The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

by Milton Rokeach

  We now see a similar double-bind leading to a similar change in Joseph’s delusional system. Dr. Yoder had made the suggestion that perhaps Joseph would like to do some writing. Although Dr. Yoder had tried to reassure him that he didn’t have to write if he didn’t have the “head for it,” the suggestion had apparently rearoused Joseph’s long-dormant, deep-seated inferiorities. He clearly wanted to follow Dr. Yoder’s suggestion, but he simply was not up to it. Joseph resolved this conflict by writing to President Kennedy. “I am unready to scribble literature at this moment. What remains? To get a job from you, President Kennedy.” What kind of a job? “If you want a good writer with you, I am the one. I can write.” And a bit further on: “I hear voices that you are my dad, my father.”

  Both Joseph and Leon were unable to carry out certain suggestions made by their positive referents. And they resolved the double-bind situation by getting rid of these referents and substituting others. There is a further interesting fact. As Joseph and Leon found it necessary to substitute new referents, they both conjured up referents of higher status, personages who were more powerful than the preceding ones. In Joseph’s case, President Kennedy replaced Dr. Yoder. In Leon’s case, Madame Yeti Woman was promoted to God and, a bit later, to Grand God. It is as if Joseph and Leon had to upgrade their delusional referents in order to provide themselves with increasing protection against and explanation for the frustrating and puzzling events which had taken place. And in doing so they may well have repeated at the delusional level what happened years before at the level of reality.

  Further light was thrown on the matter a couple of days later, on Easter Sunday, when Joseph, in his meeting report, wrote that it was he who had died on the cross. He also said he was sick; he had vomited. From that day on, he began to complain again of his “stomach pains.” It was then well over two months since he had begun taking four placebo capsules a day; during all this time he had not once complained of any kind of physical distress. On earlier occasions, to ask him how he felt was only to invite him to go into detailed, hypochondriacal discussions of how sick he was and how much he needed his mineral oil or baking soda or Alka Seltzer. One of the most startling effects of the letters from Dr. Yoder was the sudden and complete cessation of all such physical complaints.

  When Joseph’s complaints intensified during the next few days, we ordered a full medical examination by a specialist, including X-rays. The findings: Joseph had a duodenal ulcer.

  Within a week or two after being placed on an ulcer program, with amphojel, interval feedings, tincture of belladonna, and phenobarbital, Joseph stopped complaining of the stomach pains. Since it seemed there was no further purpose in continuing the placebos, the ward once again “ran out of them.” But Joseph was not to be denied. He put up such a fuss in letters to Dr. Yoder and instituted such a relentless harassment of ward personnel that the placebos had to be reinstated once more. Meanwhile, the ulcer program was continuing. At the end of four months, a re-examination showed no trace of the ulcer.

  There was no way to be sure exactly when Joseph had developed the ulcer. He had, indeed, begun to complain of a pain in his stomach early in December, and shortly afterward of nausea from the smells in the vegetable room. But then—when had Joseph not complained? One clear-cut fact does, however, emerge: placebos, prescribed for a paranoid schizophrenic by his authority referent, had served to inhibit for approximately two or three months, not imaginary pains, but somatic ones. This finding is probably the most striking of all the findings reported herein for either Joseph or Leon. It demonstrates most dramatically the positive effects which can be achieved by suggestions originating with the paranoid schizophrenic’s own delusional authority figures. This finding is all the more remarkable when one remembers that paranoid schizophrenics are typically negativistic, that, because they view other people with suspicion and mistrust, they resist suggestions that others make. But our data clearly suggest that paranoid schizophrenics are, like everyone else, quite capable of following positive suggestions when the suggestions originate with positive referents. In this respect, the major difference between normal people and paranoid schizophrenics lies not so much in the fact that the schizophrenics are less suggestible but in the fact that they have no positive authorities or referents in the real world; if they have any at all, these positive referents exist only in the world of their delusions.

  [1]Joseph’s letter to President Kennedy, like all letters from patients, was first scanned by ward personnel, and then, after the contents of the letter were copied, it was mailed. A few weeks later, Joseph casually mentioned he had received an acknowledgment from the White House. He hastened to add, however: “I don’t think the President saw it. The secretary probably answered it. I wrote him a long letter about getting me out of the hospital. That’s going to be a failure, not a reality. That’s not realistic. You just simply ask but they don’t pay any attention to it. I doubt very much I’m going to be taken out.”

  [2]G. Bateson, D. D. Jackson, J. Haley, and J. H. Weakland: “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Behavorial Science, I (1956), pp. 251-64.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE LOYALTY TEST

  THE CHANGES in Joseph’s behavior that were produced as a result of the letters from Dr. Yoder, and particularly the effects of the placebos on his physical state, were sufficiently dramatic to lead us to a further question: Could placebos issued by his authority figure alter his delusional system too?

  It should be stated at the outset that the feat we now tried to achieve proved impossible. We did not succeed in changing a single one of Joseph’s delusions. But, in the course of trying, we gained some additional clinical and theoretical insights about the limits beyond which his delusional system could not be pushed.

  On April 12, Joseph received a letter from Dr. Yoder which read in part:

  No! You do not yet have the head for it, to be deported back to Canada (as you yourself correctly state in your letter to your father). You must first get your values back! Loving you like a father loves his own son, I am now taking definite steps to give you back your values. A new powerful drug has just been discovered. It is not yet available to the general public. It has been made specially available only to you. It is called potent-valuemiocene, and I have given orders to the attendants that you be given two tablets every day. These are small tablets but extremely powerful. They are designed to accomplish the following things: to give you back your values, to give you back your head, to give you back what belongs to you, to give you courage and self-confidence, and to eliminate fear and anxiety. All these things potent-valuemiocene, the very last word in miracle drugs, is designed to do. And I make this drug available only to you!

  I cannot tell you how happy I am that I can make these special drugs available to you, and you alone! Let me hear from you—soon!

  Enclosed is 25 cents, a small token of my warm esteem for someone I love as a father loves his son.

  Cordially,

  O. R. Yoder, M.D.

  April 13

  My dear Dad,

  I want to thank you for your letter of April 12, withal, for the 25¢ which you have both sent to me! I want to thank you also for your interest on your knowing that I had gotten my capsules back. It is quite a care and an interest, this medicine!

  Yes, sir, I did obtain 2 tablets today called potent-valuemiocene; I got them as soon as I showed the mention of them which was your letter to Dr. John Donahue! … Yes, they are small as you say, but I believe as you write that they are powerful. . . . This is swell—I sure need this drug! I do not know how to thank you!! Thank you awfully much for this new medicine.

  And you write that “in view of your present status as a patient it would be unlikely that the Canadian authorities would agree to deportation proceedings.” I should like to know what my present status is. Does it mean that I am caught in the net of 3 jesus-christs? I tell you, Dr. Yoder, that I am only what I am, in nature, in the world. However this “present status” means
, I most certainly am not going to worry anent it.

  Yours very truly,

  Joseph Cassel

  P.S.

  Sometimes I cry because I am at the mercy of Dung and Benson. Dung has T.B., Benson has pains of stomach, etc. However it may be, here I have to do the meeting with these 2 men! But I must say that the medicine you prescribe to me is good, thus the warding off from the ills of these 2 men! You certainly cannot blame me for my trying to obtain a dismissal from this hospital. But you give me this medicine by writing that it gives me self-confidence and courage, thus a hope for my better living. Thank you!! I am thus grateful to you! Thank you!

  This was the first time Joseph had used the phrase “caught in the net of 3 jesus-christs.” But the idea was not new. Joseph suffered severely from feelings of depersonalization—an experience common among schizophrenics, in which the boundary between the self and not-self is extremely blurred—and he was afraid of being “caught in the net of 3 jesus-christs” because he would then not know which one of them he was. He expressed this fear at other times: when he spoke of the “double” and when he pleaded with President Kennedy: “And nobody else is to be picked up in my place.”

  I did not understand what depersonalization meant until I myself experienced it under LSD. At certain times I could not tell where I ended and my physical surroundings began. Nor could I tell whether I was I or whether I was the two other people who were attending me. To find out, I had to explore the contours of my own face, arms, and shoulders, and then theirs.

  April 20

  Dear Joseph:

  By now you should be feeling much better in many ways because of all the medicine you are taking, and especially because of the new drug, potent-valuemiocene which, as you know, I have prescribed for the purpose of giving you back what belongs to you—your values, your head, your self-confidence, your courage.

  You say in a recent letter that you sometimes feel at the mercy of Dung and Benson. This will no longer be so! Potent-valuemiocene will make you feel otherwise. You say that you sometimes feel “the ills of these 2 men!” This will no longer be so! Potent-valuemiocene will make you able with courage and self-confidence to ward off these ills.

  In other words, potent-valuemiocene will make you feel that you are no longer “caught in the net of three jesus-christs.” Rather, you will be able to view Benson and Dung (who is really Leon Gabor) for what they are—mental patients in a mental hospital. Of course, as head doctor I have the responsibility to help them in any way I can to recover from their mental illness. Thus far I have not been successful in helping them as I have been in helping you.

  Enclosed is 25 cents, a symbol of my esteem for you, and to show you that I love you like a father loves a son.

  Cordially,

  O. R. Yoder, M.D.

  This letter, like the many others in which Clyde and Leon were mentioned, was not delivered during the regular group meeting. We took this precaution to assure that conflict would not be generated among the three.

  April 21

  My dear dad,

  Thank you for helping me in the triangle of the 3 Christs. . . .

  I certainly am thankful to you and potent-valuemiocene for helping me in warding off the ills of Dung and Benson. Thank you! And I am thankful for not my being in the net of Benson and Dung, concerning Christ!

  Yours very truly,

  Joseph Cassel

  April 24. Joseph tells an aide that he is tired of hearing how many Jesus Christs there are, that he is the one and only—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

  April 25

  Dear Joseph:

  This is to acknowledge your letter of April 21. I am very glad that the potent-valuemiocene is helping in what you call “the triangle of the three Christs.” You say though in your letter that it is helping you ward off “the ills of Dung and Benson.” I only wish to say that there are no ills emanating from Dung and Benson really, and furthermore Dung’s real name is Leon Gabor. He is a mental patient in this hospital as is also Benson and, of course, as I have said many times you too are a mental patient and I am working always to improve your physical and mental health since I love you like a father loves a son.

  Sincerely,

  O. R. Yoder, M.D.

  April 25

  My dear Dad,

  This is in answer to your letter of April 25 …

  … Yes, potent-valuemiocene is helping me in the triangle of the three Christs. Yes, there are no more ills emanating from Dung and Benson. Everything that you write in your letter in regard to Dung and Benson is true. So I’m not to worry anent Dung and Benson anymore, and I want to thank you in your helping of improving my health, mental and physical.

  It is only a matter of belief, thinking that there are ills emanating from Dung and Benson. There is nothing wrong, as far as I am concerned …

  Yours very truly,

  Joseph Cassel

  May 4. We have cut off the potent-valuemiocene to determine what the effect will be on Joseph. The effect is immediate.

  My dear dad,

  Excuse if I am bothersome, but I must write this letter to you. Dr. Donahue, my ward doctor, has cut off my potent-valuemiocene medicine, a medicine which you yourself have prescribed. What am I to do? This medicine was very good for neuralgia. Having neuralgia in the shoulder, cheek, et ceteraes, it was doing a tremendous amount of good! Can you do something anent this? Please answer me.

  Yours very truly,

  Joseph Cassel

  P.S. . . . I don’t see why I am not allowed to use this medicine, when it is doing a tremendous amount of good! Of course, I am God, and I am at end of the campaign, and the whole works has had some effect on making me sickly for a while, but with all this medicine I am getting well, which is good. Potent-valuemiocene was giving me a great value, and I certainly hate to lose it. So why can’t I take back this medicine? I will continue to work as God, for the hospital, the English, the civilizations … the people of this world—I work for all! …

  May 5

  My dear dad,

  I am awfully gleeful for your having reinstated my medicine. I also want to thank you, endlessly, anent your taking so much interest in me. . . .

  Thank you very very much for my having gotten my medicine back!

  Yours very truly,

  Joseph Cassel

  May 10

  Dear Joseph:

  … In your letter of May 4, you seem to imply that you are still in an English stronghold. I think we have had a discussion about this on an earlier occasion. This is a mental hospital supported by the taxpayers of the State of Michigan, and when you say “I am getting better mentally and physically” I suppose that you mean that you are now more realistic about the fact that it is an American hospital and not an English stronghold.

  Loving you like a father loves a son, I am enclosing the usual token of esteem and do let me hear from you soon.

  Sincerely,

  O. R. Yoder, M.D.

  May 11

  My dead dad,

  … I am glad that potent-valuemiocene is helping me … in the triangle of Christs.

  I am not unaware of the fact that potent-valuemiocene—well, the medicine makes me realize that the trouble with Dung and Benson was that they thought they were Christs; but, with potent-valuemiocene the values come out of Dung and Benson, thus they cannot be Christ. In time they both should forget that they are even imposing upon me. This is the trouble with Dung and Benson: that they thought they were god, but potent-valuemiocene takes these thoughts away from them. Thus I am very gratified and thankful about your having prescribed to me potent-valuemiocene!

  As for this being a mental hospital, I am well aware of it, and I am gratified for it being supported by tax payers. But the hospital is an English stronghold, but it is in America. This hospital is an old English hospital, but some think it is an American hospital.

  Yours very truly,

  Joseph Cassel

  P.S. . . . But please know that I am not b
othered by Dung and Benson —that is, potent-valuemiocene helps me from being bothered … I realize that Dung is Leon Gabor. Thank you for all!

  May 16

  Dear Joseph:

  This is to reply to your letter of May 11. Loving you like a father loves his son, I must say that I was disappoined to learn that you still believe that “this hospital is an English stronghold.”

  One of the major purposes of potent-valuemiocene is to give you back your self-confidence, your values, and in doing so to give you strength to abandon your erroneous belief that “this hospital is an English stronghold.” The fact that you still believe this is discouraging to me, because it means that you have not been improving as fast as I had hoped.

  Enclosed is the usual token.

  Cordially,

  O. R. Yoder, M.D.

  Joseph laughs as he finishes reading the letter. “I’m not improving, anyway. I’m worse today than when I first came in here. There’s no improvement. There was nothing wrong then; now I have no teeth and I can’t get out of the hospital. I’ll write him that it’s a hospital in the United States.”