The Diceman

by Luke Rheinhart

  Instead we let the patient judge at first how he uses the dice. Of course, sooner or later he sticks himself in some small slot of diceliving where he's willing to let the dice play. Unless he's pushed he'll stay clogged up there forever.'

  'How do you overcome the patient's reluctance to expand his use of the dice?' Dr. Cobblestone asked. He seemed interested.

  Dr. Rhinehart stopped in front of him and smiled. `To overcome this secondary resistance - constipation we call it we use mostly the method of scare. We tell the patient to cast the dice concerning his biggest problem: "Give the dice the option of your getting into bed with your mother and feeling her up."

  "Let the dice decide whether you say: `Up yours, Dad."

  "Cast a die to see whether you're going to destroy your diaries."

  `What happens?'

  `The patient generally craps or faints,' said Dr. Rhinehart, beginning, to pace again while scowling at the floor. `But when he revives we suggest something a little less threatening but still outside his previous diceliving area. In utter gratefulness he goes along.'

  Dr. Rhinehart's face brightened, and he smiled at each of the doctors as he passed them in his pacing.

  `Then he's on his way. Within a month we hope he'll have achieved either ecstatic liberation, abandonment of dice therapy, or a psychosis. The psychotic break is caused by his need to avoid admitting that he can act, and he can change, that he can do something about his problems. He can't face the fact that he's free, and not the helpless, pitiable object he's under the illusion be is.

  `He feels liberated when he realizes that his horrible problems can be-solved, but are not his to worry about any longer: they've been shifted to the square shoulders of the dice. He becomes ecstatic. He experiences the transfer of control from an illusory self to the dice as a conversion or as salvation. It's something like newly born Christians giving up their souls to Christ or God, or the Zen student or Taoist surrendering to the Tao. In all these cases the ego control game is abandoned and the student surrenders to a force which is experienced as being outside himself.

  'Let me quote to you what one of our dice students has written about his experience.'

  Dr. Rhinehart returned to his chair, extracted some papers from his briefcase and began to read from one.

  'It was great. It was a real religious feeling, a spiritual, thing. Suddenly I was free of all my hang-ups about raping little girls and buggering boys. I gave up the struggle and put the whole mess into the hands of the dice. When they ordered rape, I raped. When they ordered abstention, I abstained. No problem. When they say fly to Peru, I fly to Peru. It's like being in the middle of a movie I've never seen before. It's tremendously interesting and I'm the star. In the last couple of months I haven't even bothered to give the dice any little-girl or little-boy options.

  I don't know, everything else is so fascinating I just don't seem to have the old get-up-and-go anymore.'

  Dr. Rhinehart placed the paper back on his chair and resumed his pacing.

  `Of course, it takes a while for our students to reach this level of freedom. At first they often cast the dice and think: "Now I must have the willpower to do it" That's bad. The illusion that an ego controls or has "willpower" must be abandoned. The student's got to see his relation to the dice first as that of a baby in a rubber raft on a flooded river: each motion of the river is pleasant; he doesn't need to know where he's going or when, if ever, he'll arrive. Motion is all. And then he's got to reach the point where he and the Die are each playing with one another. It's not that the person has gained equality with the Die, it's that the human vessel is now so infused with the Spirit of the Die that it's become in effect a Sacred Vehicle, a Second Cube. The student has become Die.'

  Dr. Rhinehart stopped pacing for the moment and looked intently at his listeners. He had become increasingly excited by what he was saying and five doctors behind the table had begun staring at him with increasing awe, except for Dr. Moon, who was still settled in openmouthed sleep against Dr. Mann.

  `Actually, I may be going too fast for you' Dr. Rhinehart began again. `Maybe I should tell you about some of our dice exercises. Emotional roulette, for example. The student lists six possible emotions, lets a die choose one and then expresses that emotion as dramatically as he can for at least two minutes. It's probably the most useful of the dice exercises, letting the student express all kinds of long-suppressed emotions which he usually doesn't even know he has. Roger Meters reports that a dice-student of his found after ten minutes of a dice-dictated love for a specific person that he remained in love; in fact, the student has since married her.'

  Dr. Rhinehart paused in his pacing to smile benevolently at Dr. Weinburger.

  'Let's see, in the Horatio Alger-Huck Finn game,' he went on, `a die determines at regular intervals whether the student is to work hard, achieve and be fantastically productive or to goof off and laze around and do nothing. It's good in this exercise to have the intervals very short: the absurdity of hard work is nicely alternated with absurdity of trying to laze around and do nothing.'

  'Dr. Rhinehart,' interrupted Dr. Weinburger, squeezing the crumpled papers in his fist. `It would -'

  'Wait! Wait! Russian roulette. We've got two versions. In one the student creates from three to six unpleasant options and casts a die to see which if any he has to do. In the second, he creates one extremely challenging option - say, quitting a job, insulting a mother or husband, robbing a bank, murder and gives it a long-shot chance of being chosen.

  `This second form of Russian roulette is one of our best dice exercises. Dr. Rhineholt Budweir cured what seemed to be a hopeless case of death anxiety by every morning taking out a revolver loaded with one live cartridge, spinning the cylinder, placing the barrel at his temple and casting two dice. If they came up snake eyes, he pulled the trigger. The odds each morning were thus two hundred and sixteen to one against his death.

  `From the moment he discovered the dice exercise Dr. Budweir's death anxiety disappeared; he felt a lightness such as he hadn't experienced since his earliest childhood. His sudden death last week at the age of twenty-nine is a tragic loss.'

  As he looked from one doctor to another, Dr. Rhinehart's eyes glittered behind his glasses. He continued.

  `Then there's Exercise K - named in honor of the eminent German-American researcher, Dr. Abraham Krum.'

  Dr. Rhinehart smiled at Dr. Mann. `The student lists six optional roles or selves he might adopt for periods varying from a few minutes to a week or more. Exercise K is the key to a successful dicelife. The student who practices this daily for an hour or two, or each week for a whole day, is on his way to becoming a full-blooded diceperson.

  `Families and friends assume, of course, that the student is on the road to insanity and that his therapist is already there, but ignoring doubt and ridicule is a necessary part of becoming a diceperson. Dr. Fumm tells me that a student of his expanded Exercise K hour by hour until he had gone from an hour a day to twenty-three hours a day, varying who he was every day of the week - except Sunday, which he reserved for rest. At first his friends and family were hysterical 'with fear and rage, but once he'd explained to them what he was doing they began to adjust. At the end of a few months his wife and children would simply ask him at breakfast each morning who he was and make the necessary accommodations. Since among his many roles he was Saint Simeon Stylites, Greta Garbo, a three year-old child and Jack the Ripper, the members of his family deserve a lot of credit for their psychological maturity. May they rest in peace: Dr. Rhinehart stopped pacing and looked, solemn and sincere, directly at Dr. Mann.

  Dr. Mann stared back blankly; then his face flushed. Scowling at the floor briefly, Dr. Rhinehart resumed his pacing.

  `As you can see,' he said, `like all potent medications dice therapy has certain not-so-hot side effects.

  `For example, the student usually gets the idea that the dice ought to determine whether he stays in therapy or not. Since he gives the option a lot of ch
ances, the dice sooner or later order him to leave therapy. Sometimes they tell him to return: And then leave again. Sometimes they tell him to pay his therapy bill, sometimes not. It must be admitted that dice students are, as patients, a little unreliable. You'll be happy to know, however, that the more unreliable a student becomes, the closer he probably is to total cure.

  `A second side effect is that a student does zany things, thus attracting attention to both himself and, inevitably, his psychotherapist.

  `Another thing is that during' tertiary resistance the student is likely to try to kill the psychotherapist.'

  Dr. Rhinehart paused in his pacing in front of Dr. Peerman and, looking benevolently into Dr. Peerman's averted eyes, said `This should normally be avoided.'

  He resumed his pacing.

  `A fourth side effect is that the student insists that the therapist also make decisions by the die. If the therapist is honest in his options he's likely to have to do something inconsistent with medical ethics. It must be admitted that the more medical ethics that the therapist tramples on, the more progress the student makes.'

  Dr. Rhinehart stopped his pacing at the far end of the room, glanced at his wristwatch and then marched back along the table, looking solemnly into the faces of each of his judges as he passed.

  `Prognosis,' he went on. `You probably want to know about prognosis.

  `Students who enter dice therapy are usually normal, everyday, miserable Americans. About one out of five can't get past pants-peeing and drops out of therapy within two weeks. Another fifth succumb within two months to one of the periodic onsets of constipation. We're less certain of this fraction since it's possible that some of those who disappear from therapy within those first months have actually liberated themselves and no longer need the therapist to continue their dice-living.

  `Of the thirty-three students who have worked with the dice for more than two months, six are now in mental institutions with little hope of ever being released.'

  `Good God,' exclaimed Dr. Cobblestone, retrieving his cane from the top of the table as if preparing to defend himself.

  `You'll be glad to know, however, that one of these six, although he's been catatonic for six weeks, may, in fact, be totally cured on May 13th of next year. His last recorded dice decision six weeks ago resulted in his being ordered to go into a catatonic state and remain there for one year.'

  Dr. Rhinehart stopped in front of Dr. Cobblestone and smiled warmly at the bleak-faced old director.

  `It is my personal prediction that after the year is gone the student will undergo a "spontaneous, remission" of all his symptoms and thus be released a few decades thereafter.'

  The doctors behind the table were now staring openmouthed at Dr. Rhinehart.

  'The other five inmates seem to be victims of the psychotic break, which is an obvious danger if the student is pushed too rapidly into sensitive-areas of his life. In the majority of these cases, however, the therapist believes that the personality of the student improved considerably after the psychotic break.'

  Dr. Rhinehart glanced again briefly at his watch. He hurried on.

  `Of the remaining twenty-seven patients who have stayed in dice therapy for more than two months, sixteen are still oscillating between bliss and breakdown; nine seem to have achieved a stable level of high joy, and two are dead, having both died in the line of duty. So to speak.'

  Dr. Rhinehart stopped in the center of the room, his back to Dr. Ecstein, and faced his five judges, a soft, serene smile on his face.

  `Such results are not all that could be hoped for,' he said, and after another pause, `but it should be noted that we have not with our method produced any well-adjusted miserable humans. All thirty-one of our surviving dice students are completely maladjusted to the insane society. There is thus hope.'

  Dr. Rhinehart was beaming.

  `I see no reason to let him go on,' said Dr. Mann quietly, shrugging his right shoulder in an-effort to dislodge Dr: Moon.

  `I think perhaps you're right,' said Dr. Weinburger, neatening the crumpled papers in front of him.

  `Dice therapy and money,' Dr. Rhinehart said, and began his intent pacing again. `Since Freud's pioneer work, not much has been done with the problem of money. As you gentlemen know, Freud associated money with excrement and argued shrewdly that "Tightness" was an effort to withhold excrement, to maintain, in his immortal phrase, "an Immaculate Anus."

  `Dr. Rhinehart,' interrupted Dr. Weinburger, `if yon don't mind, I think . 'Two more minutes,' said Dr. Rhinehart, glancing at his watch. `Freud postulated that a neurotic will find outflow of money, excrement, time or energy a loss, a sullying of the soul, or, more precisely, the anus. Obviously any such effort to withhold is doomed to failure. As Erich Fromm has so acutely 'observed: "It is the tragedy inherent in the fate of man that he shit."

  'Dr. Rhinehart's eyes gleamed, in, his solemn face. 'I forget the reference.'

  `Obviously the old therapies couldn't solve this dilemma. Whereas conventional psychoanalysis sees the desire for an Immaculate Anus as neurotic and counterproductive, we maintain that the desire, like all desires, is good, and causes trouble only when followed too consistently. The individual must come to embrace, in effect, both the Immaculate Anus and the excreted lumps of ford.'

  He was standing in front of Dr. Cobblestone and leaned on the table in front of him with both immaculately tailored arms. `We look not for moderation in the excretory functions, but a joyful variety: a random alteration, as it were, of constipation and diarrhea, with, I suppose, sporadic bursts of regularity.'

  `Dr. Rhinehart, please said Dr. Cobblestone.

  `Figuratively speaking, of course. In curing a man of compulsive worry about money we begin by giving him simple dice exercises which require him to spend or not spend small amounts of money at the whim of a Die and which make him let the Die determine how the money is spent. Slowly but surely we increase the stakes.'

  `That's all,' said Dr. Weinburger, standing and confronting Dr. Rhinehart, who moved over and stopped opposite him. `You've had your say; we've heard enough.'

  Dr Rhinehart glanced at his watch and then pulled a die from his pocket and glanced at it.

  `You'll never get him to stop,' said Dr. Mann quietly.

  `I guess I'm done,' said Dr. Rhinehart, and he walked back and resumed his seat. Dr. Ecstein was staring at the floor.

  Dr. Weinburger again made motions of trying to neaten up the pile of crumpled papers in front of him and cleared his throat noisily.

  `Well, gentlemen,' he said, `I suppose while Dr. Rhinehart is still here I ought to ask if any of you have any questions for him before we proceed to the vote.'

  He looked nervously first to his right where Dr. Peerman was grinning sickly and Dr. Cobblestone was staring sternly at the head of his cane between his legs. Neither responded. Dr. Weinburger then looked nervously to his left where Dr. Moon, his breath coming in even harsher and more uneven gasps than earlier, was beginning a slow arc from Dr. Mann toward the chairman.

  Dr. Mann said very quietly `The man is no longer human.'

  `I beg your pardon?' said Dr. Weinburger.

  'The man is no longer human.'

  `Oh. Yes.' Dr. Weinburger stood up. `Then if there are no further questions, I must ask Dr. Rhinehart to leave the room so that we may proceed to a vote on the issue before us.'

  `I'm inhuman you say?' said Dr. Rhinehart quietly, remaining in his chair next to Dr. Ecstein. `Big deal, I'm inhuman. But with the human pattern such as it is these days can the word inhuman constitute an insult? Considered in the light of normal, everyday, garden variety human cruelty in the marketplace, the ghetto, the family, in war, your inhuman refers to the abnormality of my actions, not their level of moral depravity.'

  `Dr. Rhinehart,' Dr. Weinburger interrupted, still standing, `would you please `Come on, I've only been talking nonsense an hour, give me a chance.'

  He stared wordlessly at Dr. Weinburger until the chairman slowly lowered himself
into his chair.

  `The suffering our dice-dictated actions causes is clearly nothing as compared man for man to that caused by rational, civilized man. Dicepeople are amateurs at evil. What seems to disturb you guys is that others are sometimes manipulated not by an ego-motivated me but by a dice-motivated me. It's the seeming gratuity of the occasional suffering we cause that shocks. You prefer purposeful, consistent, solidly structured suffering. The idea that we create love because the dice order us to, that we express love, that we feel love, all because of accident, shatters the fabric of your illusions about the nature of man.'

  When Dr. Weinburger began to rise in his chair again Dr. Rhinehart simply raised his huge right arm and continued calmly `But what is this nature of man you're so gung-ho to defend? Look at yourselves. Whatever happened to the real inventor in you? to the lover? or the adventurer? or the saint? or the woman? You killed them. Look at yourselves and ask: "Is this the Image of God in which man was created?"

  Dr. Rhinehart looked from Peerman to Cobblestone to Weinburger to Moon to Mann. `Blasphemy. God creates, experiments, rides the wind. He doesn't wallow in the accumulated feces of his past' Dr. Rhinehart put two sheets of paper back into his briefcase and stood up.

  `I'm going now, and you can vote. But remember, you are all potentially chameleons of the spirit, and thus of all the illusions that rob men of their divinity this is the cruelest; to call the rocklike burdensome shell of "character" and "individuality" man's greatest development. It's like praising a boat for its anchor.'