The Unreal and the Real - Vol 1 - Where On Earth
Page 11
I believe that with intelligent subjects it is much better not to make mysteries and so impose a false authority and a feeling of helplessness on the subject (see T. R. Olma, Psychoscopy Technique). So I showed him the chair and electrode crown and explained its operation. He has a layman’s hearsay knowledge of the psychoscope, and his questions also reflected his engineering education. He sat down in the chair when I asked him. While I fitted the crown and clasps he was sweating profusely from fear, and this evidently embarrassed him, the smell. If he knew how Rina smells after she’s been doing shit paintings. He shut his eyes and gripped the chair arms so that his hands went white to the wrist. The screens were almost white too. After a while I said in a joking tone, “It doesn’t really hurt, does it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, does it?”
“You mean it’s on?”
“It’s been on for ninety seconds.”
He opened his eyes then and looked around, as well as he could for the head clamps. He asked, “Where’s the screen?”
I explained that a subject never watches the screen live, because the objectification can be severely disturbing, and he said, “Like feedback from a microphone?” That is exactly the simile Dr. Aven used to use. F.S. is certainly an intelligent person. N.B.: Intelligent paranoids are dangerous!
He asked, “What do you see?” and I said, “Do be quiet, I don’t want to see what you’re saying, I want to see what you’re thinking,” and he said, “But that’s none of your business, you know,” quite gently, like a joke. Meanwhile the fear-white had gone into dark, intense, volitional convolutions, and then, a few seconds after he stopped speaking, a rose appeared on the whole Con dimension: a full-blown pink rose, beautifully sensed and visualised, clear and steady, whole.
He said presently, “What am I thinking about, Dr. Sobel?” and I said, “Bears in the Zoo.” I wonder now why I said that. Self-defense? Against what? He gave a laugh and the Uncon went crystal-dark, relief, and the rose darkened and wavered. I said, “I was joking. Can you bring the rose back?” That brought back the fear-white. I said, “Listen, it’s really very bad for us to talk like this during a first session, you have to learn a great deal before you can co-analyse, and I have a great deal to learn about you, so no more jokes, please? Just relax physically, and think about anything you please.”
There was flurry and subverbalisation on the Con dimension, and the Uncon faded into grey, suppression. The rose came back weakly a few times. He was trying to concentrate on it, but couldn’t. I saw several quick visuals: myself, my uniform, TRTU uniforms, a grey car, a kitchen, the violent ward (strong aural images—screaming), a desk, the papers on the desk. He stuck to those. They were the plans for a machine. He began going through them. It was a deliberate effort at suppression, and quite effective. Finally I said, “What kind of machine is that?” and he began to answer aloud but stopped and let me get the answer subvocally in the earphone: “Plans for a rotary engine assembly for traction,” or something like that, of course the exact words are on the tape. I repeated it aloud and said, “They aren’t classified plans, are they?” He said, “No,” aloud, and added, “I don’t know any secrets.” His reaction to a question is intense and complex, each sentence is like a shower of pebbles thrown into a pool, the interlocking rings spread out quick and wide over the Con and into the Uncon, responses rising on all levels. Within a few seconds all that was hidden by a big signboard that appeared in the high Con foreground, deliberately visualised like the rose and the plans, with auditory reinforcement as he read it over and over: keep out! keep out! keep out!
It began to blur and flicker, and somatic signals took over, and soon he said aloud, “I’m tired,” and I closed the session (12.5 min.).
After I took off the crown and clamps I brought him a cup of tea from the staff stand in the hall. When I offered it to him he looked startled and then tears came into his eyes. His hands were so cramped from gripping the armrests that he had trouble taking hold of the cup. I told him he must not be so tense and afraid, we are trying to help him not to hurt him.
He looked up at me. Eyes are like the scope screen and yet you can’t read them. I wished the crown was still on him, but it seems you never catch the moments you most want on the scope. He said, “Doctor, why am I in this hospital?”
I said, “For diagnosis and therapy.”
He said, “Diagnosis and therapy of what?”
I said he perhaps could not now recall the episode, but he had behaved strangely. He asked how and when, and I said that it would all come clear to him as therapy took effect. Even if I had known what his psychotic episode was, I would have said the same. It was correct procedure. But I felt in a false position. If the TRTU report was not classified, I would be speaking from knowledge and the facts. Then I could make a better response to what he said next:
“I was waked up at two in the morning, jailed, interrogated, beaten up, and drugged. I suppose I did behave a little oddly during that. Wouldn’t you?”
“Sometimes a person under stress misinterprets other people’s actions,” I said. “Drink up your tea and I’ll take you back to the ward. You’re running a temperature.”
“The ward,” he said, with a kind of shrinking movement, and then he said almost desperately, “Can you really not know why I’m here?”
That was strange, as if he has included me in his delusional system, on “his side.” Check this possibility in Rheingeld. I should think it would involve some transference and there has not been time for that.
Spent pm analysing Jest and Sorde holos. I have never seen any psychoscopic realisation, not even a drug-induced hallucination, so fine and vivid as that rose. The shadows of one petal on another, the velvety damp texture of the petals, the pink color full of sunlight, the yellow central crown—I am sure the scent was there if the apparatus had olfactory pickup—it wasn’t like a mentifact but a real thing rooted in the earth, alive and growing, the strong thorny stem beneath it.
Very tired, must go to bed.
Just reread this entry. Am I keeping this diary right? All I have written is what happened and what was said. Is that spontaneous? But it was important to me.
5 September
Discussed the problem of conscious resistance with Dr. Nades at lunch today. Explained that I have worked with unconscious blocks (the children, and depressives such as Ana J.) and have some skill at reading through, but have not before met a conscious block such as F.S.’s keep out sign, or the device he used today, which was effective for a full 20-minute session: a concentration on his breathing, bodily rhythms, pain in ribs, and visual input from the scope room. She suggested that I use a blindfold for the latter trick, and keep my attention on the Uncon dimension, as he cannot prevent material from appearing there. It is surprising, though, how large the interplay area of his Con and Uncon fields is, and how much one resonates into the other. I believe his concentration on his breathing rhythm allowed him to achieve something like “trance” condition. Though, of course, most so-called “trance” is mere occultist fakirism, a primitive trait without interest for behavioral science.
Ana thought through “a day in my life” for me today. All so grey and dull, poor soul! She never thought even of food with pleasure, though she lives on minimum ration. The single thing that came bright for a moment was a child’s face, clear dark eyes, a pink knitted cap, round cheeks. She told me in post-session discussion that she always walks by a school playground on the way to work because “she likes to see the little ones running and yelling.” Her husband appears on the screen as a big bulky suit of work clothes and a peevish, threatening mumble. I wonder if she knows that she hasn’t seen his face or heard a word he says for years? But no use telling her that. It may be just as well she doesn’t.
The knitting she is doing, I noticed today, is a pink cap.
Reading De Cams’s Disaffection: A Study, on Dr. Nades’s recommendation.
6 September
In th
e middle of session (breathing again) I said loudly: “Flores!”
Both psy dimensions whited out but the soma realisation hardly changed. After 4 seconds he responded aloud, drowsily. It is not “trance,” but autohypnosis.
I said, “Your breathing’s monitored by the apparatus. I don’t need to know that you’re still breathing. It’s boring.”
He said, “I like to do my own monitoring, Doctor.”
I came around and took the blindfold off him and looked at him. He has a pleasant face, the kind of man you often see running machinery, sensitive but patient, like a donkey. That is stupid. I will not cross it out. I am supposed to be spontaneous in this diary. Donkeys do have beautiful faces. They are supposed to be stupid and balky but they look wise and calm, as if they had endured a lot but held no grudges, as if they knew some reason why one should not hold grudges. And the white ring around their eyes makes them look defenseless.
“But the more you breathe,” I said, “the less you think. I need your cooperation. I’m trying to find out what it is you’re afraid of.”
“But I know what I’m afraid of,” he said.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“You never asked me.”
“That’s most unreasonable,” I said, which is funny, now I think about it, being indignant with a mental patient because he’s unreasonable. “Well, then, now I’m asking you.”
He said, “I’m afraid of electroshock. Of having my mind destroyed. Being kept here. Or only being let out when I can’t remember anything.” He gasped while he was speaking.
I said, “All right, why won’t you think about that while I’m watching the screens?”
“Why should I?”
“Why not? You’ve said it to me, why can’t you think about it? I want to see the color of your thoughts!”
“It’s none of your business, the color of my thoughts,” he said angrily, but I was around to the screen while he spoke, and saw the unguarded activity. Of course it was being taped while we spoke, too, and I have studied it all afternoon. It is fascinating. There are two subverbal levels running aside from the spoken words. All sensory-emotive reactions and distortions are vigorous and complex. He “sees” me, for instance, in at least three different ways, probably more, analysis is impossibly difficult! And the Con-Uncon correspondences are so complicated, and the memory traces and current impressions inter-weave so rapidly, and yet the whole is unified in its complexity. It is like that machine he was studying, very intricate but all one thing in a mathematical harmony. Like the petals of the rose.
When he realised I was observing he shouted out, “Voyeur! Damned voyeur! Let me alone! Get out!” and he broke down and cried. There was a clear fantasy on the screen for several seconds of himself breaking the arm and head clamps and kicking the apparatus to pieces and rushing out of the building, and there, outside, there was a wide hilltop, covered with short dry grass, under the evening sky, and he stood there all alone. While he sat clamped in the chair sobbing.
I broke session and took off the crown, and asked him if he wanted some tea, but he refused to answer. So I freed his arms, and brought him a cup. There was sugar today, a whole box full. I told him that and told him I’d put in two lumps.
After he had drunk some tea he said, with an elaborate ironical tone, because he was ashamed of crying, “You know I like sugar? I suppose your psychoscope told you I liked sugar?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, “everybody likes sugar if they can get it.”
He said, “No, little doctor, they don’t.” He asked in the same tone how old I was and if I was married. He was spiteful. He said, “Don’t want to marry? Wedded to your work? Helping the mentally unsound back to a constructive life of service to the Nation?”
“I like my work,” I said, “because it’s difficult, and interesting. Like yours. You like your work, don’t you?”
“I did,” he said. “Good-bye to all that.”
“Why?”
He tapped his head and said, “Zzzzzzt!—All gone. Right?”
“Why are you so convinced you’re going to be prescribed electroshock? I haven’t even diagnosed you yet.”
“Diagnosed me?” he said. “Look, stop the playacting, please. My diagnosis was made. By the learned doctors of the TRTU. Severe case of disaffection. Prognosis: Evil! Therapy: Lock him up with a roomful of screaming thrashing wrecks, and then go through his mind the same way you went through his papers, and then burn it…burn it out. Right, Doctor? Why do you have to go through all this posing, diagnosis, cups of tea? Can’t you just get on with it? Do you have to paw through everything I am before you burn it?”
“Flores,” I said very patiently, “you’re saying ‘Destroy me’—don’t you hear yourself? The psychoscope destroys nothing. And I’m not using it to get evidence, either. This isn’t a court, you’re not on trial. And I’m not a judge. I’m a doctor.”
He interrupted—“If you’re a doctor, can’t you see that I’m not sick?”
“How can I see anything so long as you block me out with your stupid keep out signs?” I shouted. I did shout. My patience was a pose and it just fell to pieces. But I saw that I had reached him, so I went right on. “You look sick, you act sick—two cracked ribs, a temperature, no appetite, crying fits—is that good health? If you’re not sick, then prove it to me! Let me see how you are inside, inside all that!”
He looked down into his cup and gave a kind of laugh and shrugged. “I can’t win,” he said. “Why do I talk to you? You look so honest, damn you!”
I walked away. It is shocking how a patient can hurt one. The trouble is, I am used to the children, whose rejection is absolute, like animals that freeze, or cower, or bite, in their terror. But with this man, intelligent and older than I am, first there is communication and trust and then the blow. It hurts more.
It is painful writing all this down. It hurts again. But it is useful. I do understand some things he said much better now. I think I will not show it to Dr. Nades until I have completed diagnosis. If there is any truth to what he said about being arrested on suspicion of disaffection (and he is certainly careless in the way he talks), Dr. Nades might feel that she should take over the case, due to my inexperience. I should regret that. I need the experience.
7 September
Stupid! That’s why she gave you De Cams’s book. Of course she knows. As Head of the Section she has access to the TRTU dossier on F.S. She gave me this case deliberately.
It is certainly educational.
Today’s session: F.S. still angry and sulky. Intentionally fantasized a sex scene. It was memory, but when she was heaving around underneath him he suddenly stuck a caricature of my face on her. It was effective. I doubt a woman could have done it, women’s recall of having sex is usually darker and grander and they and the other do not become meat-puppets like that, with switchable heads. After a while he got bored with the performance (for all its vividness there was little somatic participation, not even an erection) and his mind began to wander. For the first time. One of the drawings on the desk came back. He must be a designer, because he changed it, with a pencil. At the same time there was a tune going on the audio, in mental puretone; and in the Uncon lapping over into the interplay area, a large, dark room seen from a child’s height, the windowsills very high, evening outside the windows, tree branches darkening, and inside the room a woman’s voice, soft, maybe reading aloud, sometimes joining with the tune. Meanwhile the whore on the bed kept coming and going in volitional bursts, falling apart a little more each time, till there was nothing left but one nipple. This much I analysed out this afternoon, the first sequence of over 10 sec. that I have analysed clear and entire.
When I broke session he said, “What did you learn?” in the satirical voice.
I whistled a bit of the tune.
He looked scared.
“It’s a lovely tune,” I said, “I never heard it before. If it’s yours, I won’t whistle it anywhere else.”
“I saw the girl,” I said. “And my face on her. Do you know what I’d like to see?”
He shook his head. Sulky, hangdog.
“Your childhood.”
That surprised him. After a while he said, “All right. You can have my childhood. Why not? You’re going to get all the rest anyhow. Listen. You tape it all, don’t you? Could I see a playback? I want to see what you see.”
“Sure,” I said. “But it won’t mean as much to you as you think it will. It took me eight years to learn to observe. You start with your own tapes. I watched mine for months before I recognised anything much.”
I took him to my seat, put on the earphone, and ran him 30 sec. of the last sequence.
He was quite thoughtful and respectful after it. He asked, “What was all that running-up-and-down-scales motion in the, the background I guess you’d call it?”
“Visual scan—your eyes were closed—and subliminal proprioceptive input. The Unconscious dimension and the Body dimension overlap to a great extent all the time. We bring the three dimensions in separately, because they seldom coincide entirely anyway, except in babies. The bright triangular motion at the left of the holo was probably the pain in your ribs.”
“I don’t see it that way!”
“You don’t see it; you weren’t consciously feeling it, even, then. But we can’t translate a pain in the rib onto a holoscreen, so we give it a visual symbol. The same with all sensations, affects, emotions.”
“You watch all that at once?”
“I told you it took eight years. And you do realise that that’s only a fragment? Nobody could put a whole psyche onto a four-foot screen. Nobody knows if there are any limits to the psyche. Except the limits of the universe.”