The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (33 page)

All that had happened with respect to Leon was consistent with this interpretation. We had unwittingly destroyed his positive reference person and with it our potential for continuing to change his behavior in a therapeutic direction. Was there anything we could now do to restore the reference person to her original positive position? The results obtained thus far had suggested that with Madame Yeti Woman, now turned God, “on our side” there was no telling how far we could go in changing therapeutically Leon's confused, withdrawn, and self-denying behavior for the better. I was now in the peculiar position of trying to stave off the destruction of a delusion. We needed Leon's positive delusional figure more than he did if we were to effect further positive changes in him. Could we possibly save the situation with the help of another of Leon's positive reference persons—his uncle, Dr. George Bernard Brown?

Still September 29. Later in the evening, after our attempt to show Leon that Dr. Broadhurst had nothing to do with the letters, an aide informs him that there is a person-to-person long-distance call for Dr. R. I. Dung. Leon replies that he is busy and doesn't
want to be bothered. The aide tells him that it is a man on the other end of the phone. Leon asks who it is. The aide replies that he did not give his name, whereupon Leon comes to the office and picks up the phone. The voice at the other end identifies itself as that of his Uncle George Bernard Brown, and goes on to say that he has been in touch with Madame Dung, that they are both working for his redemption and that Leon must not say that Madame Dung, who is also God, is insane or negative. Leon listens, apparently with much interest. Then suddenly he interrupts: “Sir, excuse me, sir, your voice doesn't sound like my uncle. Goodbye sir!” And he hangs up and returns to the sitting room.

About a quarter of an hour later, the aide goes to the room where Leon, as before the call, is praying on his knees. When the aide inquires about the call, Leon replies: “Don't bother me, sir. The call was from someone at the other end of the extension. This was done through the switchboard. I don't believe in mental torture, sir. What he said doesn't matter, sir. Now would you leave me alone, sir? Thank you for helping me, sir.”

It was now clear that we had failed in our last-ditch effort to reinstate Madame Yeti Woman as a positive authority and that, moreover, our effort had only succeeded in making Leon extremely upset. The time had now clearly come to terminate any further experimental attempts in this direction.

[
1
]Matthew 6:21. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

[
2
]This would appear to be a slip of the tongue, which Leon corrected the following day, when he announced: “God Almighty walks in the shape of—is male and female; and such person has to be my father, my
foster mother
and my wife. She has no ovaries because of the age of that body. He and She is within me.”

W
HAT
L
EON
did not find out from his uncle's phone call on September 29—because he hung up too soon—was that an important change in the research personnel was to take place in the next four days. Mr. Spivak would be leaving then, and his replacement—a woman—would arrive. I wanted a female research assistant on the project primarily because of Leon's unresolved attitudes toward his mother and his preoccupations with the delusions about foster mothers and wives, morphodites, and other women who wanted to commit adultery with him. Perhaps Leon's conflicted attitudes toward women would resolve themselves in a more healthy way if he were to have daily dealings with a sympathetic, devoted female research assistant.

I had deliberately witheld any information about the impending change from the three men because I was not at all sure how any of them—and Leon, in particular—would react to the news. Of one thing I was fairly sure. If Miss Anderson, the new assistant, were to appear suddenly and without warning now, when Leon was having “trouble” with his wife and was delusionally refocusing
on the new female resident psychiatrist as the source of his woes, the probability was strong that he would change once again and perceive Miss Anderson as the real culprit. It was because I wanted at all costs to forestall this and to assure, as much as possible, that Miss Anderson's presence would from the very beginning have a maximum therapeutic affect, that I had planned to have the news of her arrival come from Leon's omniscient if delusional uncle, rather than from us. But Leon's refusal to listen to his uncle on the telephone forced me to abandon this plan and to substitute for it another, which we put into operation the next day.

Then, at a private meeting, we coaxed Leon into opening and reading a final letter. It was addressed to “My dear Dung” and it came from his uncle, George Bernard Brown. Its purpose was to inform Leon of the change in personnel that was about to take place:

I shall overlook the fact that you hung up on me because you were not sure about my voice. Yes, it was me all right, and I am taking this means of finishing my conversation which I started with you by phone.

In addition to the things I told you on the telephone, I am using this letter to let you know also that a change is going to take place around the hospital. Mr. Mark Spivak, psychologist, is going to leave this hospital to go somewhere else. He will be replaced by another psychologist very shortly. I am sure that you will find that the new psychologist will be for you positively all the time.

This was the last letter that Leon was willing to accept from either his uncle or his wife, but the letters he had accepted and his responses to them were to affect profoundly the things he would do and believe for many months to come. They were, on the one hand, to shape the unique relationship he was about to establish with the new research assistant, Miss Anderson. And, on the other, they were to lead to still more changes in his delusional beliefs. These two sets of effects occurred simultaneously and were so intricately bound together that in the account which follows no attempt will be made to separate them.

October 3. At the meeting I introduce Miss Anderson, explaining that she will replace Mr. Spivak, who has taken a position elsewhere. Joseph asks if Miss Anderson will continue to give out the weekly quarters and I reply that she will. Leon says his uncle had informed him of the transfer in a letter announcing the change.

October 5. At the meeting, I ask Leon why he is sitting with his eyes shut. He replies that he is simply relaxing.

October 7. Mrs. Parker, the head nurse, reports that Leon asked her for an interview. This is most unusual. “When I came to the door of his room,” she relates, “he asked me to sit down, and asked if I would smoke a cigarette. He then told me that when I was eleven and he was five and a half, he met me on a street in Detroit and I told him I was God. At the time he did not believe me, he said, but he now realized he was wrong. He then went on to say that God was a morphodite and that he himself had both male and female attributes over which he had no control. He said he had had sexual intercourse with God, but also with Morphy Broadhurst in England in bilocation. However, he did not know it was she since she had a veil over her face. So he was still faithful to God, the Grand Morphodite Lady. When he realized who she was, he knew he had committed adultery and because of this, he was killed last night. He had regenerated himself today, however, and was ready to start all over again. He kept on talking about having intercourse with God and I asked him if he thought I was God. He said yes, he did. I then asked him if he was trying to tell me that he wanted to have intercourse with me and he said yes. I said that I was afraid this was impossible and he immediately jumped up and said: ‘Thank you, Ma'am, thank you for letting me get a load off my chest.' He seemed quite relieved, as if he felt that since he had at least told me and as long as I had refused, he didn't have to worry about it any more.”

Later in the afternoon, at the meeting, Leon announces to Miss
Anderson that he was killed last night and got another body. Joseph disputes Leon's claim, saying that Leon has the same body he had yesterday. “Pertaining to external appearances, yes,” Leon replies, “but pertaining to internal construction it's a different body. I was shot by God Almighty and I dropped like a sack of shit.” Once again Joseph disagrees. The exchange between them continues:

“Sex is a basic factor of human behavior.”

“I'm not a homosexual, so I don't have to worry.”

“That's not the point, Mr. Cassel. Don't put the penis in the wrong hole or you'll become a disfigured midget.”

“That's a bit strong, Mr. Dung. There's Miss Anderson to consider.”

“Excuse the expression, but it's coming out of me and I believe it's best to let out pressure, and if I have hurt your feelings through rude expression it was due to using a word that Mr. Cassel can more readily understand, and strike at.”

October 10. At the meeting, Leon discusses his changing delusions about Miss Anderson, Dr. Broadhurst, his wife, his mother, his father, and the Virgin Mary. The main theme is bisexuality.

Miss Anderson is now God Morphy Anderson. God is spelled with a capital “G” because she is bisexual.

Dr. Broadhurst is also a Morphy and is now in the “he” stage.

Madame Yeti Woman is no longer his wife: “I don't care for the negativism of God implied in the name ‘Madame Yeti Woman.”' Instead, his wife is a bisexual creature variously called Ruth, God, Lordess. “Right now he's Lord, Potential Lordess.” Later on in the discussion Leon promotes her. “I am married to Grand Morphy, my wife who fostered me, but she is not my mother.”

Leon's father is Grand Morphy, Sir. “My father is my foster woman wife in a male state.”

The same is true for the Blessed Virgin Mary who, now in a male state, is called the Blessed Virgin Brother.

October 11. At the end of the meeting Leon asks Miss Anderson if it's all right to call her God Morphy, or should he say Miss Anderson. She replies that he may call her whatever he wishes, but that she prefers to be called Miss Anderson.

From this day on he calls her God Morphy Anderson or G. M. Anderson. He sometimes addreses her as Sir, sometimes as Ma'am, depending on whether she is in her “maleity” or “femaleity” stage.

October 17. As we go in to the meeting Leon hands Miss Anderson a letter, saying it is the most important document he has written in his life.

Joseph interposes: “It's ridiculous—all that stuff about God being bisexual. Why should a woman be bisexual?”

“She doesn't deny the fact that she is God. She …”

“I'll tell you, Mr. Dung,” Joseph interrupts. “No man can get away from what he is. If a man is sick, he's sick.”

I ask Clyde if he thinks Miss Anderson is God. “Oh, not quite,” Clyde chuckles. “She could be godly, I guess.”

“Ask her the question!” Leon says belligerently. “See what she says for herself!” I suggest Leon ask her himself. “I already know, I don't have to ask her. It spoils the essence of a conversation to ask questions when you know the answers.”

The letter Leon had given Miss Anderson was lengthy and for the most part incoherent. It read in part:

Later, during a private interview, I tell Leon that I have heard about the conversations he held with several women about bisexuality.

—
What is this all about?
—

“Due to the fact,” he says, “that God has chosen a bisexual body to walk in, and in my case due to the testing against the Ten Commandments, such was presented to me that I should have sexual intercourse with a particular person.”

—
Do you realize that this is the best evidence I have yet had of your manliness; the fact that you have had these conversations?
—

“I thank you, sir. I appreciate that. I was told last night that owing to the fact that I have given up those Morphy God seeds, my physical reactions are different. I don't have sexual intercourse like a fly, which is bisexual. I have more, freer, body movements. I didn't know I was carrying those Morphy God seeds. Now that I've given back to God what belongs to God, I'm more at ease, and that's the reason why I was rigid.”

—
I can conceive of certain circumstances when a person who does not have feelings of manliness feels like Dung and that's his name; but when a man feels his manliness, what should he do?
—

“Dung is a distinguished, truthful, humble name.”

—
How do you go up to a woman and say “My name is Dung”?
—

“It so happens that my foster woman wife doesn't feel hurt at all. ‘Dung, give me some more!' so I give her some more.”

—
Some more what?
—

“Sexual intercourse.”

—
A women doesn't have sexual intercourse with dung; she has it with a man
.—

But Leon continues to stand his ground on the issue of his name. “I'm glad about the fact that you mentioned concerning manliness, but concerning my name, I'm satisfied.”