by Barbara Paul
“Can I help you?” the man asked. “Are you looking for someone?”
“Uh, I have an appointment with Dr. Pierce,” Gus said.
“You’re headed in the right direction. Straight down this corridor and to your left. Dr. Pierce is a good man. You can trust him.” The man nodded pleasantly and went his way.
Gus glared after him. He made it to Dr. Pierce’s office without further incident.
It wasn’t so roomy and fine an office as Snooks’s, and the one small window looked out on nothing in particular. Dr. Pierce himself was youngish in comparison to most of the people Gus had talked to, early or mid-thirties. He listened wordlessly to Gus’s story about a friend who couldn’t remember one day in her life but then held up a hand just as Gus was fishing out Megan’s picture.
“One moment. Why did your friend not come see me herself?”
“This is my idea. She hasn’t even considered hypnotism, so far as I know. I just wanted to find out if it might help before I suggested it to her.”
“Then she doesn’t know you’re here?”
“That’s right. You see, she’s a little embarrassed by what happened and doesn’t really like to talk about it.”
Dr. Pierce gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “Hypnotism won’t help without her full and willing cooperation. If you have to talk her into it—”
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll come to that,” Gus said hastily. “It’s just that she hasn’t thought of hypnotism, that’s all. Can hypnosis bring out suppressed memories?”
“Quite frequently,” the hypnotherapist said. “But no two human minds are exactly alike, and what works for one might not work for another. Nevertheless, hypnotic suggestion has proved to be an effective form of treatment in many cases of memory loss. Assuming there’s no organic cause, of course.”
“Of course,” Gus said—and quickly slid Megan’s photograph onto Dr. Pierce’s desk. “That’s my friend.”
Dr. Pierce casually picked up the photograph and squinted myopically—and then did a double take only a blind man could have missed. Gus felt the hairs rise on his arms. The hypnotherapist looked from the photograph to Gus, clearly astonished. “This is your friend? The one who lost her memory?”
“That’s the one,” Gus said, trying not to let his excitement show.
Dr. Pierce looked at the photograph a moment longer and then abruptly dropped it on the desk. He swiveled his chair so that he was staring out the window. Gus pocketed the photograph and wondered whether to say anything or not.
Finally Dr. Pierce spoke, still staring out the window. “You say she doesn’t know you’re here?”
“That’s right.”
“She didn’t send you?”
“No, Dr. Pierce, she didn’t send me. I told you this was my idea.” Oh my, Gus thought with a mixture of glee and fear. This is the guy, oh yes. Take a little risk? “Is something wrong?”
The question brought Dr. Pierce back. He swiveled around to face Gus and said crisply, “I’m sorry, Mr. Bilinski, I won’t be able to take your friend as a patient. Recalling lost memories is an unpredictable undertaking. We might get it in the very first session, but sometimes treatment can stretch out for months. My current case load makes it impossible for me to take on any more long-term patients.”
Gus was reluctant to let him off the hook. “You could see her once, couldn’t you? For a diagnostic session?”
The doctor shook his head. “She’d just have to repeat the session with another therapist. I’m sorry. I can give you some names—”
Gus assured him he already had some names, and understood Dr. Pierce wanted him to leave. He accepted his cue.
Out in the hall Gus wasn’t able to restrain himself; he indulged in a little soft shoe dance. He glanced around quickly to see if anyone was watching, and then successfully sneaked back the way he’d come. He wanted a telephone.
The nearest one was in the reception area of the clinic itself, but it wasn’t enclosed in a booth; the receptionist would hear every word he said. He waved goodbye to her and plunged through the double doors.
Henrietta Snooks looked out her window to see a familiar scarecrow figure bobbing its way along the sidewalk. Now what the hell was Gus Bilinski doing here?
“Megan Phillips,” she answered the phone.
“Megan, I think I’ve found him.”
Her intake of breath was audible over the line. “What’s his name?”
“Dr. Gerald Pierce. A highly respectable practitioner in the field of hypnotherapy,” Gus announced with elation.
“Jerry Pierce? Did you say Jerry Pierce?”
“Gerald Pierce, yes.”
“About six feet tall, dark-blond hair, gray eyes? He’s—let’s see—he’d be thirty-four now.”
“Fits him to a T,” Gus said, his elation beginning to seep away.
“So he went into hypnotherapy,” Megan said absently. “I didn’t know that. He never showed any particular interest in it.”
“I take it you know him, then,” Gus remarked dryly.
“Used to. We dated in college—he was in pre-med then. Jerry Pierce, imagine that.” Suddenly she laughed. “That must have been a shock to him—your handing him my picture, I mean.”
“He did show a certain reaction, yes.” Gus was annoyed.
“I’ll bet he did. You can forget about Jerry, Gus. It was strictly a personal reaction, I can assure you. Jerry and I once skittered up to the very edge of marriage, but we both thought better of it.” She laughed again. “Jerry Pierce!”
“His name was on the AMA list you gave me, Megan.”
“Oh, I didn’t read it. I just handed it to you.” There was still a laugh in her voice.
“I’m glad you’re getting so much amusement out of this,” he said peevishly.
“Oh, Gus—I’m sorry. You’re disappointed, of course.” A slight pause. “I am too, come to think of it. Hell. But it wasn’t Jerry. He just doesn’t want to run into me again. Not too flattering, but understandable. It was a long time ago, but we didn’t part on the best of terms.”
“Okay,” Gus sighed. “I’ll keep looking.” He hung up and pulled out his notebook, checking to see where his next appointment would lead him.
“Megan Phillips,” she answered the phone.
“Megan, this is Snooks. What was Gus doing at the clinic?”
Pow! “At the clinic?” Megan stalled.
“At the clinic. I saw him leave not more than ten minutes ago.”
“Why, I don’t know, Snooks. He didn’t stop in to see you?”
“No, he didn’t stop in to see me. I wouldn’t have to ask you what he was doing here if he’d stopped in to see me, would I?”
“Don’t take my head off. I don’t know why he was there.”
“You two are up to something.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean you’re up to something.”
“Snooks, we’re not going to quarrel again, are we?”
“Not if you tell me the truth.”
“But I am telling you the truth! I don’t know what Gus was doing there.”
There was a silence. Then: “All right. If you won’t tell me, you won’t tell me.”
The phone went dead in Megan’s hand. Oh, great. Now she and Gus would have to think up some story to tell the psychiatrist.
Was Snooks going to be a problem?
A few days later, Gus was feeling more discouraged than ever. He was getting nowhere. He’d been able to cross seven hypnotherapists off his list without visiting them, because they were women. The voice on the phone had definitely been male. Two of the hypnotherapists had refused him appointments, saying they were accepting no new patients for the time being. Three others were on vacation.
He had only two names left; both therapists had given him appointments for Wednesday of the following week. They’d probably be just like all the others—they’d look at the photograph, smile politely,
and hand it back. Then what? Where would he look then? There were still the medical doctors and dentists who used hypnotism in their practices. But how could he find out who they were? Did the AMA keep that kind of listing too? Probably not. Or the dentists’ organization, the something Odontological Society. And hadn’t Snooks mentioned a hypnotists’ union? Maybe Megan could take care of all that. She was better at dealing with organizations than he was.
Even with those possibilities ahead of him, Gus still felt as if he’d failed. This wasn’t just another puzzle to be solved; there was too much riding on the outcome. So much time he’d spent, and all he’d come up with was one of Megan’s old boyfriends. How naïve he’d been, thinking he could go out and find the hypnotist just like that. Dumb. He deserved to fail.
Whenever Gus was in a masochistic mood, he liked to read the bulletin boards at whatever institution of higher learning he happened to be teaching in at the moment. The one he was staring at just then was on the ground floor of the grandiose Pitt building called the Cathedral of Learning. Theses and dissertations in sociology, reasonable rates … Research papers, all humanities subjects … Choose from our stock of tested term papers, guaranteed B or better … Hypnosis and psychodrama …
Hypnosis? Gus read that one all the way through.
Volunteers wanted for experimental group sessions combining hypnosis and psychodrama. Group members will be placed in a light trance and asked to act out their emotional problems. $20.00 remuneration per session. Registration in Room 117, Mercer Hall.
Dr. Harrison J. Algren,
Project Director
Harrison J. Algren, Harrison J. Algren. Sounded familiar. Gus pulled out his notebook. Ah, yes—Algren was one of the two who’d refused to give him an appointment because they weren’t taking any new patients just then. Well, if Algren was directing experimental studies at Pitt in addition to keeping up with his own practice, he probably didn’t have much time. Gus felt a sudden urge to volunteer for the great and noble experiment of combining psychodrama with hypnosis. Besides, it sounded like an easy way to pick up twenty bucks.
Mercer Hall, the bulletin board notice had said. Gus left the Cathedral of Learning and headed toward that complex of buildings called the University Health Center. He headed up DeSoto Street. Some of the Health Center’s buildings were on top of a hill; Mercer Hall was one of them.
Gus found the building and went looking for Room 117. It was an office, with a long counter separating the office workers from the outside world. Gus told a middle-aged woman behind the counter why he was there and was handed a registration form to fill out. It was six pages long. Under Occupation he wrote “student”; it was simpler. He still looked like a student.
The section asking for personal data was relatively short; the bulk of the form was given over to questions that were truly personal. They ranged from “Do you ever dream of buildings on fire?” to “How often do you masturbate?” This registration form was really a little test designed to weed out the more obvious nut cases.
Gus felt a surge of pleasure; the art of test-taking was something he’d mastered years ago. Tests were just another form of puzzle, especially if they were of the true-false, fill-in-the-blank, multiple-guess sort. The wording, the frequency with which certain subjects were repeated, the exact placement of questions within the test—all these were clues to the kind of answers the test-makers wanted. Gus chose answers that would make him appear average, normal, standard—whatever term the psychologists preferred. With just a touch of neurosis to keep him from being unbelievable. The final question was: “Why have you volunteered for this project?” Gus wrote, “For the money.” That was one motive that would never be questioned anywhere, any time, under any circumstances.
When he was finished, the middle-aged woman took back the form and glanced at his name. “You’ll be contacted by someone connected with the project, Mr. Bilinski—to make the final arrangements.”
Once they decide I’m not crazy. “Fine,” Gus said.
“If you’re selected for the project,” the woman went on, “you’ll be asked to attend one session a week for six weeks. They’ve scheduled sessions for three different times during the week—Monday nights, Thursday afternoons, and Saturday mornings. Which would be most convenient for you?”
“Is Dr. Algren directing all three sessions?”
“Dr. Algren is directing the project, but the only session he’s taking himself is the Monday night one.”
“Monday would be good.”
The woman wrote “Mon” in the corner of his application. “You’ll be contacted soon.” He was dismissed.
It didn’t take long. The next night Gus got a call asking him to report to Room 404 of Mercer Hall at 7:30 P.M. the following Monday.
There were only eight of them in the group. Gus was surprised; he’d expected a larger number. All eight were about the same age. They were seated in a circle, Gus between a girl wearing thick-lensed glasses and another who kept pulling nervously at her hair.
Dr. Harrison J. Algren was a solid, authoritative-looking man in his forties. He moved and spoke with a self-assurance that Gus frankly envied. Dr. Algren was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. He had two youngish assistants, whom he introduced without any honorifics—graduate students, no doubt. Dr. Algren gave a little speech that was designed to reassure as much as explain.
“We’re not going to try any drastic new techniques on you,” he said. “In fact, we’re not doing anything new at all. What’s going to happen here has been done many times before—combining hypnosis with psychodrama is not new. What we’re interested in is accumulating data. We have six separate situations we’re going to ask you to act out. Tonight will be the first.
“You filled out a questionnaire when you registered for this project,” he went on. “Your answers indicate all eight of you are among the seventy to ninety-five percent of the populace that are capable of going into a trance. This doesn’t mean you are weak-willed. Just the opposite. It means you are bright and imaginative and with good powers of concentration. It means you are capable of becoming deeply involved.”
Well, aren’t we wonderful, Gus thought.
“One common misconception I’d like to clear up,” Dr. Algren said. “The word hypnosis comes from Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. But that’s wrong. Hypnosis is not sleep, nor even similar to sleep. It’s not even a state of unconsciousness. You can think and talk and hear other people. You can move around and do things. There’s no unique physiological difference between a person under hypnosis and someone who’s not. But in a hypnotic state—and at the suggestion of the hypnotist and with your consent—you will be able to experience new perceptions and usually recall buried memories as well.”
Aha, thought Gus. Recall buried memories.
“Our procedure will be this. Each of you will be taken separately into another room and put into a light trance. Then you’ll come back here, and the psychodrama will begin. Tonight the subject is fear. We’re going to ask a couple of you to act out what it is you’re most afraid of. Next week we’ll ask others to play the starring roles, and so on.”
For the first time it occurred to Gus that he might spill out some things that ought to be kept secret—such as the fact that his real reason for being there was to find out whether Algren was a villain or not. But it was going to be only a light trance, and Algren had said “with your consent”—it ought to be all right.
When Gus’s turn came to be hypnotized, he went into a small room with one of the graduate students. She was a woman in her late twenties, and she had something of the same confident air that Algren had.
She started off by saying, “You’re going to go home feeling more relaxed than when you came in.”
“Yeah? You’re sure of that?”
“We give you a posthypnotic suggestion.” She smiled disarmingly. “We have an ulterior motive. We want you to look forward to these sessions.”
Gus laughed and put himself in her hands.
There was remarkably little hocus-pocus. Mostly the procedure consisted of her telling Gus how good he felt. She must have told him in the right way because soon he became aware of a feeling of lightness that was most pleasant. When she told him he could go back into the main room, he actually asked her if he was hypnotized.
“A light trance,” she said. “Receptive to suggestion, that’s all.”
Algren talked to them again, relaxing them even further. He has one of those nice voices that sound familiar even when you’ve never heard them before, Gus thought. Algren stressed the fact that all the members of the group were students (good thing Gus had fibbed), building up their sense of shared problems and goals. Gus looked at the other members of the group and felt close to them. He smiled at the girl with glasses sitting next to him; she smiled back.
Then Algren asked if someone wished to come forward and serve as the protagonist of their psychodrama. Without hesitation the girl with glasses volunteered. The one whose fears were nearest the surface?
The girl’s name was Polly, and she “shared” with the group the fact that she’d begun to have severe bouts of depression. As she talked, she seemed to be discovering how deep-seated her own fears were. Gus found himself becoming worried, feeling Polly’s anxieties.
Dr. Algren asked her to be more specific about what she was afraid of. The first thing that came out was that Polly had only recently learned she had glaucoma. There were other fears, but Polly’s thoughts were dominated by her fear that she might go blind.
Then Dr. Algren asked the other members of the group to play the role of some part of Polly’s body.
“I’ll be her eyes,” Gus heard himself saying. Others volunteered to play her heart, her mind, her hands. For some reason one person wanted to play her toenails.
Dr. Algren played the stage manager. He called one “character” at a time to improvise a scene with Polly. When Gus came on to play “Eyes,” Polly turned on him with fury.
“You’ve let me down!” she screamed. “I depend on you, I’ve always depended on you—and you’ve let me down!”
