The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (21 page)

—
Is the word “dung” equivalent to the word “shit”?
—

“Yes, sir,” Leon answered, “but considering the impoliteness of the word in comparison to dung, which is in the Bible, however, a lady didn't prefer, or doesn't care to say it. Among men, R. I. Shit would be understood. I wouldn't react negatively if you called me Shit.”

Does Leon Change His Identity?

From King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth—to Dung! From the heights of self-glorification to the depths of self-deprecation! What forces were at work within the group and within Leon to have led him to this? What function could this change of name possibly have for him, and for the group we had forged? And, above all, we asked ourselves, had Leon's sense of identity really changed?

Jesus of Nazareth is often referred to as Rex Iudeorem—King of the Jews. With this in mind, I decided to press Leon as to whether R. I. Dung might not possibly have some other, hidden meaning. But he vehemently denied this, insisting it stood for nothing but Dung.

The subject of Leon's new name was to come up many times and in many contexts in the weeks and months ahead—in the context of the daily meetings with Clyde and Joseph, in individual interviews, in the letters he wrote and in his daily dealings with us, the aides, the nurses, and the other patients in Ward D-16. From these we were able to gain additional information about the psychological significance of the change, and the ways he elaborated and rationalized his public identity as Dung.

January 22. Lunch time.

“What do you have for lunch, Mr. Gabor?” asks a nurse.

“You may call me R. I. Dung, if you please, ma'am. My name is Dung, but you may call me R. I. D. if you do not like Dung, and I thank you for your mental torture.”

“Dung is not a very nice name; I'll call you R. I.”

“No, please, it's R. I. D., and the coincidentals are there. When a man deposits dung he gets
rid
of it, so I accept my initials.”

January 27. Leon is browing through the New Testament. When an aide asks what he is doing, he says he is trying to find the
parable about the gardener who put dung at the root of a tree for fertilizer, as they do in Asia. Later, Leon seeks out the aide and tells him he can find the answer in St. Luke's, Chapter 13, verses 6 to 9.[
2
]

This same day Leon gives me a poem, written on brown wrapping paper. It reads:

February 1. Joseph says: “Leon told me that his name has always been Dung, and I said that one name was as good as another.”

Clyde asserts that the one in the back of the machine told Leon to change.

“The machine didn't tell me,” Leon replies. “It was an inspiration.”

February 7. Leon tells an aide that his God-given name is R. I. Dung, and that it is impossible for us to write Leon Gabor because a “miracle would happen and Leon Gabor would change into Dung.” He states he has three God-given names: (1) Dung, (2)
Rex rexarum, and (3) Jesus Christ. He prefers Dr. R. I. Dung because it is humble and covers any phase of life or religion.

February 15. I deliberately call Leon Rex rather than R. I. or Dung. He does not object. When I ask Clyde what he calls him, he replies: “I call him Rex.” Joseph says he calls him Dung. To all of this Leon responds: “Yes, sir! It's a pleasant name.” He sings, imitating a bell: “Dung-g, dung-g, dung-g, dung-g, dung-g.”

February 17. Leon and several other patients are on their way to the laundry room, accompanied by an aide. One of the patients asks Leon for a light. Leon insists that the patient call him Mr. Dung; otherwise, no light. The patient, after some hesitation, says: “May I have a light, Mr. Dung?” Leon enthusiastically gives him a light, saying: “Mr. Dung at your service.”

March 24. Clyde wants to hear about “that dung business” in the Bible. Leon says that I have checked and found that it is a Protestant Bible and, turning quite readily to the place, he asks me to read the verses. I read aloud from Philippians 3:8: “Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”

April 5. During a discussion of the names by which each of the three men should be addressed, Leon gives us another clue to the motive underlying his change of name. “Because people are prejudiced,” he says, “they see Rex and say, ‘What! He a king!' I went down to the most humble name I could think of.” After hesitating a moment, he adds: “God Almighty thought of it and gave it to me.”

From the preceding, it would appear that Leon's new name did not represent a change of identity but rather an extraordinary
elaboration and rearrangement of beliefs that were already present within the framework of his total system, and that the purpose of the change of name was to enable him to cope better with a social situation to which he, unlike Clyde and Joseph, was highly vulnerable. In becoming Dung, Leon tells us in schizophrenic bits and snatches, he is not renouncing his Christ identity, but, on the contrary, he is defending it, making it impervious to attack by retreating with it underground. Henceforth, he tells us, he is going to be the humblest creature on the face of the earth—so lowly as not to be worth bothering with. But though he would not refer to himself as the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, he maintained this identity for many, many months, and he still believed he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Why did he have to take such desperate means to defend his identity as Christ? It would have been much easier simply to refuse to have anything whatever to do with Clyde or Joseph or us. As already mentioned, we had no way of forcing Leon to attend the daily meetings; or to sit in their sitting room, day in and day out, with Joseph at his side; or to eat with the others; or to work with them. All he had to do was withdraw, and that would be that! He could have gone to the toilet and stayed there during the meetings, or he could have gone to the recreation room. Such refusals are not uncommon among mental patients, and Leon had demonstrated on many occasions that he was only too capable of standing his ground rigidly and saying “No!” For example, unlike Clyde and Joseph, he continually refused my offerings of cigarettes with a “No, thank you, sir,” or “I've just had one, sir,” even though he betrayed his desire for a good ready-made cigarette by such gestures as extending his hand in its direction when it was offered. But then, instead of taking the cigarette, he would continue an elaborate motion, at the end of which his hand went to his own pocket, and drew forth his own tobacco pouch. He also refused to accept his small weekly allowance from us. In a like manner, he refused to touch any part of the large sum of money which had been accruing over the years
to his account by virtue of a veteran's pension. He refused to go to the dances despite continued urging from the aides on the ward. Leon could certainly say “No!” when he wanted to.

Our best guess as to the motive for his behavior is that it permitted him both to have his cake and to eat it. All the evidence indicates that he needed and wanted to continue as a member of the group. The reward was attention, human companionship, stimulation, and relief from the relentless boredom of everyday life in the back wards of a mental hospital. At the same time there was a price, a price he did not want to pay—the conflicts and tensions arising from the fact that month in and month out, day in and day out, he had to live with two other people who claimed the same identity as he, and had at the same time to justify his grandiose and irrational claims to the research personnel. By becoming Dung he hoped to be able to stay in the group and at the same time avoid the tensions resulting from the central focus of his conflicts with Clyde and, especially, Joseph—the issue of identity. He even said, whatever he may have meant by it, that he had “signed the Declaration of Independence” as Dr. R. I. Dung.

As we have seen, it took many months for Leon to make the transformation into R. I. Dung. The process was slow and gradual. Where did Leon find the elements with which to construct his new delusions? Obviously, he did not pluck them out of thin air. Rather he wove them out of his past experience and out of the stimuli which his present situation provided. One source he looked to was the Bible: by putting his own interpretation on the Testaments, he was able to use them to justify his beliefs, no matter what direction these beliefs might take. A second source was the delusional material that Clyde and Joseph brought up. A third was his pre-occupation with his own identity and with the problems the confrontations with Clyde and Joseph produced. A fourth source was his preoccupation with sex, aggression, sin, the Ten Commandments, and allied topics. A fifth was the magazines and books which the men read to each other in the daily meetings: this, for example, is doubtless where he got the Yeti idea originally. And no doubt
there were other sources which we have overlooked or of which we were unaware.

Leon was stimulated by all these factors as he cast about for material with which to reconstruct his system of belief. What was to be the function of this system? To serve better all his complex needs, ego and id, rational and irrational. Whatever the outcome, it must satisfy two broad sets of requirements. The revised system must explain just as well as the previous one, if not better, who he is, where he is, and how he got to be the way he is. At the same time it must make him impregnable to the threats implicit in every confrontation, while permitting him to remain in a social situation which he obviously found rewarding.

The solution? Take on a new public identity: Dr. R. I. Dung, the most humble creature on earth—without giving up the secret identity. This immediately removed him from the arena of identity conflict with the other two, and with us. But taking on such a public identity created new problems of internal consistency, a posture which Leon—the overintellectualizer—found it necessary to preserve at all costs. How could one claim to be Dung and at the same time claim to be married to such an exalted person as the Virgin Mary? He must get rid of her, marry her off somehow. How? Leon invented a light brother. And when the light brother had served his purpose, he disappeared from the scene. But Leon was still left with his need for a good mother and his need to protect himself from his guilt-provoking sexual fantasies, both of which needs his marriage to the Virgin Mary satisfied. He therefore had to take a new wife—Madame Yeti Woman—who also satisfied these needs and who was at the same time a logically more fitting wife for Dr. Dung.

We are able thus to fill in, at least in crude outline, the thought processes Leon must have gone through as he proceeded to transform his public identity from
Rex Rexarum et Domino Dominorum
, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to Dr. R. I. Dung.

The Need to Be Alone

This leads us to another, somewhat paradoxical, aspect of Leon's motivations which we have not yet considered. The months immediately preceding his change to Dung—beginning with the institution of the rotating chairmanship—were relatively peaceful. The issue of identity did not arise; both we and the men refrained from bringing it up. During this period there were many instances of co-operation and many expressions of friendly feelings among the three delusional Christs. Leon was less withdrawn, more friendly, and he was, much of the time, in contact with reality. He was, in other words, getting better. It is our guess that Leon did not want to get better. He did not want to get any closer to us, or to Joseph or to Clyde. He was only too aware of the implications of getting better, and he was frightened of them. He had become sick originally for very good reasons, and the reasons had not changed. Thus, although he needed companionship, he wanted it only up to a point, and this point had already been reached and passed. He was beginning to care too much for Joseph and Clyde (and perhaps for us too), and he needed to return to his earlier state of isolation from his fellow man.

January 29. At a meeting, I mention to Leon that I had noticed an article about Sir Edmund Hillary in
Life
magazine. Hillary was going on an expedition to look for the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman.
Leon responds emphatically and angrily: “I have news for Sir Hillary. He better not go there. The Yeti people did not invite him and they do not want to be bothered.”

February 12. Today we witness what is to be one of the last manifestations of the positive feelings which had prevailed before Leon changed his name. The three men have just finished peeling potatoes in the vegetable room (they had been transferred because the work was easier for Clyde), and Joseph and Leon move toward the door, about to leave. Leon halts at the door, saying: “Just a minute, Benson is still cleaning.”

February 26. A snowstorm prevents us from attending the meeting today. Arrangements are made by phone for an aide to meet with the men, and to record the proceedings on tape.