Of course, it did not prove necessary to debunk Magnusson; just as Ramsburgh had defended herself, so the patients - in defense of their threatened identities -arrived at this conclusion on their own, separate and unanimously.
We had taken a vast step forward as a result of the group interaction. The patients began to speak openly of their fearful reaction to one another, and we analyzed their reports, gaining further insights into the extent of their perceptual abnormalities. For example, it was during the period immediately following the interaction that Harrison revealed the fact he was seeing bioenergy: ‘… Raw mists of a single color sheathing the upper body, showing patches and glints of secondary colors, all fading in a matter of seconds.’ His perceptions, in particular, gave me cause to ponder Magnusson’s pronouncement concerning my own illness, though at the time I assumed his diagnosis to be a vindictive rather than an accurate one. But while such insights provided clues to the developmental processes of these phenomenal strangers who were the BIAP patients, they shed no direct light upon the essential mystery of their existence; and the illumination of this mystery must be, I felt, the primary goal of the project. So, instead of pursuing a hands-off policy in the wake of Magnusson’s revelations to the group, I continued as planned to set up problematic situations which would, I hoped, stimulate the patients to more profound depths of self-discovery.
Throughout the hullabaloo which eventuated after the media’s disclosure of the project, my detractors have labeled me a manipulator, and while I do not accept the term with its overtones of maleficence, I submit that all psychotherapy is manipulation; that as psychiatrists we do not heal people, but manipulate their neuroses into functional modes. Any psychiatrist worth his salt is at heart a sophist who understands he is lost in a great darkness and who utilizes theories not as doctrinal cant, but as guideposts to mark the places he has illumined in his dealings with specific patients. Thus, also, did ancient alchemists incise their alembics with arcane symbols representing the known elements. I have been accused of ruthlessly swaying the courses of lives to satisfy my academic whimsies. This charge I deny. I maneuvred both patients and therapists as would a man lost in a forest strike flint and steel together to make a light. And we were lost. Before my arrival the project had an unblemished record of failure in every area, especially as regards the unraveling of the patients’ intrinsic natures. This memoir is not the proper framework in which to detail all we did unravel after my arrival, but I must point out the various papers and monographs of my detractors as evidence of my successes (the more scholarly reader may wish to avail himself of my own soon-to-be-published The Second Death and its speculative companion, Departed Souls: A Psychoanalytic Reassessment of Animist Beliefs).
My detractors have addressed with especial venom what one of them has termed my ‘unprofessional obsession with Jocundra Verret,’ and have laid the blame for all consequent tragedy at my feet. In this I admit to some complicity, yet if I am to shoulder the blame, then surely I must take credit for all that has been gained. While I do not discount my colleagues’ responsibility, and while Ms Verret herself has testified that she acted for reasons of her own, if they are insistent I will accept full blame and credit, and leave history to confer final judgement on the worth of my contribution. Yes, I took chances! I flew by the seat of my pants. I was willing for all hell to break loose in order to learn the patients’ secrets, and perhaps a measure of hell was necessary for the truth to emerge. We were cartographers, not healers; it was our duty to explore the wilderness of this new human preserve, and I could not accept as Brauer seemingly could, my role as being merely that of babysitter to the undead.
Though my case study of the relationship between Harrison and Verret - and never has a courtship been so thoroughly documented as theirs, recorded on videotape and footnoted by in-depth interviews of the participants -though this study revealed much of value, as the weeks passed I came to regard the relationship primarily as a star by which I navigated, one whose unwavering light signaled the Tightness of my course. This may seem an overly romantic attitude for a member of my profession to hold, and perhaps it was, but I believe I can justify having held it in terms of my own emotional needs. The pressures on me were enormous, and I was only able to cope with them by commuting to and from New Orleans on the weekends and spending the nights in my own home. Project officials screamed for results, my colleagues continually questioned my concern for the patients’ well-being. My concern? Because I refused to indulge in banal Freudian dissections and quasi-metaphysical coffee klatches with these second-rate theoreticians, did I lack concern? I stimulated the patients, encouraged them, tried to provide them with a pride in their occupations. Should I, instead, have pampered them, patted them on the head and admired the fact that they actually breathed? This was Ezawa’s attitude: having made them, he was well pleased, looking upon them as mere monumentsto his cleverness.
But, of course, the greatest pressure was that exerted by the patients themselves. Imagine, if you will, indwelling with a group of brilliant and charismatic individuals, thoroughly dominant, whose vivid character suppresses and dulls your own. It was a constant strain to be around them; I cannot think of a single person who did not suffer a severe depression at some time or another as a result. They were mesmeric figures: green-eyed monsters with the capacities of angels. Harrison’s poems, Monroe’s ballet, even Richmond’s howled dirge… these were powerful expressions, dispiriting to those of us incapable of emulating them, especially dispiriting because of the wan light their productions appeared to shed on the nature of creativity, demystifying it, relegating it to something on the order of a technological twitch, like the galvanic response of a dissected frog. And yet neither could we totally disabuse ourselves of mystical notions concerning the patients. At times it seemed to me that we were a strange monastic order committed to the care and feeding of crippled, green-eyed saints whose least pronouncement sent us running to examine the entrails for proof of their prophetic insight. All the therapists stood in awe of them, or - as did Laura Petit - maintained an artificial distance; all, that is, except Jocundra Verret.
Watching Verret and Harrison, observing the relaxed attitude they had adopted with each other, their reponses increasingly warm and genuine, I felt I was witnessing the emergence of some integral shape from the chaotic sphere of Shadows: a sweet, frail truth which - despite its frailty - underlies our humanity. Always a beautiful woman, Verret grew ever more beautiful; her skin glowed, her hair shone and her walk - previously somnolent, head down, arms barely aswing - grew sprightly and girlish. I often pointed out to her during our sessions that she -every bit as much as the residual RNA - was a determining factor in Harrison’s personality, that just as the mama loi identifies the possessing spirit in a voodoo rite, so she was ‘identifying’ Harrison, evoking the particular complex of his behaviors to conform with her own needs. He was, after all, trying to please her, molding himself to suit her requirements as a man. Given Harrison’s perceptual abilities, his concentrated focus upon her, it is likely he was being influenced by her on levels we can only begin to guess at, and the extent of her influence is equally unfathomable. She preferred, however, to downplay her role of creatrix, insisting he was something more mysterious and self-determining. I am certain she did not know what was happening, not at first, hiding her feelings behind the pose of duty.