Will work with both patients under scope tomorrow. It is exciting to have my own patients, I am impatient to begin. Though of course teamwork was very educational.
31 AUGUST
Half-hour scope session with Ana J. at 8:00. Analyzed scope material, 11:00-17:00. N.B.: Adjust right-brain pickup next session! Weak visual Concrete. Very little aural, weak sensory, erratic body image. Will get lab analyses tomorrow of hormone balance.
It is amazing how banal most people’s minds are. Of course the poor woman is in severe depression. Input in the Con dimension was foggy and incoherent, and the Uncon dimension was deeply open, but obscure. But the things that came out of the obscurity were so trivial! A pair of old shoes, and the word “geography”! And the shoes were dim, a mere schema of a pair-of-shoes, maybe a man’s maybe a woman’s, maybe dark blue maybe brown. Although definitely a visual type, she does not see anything clearly. Not many people do. It is depressing. When I was a student in first year I used to think how wonderful other people’s minds would be, how wonderful it was going to be to share in all the different worlds, the different colors of their passions and ideas. How naive I was!
I realised this first in Dr. Ramia’s class when we studied a tape from a very famous successful person, and I noticed that the subject had never looked at a tree, never touched one, did not know any difference between an oak and a poplar, or even between a daisy and a rose. They were all just “trees” or “flowers” to him, apprehended schematically. It was the same with people’s faces, though he had tricks for telling them apart: mostly he saw the name, like a label, not the face. That was an Abstract mind, of course, but it can be even worse with the Concretes, whose perceptions come in a kind of undifferentiated sludge—bean soup with a pair of shoes in it.
But aren’t I “going native”? I’ve been studying a depressive’s thoughts all day and have got depressed. Look, I wrote up there, “It is depressing.” I see the value of this diary already. I know I am over-impressionable.
Of course, that is why I am a good psychoscopist But it is dangerous.
No session with F. Sorde today, since sedation had not worn off. TRTU referrals are often so drugged that they cannot be scoped for days.
REM scoping session with Ana J. at 4:00 tomorrow. Better go to bed!
1 SEPTEMBER
Dr. Nades says the kind of thing I wrote yesterday is pretty much what she had in mind, and invited me to show her this diary again whenever I am in doubt. Spontaneous thoughts—not the technical data, which are recorded in the files anyhow. Cross nothing out. Candor all-important.
Ana’s dream was interesting but pathetic. The wolf who turned into a pancake! Such a disgusting, dim, hairy pancake, too. Her visuality is clearer in dream, but the feeling tone remains low (but remember: you contribute the affect—don’t read it in). Started her on hormone therapy today.
F. Sorde awake, but too confused to take to scope room for session. Frightened. Refused to eat. Complained of pain in side. I thought he was unclear what kind of hospital this is, and told him there was nothing wrong with him physically. He said, “How the hell do you know?” which was fair enough, since he was in a straitjacket, due to the V notation on his chart. I examined and found bruising and contusion, and ordered X-ray, which showed two ribs cracked. Explained to patient that he had been in a condition where forcible restraint had been necessary to prevent self-injury. He said, “Every time one of them asked a question the other one kicked me.” He repeated this several times, with anger and confusion. Paranoid delusional system? If it does not weaken as the drugs wear off, I will proceed on that assumption. He responds fairly well to me, asked my name when I went to see him with the X-ray plate, and agreed to eat. I was forced to apologise to him, not a good beginning with a paranoid. The rib damage should have been marked on his chart by the referring agency or by the medic who admitted him. This kind of carelessness is distressing.
But there’s good news too. Rina (Autism Study subject 4) saw a first-person sentence today. Saw it: in heavy, black, primer print, all at once in the high Con foreground: I want to sleep in. the big room. (She sleeps alone because of the feces problem.) The sentence stayed clear for over 5 seconds. She was reading it in her mind just as I was reading it on the holoscreen. There was weak subverbalisation, but not subvocalisation, nothing on the audio. She has not yet spoken, even to herself, in the first person. I told Tio about it at once and he asked her after the session, “Rina, where do you want to sleep?”—“Rina sleep in the big room.” No pronoun, no conative. But one of these days she will say I want—aloud. And on that build a personality, maybe, at last: on that foundation. I want, therefore I am.
There is so much fear. Why is there so much fear?
4 SEPTEMBER
Went to town for my two-day holiday. Stayed with B. in her new flat on the north bank. Three rooms to herself!!! But I don’t really like those old buildings, there are rats and roaches, and it feels so old and strange, as if somehow the famine years were still there, waiting. Was glad to get back to my little room here, all to myself but with others close by on the same floor, friends and colleagues. Anyway I missed writing in this book. I form habits very fast. Compulsive tendency.
Ana much improved: dressed, hair combed, was knitting. But session was dull. Asked her to think about pancakes, and there it came filling up the whole Uncon dimension, the hairy, dreary, flat wolf-pancake, while in the Con she was obediently trying to visualise a nice cheese blintz. Not too badly: colors and outlines already stronger. I am still willing to count on simple hormone treatment. Of course they will suggest ECT, and a coanalysis of the scope material would be perfectly possible, we’d start with the wolf-pancake, etc. But is there any real point to it? She has been a bakery packager for 24 years and her physical health is poor. She cannot change her life situation. At least with good hormone balance she may be able to endure it.
F. Sorde: rested but still suspicious. Extreme fear reaction when I said it was time for his first session. To allay this I sat down and talked about the nature and operation of the psychoscope. He listened intently and finally said, “Are you going to use only the psychoscope?”
I said Yes.
He said, “Not electroshock?”
I said No.
He said, “Will you promise me that?”
I explained that I am a psychoscopist and never operate the electroconvulsive therapy equipment, that is an entirely different department. I said my work with him at present would be diagnostic, not therapeutic. He listened carefully. He is an educated person and understands distinctions such as “diagnostic” and “therapeutic.” It is interesting that he asked me to promise. That does not fit a paranoid pattern, you don’t ask for promises from those you can’t trust He came with me docilely, but when we entered the scope room he stopped and turned white at sight of the apparatus. I made Dr. Aven’s little joke about the dentist’s chair, which she always used with nervous patients. F.S. said, “So long as it’s not an electric chair!”
I believe that with intelligent subjects it is much better not to make mysteries and so impose a false authority and a feeling of helplessness on the subject (see T. R. Olma, Psychoscopy Technique). So I showed him the chair and electrode crown and explained its operation. He has a layman’s hearsay knowledge of the psychoscope, and his questions also reflected his engineering education. He sat down in the chair when I asked him. While I fitted the crown and clasps he was sweating profusely from fear, and this evidently embarrassed him, the smell. If he knew how Rina smells after she’s been doing shit paintings. He shut his eyes and gripped the chair arms so that his hands went white to the wrist. The screens were almost white too. After a while I said in a joking tone, “It doesn’t really hurt, does it?”