The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [94]
If real external, positive referents are missing in paranoid mental patients—and this seems to be the case with Clyde and Joseph and Leon—then obviously it is not possible to initiate changes in their delusions and behavior through external referents. But this does not mean that these mental patients have no positive referents whatsoever. Again and again we were struck by the fact that the three men would mention certain referents to whom they obviously looked in a positive way. But these referents were either completely delusional or only quasi-real. Clyde, for example, frequently hallucinated and spoke warmly of someone called Gloria. a lifelong chum he had grown up and gone to school with. As has already been mentioned, Joseph told us from the very beginning that Dr. Yoder was his Dad. It is not unusual for the superintendent of a mental hospital to be so considered. Dr. Yoder told me that over the many years of his tenure as superintendent, patients had often referred to him as Father or Dad and sometimes had even gone so far as to ask him for a small photograph to carry around in their wallets or purses. In the case of Leon, there was at first his wife the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his uncle, George Bernard Brown, the reincarnation of the Archangel Michael. Later, of course, he transferred his affections to Mrs. R. I. Dung, or Madame Yeti Woman. In contrast to the negative things Leon had to say about all real human beings, he always spoke positively and warmly of his relations with these creatures of his imagination.[7]
That these three men had positive delusional referents is of theoretical importance in its own right, and points to an aspect which seems thus far to have been overlooked by those who have worked with psychotic persons. We have in mind here most particularly the important work of Norman Cameron, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on the nature of paranoid states. He describes the paranoid pseudo-community in the following way:
The paranoid pseudo-community is an imaginary organization, composed of real and imagined persons, whom the patient represents as united for the purpose of carrying out some action upon him.[8]
… The motivation he ascribes to [these] persons … is bound to be extremely hostile and destructive. To complete his conceptual organization of a paranoid conspiracy, the patient also introduces imaginary persons … helpers, dupes, stooges, go-betweens, and master-minds, of whose actual existence he becomes certain.[9]
The “presence” of positive authority figures was noted not only delusional systems of the three Christs but also in three paranoid female patients we studied for control purposes. (More will be said about this in Chapter XIX.) From all these observations it may be suggested that the paranoid pseudo-community also includes positive delusional referents. And we proposed in the second phase of research to enlist the aid of these delusional referents by initiating suggestions for change through them.
Cameron remarks that the patient “introduces imaginary persons … of whose actual existence he becomes certain.” The messages we were to send Leon and Joseph (but not Clyde) from their positive delusional referents were designed to explore the effect of such communications and also to ascertain whether Leon and Joseph actually believed in the existence of these referents.
Needless to say, I composed and sent all messages. In this connection, I would like to discuss some ethical matters to which I gave the gravest consideration before I finally decided to proceed.
Joseph and Leon did not invite us to come to Ypsilanti, and I did not seek their permission in advance for the experimental procedures we employed. To this day, neither Leon nor Joseph knows, as far as I am aware, that I was the author of the letters they received, supposedly from their delusional referents. Of even greater concern was the fact that I had no way of knowing in advance what would happen as a result of