The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (10 page)

“We worship both,” Clyde said.

“I don't worship you,” Leon put in. “I worship God Almighty through you, and through him, and him,”

“You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!” Clyde announced.

“I will not worship you!” Leon shouted. “You're a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts.”

“I'm living my life,” Clyde shouted back. “You don't wake up! You can't wake up!”

“No two men are Jesus Christs,” Joseph interjected.

“You hear mechanical voices,” Leon said.

“You don't get it right,” Clyde shouted. “I don't care what you call it. I hear natural voices. I hear to heaven. I hear all over.”

“I'm going back to England,” Joseph said.

“Sir, if the good Lord wills only,” Leon put in.

“Good Lord! I'm the good Lord!” Joseph exclaimed.

“That's your belief, sir,” said Leon quietly.

July 20, in the ward, before breakfast

Leon pointed to Joseph and said: “His foster father's a barracuda. Clyde's is a sandpiper.”

“My foster father was not a sandpiper,” Clyde answered.

“That's your belief, sir,” Leon said.

“It is not my belief,” Clyde asserted. “I got proof of what I say.”

“That's what you think,” Leon said.

At this, Clyde said: “I'm gonna kill you—you—son-of-a-gun! I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch!”

“I'm afraid that's impossible,” Leon said. “My father was a white dove and so was my mother, and later she became a witch. But your foster father was a sandpiper.”

Clyde jumped up and stormed over to Leon. “I'm really going to let you have it,” he shouted. “You don't know what you're talking about!” And he shook his fist and put it right next to Leon's chin.

“Sit down—sit down,” Leon said. “You're creating a disturbance.”

Clyde cooled off and sat down. After a moment Leon resumed: “You can't help it if you're under the influence of electronic duping.”

“I am not. I'm Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and God Almighty himself,” and he drew back his arm as if to hit Leon.

“Sit down, sir, sit down,” Leon said. “Sir, do you have a cigarette paper to give me?”

July 26, at the group meeting

Joseph said he wanted to be deported back to England, where he belonged.

“I don't think they do that,” Leon said.

“So I just say, fuck you all!” Joseph yelled. “I'm going back to England and that's that.”

Clyde growled at Joseph's language, and Leon said: “I think they'd say you're an undesirable over there also. My uncle said: ‘What are you going to do about Mr. Cassel's body when he passes away?' He said this to my other uncle. The other uncle replied: ‘Deportation to England? What for? He can rest over here too.' ”

August 4, at the group meeting

Leon and Joseph had been quarreling. Joseph said: “I don't want to be insane like you.”

Leon, highly agitated, countered: “My uncle's ball of lightning is going to put an end to your warped psychology. You're on his dung list.”

“Pure insanity, that's what it is!” Joseph exclaimed.

“Do you remember you flushed a towel down the toilet and I reprimanded you?” Leon asked. “Now that toilet is stopped up, and it's inconsiderate of other men who might want to go to the toilet.”

“I can't see it,” Joseph said.

“Why do you throw books out the window?” Leon asked. “Why did you tear down the notice of church services? Because you didn't want other people to read it? The Ten Commandments say, Do not steal. You're for stealing, cheating, falsehood.”

“Crazy! Crazy stuff!” Joseph yelled.

As this incident demonstrates, Joseph and Leon each paid attention to what the other was doing, and expressed their awareness openly. Such behavior, representing as it does an enlargement of the sphere of involvement with others, is uncommon in paranoid schizophrenics, who are generally concerned only with themselves. In the very process of defending their delusional systems against attack, these two men became realistically oriented toward each other in order to obtain information to use as weapons of attack and defense.

Outbreaks of Violence

The first show of physical violence took place three weeks after the initial encounter. At the time, the three men had been having a discussion about the pre-Christian era.

July 22, group meeting

“Adam was a colored man,” Leon said, “because his body was taken from the rich brown mud. Did you know that? Woman Eve was a mulatto because she was taken from his rib, and rib meat is a little bit lighter.”

“Adam was a white,” Clyde said. “I made the passing of that at one year old.”

“I wish to mention while we are talking about Adam that he is reincarnated,” Leon said, “and he happens to be my foster brother, and he's a colored boy.”

“You son of a bitch!” Clyde shouted. “There isn't any such thing!”

“Watch your language!” Leon shouted back, and Clyde said: “He's an educated doggone fool.”

“I'm not a bastard,” Leon asserted. “I have a foster father. He's with me.”

“Adam is a white man, the first child of God,” Clyde said.

“I've got news for you,” Leon answered. “He happens to be my foster brother pertaining to his reincarnation, and whether you like it or not, it's that way.”

Clyde, now livid and standing menacingly over Leon, shouted: “No! It's not that way!”

“Will you kindly sit down,” Leon said, in a calm tone. “I said, will you kindly sit down and behave yourself!”

“You dirty dog!” Clyde shouted, and Leon countered: “You are a first-class ignoramus. Sit down before you are knocked down—and I'm not the one who's going to do it, either. The righteous-idealed robot governor has more power than you or I. Will you kindly sit down!”

“I'll call you anything!” Clyde said.

“I believe in truthful bullshit but I don't care for your bullshit,” Leon said.

Clyde's response was to hit him hard on the right cheek. Leon sat immobile, his hands folded in his lap, making not the slightest move to defend himself or to fight back. My assistant and I pulled Clyde away from Leon, and finally the two men calmed down and the discussion about Adam continued in much the same vein as before.

Several days later, we interviewed Leon alone and he stated accurately the issue over which Clyde had struck him. But in the meantime he had had some second thoughts. He now stated that although Adam had dark skin, he was not a Negro, and that he, Leon, therefore deserved what he got from Clyde. This was the first time we witnessed a change in one of Leon's beliefs, and it is interesting to note the context within which it occurred. It followed from an act of physical aggression which apparently aroused enormous anxieties within Leon, and against which he was totally incapable of defending himself. I asked Leon how he felt when Clyde struck him and whether he had thought of striking back. Leon admitted that he was shaken and that most men would have “floored the guy.” He didn't, Leon continued, because he is the weakest creature on earth and also because his uncle, Dr. George Bernard Brown, is in charge of the department that metes out justifiable punishment. Leon then went on to say that he didn't deserve violence, that he himself had never struck anyone, and, finally, that he didn't believe in violence.

We also interviewed Clyde about the incident. He too stated the issue accurately and explained his actions forcefully: “I just hit him on the chin. I had to cool him down. Then he starts talking straight. He talks better then.”

Other violent encounters took place outside the group meetings. One morning, for example, Joseph and Leon were each pushing a cart, Joseph in the lead. As Joseph rounded a turn in the tunnel at a fairly fast clip, he let go of the cart, which slammed against the wall and careened wildly.

“Watch your cart!” Leon shouted. “You … Bless you! You with the unsound mind!”

A few moments later the foreman, a hospital employee, came up and asked Joseph what had happened. “I just stopped my cart against the wall, that's all.”

“Sir,” said Leon, “I believe what happened was—”

“Don't listen to him!” Joseph interrupted. “He's crazy!”

“You're the crazy one!”

“You're crazy,” Joseph yelled. “You're a shit-ass! That's what you are, a shit-ass!” Then he grabbed Leon by the coat lapels with both hands and slammed him hard against the laundry cart.

The men were immediately separated. Leon, his left hand drawn back in a loose fist, glared angrily at Joseph. Joseph was quickly removed by an aide, Leon shouting after him: “Begone, sir, or you'll be dropped!” Joseph shouted back: “You've got the unsound mind!”

When interviewed later concerning the incident, Leon once again described it accurately. I asked him if he had felt like hitting back, and he replied, as he did before, that hitting back is not his department but his uncle's. When I asked him why Joseph had hit him, he was able to explain that too. “It was two-thirds imposition and one-third bullheadedness,” Leon replied.

Joseph was interviewed next and he gave his version: “Rex started raising hell with me that I had no business to leave the truck there, so I jumped on him. I didn't hit him. I just shook him. That man is sick. No joke! He says everything contrary. Nobody can talk to him.”

—
You're not getting along too well with Rex?
—

“Negativism exasperates you. Clyde is better than Leon; he has stopped claiming he's God so much. And you, Dr. Rokeach, give me a hand too. After Clyde talks, you ask me to say something and it gives me a chance for correction.”

—
Are you getting stronger or weaker?
—

“Stronger. That Rex, you gotta be careful with him. He says he's God. I take it away from him. Why, a mind like this could turn the world upside down in no time!”

—
Are you still laughing it off, or not?
—

“I do something else. I stood up there and told him I was God.”

—
Changing your tactics?
—

“In a way, yeah.”

The final physical altercation occurred on August 17; this time the participants were Joseph and Clyde. It was initiated by a verbal exchange, concerning “false Jesus Christs and false gods,” which consisted mainly of childish threats, name-calling, and obscenities, such as: “You're the biggest liar,” “You're not going to burn me, you keep talking like that and I'm going to knock the shit out of you,” “I'm the boss,” “You never were,” etc. At one point Clyde lunged at Joseph and the two went into a clinch until they were separated. Leon took the scuffle in, sitting in his usual chair, not moving a muscle, his face and body immobile and passive, as if he were watching something from far away. Before long the quarrel flared up again.

“You're just a lot of shit to me, that's all!” Joseph shouted.

“You can't say that word to me!” Clyde answered.

“I have my rights,” Joseph insisted.

“I own the hospital,” Clyde said.

“Just because you don't want to work for the English cause.”

“Doggone right I don't want to work for England,” Clyde asserted. “That would be foolish. You're a bullheaded fool!”

“I'm speaking the truth!” Joseph shouted, and Clyde shouted back: “You're the biggest liar!”

Now, for the first time, Leon spoke very quietly: “Duping can cause phenomena that are actually real to the person. I've had experience with it in this place.”

Strategies of Attack and Defense

During all the time we observed the three Christs, the only outbreaks of violence among them were those just described: the first
between Clyde and Leon; the next between Joseph and Leon; and the last between Clyde and Joseph. The impression we gained was that all three men were extremely eager, following these outbreaks, to avoid further ones. This is not to say that there were not other quarrels, often bitter in tone. But they emerged despite the efforts of the three men to avoid them and they subsided quickly, without interference from us, once a certain level of intensity had been reached.

Of the three Christs, Clyde was the least in touch with social reality, the most primitive and childlike. His typical defense was what psychoanalysts would call
denial
; he repeatedly and consistently denied that the other two were alive. He lacked finesse and, when he felt himself menaced, could only resort to vague blustering threats, childish braggadocio, and authoritarian assertions of his power. “You're going to listen to the truth. I'm the Jesus and you're going to follow. I am the boss, and you better believe it. You serve me first!” At the meetings he participated least in the discussions. He reminded us of a slumbering bear who preferred to revel in his fantasies but who, when enraged, would try to scare off his attackers with loud, ominous-sounding growls so that he could hurry back to his own familiar world. On occasion he would try to cope with the others by borrowing one of their concepts to use as a weapon against them. He borrowed Leon's term “habeas corpus,” which for Leon was an effective weapon of attack and defense, but in Clyde's lexicon remained childlike and ineffectual. He could only use it to say: “There's a habeas corpus and that represents the resurrection. I'm not assigned to the hospital like they are. I've got good guns too, Mister!”

Although Joseph seemed more aware than Clyde of what was going on, his typical response also involved denial. In the initial encounter, for example, he had responded by “laughing it off.” Denial was, in fact, Joseph's main defense against everything, including recognition of his own illness. Once, when I asked him whether Clyde's and Leon's claims to be Christ or God bothered him, he replied: “It doesn't bother me a bit. I'm too smart to say
it bothers me.” Or, on another occasion: “There is nothing wrong. Yesterday I know I was what I am. Today I am what I am. I'm not worried about losing my identity.” Still another time: “If anything bothers me, I soon can get rid of it. Before I have a headache or any thought I don't want to have, I just snap it.”