The Mind of Mr Soames (13 page)

Conway suppressed the fury that surged within him, and maintained a calm, patient demeanour. ‘Exactly,’ he said quietly. ‘You picked up the chair and hit the orderly with it, just as you tried to do to me. But it’s not funny, you know. It’s not funny to try to hurt people.’

Mr Soames looked slightly crestfallen in a sombre way. ‘People hurt me—I hurt people,’ he pronounced solemnly.

‘How do people hurt you?’ Conway demanded.

‘No clothes, bad food, lock me in a room all day...’

‘That is because you were...’ He almost used the word ‘naughty’, but decided against it. ‘Because you were being difficult—disobedient. You understand disobedient?’

. Mr Soames shook his head morosely.

‘Because you would not do what you were told to do,’ Conway explained. ‘We are trying to help you, but sometimes you do not wish to be helped, and you have to be punished.’

‘I don’t want to be punished.’

‘Then you must do what people who are trying to help you tell you to do.’

‘I don’t want to do what they tell me.’

‘You must learn,’ Conway said slowly and emphatically, ‘that what you want and what you don’t want are not important. There are many things that matter more. Doing what you are told to do is one of the things that are far more important at present. When you have learned all that we can teach you, then you will be able to make up your own mind about what you want to do, but until then you must do as we say.’

Mr Soames stared at him blankly for a while, then said : ‘Why?’

Why indeed, Conway thought. Because the particular society in which we happen to live possesses certain criteria of conduct and behaviour, and it is generally better to conform, if one wishes to live a peaceful life and avoid trouble. Because the particular form of psychological conditioning known as education is required to follow a preordained pattern developed over the centuries to produce the kind of citizens most suited to their environment. Because
homo sapiens
, in his condition of civilised enlightenment (if that is the word), has adopted a simple binary classification of human behaviour into good and bad. Good is right and bad is wrong, but only in terms of social relationships and responsibilities. ‘I want’ is good if it also fits the existing structure of social conditioning; if not, then it is bad. ‘I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ are irrelevant in themselves. One must learn to like what is good because it is right, and, conversely, to dislike what is bad because it is wrong. In such a way one acquires social education and conditioning, like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

None of which was an answer to Mr Soames’s blunt question, however. With the simple logic of a child he just wanted to know why he had to do as he was told, to differentiate between arbitrary standards of right and wrong when, in fact, right was what he liked and wrong was what he didn’t like. There was no adequate reply that could satisfy him in his present stage of mental development; indeed, a reply was not needed. Training required no explanation. It was a discipline imposed from outside; a drill demanding obedience and, to some extent, dedication. Above all, there had to be the recognition of, and respect for, authority—and that was Mr Soames’s trouble all along the line. He was being educated as a child with the status of a man, and in consequence he recognised no authority but his own. It was the typical syndrome of the spoilt brat, the juvenile delinquent, the post-war ‘crazy mixed-up kid’—the defiant adolescent suffering from under-discipline and over-indulgence, the only one in step in an out-of-step world.

Still no answer to Mr Soames’s vital question.
Why!
Conway could think of a thousand reasons why, but none of them would be comprehensible to Mr Soames’s naïve and egocentric mind. But clearly there had to be an answer, and a quick answer, for Mr Soames was becoming restless and uneasy.

Conway said, with all the authority he could muster: ‘Because I said so.’

Mr Soames considered that for a while. Conway could almost visualise his mind ticking over, fitting the words into place semantically. Why must Soames do as he is told? Because Conway said so. Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer...

‘Why should I?’ Mr Soames said presently. ‘Why not you do as I say? I stronger than you.’

Eminently reasonable, Conway decided. Mr Soames was something of a fundamentalist. Might is right, and right is what I want. The basic conflict of nature herself, and certainly of human beings from the dawn of history. Law is power and power is law: conquer and rule, or surrender and serve. On the other hand, in this particular case, it was essential to avoid any feeling of personal conflict. True, Mr Soames had to be made to respect authority, but it had to be an impersonal authority involving the recognition of accepted behaviour codes. Therein lay the fault. If Mr Soames was in essence a child, then logically he should pursue the step-by-step progression of the typical child, accepting first the totalitarian but benevolent authority of the parent, and then transferring it incrementally to the school-teacher, the employer, the police, the judiciary and the government, progressing ultimately to the acceptance of an abstract system of morality that would override and justify, all other forms of authoritarian discipline. But such progress could hardly be accomplished without punishment, or the threat of punishment, exercised in the shape of guidance firmly imposed: the slapping hand of the parent, the cane of the school-teacher or the imprisonment of school detention, the danger of dismissal from a job or the shadow of demotion or unemployment, the impersonal machinery of the law, empowered by the police and activated by the courts, and finally the arbitrary dictates of government, whether democratic or otherwise, subordinating the individual to the corporate jurisdiction of the human mass that comprised the State. Here and now, what Mr Soames obviously needed more than anything was a father—a firm, strong, uncompromising father. But Mr Soames was also a big, strong adult, and, as he had just stated, stronger than Conway himself if it came to the point.

‘I do not make the rules,’ Conway said tactfully. ‘The rules are made by many people and we all have to obey—even I have to obey. If I do not obey, then I, too, may be punished.’

Mr Soames began to show mild interest. ‘They lock you in room and take away your clothes?’

‘If I break certain rules called laws they can certainly lock me in a room, perhaps for many years, and they can take away my clothes and give me other bad clothes to wear. And if I were to break certain other laws they could put a rope round my neck and hang me.’

‘Hang?’ Soames echoed.

‘Kill-with a rope.’

‘Oh.’

It was fairly evident to Conway that Mr Soames was getting a little out of his depth, and that it was premature and probably unwise to embark on a simplified explanation of crime, punishment and execution. For one thing, the association of ideas was undesirable, and it seemed an ill-judged moment to implant in his mind visual images associated with killing—albeit judicial killing—as if the simple violence of the patient were being countered by the implied threat of a more lethal kind of violence. Mr Soames certainly seemed to have become suddenly thoughtful and subdued, and it was time to change the subject ‘Let’s go for a walk in the grounds,’ Conway suggested.

Mr Soames nodded slowly and glumly.

‘Good,’ Conway went on. ‘It will make you feel much better, and then you can have the food you like, and the games, and see films and so on. Just wait here for a few minutes, and I will come back for you.’

He left the room, locking the door quietly behind him, and went in search of another male nurse to help escort the patient on his excursion out of doors. Mr Soames’s pacific mood seemed just a little too good to be true, and it wasn’t wise to take chances.

Mr Soames
remained on his behaviour throughout the remainder of the day, as if his violent outburst of the morning had been a mere tantrum, but Conway was far from gratified. The patient had become docile, it was true, but in a morose, withdrawn fashion suggesting utter defeat. At no time did he show any sign of pleasure at his newly restored privileges.

It was, in a way, a logical enough reaction, Conway supposed, characteristic of the cycloid or manic-depressive type of personality. Mr Soames was happiest when asserting himself in defiance of authority, and the negative phase of surrender and submission merely produced depression, even though the circumstances of living became more pleasant. If the pattern proved to be consistent, one might even be able to predict his probable behaviour by his moods; good humour would signal stubbornness and truculence, while despondency would indicate obedient sulky compliance.

Conway put this viewpoint to Dr Mortimer during the afternoon. Mortimer was conducting what amounted to a formal enquiry into the assault on the male nurse, presumably to allocate responsibility and prepare a report for Dr Breuer. The enquiry proved to be relatively inconclusive, and even Mortimer himself admitted that the incident was fundamentally childish, which was what one might expect, anyway. He did not think it called for a further withdrawal of privileges or any disciplinary action under the circumstances, though obviously the male nurses, and the doctors too, for that matter, would need to exercise more caution when dealing with the patient, ‘As I see it,’ Conway said, ‘Mr Soames is likely to be dangerous when happy and harmless when unhappy. I think that might prove a useful barometer as to his behaviour, for the present, at least. In a sense he’s trying to establish himself as an individual, and that implies a certain resistance to imposed regulations. He hasn’t yet learned to compromise—how to make the best of both worlds.’

‘I think we need to be particularly careful at this stage,’ Mortimer said thoughtfully. ‘We have to encourage the feeling of contentment combined with independence, but at the same time we must suppress any hint of open conflict with authority, and try to do it without causing unnecessary depression in the patient. There is a very real danger that we might inadvertently create a fundamentally schizophrenic personality operating in two parallel modes.’

Conway said: ‘I can’t help feeling that he ought to be allowed to mix with other people, at his own level, as it were. At the moment he’s the focus of attention, and the film units making documentary records of his progress haven’t helped. He’s being spoiled—as a kind of superlative only child—and it’s producing the inevitable reaction: the truculent phase followed by the sulking phase. The “you can’t play in my garden” attitude.’

‘That is to be expected,’ Mortimer pointed out. ‘We really must try to differentiate between the physical Soames and the mental Soames. Our immediate responsibility is the mental Soames, in terms of psychotherapy, and we are not basically concerned with the physical Soames at all, except in so far as he may need to be restrained from violence for his own ultimate good. In the long term what he does physically will depend on how he thinks mentally. We must take things in the correct order of priority.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Conway said dubiously. ‘It seems to me that Mr Soames’s thinking may well depend on how he’s allowed to behave. Like the chicken and the egg, it may be a question of which comes first.’

‘He’s a child,’ Mortimer insisted. ‘His mind is embryonic. Until it is fully developed he will tend to behave in an arbitrary, irrational way, like any paranoiac or schizo case.’

Conway shrugged. ‘True enough, I suppose, Dr Mortimer. That’s the trouble with the Soames case—every viewpoint seems to be correct. They can’t all be right.’

‘I wonder,’ Mortimer murmured wistfully. ‘It could be that we
are
all right, and all wrong at the same time, if you see what I mean. Which of us really understands the
reed
Mr Soames?’

‘You mean Soames the adult or Soames the child...’

‘Both together—the adult-child, or the child-adult. It’s a little out of the routine run of psychiatric experience. There are no earlier case histories to establish a useful precedent.’

Conway considered for a moment. ‘I suppose the only thing to do is to proceed by trial and error.’

‘That’s the trouble, Dr Conway,’ Mortimer said, shaking his head sadly. ‘And I’m very much afraid that most of our trials may end in serious error.’

Fair comment, Conway thought, and there was nothing one could add to what seemed to be a mere statement of fact.

❖

Dr Takaito arrived late the following afternoon, for which Dr Breuer was quietly thankful, have reached the point where he was prepared to welcome outside advice on how to handle Mr Soames. At least the Japanese psychoneurologist had had the grace to show up before the threatened visit of Mrs Martinez and her daughter, and so would be able to witness the situation as it developed. To cement the Anglo-Asiatic
entente cordiale
Breuer provided a bottle of Scotch whisky, which Takaito put to good use without invitation.

When they were comfortably settled in deep armchairs, Breuer wasted no time in bringing Takaito up to date on the Soames case history, explaining in considerable detail the more obscure facts of the patient’s perverse nature. Takaito for his part listened amiably to the other’s clinical exposition of Mr Soames’s recalcitrant personality, helping himself to a drink from time to time as if suffering from chronic alcohol deficiency. He sat lethargically in the chair near to the window of Breuer’s study, peering shrewdly at his host through his heavy concave glasses and holding his whisky glass in a steady hand.

‘The situation at the moment,’ Dr Breuer concluded, ‘is that Mr Soames has subsided into a compliant but relatively unhappy state, as if weighed down by an overpowering sense of humiliation and defeat.’

‘Mm,’ Takaito observed enigmatically.

‘To make matters worse, I had a telephone call from the editor of the National Daily Courier a short while ago. Soames’s mother and sister are on their way here. I’m expecting them within the hour.’

Takaito finished his drink and shrugged. ‘A good thing, perhaps, Dr Breuer. Mr Soames cannot live in a vacuum forever.’