The Search for Bridey Murphy (5 page)

I reached into my pocket, looking for anything that might serve to fill in the blanks for me. I pulled out a letter. From its date I oriented myself to some degree; and from the contents of the letter, which concerned a current business project, I learned more about myself. Enough, at any rate, to venture forth into the hall.

I bumped smack into the busy doctor, who had apparently forgotten all about me by this time. “Oh, hello,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Fine. This is Saturday, June twenty-first. The time is 3:15 P.M., and I just took a shock treatment for experimental purposes.” The time had come from the clock in the therapy room, and the remainder of the dope had been wrung from the letter.

I expected the doctor to break out in applause at this fine performance. But he merely nodded his head and rushed on.

Wandering out on the hospital grounds, I kept piecing together the balance of the puzzle. When I finally remembered how I’d got to the hospital I found my car and drove home.

Within three or four hours my memory was back to normal. But I must admit that during these hours some of the questions I put to my wife, who did not at that time know about the treatment, had her watching me out of the corner of her eye. When I asked, for instance, whether my father was in town and what college my brother attended, she began to grow a little concerned. But she became downright alarmed when she found me trying to recall what she had served me for lunch only a few hours before. So I finally told her about the shock experiment.

It should be emphasized, however, that the shock treatment was not painful in any manner whatsoever. I felt nothing; I had no stiffness, no bruises, no damaging aftereffects of any kind. Even the temporary loss of certain memories was only silly, not frightening. Referring to the doctor’s earlier comment that this was not
comparable to sticking a finger in the electric light receptacle, my own conclusion was that the sensation from a light socket is somewhat more unpleasant.

Afterward I really did feel calm, relaxed, somewhat more at ease than usual. And remember that the whole purpose of this experience was to achieve a relaxed state in order to determine whether in such a condition I was readily hypnotizable. But I am afraid that the effort was wasted; my hypnotist friend, Bill Moery,
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could not work on me—I learned at the last minute—that night. Days later, when Bill ultimately got to me, I was back in the old groove at my office; those post-shock moments of tranquility were all gone.

But if the shock treatment had been surprisingly pleasant, my next venture, the carbon dioxide treatment, provided retribution with interest. It was unexpectedly harrowing. Believe me, never again will I walk into a treatment room and ask to have a carbon dioxide mask clamped on my face. What a trial of feverish panic that was!

I had learned about this relatively new treatment from a young psychiatrist. The two of us had been brought together through our mutual interest in hypnotism. Unfortunately the doctor had been unable to evoke any real interest in hypnotic therapy at his institution. Although he himself was using it to a limited extent, the frowns of his associates made it clear that efforts in this direction were not entirely welcome. I suppose, therefore, that we first came together to deplore the general neglect of this mighty scientific tool.

However, the interests of this young doctor were certainly not confined to hypnosis. He intensively researched into practically every aspect of the psychiatric field, especially seeking out any new developments. There were stacks of medical journals in his apartment, and he really read them. One day he read that a type of carbon dioxide treatment was being used with some success on an imposing number of mental cases.

Off he went, racing to the nearest hospital where he could learn more about this relatively new application. He studied the apparatus in detail, finally promoted its installation in his own hospital, and then he took the first treatment himself.

Here I want to doff my hat to our many, many doctors who, like this young medic, are striving incessantly to find better ways to help the sick. Few of us can realize how sincerely and strenuously these weary men are grinding away at the stumbling blocks in the way to better health.

After my medical friend took his carbon dioxide (CO2) treatment he told me about it. “It gives you a wondrously relaxed feeling,” he said.

There was my signal again!

I was soon maneuvering to get myself one of these CO2 treatments. If this was so “wondrously” relaxing it might be that key I was seeking to prepare me for hypnosis.

To my surprise, no stratagems were necessary. Before I could even jockey into position, he sensed what I was up to and asked whether I would like to take one of these treatments.

So the next day I was once again stretching out on a white table in a psychopathic hospital, this time getting instructions for the administration of a combination of 80 per cent oxygen and 20 per cent carbon dioxide.

The doctor explained that the whole point was to inhale this gaseous mixture until passing into a coma, as it was this state of stupor which somehow always seems to result in a blissfully relaxed state afterward.

Then I was shown the mask, which looks harmless enough; also the bottles of oxygen and carbon dioxide, the controls, and the small-diameter hoses leading from the bottles to the mask. Nothing there to worry a fellow; it was rather like the old-fashioned dental gas equipment. I presumed that I would start inhaling normally and that, little by little, my breathing would become deeper until I drifted off to sleep.

But the doctor’s next words straightened me out—stiffened me, in fact. “This may become a little unpleasant,” he said. “You might experience an odd breathless sensation.”

This comment, I was soon to learn, was a most flagrant understatement.

But before he finally fixed the mask over my nose and mouth he explained his technique: As I inhaled he would count out loud the consecutive number of each one of my inhalations, and at some point during the counting he would suddenly pull off my mask and ask me to repeat the last number that he had called out. This
device would serve as a gauge to the progress of the treatment. My degree of confusion in attempting to answer him—or my complete failure to respond—would obviously provide him with the cues he needed.

He then called in a husky nurse, introduced me to her, and explained that she would hold my hands. I thought that he must be joking. What was the need for holding my hands?

But he meant exactly what he said. The hand-holding was necessary, he told me, because there might be a tendency on the part of the patient to pull off the mask. Tendency! Another understatement.

He asked me to lie back and give my hands to the nurse. He took the mask and I saw it coming down over my face. That very first instant I was gasping for life! I was sucking desperately, helplessly for air. I was certain that there had been a mistake; that something had gone wrong with the controls; that I was not intended to suffocate from the very first moment. I had expected that the sensations would compare to those experienced while running for some distance—at first you breathe perfectly naturally, and then as the concentration of carbon dioxide builds up respiration becomes gradually more labored. But no! This satanic machine would not even grant a period of adjustment; it was a fight for life, as far as I was concerned, from that very first instant.

In frenzied panic I instinctively moved to tear off the mask. But the nurse must surely have been a former female wrestling champ; my hands were locked. While I exhaustively strained for a breath of air I visualized the article—one I would never see—in tomorrow’s paper: “Psychic research leads to accidental suffocation of local businessman.”

Suddenly the mask was yanked off and the doctor was shouting into my puffing face, “What was the last number?”

“Ten,” I panted. Boom! Down came the mask again before I could even gasp that I was strangling. Incredibly, this went on until the count of fifty, at which time the doctor stopped the whole thing.

He was shaking his head. “That’s funny,” he said.

My face was a blazing red; my lungs were pumping like bellows; I had narrowly escaped suffocation.

“Funny,” he said again, but the look on his face indicated that what he really meant was that he was puzzled. “The average pa
tient,” he explained, “passes out somewhere between the counts of ten and thirty. Perhaps you were getting some outside air from leakage at the bottom of the mask. We’ll try it again and I’ll watch more closely this time.”

I was faced with a decision. Which was worse: to admit that I was a coward and that I could not take any more; or to go through that ordeal all over again? While I was making up my mind, down came the mask and we were off again.

It turned out to be an almost exact repetition of the first round, so the doctor gave up—thank heaven!—concluding that there had definitely been a leakage.

Even so, I was very pleasantly relaxed during the remainder of the day. When I got back to my business that afternoon, for instance, my father noticed and commented on my relaxed, easy manner. “Well,” I improvised, “I have just been taking some new exercises. An almost breathless experience!” Then I darted upstairs to my office to cut off any further probing. But when my hypnotizability was tested that night—and, after all, that was the whole idea of the treatment—there was no apparent change. I was still a poor subject.

Still there remained an ace in the hole. A group of doctors and psychologists had repeatedly insisted that an almost positive method of breaking down resistant subjects was readily available in a process known as narcosynthesis. This imposing term merely refers to hypnosis by means of drugs; and the drugs most commonly used for the purpose are sodium amytal and sodium pentothal; scopolamine and paraldehyde are sometimes employed too.

It may be recalled that narcosynthesis (sometimes alluded to as the truth serum treatment) was highly publicized during World War II, when there was a desperate necessity for developing accelerated methods of psychotherapy, principally to relieve battle fatigue. Since the war, however, the use of this valuable therapeutic tool has been ebbing.

The idea is simple and makes sense. Hypnosis is superimposed on one who has been rendered sleepy by one of these narcotics. Then, while the subject is in a deep state of relaxation—and possibly in deep hypnosis too—post-hypnotic suggestions, aimed at making him easily hypnotizable in the future, are drilled into his subconscious. In other words, if post-hypnotic suggestions are so powerful and if the subject will follow, after he awakens, almost
any such directions given him, then why should he not also respond to the charge that he become a good hypnotic subject?
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To me this appeared entirely logical, and I had always recognized this possibility as a last resort. Now that I was so friendly with the young psychiatrist, here was my chance to take the final plunge. I discussed the subject with him and once more I found that he was as eager as I to investigate narcosynthesis and the possibility of becoming a good subject through this means.

But the doctor made it clear that he would not merely jab a needle in my arm and start pouring out suggestions that I would become hypnotizable. Instead he insisted upon at least a superficial degree of psychoanalysis before attempting the narcosynthesis. In short, he wanted to be in position to probe more intelligently the meanings of my “block” against hypnosis.

So I spent my evenings with the doctor while he probed my family background, my childhood, my disappointments and triumphs, likes and dislikes, habits, emotions, goals—what “made me tick.” He admitted that this was far from a full-scale psychoanalysis, but it would serve as a guide when he ultimately administered the drugs.

Finally one Saturday night he told me that we were ready. Because it would be necessary for me to sleep off the effects of the drugs, he suggested that I undergo this treatment in my own bed. This was agreeable to me; I was wearying of my former experiences on hard surgery tables.

When the doctor came over he first gave me another physical examination, being especially heedful of my heart. I passed my examination and got into bed. Then came the needle. Ordinarily the patient drifts into unconsciousness within a relatively few seconds. But here again the usual pattern was altered; an unexpected incident delayed our progress, but it added a delightful little twist.

As soon as the doctor inserted the needle he told me to start counting backward from one hundred. When I had reached the mid-eighties I was already feeling pleasantly lightheaded. And then his needle jammed. He had to remove it and find the trouble.

Keep in mind that I already had been injected with a fair load
of pentothal. Not enough to knock me out, but just enough to maintain me in that magical in-between land. So while he perspired over the needle I was dreamily floating in bed.

I lazily assured the doctor that he need be in no hurry to continue, that I could languish in this heavenly state forever. While I was sailing farther into this blissful sea I began to wonder whether this could be similar to any of the superconscious states of ecstasy described by the science of yoga. I babbled airily on and on about philosophy, stopping only briefly to describe my sensations to the doctor.

Strangely he was interested in neither the philosophy nor the sensations. He told me to shut up while he fixed the needle.

Soon he was resuming the treatment, and this time I didn’t remain conscious very long. I remembered nothing more until I found myself opening my eyes and being vaguely aware that the doctor was still hurling questions at me.

Apparently part of his technique included quizzing the patient while he slowly awakened and was still in a sort of semiconscious state. Here was one more time when I didn’t know for a few minutes where I was, who he was, or what day it was. He didn’t ask me who I was. A good thing; that might have been very embarrassing.

But I was soon fully oriented. The doctor didn’t seem overjoyed with whatever he had managed to pump from me, but he was confident that I would in the future be a good hypnotic subject; he assured me that he had repeatedly filled me with adequate posthypnotic suggestions. He would come back the following evening and demonstrate the progress that had unquestionably been made. Now, he told me, go back to sleep. I did.