How right Pris had been when she had told me that I had within me a deeply unstable streak which someday might bring me into trouble. Hallucinated, weary and hopeless, I had at last been taken into tow by the authorities, as she herself had been a few years ago. I had not seen Horstowski’s diagnosis, but I knew without asking that he had found schizophrenic responses in me. . . . I felt them inside me, too. Why deny what was obvious?
I was lucky that help, on a vast collective scale, was available for me; god knew I was wretched in such a state, close to suicide or to total collapse from which there might be no recovery. And they had caught it so early–there was a distinct hope for me. Specifically, I realized I was in the early catatonic excitement stage, before any permanent maladjustment pattern such as the dreaded hebephrenia or paranoia had set in. I had the illness in its simple, original form, where it was still accessible to therapy.
I could thank my father and brother for their timely action. And yet, although I knew all this, I accompanied Horstowski into the Bureau’s office in a state of trembling dread, conscious still of my hostility and of the hostility all around me. I had insight and yet I did not; one part of me knew and understood, the rest seethed like a captured animal that yearns to get back to its own environment, its own familiar places.
At this moment I could speak for only a small portion of my mind, while the remainder went its own way.
This made clear to me the reasons why the McHeston Act was so necessary. A truly psychotic individual, such as myself, _could on his own never seek aid_; he had to be coerced by law. That was what it meant to be psychotic.
Pris, I thought. You were like this, once; they caught you there in school, picked you out and separated you from the others, hauled you off as I’m being hauled off. And they did manage to restore you to your society. Can they succeed with me?
And, I thought, will I be like you when the therapy is over? What former, more adjusted state in my history will they restore me to?
How will I feel about you then? Will I remember you?
And if I do, will I still care about you as I do now?
Doctor Horstowski deposited me in the public waiting room and I sat for an hour with all the other bewildered, sick people, until at last a nurse came and summoned me. In a small inner office I was introduced to Doctor Nisea. He turned out to be a good-looking man not much older than myself, with soft brown eyes, thick hair that was well-combed, and a cautious, apologetic manner which I had never encountered outside the field of veterinary medicine. The man had a sympathetic interest which he displayed at once, making sure that I was comfortable and that I understood why I was there.
I said, “I am here because I no longer have any basis by which I can communicate my wants and emotions to other humans.” While waiting I had been able to work it out exactly. “So for me there’s no longer any possibility of satisfying my needs in the world of real people; I have to turn inward to a fantasy life instead.”
Leaning back in his chair Doctor Nisea studied me reflectively. “And this you want to change.”
“I want to achieve satisfaction, the real kind.”
“Have you nothing at all in common with other people?”
“Nothing. My reality lies entirely outside the world that others experience. You, for instance; to you it would be a fantasy, if I told you about it. About her, I mean.”
“Who is she?”
“Pris,” I said.
He waited, but I did not go on.
“Doctor Horstowski talked to me briefly on the phone about you,” he said presently. “You apparently have the dynamism of difficulty which we call the Magna Mater type of schizophrenia. However, by law, I must administer first the James Benjamin Proverb Test to you and then the Soviet Vigotsky-Luria Block Test.” He nodded and from behind me a nurse appeared with note pad and pencil. “Now, I will give you several proverbs and you are to tell me what they mean. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I said.
“‘When the cat’s away the mice will play.'”
I pondered and then said, “In the absence of authority there will be wrong-doing.”
In this manner we continued, and I did all right until Doctor Nisea got to what turned out for me to be the fatal number six.
“‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.'”
Try as I might I could not remember the meaning. At last I hazarded, “Well, it means a person who’s always active and never pauses to reflect–” No, that didn’t sound right. I tried again. “That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral stature won’t grow stale.” He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, “I mean, a man who’s active and doesn’t let grass grow under his feet, he’ll get ahead in life.”
Doctor Nisea said, “I see.” And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.
“What does it mean?” I asked. “Did I get it backward?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. The generally-accepted meaning of the proverb is the opposite of what you’ve given; it is generally taken to mean that a person who–”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I broke in. “I remember–I really knew it. A person who’s unstable will never acquire anything of value.”
Doctor Nisea nodded and went on to the next proverb. But the stipulation of the statute had been met; I showed a formal thinking impairment.
After the proverbs I made a stab at classifying the blocks, but without success. Both Doctor Nisea and I were relieved when I gave up and pushed the blocks away.
“That’s about it, then,” Nisea said. He nodded to the nurse to leave. “We can go ahead and fill out the forms. Do you have a preference clinic-wise? In my opinion, the best of the lot is the Los Angeles one; although perhaps it’s because I know that better than the others. The Kasanin Clinic at Kansas City–”
“Send me there,” I said eagerly.
“Any special reason?”
“I’ve had a number of close friends come out of there,” I said evasively.
He looked at me as if he suspected there was a deeper reason.
“And it has a good reputation. Almost everyone I know who’s been genuinely helped in their mental illness has been at Kasanin. Not that the other clinics aren’t good, but that’s the best. My aunt Gretchen, who’s at the Harry Stack Sullivan Clinic at San Diego; she was the first mentally ill person I knew, and there’ve been a lot since, naturally, because such a large part of the public has it, as we’re told every day on TV. There was my cousin Leo Roggis. He’s still in one of the clinics somewhere. My English teacher in high school, Mr. Haskins; he died in a clinic. There was an old Italian down the street from me who was on a pension, George Oliveri; he had catatonic excitements and they carted him off. I remember a buddy of mine in the Service, Art Boles; he had ‘phrenia and went to the Fromm-Reichmann Clinic at Rochester, New York. There was Alys Johnson, a girl I went with in college; she’s at Samuel Anderson Clinic in Area Three; that’s at Baton Rouge, La. And a man I worked for, Ed Yeats; he contracted ‘phrenia and that turned into acute paranoia. Waldo Dangerfield, another buddy of mine. Gloria Milstein, a girl I knew; she’s god knows where, but she was spotted by means of a psych test when she was applying for a typing job. The Federal people picked her up. . . she was short, dark-haired, very attractive, and no one ever guessed until that test showed up. And John Franklin Mann, a used car salesman I knew; he tested out as a dilapidated ‘phrenic and was carted off, I think to Kasanin, because he’s got relatives in Missouri. And Marge Morrison, another girl I knew. She’s out again; I’m sure she was cured at Kasanin. All of them who went to Kasanin seemed as good as new, to me, if not better; Kasanin didn’t merely meet the requirements of the McHeston Act; it genuinely healed. Or so it seemed to me.”
Doctor Nisea wrote down _Kasanin Clinic at K. C._ on the Government forms and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes,” he murmured, “Kansas City is said to be good. The President spent two months there, you know.”
“I did hear that,” I admitted. Everyone knew the heroic story of the President’s bout with mental illness in his midteens, with his subsequent triumph during his twenties.