The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (28 page)

2. Other primitive beliefs, however, may remain with him even if they find no social support. Through adverse experience, some primitive beliefs—both about the self and about others—may arise or become transformed in such a way that support from external authority is abandoned together. For example, a child may come to believe that he lives in a totally hostile world, or that he is unloveable, or, phobically, that certain heretofore benign objects or places are now dangerous.

3. Finally, as the child deals with other people, he exposes his expanding repertoire of primitive beliefs to them and at the same time is exposed to the repertoire of their beliefs. Thus he may at any moment discover that a particular belief he had heretofore thought that everyone shared—belief in God or country or Santa Claus, for example—is not in fact universally accepted. At this
point he is forced to work through a more selective concept of positive and negative authority.

Two little boys, Sammy and Marty, both seven, are having a discussion, over milk and cookies, about God. Sammy says he believes in God and Marty replies he isn't sure there is a God. Sammy says that everybody believes differently about God—some people believe there is a God and some people don't.

“But,” Sammy adds, “it doesn't matter what you believe as long as it's the same thing your Daddy believes. So I'll go on believing there is a God.”

“Yes,” Marty nods in agreement, “you're supposed to believe what your Daddy believes. So I'll go on believing that maybe there is and maybe there isn't a God.”

They finished their milk and cookies and go outdoors.

I had eavesdropped on them as in their childhood innocence they discussed theories of authority (they agreed) as well as philosophical conceptions of God (they disagreed). This innocence is fated to be overlaid very soon with more “sophisticated” reasons for belief and disbelief.

Clearly, Sammy and Marty were telling us about the “theory” of selective authority that guides them as they decide which beliefs to accept among a group of alternatives. It would seem that the concept of authority of each child has already expanded to the point where his Daddy is seen as a positive reference person and at least some other Daddies as negative reference persons. There may come a day when even one's own father is rejected as a positive referent. But this day has not yet arrived for Sammy and Marty.

With Sammy's and Marty's discourse still fresh in our minds, let us make several additional points. First, as was pointed out in Chapter I, belief in God, however passionately adhered to, fought over, or died over, is not, in our conception, a primitive belief inasmuch as it is supported by something less than total consensus; it has a primitive character only in exceptional cases—in, for example, a primitive society where everyone believes in the
same God or gods, or among those relatively rare persons who would believe in a Deity even if this belief found absolutely no social support at all, even if it was entirely rejected by the rest of their community. Second, as with his primitive beliefs, the child's base of selective referents for his peripheral or ideological beliefs is gradually extended to include other persons and groups outside the family—social classes, religious and ethnic groups, peer groups, and political and national groups. Third, and most germane to our immediate research, it is easy to imagine Sammy and Marty changing their beliefs about many things, provided these changes are preceded or initiated by changes in their referents.

A number of findings and observations made by others seem to be consistent with the notions developed above. The social psychologist, Theodore Newcomb,[
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] has reported that many girls at Bennington College became more liberal in ideology during their college years as a result of shifting their reference group from the family to the college peer group. It has been widely noted that members of the Communist Party in various countries of the world change their position about issues soon after similar changes of position emanate from the Kremlin, or if they cannot do so, defect or change their reference group. A devout Catholic holds the same beliefs about faith and morals as does the Church as a whole, and it seems reasonably certain that if the Catholic Church were to change its attitude about a particular issue millions of believers would change their attitudes in precisesly the same way. Bruno Bettelheim's study of concentration camps suggests that Jews will develop anti-Semitic beliefs because they have changed their referents—that is, to preserve their identity and to survive physically, they will identify with the aggressor's ideology.[
2
] Identification with the aggressor—that is to say, adopting one's oppressor as a reference person or group—has been used to explain such phenomena as Jewish anti-Semitism and Negro Jim
Crow.[
3
] Similar explanations have been offered for the success of so-called brainwashing techniques and thought reform in inducing ideological change in the prisoner-of-war camps of North Korea, in the prisons of China, and more widely, in the indoctrination of the youth of China in the ways of the People's Democracy.[
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]

A particularly instructive example is reported by Robert Lifton in his study of thought reform among Westerners in Chinese prisons. He quotes one of his converted subjects, a Frenchman, as saying the following about de Gaulle:

On the basis of all the preceding considerations, the following hypothesis seems tenable: a normal person will change his beliefs or behavior whenever suggestions for such change are seen by him to emanate from some figure or institution he accepts as a positive authority. Either he will change his beliefs and behavior so that they conform with what he believes positive authority expects of him, or, if he cannot or will not change, he will alter his beliefs about the positive authority itself; he will become more negative or more disaffected with the authority and, in the extreme, he will even formulate new beliefs about new authorities to rely on.

What has this theoretical discussion to do with our study of the three delusional Christs? How could these notions be applied to produce further changes in the delusional beliefs and behavior of our subjects? Many psychiatrists and psychoanalysts would agree that the severely regressed paranoid person has no external positive reference persons or groups; this is precisely why he is
so difficult to treat. His delusional beliefs are unshakable because they are wholly without support by others, and this accounts for the secretiveness, seclusiveness, and solitary rumination so frequently observed in the patient with paranoid delusions. He knows that no one in the real world will accept his beliefs, so why communicate them and thereby risk subjecting himself to ridicule or to the stress of argument? Better, as Joseph said, to keep one's mouth shut. Possibly because the paranoid psychotic has been tremendously hurt by significant referents of his earlier life, he has renounced all positive referents outside himself. The only external referents he has are negative ones, referents to whom he looks in order to know what
not
to do; this accounts for the negativism so characteristic of the paranoid person. Since he looks to no one outside himself in a positive way, it is extremely difficult for the therapist, or anyone else for that matter, to say or do anything that would make a real difference. Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes that a basic prerequisite for positive change in the therapeutic situation is the capacity of the patient to form a positive transference relationship with the therapist—that is, the patient must establish the therapist as a positive referent. But in psychosis, and particularly in psychoses involving paranoid tendencies, a positive transference is deemed extremely unlikely[
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] and for this reason the typical prognosis is, at best, “guarded,” and more usually, “poor.” The whole system of belief has become more or less primitive, including the normally nonprimitive beliefs about selective authority. Thus, since there are no positive referents outside the self, it is considered to be extremely difficult to contradict delusional beliefs from the outside. Logical persuasion by others is ineffectual since the person is beyond the reach of all external referents. His delusional system represents a closed network
of beliefs designed, on the one hand, to make him completely independent of external referents—thus putting himself beyond reach and hurt—and on the other, to help him account for what he does, or understand why he feels as he feels, and why others refuse to recognize him for his true worth and instead persecute and mistreat him.

If real external, positive referents are missing in paranoid mental patients—and this seems to be the case with Clyde and Joseph and Leon—then obviously it is not possible to initiate changes in their delusions and behavior through external referents. But this does not mean that these mental patients have no positive referents whatsoever. Again and again we were struck by the fact that the three men would mention certain referents to whom they obviously looked in a positive way. But these referents were either completely delusional or only quasi-real. Clyde, for example, frequently hallucinated and spoke warmly of someone called Gloria. a lifelong chum he had grown up and gone to school with. As has already been mentioned, Joseph told us from the very beginning that Dr. Yoder was his Dad. It is not unusual for the superintendent of a mental hospital to be so considered. Dr. Yoder told me that over the many years of his tenure as superintendent, patients had often referred to him as Father or Dad and sometimes had even gone so far as to ask him for a small photograph to carry around in their wallets or purses. In the case of Leon, there was at first his wife the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his uncle, George Bernard Brown, the reincarnation of the Archangel Michael. Later, of course, he transferred his affections to Mrs. R. I. Dung, or Madame Yeti Woman. In contrast to the negative things Leon had to say about all real human beings, he always spoke positively and warmly of his relations with these creatures of his imagination.[
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]

That these three men had positive delusional referents is of theoretical importance in its own right, and points to an aspect which seems thus far to have been overlooked by those who have worked with psychotic persons. We have in mind here most particularly the important work of Norman Cameron, a psychiatrist who has written extensively on the nature of paranoid states. He describes the
paranoid pseudo-community
in the following way:

The “presence” of positive authority figures was noted not only delusional systems of the three Christs but also in three paranoid female patients we studied for control purposes. (More will be said about this in Chapter XIX.) From all these observations it may be suggested that the paranoid pseudo-community also includes positive delusional referents. And we proposed in the second phase of research to enlist the aid of these delusional referents by initiating suggestions for change through them.

Cameron remarks that the patient “introduces imaginary persons … of whose actual existence he becomes certain.” The messages we were to send Leon and Joseph (but not Clyde) from their positive delusional referents were designed to explore the effect of such communications and also to ascertain whether Leon and Joseph actually believed in the existence of these referents.

Needless to say, I composed and sent all messages. In this connection, I would like to discuss some ethical matters to which
I gave the gravest consideration before I finally decided to proceed.

Joseph and Leon did not invite us to come to Ypsilanti, and I did not seek their permission in advance for the experimental procedures we employed. To this day, neither Leon nor Joseph knows, as far as I am aware, that I was the author of the letters they received, supposedly from their delusional referents. Of even greater concern was the fact that I had no way of knowing in advance what would happen as a result of the messages they would receive. I was about to explore an obscure area of the human psyche by means of a method never before tried; I had to consider especially the possibility that these messages might be extremely upsetting to Leon and Joseph.

Obviously, serious ethical issues were involved. These issues are highly complex, and we can only comment on the considerations which guided us in employing these procedures. It should first be reiterated that it was on ethical grounds that we turned away from the study of identity in normal children, to work instead with psychotic subjects; with such people, we hoped there might be, therapeutically, little to lose and, hopefully, a good deal to gain. Second, we always proceeded cautiously with the men, assessed their emotional reactions at every step, and were ever ready to back off if we thought it advisable. Third, we always consulted the psychiatric staff at Ypsilanti State Hospital, particularly Dr. O. R. Yoder, Medical Superintendent, and Dr. Kenneth B. Moore, Assistant Medical Superintendent, before embarking on a new experimental procedure, thus obtaining independent checks on our ethical judgment. Fourth, the three men continued eagerly to attend our meetings despite the procedures employed. Had they refused, or had they refused to deal with one another or with us, that would have been the end of it. When Joseph, for example, objected to working in the vegetable room with Leon and Clyde, we changed his work assignment. Fifth, as we got to know the three men better, we were impressed by the fact that their defenses were powerful enough to counter any threat they could not cope with on a realistic level. Sixth, we were cognizant of
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann's observation: “… we no longer treat the patients with the utter caution of bygone days. They are sensitive but not frail.”[
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]