disappeared from the scene. But Leon was still left with his need for a good mother and his need to protect himself from his guilt-provoking sexual fantasies, both of which needs his marriage to the Virgin Mary satisfied. He therefore had to take a new wife—Madame Yeti Woman—who also satisfied these needs and who was at the same time a logically more fitting wife for Dr. Dung.
We are able thus to fill in, at least in crude outline, the thought processes Leon must have gone through as he proceeded to transform his public identity from Rex Rexarum et Domino Dominorum, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to Dr. R. I. Dung.
The Need to Be Alone
This leads us to another, somewhat paradoxical, aspect of Leon’s motivations which we have not yet considered. The months immediately preceding his change to Dung—beginning with the institution of the rotating chairmanship—were relatively peaceful. The issue of identity did not arise; both we and the men refrained from bringing it up. During this period there were many instances of co-operation and many