The positive relationship he had developed with Miss Anderson manifested itself in many ways, and each time we observed it we were struck by the contrast with Leon’s earlier inability to relate himself positively to other human beings. He often moved his chair to face hers or he sat in a chair next to her, looking her directly in the face, something he had rarely been able to do. Once he noticed a pin she was wearing and spontaneously commented on the design, wondering if it was African. Another time he reported a dream in which he saw the face and eyes of Miss Anderson “in relationship to the cosmos.” He more frequently reported that he felt good. “Today I felt relief that I haven’t felt for years—imposition taken off.”
He was even able to take some ever-so-small steps toward permitting himself to receive, and to give, and to share experiences. Miss Anderson reports:
R. I. asked me for a pencil and then asked to keep it. We are exchanging gifts! Somehow I wish they weren’t all phallic symbols.
The ward was out of cigarette papers. Leon said to me, ‘G. M. Anderson, will you get me some cigarette papers? They don’t have any on this ward.’ I got him some from the next ward. He seemed very grateful and we were closer today than we have ever been.
He rolled me a cigarette since I was out of my own.
He is able to look at me today. He walked out abruptly as the group meeting ended and then came back to talk. As I was out of matches he went to the office and got some and gave them to me.
After our meeting is over he regularly, these days, goes out of the building with me (but no farther). This is another shared experience for us.
Once, when there was a party on the ward, an aide came in and offered them ice cream and cake. “No, thank you, sir,” Leon said, “I don’t care for any.” Then, addressing Miss Anderson: “Would you care for some?” She also declined. Leon went on to say that his shoe had broken last night and that it flapped when he walked; squelches came out and hundreds of people received squelches from his shoe. Miss Anderson told him he needed a new pair of shoes. Leon replied: “No, please, these are comfortable.” At this they laughed together.
During this time, too, Leon’s general behavior in the ward improved markedly. He socialized more with the other patients. He partook of evening snacks, something he normally did not do. He sat closer to the other patients when watching television. The aides noted especially that he was singing while taking his showers.
But it would be a mistake to think that Leon was always friendly toward Miss Anderson. Far from it. While his behavior to her was in marked contrast to his earlier withdrawal from all social contact, his reactions to her were typically ambivalent and often hostile. The negativism was clearly traceable to the fact that he identified her with his mother: “May I see you for a few minutes, Mom,” he said one day. And another: “What do you think of a person who is thirty-nine or forty years of age who looks like a particular G. M. who passed away, G. M. Eve, Potential Sir, at the same particular age. Is there such thing as differential twins through delayed timing?” On still another occasion, he said that he and Miss Anderson were together as one person and that he had to breathe and eat for her because she was invisible. One day he claimed that Miss Anderson had tortured him for over thirty years. Shortly thereafter, fearful of getting too close to her, he drew back by saying: “I have had enough experience with the lame-brain I used to live with. I don’t care to tangle with another one at that age. I cannot have no direct attachments.”
He sought to contain within strictly rigid bounds whatever positive feelings he had for Miss Anderson, and resisted all attempts to broaden the range of such experiences. Once he gave her a lecture about trying to push patients beyond the patients’ acceptance. Another time, he said he would like to see her after the meeting. She had another appointment, she told him, but she would be glad to see him later in the day. Would he like to meet her at three o’clock in the lobby of A building? Leon hesitated and then declined, saying he would see her instead the following day at the usual hour. But shortly after three o’clock, she observed him loitering in front of A building, and called to ask him if he would like to come inside to talk. He replied no, he would wait until tomorrow, and immediately sauntered away.
How did Leon cope with his emotional and sexual feelings toward Miss Anderson during these months? Could all the time, devotion, assurance, and reassurance she tried to give him countervail against the gigantic proportions of his anxiety and guilt over sexual expression, his stupendous fear of becoming dependent on her, his fear that she, like his mother, would overwhelm and stifle him, and against his gigantic doubts of his adequacy, indeed, his identity, as a man? On the one hand, in contrast to his typically detached, emotionless, coldly hostile take-it-or-leave-it relationship with others, he went to great lengths to maintain, solidify, and perpetuate his relationship with her. On the other hand, he could not let the relationship develop, but had to contain it within strict bounds, and he was therefore compelled to employ a whole gamut of defense mechanisms to alleviate his guilt and anxiety, and deny his dependency on her. These defensive maneuvers intermingled and alternated with his positive approaches in a series of predictable fluctuations. If a particular session with Miss Anderson was human and warm, we could reasonably expect that the next would be difficult, characterized by withdrawal or hostility, or muteness, or an excessive concern with squelches.
Moreover, as it turned out, we were wrong in believing that Leon’s routine of seeing Miss Anderson alone after the group meeting was firmly established. Never, in all the time we knew him, did Leon refuse to attend the daily meetings. But on many occasions, of durations from a day to two weeks, he refused to see Miss Anderson afterwards. And even at times when he had asked specifically to see her alone, he might refuse to look at her, “because of the thoughts which come to my mind.” At other times he would simply refuse to talk, or would reply curtly to all queries with: “If it says so on the cosmic parchment, then it’s true,” or “Dung is busy with his thoughts, G. M. Anderson,” or “If you don’t mind, I’d care to leave. I don’t have anything to say. Excuse me,” and then retreat quickly to the toilet. On occasion, in contrast to his refusal to take a light from anyone but Miss Anderson, he would ask for a light from anyone but her. One day, when she commented to him that he seemed so far away, he readily agreed: “I go into a realm where it is more peaceful.”
Leon tried first one technique, then another to cope with the interferences which made him feel the way he did about Miss Anderson. Sometimes he tried to ward off the imposition which emanated from her by grimacing and holding his breath for as long as he could, and by waving ritualistically through the air a small piece of paper he called a “converter static discharger”, which, he insisted, could ward off interferences “up to eighty feet.” He brushed off interferences from his hair, face, beard, and ears with his home-made calling card or his ground card. But he was never satisfied with the results, and he would continually look for other, still better ways.
Throughout this time he continued to address her as “G. M. Anderson,” although he sometimes called her “Mr. Russell Anderson” or “Mrs. Rachel Anderson.” Once she suggested that he call her by her correct name—Mary Lou Anderson—but he adamantly refused on the ground that if he were to agree it would lead only to more demands on her part for him to change. “It so happens if I say that, it’s gonna build up to something else.”
Reminiscent of his frequent accusations against his own mother —and at the same time symbolic of his fear of being overwhelmed by her—was his accusation that Miss Anderson had once given him a poisonous octopus drink. He also accused her of forcing him to deny his identity as “R. I. Dung, reincarnation of Jesus Christ.”
And he would deny to her that she meant anything to him. He asserted that his foster sister was much more pleasing to him than she was.
A central issue that came up again and again in his daily, ambivalent, anxiety-ridden, guilt-laden contacts with Miss Anderson was the issue of his sexual feelin
gs toward her. He would discuss these sometimes directly and sometimes metaphorically—metaphor became the preferred mode after she found it necessary to point out to him that patients often develop sexual feelings toward hospital personnel which cannot be reciprocated.
“I forgot to mention that while I was kneeling in there, respecting you, I didn’t mention that the bull came once, then a pause, then twice, then three times. Last night I prayed again. I came fourteen times. It was a complete recession. I tried to pray some more and mine was limber and the bull came once—ah, that was with the squeezing of the anus. I didn’t care for that. This morning when I got up I felt a knock in both sides in the lobe of my brain as if my eyes were open. Where is there a woman who could take a hundred and ninety-six duo-orgasms consecutively? The Ten Commandment female part can do it.
“And here’s another comical story. I think it was my uncle who said, ‘Did you hear the story of the spinster who didn’t like men?’ Shit was mentioned and she had a fit—she got so angry she went out to the barn and took some shit and said if it’s instrumental I’ll see what I can do with it. So she slopped it around, and some fell on a little lily seed and of course the lily grew up and it was beautiful. A particular friend of this spinster came along and happened to see the lily and he dug it up and put it in a flower pot and took it over to her and the story goes that the lily wound up in the parlor window, and when she asked where did you get that from he didn’t care to say it was a cheap gift that he dug out of her own backyard in a pile of manure and she was put to shame when he told her because she was the one who put it there and didn’t realize it—so dung is very helpful. There’s charm there but she didn’t see it, he did.”
After a brief silence, very gently: “You didn’t make any connection, did you? That’s what I thought.”
But the greatest part of Leon’s conversation with Miss Anderson was highly delusional talk about “squelches.” The nature of this discourse, which can best be described as Leon’s “squelch defense,” was clearly twofold. On the one hand it was designed to keep Miss Anderson there as long as possible, that is, it had a filibustering function. On the other hand, it was a defense designed to ward off a realistic awareness of his emotional and sexual needs for Miss Anderson. The purpose of a “squelch,” Leon often told us, was to keep away the interferences. In his own words a squelch is “a metaphysical phenomenon of energy in the shape that will suppress, lift, cut, bind, burn, go through solids—all types of feats that are above normal action.”
“A buster squelch is one which can bust up immoral emotions.”
“I was sitting in the toilet sending out squelches to close up the cracks in the partitions between the toilets, so the person in the next toilet wouldn’t be affected.”
“I have set up a Positive Etcetera Squelch Fund so that any positive-idealed G. M. can use the Fund to enjoy sexual outlet.”
In the same vein, Leon talked about cosmic eye squelches in the middle of his forehead, spider squelches, hurricane squelches, and sparkler squelches. He asserted that David Niven gave him a squelch in his vagina, and that he could use squelches to kill people but was forbidden to do so.
And, of course, Leon had enough insight to know what he was really doing. Asked one day to explain his preoccupation with squelches, he replied: “I could go into personal things, but that would be agitational.”
Changes In Delusional Beliefs
During the time Leon was waging his lonely struggle, from November of 1960 to the following July, we observed many additional developments in his delusional system. These changes reflected in general the course of his struggle; the majority of them took place in February and March of 1961. Only the most important of these changes are noted here.
In December, I showed Leon some portions of his handwritten manuscript, Cause and Evolution. Leon repudiated it with the statement that it was the insanity of God which had prompted these writings.
Early in February, Leon announced he was a “morphodite.” This was in contrast to his earlier, emphatic insistence that he was only a male. It is in the innate nature of a “morphodite,” he added, to kill its parents and to “born itself.”
All this was quickly followed by a significant change in the way he signed his name to the Chairman List: Dr. R. I. Dung, Sir, P. M., G. M.—Potential Madame, God Morphodite.
Leon claimed he had just discovered his “femaleity.” “I have myself observed emotional feelings that are changing.” He conceived of himself as having breasts and a vagina which no one could see, not even himself, because they were covered up with “triangle-designed squelches.”
Associated with this conscious conception of himself as a hermaphrodite were Leon’s announcements during February that he was about to give birth to twins. He sobbed when discussing these twins, saying that he did not want them to suffer from impositions, as he did. But early in March the twins were dead. They were “morphodites,” Leon informed us; they had bled to death before birth.
Leon’s insistence that he was bisexual was followed by a change in his marital status. He announced that G. M. Ruth had gone the way of her predecessors, the Virgin Mary and Madame Yeti Woman, and was no longer his wife. Leon told us how she had met her end: “Ruth kicked me out of the truck and I was about ready to fall. I was lifted up by a power unseen, only felt, and the Ten Commandment Power Box appeared and killed G. M. Ruth.”
But Leon did not remain a bachelor for long. He immediately described his new marital condition. “I’m married to myself through the letter ‘o’ of the Ten Commandments.” When I asked how anyone could be married to himself, he replied: “I died the death while my femaleity was having sexual intercourse with my maleity, compounded-compounded. There was a female seed and a male seed and the female seed died, yet through dying the death in such a manner the female body did not depart. The letter ‘o’ in the Ten Commandments is the marriage ring between me as a foster brother and my foster sister. My foster sister is my wife now.” And, turning to Miss Anderson, he added: “The chair is open to the person who speaks the truth.”
I asked Leon how he could be sure that his femaleity was there, since he could not see it. Leon answered emphatically: “Truth is self-evident—something that I don’t see that I believe is there through the eyes of faith, that is, in a higher category than from a person who does see it and doesn’t want to admit it.”
Two additional items regarding Leon’s delusional changes are worth reporting. The first concerns his uncle, the second his real mother. Late in February we noted with considerable interest the beginnings of an increasing disillusionment with his delusional uncle. He claimed he saw his uncle on television, having sexual intercourse with his foster sister. “This truth hurts, but I have to accept it.” Two weeks later, Leon reported, he saw his uncle get beat up on television. He deserved the beating. Leon’s uncle gradually faded away until we heard no more of him.
In May of 1961 I asked Leon if there was any news of the lady who claimed to be his mother.
“Concerning that G. M., as far as I’m concerned, is dead, was buried over here, going on two years, this coming Christmas. She’s wherever the sanity of God permits.”
After a silence, he added: “As far as I know, you’re up-to-date on that.”
Going It Alone
The delusional changes reported above can be thought of as a series of projections which describe symbolically Leon’s inner struggle. But we need not rely solely on these projections to trace the main directions that struggle took. Leon himself on various occasions told us, often quite explicitly, how he perceived and interpreted his conflict-ridden, ambivalent relationship with Miss Anderson; also, how he perceived his relationship with the outside world, and, in addition, the direction in which he was planning to move in order to resolve his relationship with Miss Anderson and the social world she represented. Taken as a whole, the account which follows may be said to represent Leon’s philosophy of life—and, more generally, the philosophy of schizoph
renia. November 21, 1960. Leon talks about a Dung Chapel in the Sahara Desert where he intends to live for the next five to seven years.
December 23. When Miss Anderson asks Leon what he did while in the army, he replies: “In the service I lived for positive nothing. I didn’t care to go out with WAC’s; didn’t go out with the fellows. I had my prayers.”
February 6. “G. M. Anderson, please. I have mentioned from my earliest remembrances was persuasion through sex, living my life against my will, and I don’t go for this stuff. It’s better to live alone, relating to positive nothingness. There is no better. I’m trying to bring out that that’s the focal point of human behavior—the way they mistreated me. I cannot forget that. I was trying to give one hundred per cent love with pure intent. What did I get in return? Cheat, steal, belittle, suppress! What’s the sense of living with society? That’s what I found out in most of my life. Trying to turn me inside out.
“I’m looking forward to living alone. My love is for infinity and when the human element comes in it’s distasteful.”
February 22. “This particular body cannot have direct attachments to no person, place, or thing, except through the medium of truth.”[1]
“I want positive-idealed love without attachment. That’s what my femaleity wants. Nobody offered it to me so my maleity offered it and I married myself.”
March 27. “I’ve found out whenever I receive something, there’s always strings attached and God bless I don’t want that.”
May 12. Leon responds to the news that I will be leaving before the fall. “I have to take things in stride,” he comments. “I live from moment to moment; I find that is the best. Living in the present correctly forms the future and does not bring about remorse of the past. It adds up.”
May 16. I ask Leon how he would feel if we were to call him Rex instead of Dung. He retorts: “I prefer Dung. That’s the way I became invisible.”
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Page 27
