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They both nodded solemnly.
"You don't know what it's like," I said, "to have the catatonic urgency, that craving. It drives you
on and on and then all at once you collapse; you know you're not right in the head, you're living in a
realm of shadows. In front of my father and brother I had intercourse with a girl who didn't exist
except in my mind. I heard people commenting about us, while we were doing it, through the door."
Ralf asked, "You did it through the door?"
"He heard them commenting, he means," Julie said. "The voices that took note of what he was
doing and expressed disapproval. Isn't that it, Mr. Rosen?"
"Yes," I said, "and it's a measure of the collapse of my ability to communicate that you had to
translate that. At one time I could easily have phrased that in a clear manner. It wasn't until Doctor
Nisea got to the part about the rolling stone that I saw what a break had come about between my
personal language and that of my society. And then I understood all the trouble I had been having up
to then."
"Ah yes," Julie said, "number six in the Benjamin Proverb Test."
"I wonder which proverb Pris missed years ago," I said, "that caused Nisea to single her out."
"Who is Pris?" Julie asked.
"I would think," Ralf said, "that she's the girl with whom he had intercourse."
"You hit the nail on the head," I told him. "She was here, once, before either of you. Now she's
well again; they discharged her on parole. She's my Great Mother, Doctor Nisea says. My life is
devoted to worshipping Pris as if she were a goddess. I've projected her archetype onto the
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universe; I see nothing but her, everything else to me is unreal. This trip we're taking, you two,
Doctor Nisea, the whole Kansas City Clinic--it's all just shadows."
There seemed to be no way to continue the conversation after what I had said. So we rode the
rest of the distance in silence.
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18
The following day at ten o'clock in the morning I met Doctor Albert Shedd in the steam bath at
Kasanin Clinic. The patients lolled in the billowing steam nude, while the members of the staff
padded about wearing blue trunks--evidently a status symbol or badge of office; certainly an
indication of their difference from us.
Doctor Shedd approached me, looming up from the white clouds of steam, smiling friendly at me;
he was elderly, at least seventy, with wisps of hair sticking up like bent wires from his round,
wrinkled head. His skin, at least in the steam bath, was a glistening pink.
"Morning, Rosen," he said, ducking his head and eyeing me slyly, like a little gnome. "How was
your trip?"
"Fine, Doctor."
"No other planes followed you here, I take it," he said, chuckling.
I had to admire his joke, because it implied that he recognized somewhere in me a basically sane
element which he was reaching through the medium of humor. He was spoofing my paranoia, and, in
doing so, he slightly but subtly defanged it.
"Do you feel free to talk in this rather informal atmosphere?" Doctor Shedd asked.
"Oh sure. I used to go to a Finnish steam bath all the time when I was in the Los Angeles area."
"Let's see." He consulted his clipboard. "You're a piano salesman. Electronic organs, too."
"Right, the Rosen Electronic Organ--the finest in the world."
"You were in Seattle on business at the onset of your schizophrenic interlude, seeing a Mr.
Barrows. According to this deposition by your family."
"Exactly so."
"We have your school psych-test records and you seem to have had no difficulty. . . they go up to
nineteen years and then there's the military service records; no trouble there either. Nor in
subsequent applications for employment. It would appear to be a situational schizophrenia, then,
rather than a life-history process. You were under unique stress, there in Seattle, I take it?"
"Yes," I said, nodding vigorously.
"It might never occur again in your lifetime; however, it constitutes a warning--it is a danger sign
and must be dealt with." He scrutinized me for a long time, through the billowing steam. "Now, it
might be that in your case we could equip you to cope successfully with your environment by what is
called controlled fugue therapy. Have you heard of this?"
"No, Doctor." But I liked the sound of it.
"You would be given hallucinogenic drugs--drugs which would induce your psychotic break,
bring on your hallucinations. For a very limited period each day. This would give your libido
fulfillment of its regressive cravings which at present are too strong to be borne. Then very gradually
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