The Caine Mutiny (63 page)

“Dr. Lundeen, would you, as an expert witness, say that Commander Queeg should be restored to command of a United States naval vessel?”

“Well, I- The question’s pointless. That’s the province of the Bureau of Personnel. The man is not mentally ill. I’ve repeatedly stated that a paranoid disturbance, however mild, is a distorting condition and exceedingly unpleasant for associates. In war you make do with what you have. He isn’t disabled.”

“Would you care to have your son under Captain Queeg in battle?”

Lundeen glanced unhappily at the judge advocate, who jumped to his feet. “Objection. It is a personal emotional reaction that is being asked for, not an expert opinion.”

“I withdraw the question,” said Greenwald. “Thank you, Dr. Lundeen. Defense is finished.”

Captain Blakely said, “The court wishes to clear up one point.” The other court members looked tensely at the president. “Doctor, is such a thing possible-a temporary disability under stress, not amounting to a full collapse? Or-well, let me put it this way. Let’s say a man with a mild condition is not disabled for all the usual stresses of command. Now let’s say the stresses are multiplied manifold by a most extreme emergency. Would there be a loss in efficiency? A tendency to get confused and rattled, to make erroneous judgments?”

“Well, there might be. Extreme stress does that to almost anybody, sir.”

“It’s not supposed to do it to commanding officers.”

“No, but practically speaking, sir, they’re human, too.”

“Very well, Doctor, thank you.”

Challee resumed direct examination, and led Lundeen to assert several times, in different ways, that Queeg was not and had never been disabled. The doctor made these statements with aggrieved emphasis, occasionally looking sidewise at the defense lawyer.

“Dr. Bird will be my last witness, sir,” Challee said to the court, as the orderly went out to call the second psychiatrist. “Very well,” said Blakely, glancing at the clock. It was five minutes past two. The lieutenant who came in was an extremely slender, youthful-looking man with dark hair, sallow skin, and sharp sensitive features. His eyes were brown, deep-set, large, and penetrating. There was something of the fanatic in his look. He was quite handsome.

Under Challee’s questioning he confirmed everything that Dr. Lundeen had said about Queeg. In crisp, clear, yet gentle tones, he asserted that Queeg was fit for command now and had never been unfit. Challee said, “Did Dr. Manella concur with you and Dr. Lundeen in this opinion?”

“He did.”

Challee paused, then said, “Did you find any indication that the commander had what is known as a paranoid personality?”

“Well, I would prefer to call it an obsessive personality with paranoid features.”

“But this did not indicate mental unfitness?”

“No, it did not.”

“Do the terms ‘paranoid personality’ or ‘obsessive personality’ occur in your board’s report?”

“No.”

“Why not, Doctor?”

“Well, terminology is far from exact in psychiatry. The same terms may mean different things even to men of the same school. ‘Paranoid personality’ sounds disabling and really isn’t, at least not for me or Dr. Lundeen or Dr. Manella.”

“Then Commander Queeg was pronounced fit from three different psychiatric viewpoints?”

“Yes.”

“You unanimously agreed, Doctor, that Commander Queeg is mentally fit now and must have been mentally fit on 18 December, when he was summarily relieved on the grounds of mental illness?”

“That was our unanimous conclusion.”

“No further questions.”

Greenwald approached the witness. “Doctor, in the Freudian analysis is there such a thing as mental illness?”

“Well, there are disturbed people and adjusted people.”

“But
disturbed
and
adjusted
correspond roughly, don’t they, to the terms sick and well as laymen use them?”

“Very roughly, yes.”

“Would you say Commander Queeg suffers from inferiority feelings?”

“Yes.”

“Based on what?”

“Very severe childhood trauma. But they are well compensated.”

“Is there a difference between
compensated
and
adjusted
?”

“Most definitely.”

“Can you explain it?”

“Well-” Bird smiled and settled back in his chair. “Let’s say a man has some deep-seated psychological disturbance buried in his unconscious. It will drive him to do strange things and will keep him in a constant state of tension, but he’ll never know why. He can
compensate
by finding outlets for his peculiar drives, by will power, by daydreams, by any one of a thousand conscious devices. He can never
adjust
without undergoing psychoanalysis and bringing the disturbance up from the unconscious to the light of day.”

“Has Commander Queeg ever been psychoanalyzed?”

“No.”

“He is, then, a disturbed person?”

“Yes, he is. Not disabled, however, by the disturbance.”

“Dr. Lundeen testified that he was adjusted.”

Bird smiled. “Well, you’re in terminology again. Adjustment has a special meaning in Freudian technique. Dr. Lundeen used it roughly to mean that the patient has compensated for his disturbance.”

“Can you describe the commander’s disturbance?”

“Without an extensive analysis I could not describe it accurately.”

“You have no idea of what it is?”

“Of course the surface picture is clear. Commander Queeg subconsciously feels that he is disliked because he is wicked, stupid, and personally insignificant. This guilt and hostility trace back to infancy.”

“How has he compensated?”

“In two ways, mainly. The paranoid pattern, which is useless and not desirable, and his naval career, which is extremely useful and desirable.”

“You say his military career is a result of his disturbance?”

“Most military careers are.”

Greenwald glanced up surreptitiously at Blakely. “Would you explain that, Doctor?”

“I simply mean that it represents an escape, a chance to return to the womb and be reborn with a synthetic blameless self.”

Challee stood. “How far is this totally irrelevant technical discussion going to be pushed?”

“Are you objecting to the question?” Blakely said, scowling. “I am requesting the court to set limits to time-wasting by the defense in confusing irrelevancies.”

“Request noted. Proceed with cross-examination.”

Greenwald resumed, “Doctor, did you note any peculiar habit Commander Queeg had? Something he did with his hands?”

“Do you mean rolling the marbles?”

“Yes, did he do that in your presence?”

“Not for the first week or so. Then he told me about it and I recommended that he resume the habit if it made him more comfortable. And he did so.”

“Describe the habit, please.”

“Well, it’s an incessant rolling or rattling of two marbles in his hand-either hand.”

“Did he say why he did it?”

“His hands tremble. He does it to steady his hands and conceal the trembling.”

“Why do his hands tremble?”

“The inner tension. It’s one of the surface symptoms.”

“Does the rolling of balls have significance in the Freudian analysis?”

Bird glanced at the court uneasily. “Well, you go into technical jargon there.”

“Please make it as non-technical as possible.”

“Well, without analysis of the person you can only guess at the symbolism. It might be suppressed masturbation. It might be fondling poisonous pellets of feces. It all depends on-”

“Feces?”

“In the infantile world excrement is a deadly poison and therefore an instrument of vengeance. It would then be an expression of rage and hostility against the world.” The court members were exchanging half-amused, half-horrified side glances. Challee protested again about the waste of court time, and Blakely again overruled him. The president was squinting at the Freudian doctor as though he were some unbelievable freak.

“Doctor,” Greenwald went on, “you have testified that the commander is a disturbed, not an adjusted, person.”

“Yes.”

“In laymen’s terms, then, he’s sick.”

Bird smiled. “I remember agreeing to the rough resemblance of the terms
disturbed
and
sick
. But by those terms an awful lot of people are sick-”

“But this trial only has Commander Queeg’s sickness at issue. If he’s sick, how could your board have given him a clean bill of health?”

“You’re playing on words, I’m afraid. We found no disability.”

“Could his sickness, greatly intensified, disable him?”

“Very greatly intensified, yes.”

Greenwald said with sudden sharpness, “Isn’t there another possibility, Doctor?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose the requirements of command were many times as severe as you believe them to be-wouldn’t even this mild sickness disable Queeg?”

“That’s absurdly hypothetical, because-”

“Is it? Have you ever had sea duty, Doctor?”

“No.”

“Have you ever
been
to sea?”

“No.” Bird was losing his self-possessed look.

“How long have you been in the Navy?”

“Five months-no, six, I guess, now-”

“Have you had any dealings with ships’ captains before this case?”

“No.”

“On what do you base your estimate of the stresses of command?”

“Well, my general knowledge-”

“Do you think command requires a highly gifted, exceptional person?”

“Well, no-”

“It doesn’t?”

“Not highly gifted, no. Adequate responses, fairly good intelligence, and sufficient training and experience, but-”

“Is that enough equipment for, say, a skilled psychiatrist?”

“Well, not exactly-that is, it’s a different field-”

“In other words, it takes more ability to be a psychiatrist than the captain of a naval vessel?” The lawyer looked toward Blakely.

“It takes-that is, different abilities are required. You’re making the invidious comparison, not I:”

“Doctor, you have admitted Commander Queeg is sick, which is more than Dr. Lundeen did. The only remaining question is,
how
sick. You don’t think he’s sick enough to be disabled for command. I suggest that since evidently you don’t know much about the requirements of command you may be wrong in your conclusion.”

“I repudiate your suggestion.” Bird looked like an insulted boy. His voice quivered. “You’ve deliberately substituted the word
sick
, which is a loose, a polarized word, for the correct-”

“Pardon me, what kind of word?”

“Polarized-loaded, invidious-I never said sick. My grasp of the requirements of command is adequate or I would have disqualified myself from serving on the board-”

“Maybe you should have.”

Challee shouted, “The witness is being badgered.”

“I withdraw my last statement. No more questions.” Greenwald strode to his seat.

For ten minutes Challee tried to get Bird to withdraw the word “sick.” The young doctor was upset. He became querulous and dogmatic, and threw up clouds of terminology. He refused to abandon the word. Challee finally excused the balky, hostile psychiatrist. He introduced as evidence the medical board’s report, the Ulithi doctor’s report, several of Queeg’s fitness reports, and sundry logs and records of the
Caine
. His presentation was finished.

“It’s three o’clock,” said Blakely. “Is the defense ready to present its case?”

“I only have two witnesses, sir,” said the pilot. “The first is the accused.”

“Does the accused request that he be permitted to testify?”

At a nod from his lawyer, Maryk stood. “I do so request, sir.”

“Stenographer will affirmatively record that the statutory request was made. ... Defense proceed to present its case.”

Maryk told the story of the morning of December 18. It was a repetition of Willie Keith’s version. Greenwald said, “Was the ship in the last extremity when you relieved the captain?”

“It was.”

“On what facts do you base that judgment?”

Maryk ran his tongue over his lips. “Well, several things, like-well, we were unable to hold course. We broached to three times in an hour. We were rolling too steeply for the inclinometer to record. We were shipping solid water in the wheelhouse. The generators were cutting out. The lights and the gyro cut off and on. The ship wasn’t answering to emergency rudder and engine settings. The radar was jammed out by sea return. We were lost and out of control.”