DR. NEWMAN: You know, in America during the 19th century there were hundreds of such cults and societies, though few as original, and even today there is a man in Harlem believed to be God by thousands.1
MRS. BERGEN: Yes, I know. My husband is not at all disturbed by such comparisons. He says that no other religion showed how to get a direct experience of the divine will. And he has a whole schedule of rituals, which his disciples perform, and which is supposed to bring this experience to all who will believe. No one of the disciples, no one but my husband, has had this intuitive experience as yet.
DR. NEWMAN: The whole matter is probably beyond my sphere. As you probably know, the psychiatrist deals with difficulties which are relatively contained in the individual — fixations, compulsions, fetiches which usually have their origin in some childhood event or misunderstanding, or some kind of deep-seated frustration. But your husband’s fantasy may not be pathological in this sense at all. The fact that he has won disciples suggests that it is not.
MRS. BERGEN: His disciples have good practical reasons for listening to him. He helps them financially and otherwise.
DR. NEWMAN: Still, your husband’s belief may be a response to the kind of world in which we now exist, not a personal fantasy. Our society is breaking up, tearing itself to pieces, being transformed, and that is why many curious schemes are invented by individuals who have a blind but intense awareness that their world, their way of life, everything dear to them, is turning into something else, slipping from them, becoming strange, repugnant, too difficult for them.
MRS. BERGEN [sighing]: I feel that way myself, Dr. Newman.
DR. NEWMAN: If such is the case, I cannot help your husband, and I assure you that he is not insane in the legal sense. Of course, I can as a reasonable person try to persuade him that he mistakes the source of his belief, but I would surely fail.
MRS. BERGEN: Speak to him, Dr. Newman, do what you can. I am afraid another person will kill himself now that they believe that Eleanor’s death was the most wonderful act possible.
DR. NEWMAN: I should have come here before this, knowing your daughter as I did. But I hesitated.
MRS. BERGEN: Please stay for their daily ceremony, which will begin on the terrace shortly, and you will see that something is wrong with them and that my husband’s doctrines are dangerous. Eleanor is dead, I am not concerned about her now, but perhaps you can speak to the others, especially my daughter Martha, who mistakes a devotion to her father for a belief in what he says.
DR. NEWMAN: Very well, if you wish me to do so. But I am afraid I can do nothing to help you. [Rising, he goes to the mantelpiece, and takes Eleanor’s photograph in his hand.] I should have come to you before this, but I did not want to intrude in a home of mourning, I did not know how your daughter’s death was understood, I was sure that my news would be unwelcome.
MRS. BERGEN: What did you know about my daughter?
[Before DR. NEWMAN can answer, DR. BERGEN enters with his nine disciples—HERRIOT, SCHMIDT, RAKOVSKY, FRIETSCH, ROSENBERG, PERRY, PORTER, MONTEZ—and his daughter MARTHA, who is by his side and holds his hand. The other disciples follow in twos, conversing quietly, and with looks of concentration and seriousness.]
DR. BERGEN: How do you do, sir?
MRS. BERGEN: Felix, this is Dr. Newman, a friend of Emma’s.
DR. BERGEN: O I see! You are that psychiatrist who is going to persuade me that I am merely a deluded old man. We shall see. We are glad to have you here and glad to have you present at our ceremony. Perhaps that persuasion will be other than you expect, although the cynicism I see on your face is a distinct handicap. [To the disciples: ] Let us proceed.
[They mount to the terrace, and seat themselves at the long table which stands there, DR. BERGEN at the head and MARTHA at the other end. They are at an obvious distance from the audience and all that they speak and do has a formalized character, which is partly created by the fact that the living room is intermediate between them and the audience, so that MRS. BERGEN and DR. NEWMAN, who remain in the living room and watch them, are as if a prior audience.]
DR. BERGEN: We will begin as we usually do, by reading this week’s version of our first imperative. [He reads.]
Be conscious of what happens to you from minute to minute, be conscious of what you have done and what is done to you, the event active or passive, multitudinous, misunderstood at the moment of being.
Be self-conscious of the complexities of the personal event by a certain effort. Write before sleep, at night, in a book which can be taken with you as the past is taken with you, as the past takes you, which you will read with shame, remorse, and astonishment long after, in other circumstances.
To keep a diary is an act of prayer, duplicating in your own meager power the gaze of the deity’s blue eye upon you. Pray then, by seeking the full awareness of what is written, which is not soon removed, which you must read once more when you are different, when you are disinterested.
Write before sleep, when, in the silence, the night sounds become distinct, and a car starts downstairs, and the typical
Ticking of the clock repeats its dry sound, while outside the bedroom window the great city squats,
Silent and black beneath the ignorance of night. Be conscious thus. Be troubled by the shortcoming of all through which justification is assured.
Write exactly what you have felt, your motives, your intention in appearance and after examination, your hope and desire, all that has happened
During the long day which has slipped past without being counted, which will never be renewed, which must be known.
Do not be concerned with the false tone, the affected phrasing, the necessary pretentiousness of all self-consciousness,
But deny the desire to invent, distort, defend, omit, forget, when confronted with your own foolishness.
Because this examination of consciousness is your duty and your consolation. Thus is the past carried forward, thus do you take hold of your life,
Otherwise it slips from you. Thus this nightly act will be your correction, your memory,
Your freely-given offering to the deity whose blue eye shines overhead, to whom
Our hearts are in debt forever.
[He pauses for a moment.]
And now before we go ahead to this week’s version of the second imperative, we will discuss “Problems.” Who will propose the problem?
RAKOVSKY: I will, Dr. Bergen. Last night as I wrote the day’s entries in my diary, the following predicament occurred to me. Suppose I were on an ocean liner which struck an iceberg and began to sink, and suppose that subsequently I was in the water, holding a spar, unable to swim (although I am able to swim) and another man came towards me and told me that he could not keep afloat much longer unless I let him hold the spar also, but it was obvious that the spar could not support the weight of two men. Furthermore, both myself and my suppliant were adult men, there was no question of a woman or a child. What ought one to do? Ought one to save one’s own life or that of one’s neighbor? How is one to decide, by what measure?