"Ah yes," Julie said, "number six in the Benjamin Proverb Test."
"I wonder which proverb Pris missed years ago," I said, "that caused Nisea to single her out."
"Who is Pris?" Julie asked.
"I would think," Ralf said, "that she's the girl with whom he had intercourse."
"You hit the nail on the head," I told him. "She was here, once, before either of you. Now she's well again; they discharged her on parole. She's my Great Mother, Doctor Nisea says. My life is devoted to worshiping Pris as if she were a goddess. I've projected her archetype onto the universe; I see nothing but her, everything else to me is unreal. This trip we're taking, you two, Doctor Nisea, the whole Kansas City Clinic--it's all just shadows."
There seemed to be no way to continue the conversation after what I had said. So we rode the rest of the distance in silence.
18
The following day at ten o'clock in the morning I met Doctor Albert Shedd in the steam bath at Kasanin Clinic. The patients lolled in the billowing steam nude, while the members of the staff padded about wearing blue trunks--evidently a status symbol or badge of office; certainly an indication of their difference from us.
Doctor Shedd approached me, looming up from the white clouds of steam, smiling friendlily at me; he was elderly, at least seventy, with wisps of hair sticking up like bent wires from his round, wrinkled head. His skin, at least in the steam bath, was a glistening pink.
"Morning, Rosen," he said, ducking his head and eyeing me slyly, like a little gnome. "How was your trip?"
"Fine, Doctor."
"No other planes followed you here, I take it," he said, chuckling.
I had to admire his joke, because it implied that he recognized somewhere in me a basically sane element which he was reaching through the medium of humor. He was spoofing my paranoia, and, in doing so, he slightly but subtly defanged it.
"Do you feel free to talk in this rather informal atmosphere?" Doctor Shedd asked.
"Oh sure. I used to go to a Finnish steam bath all the time when I was in the Los Angeles area."
"Let's see." He consulted his clipboard. "You're a piano salesman. Electronic organs, too."
"Right, the Rosen Electronic Organ--the finest in the world."
"You were in Seattle on business at the onset of your schizophrenic interlude, seeing a Mr. Barrows. According to this deposition by your family."
"Exactly so."
"We have your school psych-test records and you seem to have had no difficulty... they go up to nineteen years and then there's the military service records; no trouble there either. Nor in subsequent applications for employment. It would appear to be a situational schizophrenia, then, rather than a life-history process. You were under unique stress, there in Seattle, I take it?"
"Yes," I said, nodding vigorously.
"It might never occur again in your lifetime; however, it constitutes a warning--it is a danger sign and must be dealt with." He scrutinized me for a long time, through the billowing steam. "Now, it might be that in your case we could equip you to cope successfully with your environment by what is called _controlled fugue_ therapy. Have you heard of this?"
"No, Doctor." But I liked the sound of it.
"You would be given hallucinogenic drugs--drugs which would induce your psychotic break, bring on your hallucinations. For a very limited period each day. This would give your libido fulfillment of its regressive cravings which at present are too strong to be borne. Then very gradually we would diminish the fugal period, hoping eventually to eliminate it. Some of this period would be spent here; we would hope that later on you could return to Boise, to your job, and obtain out-patient therapy there. We are far too overcrowded here at Kasanin, you know."
"I know that."
"Would you care to try that?"
"Yes!"
"It would mean further schizophrenic episodes, occurring of course under supervised, controlled conditions."
"I don't care, I want to try it."
"It wouldn't bother you that I and other staff members were present to witness your behavior during these episodes? In other words, the invasion of your privacy--"
"No," I broke in, "it wouldn't bother me; I don't care who watches."
"Your paranoiac tendency," Doctor Shedd said thoughtfully, "cannot be too severe, if watching eyes daunt you no more than this."
"They don't daunt me a damn bit."
"Fine." He looked pleased. "That's an a-okay prognostic sign." And with that he strolled off into the white steam clouds, wearing his blue trunks and holding his clipboard under his arm. My first interview with my psychiatrist at Kasanin Clinic was over with.
At one that afternoon I was taken to a large clean room in which several nurses and two doctors waited for me. They strapped me down to a leather-covered table and I was given an intravenous injection of the hallucinogenic drug. The doctors and nurses, all overworked but friendly, stood back and waited. I waited, too, strapped to my table and wearing a hospital type frock, my bare feet sticking up, arms at my sides.
Several minutes later the drug took effect. I found myself in downtown Oakland, California, sitting on a park bench in Jack London Square. Beside me, feeding bread crumbs to a flock of blue-gray pigeons, sat Pris. She wore capri pants and a green turtle-neck sweater; her hair was tied back with a red checkered bandana and she was totally absorbed in what she was doing, apparently oblivious to me.
"Hey," I said.
Turning her head she said calmly, "Damn you; I said be quiet. If you talk you'll scare them away and then that old man down there'll be feeding them instead of me."
On a bench a short distance down the path sat Doctor Shedd smiling at us, holding his own packet of bread crumbs. In that manner my psyche had dealt with his presence, had incorporated him into the scene in this fashion.
"Pris," I said in a low voice, "I've got to talk to you."
"Why?" She faced me with her cold, remote expression. "It's important to you, but is it to me? Or do you care?"
"I care," I said, feeling hopeless.
"Show it instead of saying it--be quiet. I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing." She returned to feeding the birds.
"Do you love me?" I asked.
"Christ no!"
And yet I felt that she did.
We sat together on the bench for some time and then the park, the bench and Pris herself faded out and I once more found myself on the flat table, strapped down and observed by Doctor Shedd and the overworked nurses of Kasanin Clinic.
"That went much better," Doctor Shedd said, as they released me.
"Better than what?"
"Than the two previous times."
I had no memory of previous times and I told him so.
"Of course you don't; they were not successful. No fantasy life was activated; you simply went to sleep. But now we can expect results each time."
They returned me to my room. The next morning I once more appeared in the therapy chamber to receive my allotment of fugal fantasy life, my hour with Pris.
As I was being strapped down Doctor Shedd entered and greeted me. "Rosen, I'm going to have you entered in group therapy; that will augment this that we're doing here. Do you understand what group therapy is? You'll bring your problems before a group of your fellow patients, for their comments... you'll sit with them while they discuss you and where you seem to have gone astray in your thinking. You'll find that it all takes place in an atmosphere of friendliness and informality. And generally it's quite helpful."