The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (18 page)

After seven weeks of these chaired meetings we succeeded in getting the men to meet on weekends without us, and also persuaded them to submit reports on the proceedings. These reports were sometimes realistic accounts, but more often they were not.

On December 31 Joseph was in the hospital. Apparently he had had a pain in his stomach the day after Christmas—and to treat it had rubbed his chest and upper abdomen with a floor-cleaning or bleaching compound he found in an open cupboard in the laundry. Not unnaturally, he suffered rather severe burns. When he was interviewed shortly afterwards at the hospital, he said: “Do you think we will be getting together with Rex and Clyde this evening?” We suggested to the others that they hold their meeting at Joseph's bedside, and after Leon expressed some reluctance to disrupt the usual routine, they agreed. The meeting
was held, but there was some strain and no singing. However, Clyde and Leon were quite willing to go to Joseph's bedside the next day. On the way there, we passed through the lobby of A building, which was filled with floral displays donated by various funeral parlors. At our suggestion, Leon and Clyde selected a bouquet and presented it to Joseph, who was quite touched. Leon put it on Joseph's night table and fussed over it, trying to get the best effect. Joseph commented many times on how nice the flowers looked and thanked Clyde and Leon. They held their meeting, opening and closing with the usual song. When they ran out of tobacco paper, Leon obtained some from the aides and shared it with the others. He filled Joseph's empty tobacco pouch from his own. At the close of the meeting we wished them all a Happy New Year, after which they spontaneously shook hands all the way around and wished each other a Happy New Year.

It should by now not be at all surprising, in view of the changed climate depicted above, that after they themselves took over the conduct of their meetings, the three Christs altered their attitudes toward these sessions, toward one another, and toward me. Any number of comments they made—both in individual interviews and on other occasions—gave evidence of this.

Clyde said that he was “getting along all right with Rex and Joseph.” Of Leon, Clyde remarked that he was “quieter, not so cranky.” When I asked Clyde if the others still claimed to be God or Jesus Christ, he replied: “No, not so much.”

Several times Joseph clamored for two meetings a day instead of the usual one, asked if “we can't stay longer,” and reiterated that he enjoyed all the meetings. Of Leon, he said: “He doesn't seem to detest my company. Rex has changed considerably. He forgets that there is any animosity. He is diurnal, daily, regular. Two weeks ago he started changing. He's got a kind of resting sickness. He's quiet. His face is more refined than it used to be. And behind that face there's another face that looks like another patient that used to be here.”

When I asked him how he was getting along with Clyde, Joseph said: “Very nicely. A few weeks ago he wanted to keep my quarter; said I had the most money. But the last time he just gave me the quarter. Didn't say anything.”

Referring to the visits Clyde and Leon paid him while he was in the hospital, Joseph remarked: “Mr. Spivak [the research assistant] brought Clyde and Rex, two friends of mine, and we had a meeting. I thought it was rather special. They brought me flowers and I thanked them for it.”

Moreover, Joseph showed indications of being under less tension. He admitted he had been born in Quebec, whereas before, while claiming to have been everywhere in the world, he specifically denied ever having been in Quebec. He answered realistically that he had been in the hospital since 1941, instead of saying, as he had before: “Three and a half years; after I've been here four years I cannot be deported back to England.”

Leon, when asked if he was satisfied with the new chairman system, replied: “It is a slight change. Satisfying to a certain degree. Mr. Cassel is somewhat more reserved. Mr. Benson is somewhat more reserved also. Mr. Cassel brings up books he gets at the library. Some are interesting.” But Leon modified this somewhat. “Mr. Cassel's jealousy can be sensed to a certain degree. Like reading with a Scottish brogue and right away he can't duplicate that; why, he snatches the book away and he indirectly says that he didn't care for me to read that way. Today he read French and I applauded. I was impressed. Pertaining to his vocabulary, he knows quite a bit. If I don't know something I'll ask him and he usually turns up with a definition of words.”

As already mentioned, under conditions of the rotating chairmanship, Leon showed evidence of reduced self-centeredness and of concern for other people. He showed considerable concern, for example, when one of the research assistants caught his finger in a closing door. In October, after I had been absent for several days, he asked me a personal question for the first time. Had anything of interest happened at Michigan State University, he wanted to
know. In December he talked about the weather and warned me to drive carefully since it was foggy. I encouraged him to talk further about his attitude toward me and Mr. Spivak. In the course of this conversation it became clear that his tendency to dichotomize everyone and everything in black or white categories had undergone change.

“You have retracted,” he said, “toward neutrality. Yes, you've changed to a certain degree. You're not so negative any more. You're neutral. No, not neutral, a little to the side of negative. With Mr. Spivak it varies. Sometimes he is more and sometimes less negative.”

—
Do you have any feelings about the meetings?
—

“If you care to discuss, it's up to you. It's a repetition of positivism. If it's a repetition of positivism it won't wear out.”

—
Are the meetings lately negative, positive, or neutral?
—

“Negativism has tapered down some, but it still spurts up.”

When asked if he wanted to continue with the meetings, he said he was still willing to give his time to them even though he was very busy.

There were still other indications that Leon was more relaxed. To the question: “How are you, Rex?” he no longer offered the stereotyped response: “All right, sir, except for the interferences,” which he had given us during the first couple of months. Instead, his usual answer now was: “All right, sir, a little tired,” or “All right, sir, still trying to do a good job,” or “Fine, sir, how are you?”

The Issue of Identity

Never again were we to observe the violent arguments and outbursts that characterized the daily sessions in the early weeks. After the men were put in charge of the meetings, the issue of identity simply did not come up again unless I raised it deliberately. On rare occasions one of the men would mention, in passing, that he was God or Christ or, somewhat more frequently, might bring up other delusional material which touched on his identity. Such
remarks were quickly passed over. The men refused to respond; they would change the subject, pretend not to have heard, or simply make a motion to adjourn, which would be seconded and quickly passed without debate. Leon typically would respond with: “That's your belief, sir,” muttered almost under his breath, and then either lapse into silence or deftly change the subject.

In general, the three men behaved far less delusively during their meetings after we relinquished control to them, and they spent the major portion of their time reading, or in “meditative silence,” as Leon put it. During the weeks and months that followed, however, Leon was to evince a strong need to bring up new delusional material. This he would do under the guise of “announcements” or “news items” in response to our standard question: “What's new?” In time it became evident that one function of these new delusions was to reduce rather than increase the possibilities of interpersonal conflict.

More than anything else, it was by now clear that all three men wanted to avoid conflict, and keep the group together. Obviously it satisfied powerful needs in their empty, lonely lives, despite the conflict it had caused.

Yet it would be incorrect to infer that the metamorphosis in group atmosphere was anything more than a slight matter of degree, or that the issue of identity no longer existed. There were definite limits to the extent to which we could get these men to leave their delusional worlds, co-operate with each other, and be more outgoing toward us. Joseph, for example, despite his requests for two meetings a day, often went to the toilet just before the meeting, and stayed there an inordinately long time. Once I asked Leon to check on what he was doing there; Leon returned to tell me that Joseph was taking bicarbonate of soda. For several weeks Joseph made it a practice to go to the library to return books while Leon was in the middle of a story.

Leon, for his part, refused to have anything to do with receiving or passing out the weekly allowance, or the ready-made cigarettes, and no amount of pressure could persuade him otherwise. “If you
are sincere,” he admonished us, “give one pack to this man, one pack to that man, and say: ‘Here, enjoy yourself.' You are now suggesting indirect pressure from these two persons against me because of your choice of trying to force me to accept something against my free will.” He still had to go through various rituals to shake off “interferences.” And when Clyde went off on a weekend visit to his daughter, Leon explained Clyde's absence by saying that he was dead, “struck dead by my uncle.” Twice he made a similar comment about Joseph: once right after the death of his mother, when he said he had been informed Joseph had died, and again a few days later, when Joseph was hospitalized at the end of December. At that time, Leon claimed that Joseph was dead, and subsequently maintained that he was a “false-idealed reincarnation of the Devil.”

The all-important issue of identity cropped up in other indirect ways, too, in contexts which would normally have been unlikely to produce interpersonal conflict. Within two weeks after the rotating chairmanship had been established, Leon became preoccupied with the apparent need to tell others—research personnel and other patients, but not Clyde or Joseph—his “full name.” “My card, sir,” he would say, showing the home-made calling card he had fashioned, on which was written:
Dr. Domino dominorum et Rex rexarum, Simplis Christianus Puer Mentalis Doktor, reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth
. At the same time he began writing letters addressed to no one in particular, and handed them to the ward aides. Their purpose was evidently to reaffirm his identity:

Leon's continuing need to proclaim his identity—or at least to deny the others' claims—was evidenced by his behavior when Joseph read a weekend report in which he mentioned he was God. Although he did not argue Joseph's claim, he did get up from his chair to whisper in the research assistant's ear that Joseph was only an instrumental god.

Joseph, too, felt the need to proclaim his identity in devious ways. Several times he asked to make a speech into the tape recorder. With his back to Leon and Clyde and with the microphone close to his mouth, he would boom: “This is me, God!” whereupon Clyde would mutter and Leon would say: “That's your belief, sir.” Like Leon, Joseph also began to assert his identity in written communications. But instead of addressing no one in particular, as Leon did, Joseph wrote to important personages such as Prime Minister Diefenbaker of Canada and President Eisenhower. To the President he wrote: