I ask Joseph why he is writing such long reports of the weekend meetings. “It’s a double,” he replies, “it’s been done one thousand years ago.”
—For whom did you write the reports?—
“They’re not addressed to anyone—nobody is gonna read them.”
—I read them, and Miss Anderson reads them.—
“I don’t believe it. Nobody reads them now—fifteen thousand, twenty-five thousand years from now or maybe longer, they will bring out the old reports and make corrections. They will need these reports to know what was going on here.”
—They are not supposed to be read now?—
“It’s a record—to be put away.”
What I have aimed in this writing is to obtain the values of the classics and of the authors. This is psychologically speaking, so I can also make a usability for the values of the world. These writings are not a history of literature by all means; they are simply a work for my usability—a work for the usability of the world, a work for the honest workers of the world, for I am God and I have engineered to beat the enemies for the betterment of the world.
Joseph has copied the titles of forty-six volumes of detective stories, giving resumés and quotations from nearly every volume. On the back of many of the pages of this forty-one-page report he has done extensive “doodling”—thousands of dots that fill up every bit of the paper, from top to bottom, and from margin to margin.
This report must be read on the whole in order to understand it. One must say that the copying of the detective books was so enticing for beating the enemies that I, the writer of this report, Joseph Cassel, continue to copy more books, to beat the enemies. …
And the next shelf, coming down, has foreign books of German and Latin and French. There are about 200 books in this book case.
This bookcase has 243 books. It is supposed to be of philosophy, religion, social sciences, etceteraes. It has some books on religion, all right, maybe one on philosophy, some on politics, the rest are of general subjects.
In this library, there are approximately 3,900 books.
In announcing our impending departure, we had been deliberately vague about what would happen after we were gone. We hoped to keep track, through other hospital personnel, of what the three men would do on their own initiative. As the time for our departure drew closer, a related, supplementary theme emerged in Joseph’s voluminous reports. He showed an increasing concern with the conduct of future meetings without us.
The meeting is being held, every day, with Miss Anderson in charge, and Dr. Rokeage comes at the meeting 2 times a week, but on Saturday and Sunday, Miss Anderson does not attend the meeting, thus I have to make a report on the day she does not show up. There are 3 patients who attend the meetings daily and they are R. I. Dung, Clyde Benson, and myself. The meeting is for the purpose of meeting, symbolically speaking, for the right meetings in the world.
But with us gone, Joseph wondered apprehensively, who would keep the meetings going, who would keep track of the lists, and write the reports? And, most important, who would get the credit for writing them? There were not only the long-dead enemies who had stolen his values but also two live ones to be reckoned with.
For quite a while I have written these reports and I have been the only one who has worked for the subjects. Thus the reports on the books are solely my work. But the two fellows I am working with are sickly and they have shoved to me bad illiterary effects—all kinds of bad effects. They attend the meetings with me every day, and one of them might have taken the list of classics, for all I know. Their names are R. I. Dung, and Clyde Benson. We sleep adjacent to each other and we eat together in the same room.
I, Joseph Cassel, also God, have for quite some time written the meeting reports. I have withal copied all of the books which are listed in the reports … I have done this alone. I have also instigated the meetings; I have to see that the meetings are held, especially when Miss Anderson and Dr. Rokeage are not showing up.
It must be known that the two other fellows, R. I. Dung and Clyde Benson have made reports, though, it was quite a while ago, that were not acceptable, so I ask not to be confused with these two men, who assist at the meeting and who are chairman, by turn, but who do not write reports, but just sign their names to the chairman list, sign by turns. And I must be careful so illy effects will not be thrown to me, by them, for their heads are unwell, and very incomparable to mine.
Joseph was the only one who seemed upset by our leaving. He had thought that the meetings would go on forever. He didn’t like the pattern broken, he explained.
What I wish to write is that next month Dr. Rokeage will go to Palo Alto, California and will not attend our meetings, for he goes away for at least a year. And Miss Anderson will not attend any more meetings, either. However, I must write that Dr. Rokeage has told R. I. Dung that he will have to write his own meeting report. He has not written a report for a year.
I must say that Dung is not to be trusted with the reports nor can Benson for that matter. And Dung has a habit of using other people’s values so much that he can use my name on his report instead of his. He simply is not to be trusted. So I warn all those concerned that Dung is not to get credit for not writing bad reports.
This was bad enough: they did more: they have shoved me so many illy entities to me, at one time or another, that I then realized that their unvalues would affect me so much that if I did not do anything about it, I would then be unabled to write well my reports. I straightened myself up. I noticed, afterwards, that my reports were better, due to my having straightened up, but my work showed an effect. However, I persevered, thus, I have not a bad record in my reports, my meetings, my writings of letters to Dr. O. R. Yoder. But I must ask pardon if there are some reports which are, in spots, incorrect. I must also write that they have written to Dr. Yoder letters, in which they have been impostering by posing as God: I am God; they are not, and if one will look at the reports of Dung and Benson, one will find out how bad their reports are. Dung has even written letters to my wife; he has even received my wife as a visitor in this hospital. He would receive my letters from my wife and if it contained a dollar, he kept it for himself. I say that Dung and Benson are sick. And they wish too much to be God.
So Dung will write reports again. How bad this is. His reports are so illly written. I, as God, Joseph Cassel, remember that prior to my campaign, I coerced Dung to do certain things in my campaign; this was conducive to his writing reports, but, of course, I must say that this was not too lovely, for the reports were bad, and he even signed my name to his reports. He must be watched closely. I say to the authorities, Watch this patient. He is not to be trusted. He wants to be this or that; he wants to be this fellow or the other fellow. He wants to be this woman or the other woman. He is an enemy. He cannot be trusted. He wants to destroy the world. He wants to be God. Watch.
Watch Dung and Benson, they are two enemies. They want to be God. I am God, the writer and worker for materials for these reports. Watch them.
There was an enemy who was sporting my godliness or posing or impostering as God, who went under the name of Joseph Cassel, but the English and I saw to it that he died. We have killed him in the hospital—here in Ypsilanti State Hospital.
It is I, God, who have, for quite a while, been gathering materials for the reports. It is I, alone, who have written all of the reports; who have started the meetings; who have seen to it that the chairman list was signed, properly. It is I who have carried the list, in my pocket, so Liszt, a musician, and others, too, for the matter, would be defeated. My name is Joseph Cassel, but I am God, and my English name is John Michael Ernahue. Joseph Cassel is a name that I always used in France and in the province of Quebec, in Canada, and it was in Quebec that the enemies, who had jumped down from a country above France, unseen and in space and watched upon, went to live, after they had crossed both immigration lines without visas or passports. Afterwards, they invaded me and the rest of the world. S
o, they killed and raped and stole.
This is I, God, Joseph Cassel, who continually go to the library to copy from books to make all of the reports.
The last book, Alone, was written by me, God. The exploration which comes after this book is by Byrd on account of his decamping me. At that time, the exploration was just about starting when Byrd and his cohorts showed up. I was authorized by President Eisenhower to go on with the exploration to the South or rather North Pole.
We, the workers for the world, will keep on going, and, one beautiful day, there will not be an enemy left.
This beautiful day will never come soon enough.
I’ll see you in the next report.
So long, I feel much better, thank you.
PART THREE
CHAPTER XIX
THE STRIVING FOR GOODNESS AND FOR GREATNESS
WE SAID GOODBYE to Clyde and Joseph and Leon on August 15, 1961—two years, one and a half months after I first brought them together. During this time we accumulated a vast amount of information—about their earlier histories, their characters, their daily lives in a mental hospital, their attitudes toward themselves and toward others with whom they had dealings. The data thus obtained are relevant to many issues: to the problems of schizophrenia and paranoia; to the problem of identity; to the nature of authority or reference groups in the mentally disturbed; to the psychoanalytic theory of symbolism; to psychotherapy; and to the role of religion in mental health and illness.
But most important from the standpoint of the present research is the knowledge we gained from observing the reactions of each of the three Christs to confrontations with others who claimed the same identity and the reactions of Joseph and Leon to communications purporting to come from people who were part of their delusional systems. We must now assess the extent to which this material lends support to the hypotheses that guided the study and the theoretical concepts underlying it.
The Ubiquitous Identity Problem
Consider first the problem of identity. Aside from whatever intrinsic interest the story of the three Christs has, what generalizations about normal people can emerge from the study of these three psychotic men? What can be learned that has relevance to an understanding of systems of belief and the primitive belief in identity, beyond what is exemplified in the paranoid schizophrenics studied here?
In my readings of current psychiatric literature, I have been struck by the variety of contexts in which the question of the sense of identity, and disturbances of that sense, arise. Present-day psychiatry seems to be coming more and more to regard the many forms of mental illness as different manifestations of the same disturbance: disturbance of the sense of identity. One does not have to renounce one’s name and assume a more grandiose one in order to manifest such a disturbance. To put the present investigation in proper perspective it is necessary to link the delusions of the three Christs not only with other psychopathological disturbances in the sense of identity but also with more normal strivings to maintain a secure set of beliefs about one’s own identity and one’s group identifications—which Erik Erikson has more succinctly called ego and group identity.
Of the various psychopathological disturbances in the sense of identity, I should first mention amnesias and multiple personalities, which have been studied by many psychiatrists.[1] These have been described by R. W. White in the following terms:
Whether we are dealing with a brief amnesia, a more extended fugue, or a fully developed double or multiple personality, the central feature of the disorder is a loss of personal identity. The patient forgets who he is and where he is. He loses the symbols of identity and also the memories of his previous life that support a continuing sense of selfhood.[2]
Perhaps even more important is the fact that modern psychiatry is coming increasingly to recognize that the whole complex problem of schizophrenia in all its manifestations fundamentally represents a disturbance in beliefs and feelings about personal identity[3] and that such disturbances arise from what Paul Federn, in his book Ego Psychology and the Psychoses,[4] has called a dissolution of ego boundaries and a loss of ego feeling. In his book, The Divided Self, R. D. Laing describes this identity disturbance in schizophrenia as follows:
It is the ultimate and most paradoxically absurd possible defence, beyond which magic defences can go no further. And it, in one or other of its forms, is the basic defence, so far as I have been able to see, in every form of psychosis. It can be stated in its most general form as: the denial of being, as a means of preserving being. The schizophrenic feels he has killed his “self,” and this appears to be in order to avoid being killed. He is dead, in order to remain alive.[5]
But, as has been pointed out, the concern with beliefs involving a sense of identity is of even wider scope, having application to normal persons no less than to schizophrenics and to other persons suffering from pathological states. Erik H. Erikson[6] has contributed more than anyone else to our general theoretical understanding of the development of a sense of identity, in his careful and detailed descriptions of the various stages in the formation of identity and in the crises of identity which face each person as he proceeds from life to death. In so doing, Erikson has enriched immeasurably the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, a theory meant to apply to all human beings, which describes the unfolding of each human personality in terms of passage from a first phase of identity and crisis of identity in “infancy” through a series of seven additional phases culminating in “adulthood” and “mature age.”[7]
The theme of identity will also be found in many other writings. Mention may be made here of the works of Helen Merrell Lynd, Edith Weigert, Paul Federn, Carl Rogers, the existentialists, Erich Fromm, Abraham H. Maslow, and Gordon Allport, all of whom are concerned with the problem of identity, even though they employ other concepts, such as estrangement, depersonalization, loneliness and isolation, self-alienation, anomie, becoming, existence, self-actualization, and self-realization.[8]
A number of these writers have pointed eloquently to the pervasiveness of the problem of identity in modern society.
Edith Weigert writes:
One could speculate why the problem of identity concerns us so much in our time. It concerns not only the psychiatric patient who is particularly inflexible or helplessly volatile in the face of change— there is a general insecurity about identity in our time.[9]
Allen Wheelis:
During the past fifty years there has been a change in the experienced quality of life, with a result that identity is now harder to achieve and harder to maintain. The formally dedicated Marxist who now is unsure of everything; the Christian who loses his faith; the workman who comes to feel that his work is piecemeal and meaningless; the scientist who decides that science is futile, that the fate of the world will be determined by power politics—such persons are of our time, and they suffer the loss or impairment of identity.[10]
Helen Merrell Lynd:
Awareness of loneliness, of isolation, is one of the most characteristic experiences of the contemporary world. Marx’s chief condemnation of capitalism is that it alienates the individual. The phenomenon of individual isolation is a cornerstone of existential philosophy, and the fact of alienation in the contemporary world is one thing that gives existentialism its contemporary appeal. Freud regards separation and fear of separation as one of the main factors in anxiety. The situation of isolation is a central theme in Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, in Sullivan’s psychology of interpersonal relations and in Durkheim’s and Merton’s analysis of anomie.[11]
I have offered all these examples simply to point up the fact that the present study is unique only in the sense that it deals with extremes of loneliness, social anomie, and alienation from society. In giving up their ego identities, Clyde, Joseph, and Leon gave up the rose as well as the name; they gave up their group identities, their identifications with family, religion, country, and occupation, in order to become Dead Latin and Yeti, to work for the cau
se of the Ka and for the cause of an Empire which no longer exists. Clyde and Joseph and Leon are really unhappy caricatures of human beings; in them we can see with terrible clarity some of the factors that can lead any man to give up realistic beliefs and adopt instead a more grandiose identity.
And they are caricatures of all men in another sense too. I believe it was the German philosopher Fichte who pointed out years ago that to some extent all of us strive to be like God or Christ. One or another facet of this theme is to be found in a good deal of Western literature—for example, in the writings of Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, and Dostoevsky. Bertrand Russell said it best of all: “Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.”[12] It is thus surprising that we found only three delusional Christs in Michigan, but perhaps not surprising that we found not a single Napoleon or Hitler. Who, better than Jesus of Nazareth, can symbolize Western man’s conscious and unconscious striving to die and be doubly redeemed, in order to live a life everlastingly good and great at the same time?
Identity Confrontations
The three Christs did not recover their sanity as a result of the identity confrontations. Although Joseph and Leon responded and changed as a result of our experimental procedures, we—unlike the atomic physicists—have not as yet learned how to control reactions in order to achieve an enduring, socially desirable end. Our findings do not support those of Voltaire, who tells of the temporary recovery in Simon Morin, or those of Lindner, who implies a more enduring recovery in the older of the two Virgin Marys. Apparently, mere confrontation with others claiming the same identity is not enough to effect such a radical change in delusional systems. The three men had developed their delusions for good reasons, and these reasons, whatever their nature, did not change as a result of confrontation. Thus, our investigations do not substantiate Lindner’s conclusion: “…it is impossible for two objects to occupy the same place at the same time. When … another person invades the delusion, the original occupant finds himself literally forced to give way.”[13]
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Page 33
