Bill sighed and turned the page.
4/3/67 … results of speech-dexterity tests during wakened state disclosed subject unable to enunciate staccato word pattern with same degree of skill as within dream state … subject tends to slur words, loses “t” sound altogether in rapid word stream, “Hothothothot …” and has difficulty in coping with the “d” and “m” sounds in words “daddy” and “mommy” word streams.…
4/21/67 … the window seems to be her main goal—an unattainable goal, the glass pane presenting a barrier of prodigious heat … the fires of hell? … attempts to approach glass unsuccessful as heat too intense … stumbles back … falls … weeps … corneal and pupillary and deep tendon reflexes are present … patient does not bite her tongue or urinate … she becomes red in the face rather than blue or white … bodily temperature increases evident whenever approach behavior takes her to window.…
Bill rubbed his eyes a moment. Drops of sweat had flowed into them from his forehead. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. He then looked at his watch. It was only ten past eleven. He put it to his ear to see if it hadn’t stopped. He felt certain he had been in the room longer than ten minutes. But the watch was ticking normally. He thought about calling Janice. There was a phone on a table at the end of the room. He decided to give her another ten minutes. He wondered if Hoover had tried to call the house. His eyes traveled down to the notebook, spread open before him, beckoning. He could think of no other matters to delay his turning the page.
In summary, what we have here is a child who, at age two and a half, appears to have developed, much earlier than one usually sees it, a somnambulistic form of hysteria … she appears to be reenacting some earlier traumatic experience in which heat or fire is the motivating force … there are very peculiar circumstances which have come up during treatment—namely, that within somnambulistic state, both language and motor activity show a degree of maturity greater than what the child shows normally, which is a most striking and unusual thing.…
The next page read:
Treatment: somnambulism is a manifestation of hysteria … hypnotherapy indicated, yet not possible because of early age of child … suggestive therapy applied with some positive results … strong authoritative suggestions during dream state—strong insistence and pressure to give up the symptom—found some response indicating child is a very susceptible somnambulist … hence, using the suggestibility of the child in order to command the traumatic experiences to go away, positive results were achieved over a period of forty-one sessions of varying durations.…
The next page of the notebook was blank. Bill riffled through the rest of the pages, expecting to find nothing more and was surprised to see another entry on the last page.
We are dealing here with something of which limited knowledge and information preclude full diagnostic evaluation. Jung’s concept of archetypes … possible relation to behavior here … possibly child is reenacting an experience which is not her own, but is in her mind, without having happened to her lends some credence to possible Jungian interpretation … may be event not expressing child’s own experience, but something from the collective unconscious??? …
Bill turned over the black-pebbled cover and closed the notebook. The perspiration on his neck had turned to an icy chill. He sat still, emptying his mind of all thought, for thought at this moment was an enemy, challenging reason, encouraging doubt. He could almost see the German woman’s face grinning at him.
The door pushed inward. Dr. Schanzer’s secretary held it open for Janice.
“Your wife is here, Mr. Templeton,” the secretary said cheerfully, and quickly left.
“Come join the fun,” he said, pulling out the chair next to his. Janice looked very pretty, he thought: cool, fresh, and wearing an outfit he didn’t remember seeing before. She had obviously taken pains to please him, which was a good omen.
“Better take off your jacket,” he warned. “This place is a steam bath.”
“I’m okay,” she said, sitting down beside him.
“How’s Ivy?”
“Much better. Her temperature is down to one hundred. Dr. Kaplan stopped by and changed her bandages. He doesn’t think the burns will leave a scar.”
“Thank God,” Bill said strongly, then asked, “Carole with her?”
Janice nodded. “They were watching Let’s Make a Deal when I left.”
“Anyone call this morning?”
“No,” Janice said, knowing to whom he referred.
Bill sat down and tossed her the folder. “Dig in,” he said.
“Anything interesting?” Janice opened the folder and started reading the first scrap of yellow paper.
“A lot we already know; a lot I don’t understand.”
Bill rose, put on his jacket, and excused himself to get a drink of water. Walking down the long corridor, looking for a water fountain, he almost collided with a young, swarthy man emerging from a brightly lit office on the right and wondered if this might be Dr. Perez. He found a men’s room hidden inside a small alcove and went in. The water felt cold and bracing against his face as he bent his head down into his cupped hands and even drank some of it. He gave Janice enough time to finish reading before returning to the conference room.
Dr. Schanzer was with Janice when he arrived, the folder clutched in his hand possessively. Janice looked decidedly paler than when he had left her.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting, Mr. Templeton.” Dr. Schanzer’s dark-brown eyes twinkled at him. He was a stocky white-haired man with powerful arms and chest. “I was telling Mrs. Templeton here that Dr. Noonis, one of our associates, might find a slot for your daughter later this week. He has five thirty on Friday afternoon open; if that’s convenient, we could set up an appointment for a family interview.”
“I don’t know,” Bill hedged. “We were planning a trip.…”
“My daughter and I will be here, Doctor,” Janice interposed. “Friday will be fine.” The statement was uttered in the same dull monotone he had heard that morning: impassive, indifferent, apathetic.
“Fine,” Dr. Schanzer intoned. “Then I’ll make the appointment for you.” He rose to leave.
“Doctor—” Bill’s voice stopped him. “Can you tell me what archetypes are?”
Bill noticed Janice’s quick, grave look through the corner of his eyes. The doctor shut the door and formed a small smile on his face. He seemed almost amused by the question.
“Jungian archetypes. The word is a contrivance of Dr. Jung’s. It refers to what he called the collective unconscious. In his work with schizophrenics, he was struck by the frequent appearance of images which were remarkably similar in patients of widely varied backgrounds. The evidence suggested to him that the mind of man as well as his body bears traces of his racial past, that his longings, expectations, and terrors are rooted in the prehistory over and above his experiences as an individual.”
“Do people in your profession subscribe to this theory?”
Dr. Schanzer chuckled. “Let me say, Mr. Templeton, that people in my profession attempt to keep an open mind at all times. Dr. Jung was a brilliant man, but something of a maverick—a lot of his theories are pretty explosive, yet there is merit in a great many of them.”