MADMAN - John R. Suler, Ph.D. - copyright 1995
Chapter 18 - Sleep
I don't remember walking down the hallway. I do remember finding the elevator open. It was waiting for me. I stepped inside, leaned back against the wall, and said to myself, "What the hell is going on with me?" My throat ached as the words resonated through it. My nose was stuffed up and dripping, and my eyes burned. I had a headache."I'm sick," I said. "That explains it."
The elevator doors opened and hissed a reply - "Ssssure."
The head nurse was waiting for me when I arrived on the unit. I still couldn't recall her name.
"We've got a new patient for you," she said.
"A new patient?"
"Yeah. Sorry. The police brought him in a few minutes ago."
"The police?" I was suffering from a mild case of echolalia.
"Yeah. They found him wandering along the interstate. He was collecting the carcasses of run-over animals. And you thought Mobin was strange. He wouldn't tell the cops what his name is or where he lives. Maybe he can't remember. And he doesn't have any identification on him. Other than that, he seems cooperative."
"A John Doe."
"At the moment - unless you can figure out who he is." She studied my face. "Are you O.K.? You don't look too good."
"Just coming down with a cold. Where is he?"
"Over there, in the library cubicle."
I sighed. "Well, ready or not, here I go."
"Good luck," she said sympathetically.
The cubicle was empty. Perhaps he was in the other one on the other side of the unit. I walked around but found that one empty too. Curious. Completing the circle around the unit I arrived again at the nurse's station.
"What's wrong?" the head nurse asked.
"He's not there."
"Are you sure? I checked him just a few minutes ago. He was looking at a magazine."
"Uh... I'll look again." When you start to doubt even your most basic perceptions, you have to wonder about yourself.
Sure enough, there he was in the first library cubicle, with a National Geographic in his lap. I blinked, thinking he might disappear again. There was something odd about his clothes - odd, paradoxically, in the sense that they seemed so uniquely plain. They could have come from anywhere. They could have been labeled "Generic Clothes." Maybe that's why I overlooked him.
He was an older, wiry-looking guy - his face weathered by the passage of several lifetimes, his hair white and frizzled, as if he just stepped out of the wind. But his body also struck me as supple and sure. It would have been hard to pinpoint his age. Despite the fact that he had just been picked up by the police and deposited at the Loony Bin, he seemed at home. As I examined him for a moment before entering the cubicle, a strange feeling overcame me. He hadn't given off any visible signs that he knew I was standing there - in fact, he looked totally focused on the magazine - and yet I felt that my presence was being fully sensed. Paranoid hypervigilance?
"Hi, I'm Dr. Holden."
Starting at some point below the floor, he scanned upwards, moving from my feet to my head, in a smooth, fluid motion, absorbing every detail along the way. When he got to my face, his eyes fixed onto mine. They were bright, youthful, almost the color of bronze. He smiled, very warmly. "My, my, if it isn't the ripe one," he said. "And a bit... driven, I would add."
"What?"
"Never mind. Here, take a look at this picture."
He held out the National Geographic to me. It was a photograph of a young native woman, naked from the waist up, kneeling on the ground, her hands buried in rich soil. She was planting seedlings.
"That's interesting," I said curtly, hoping to get on with the intake interview.
"Wait, you're missing it - take a good look at her," he answered with insistence. Somewhat reluctantly, I complied and tried to focus my attention on the woman in the picture. She was looking up into the camera, and as I studied her face, I felt her alluring inner calm and sensitivity. Indeed, there WAS something interesting here! Her smooth, dark skin and long black hair contrasted sharply with her lightly colored eyes. I had never seen such an unusual combination. In most National Geographic photos, natives either appear completely oblivious to the camera or overly posed, self-conscious, even comical. But her eyes seemed to pass through and beyond the camera, carrying her quiet presence into our world, as if understanding and accepting the photograph as an invitation. Like the Mona Lisa, she was hiding something, a secret. I tried to imagine what it was.
"Now that's a woman," he interjected.
"Huh?"
"You're trying too hard.... Never mind. What was it you were about to say?"
"Um... I'm Dr. Holden."
"I should think you are, unless you've changed since a minute ago."
I felt off balance. This nut was up-staging me. Get your act together Thomas! Maybe I could use my wobbling to maneuver him into revealing his identity.
"Oh, that's right. I already introduced myself. My brain's a little fuzzy tonight. In fact, I can't remember what the nurse said your name was. I'm sorry."
He smiled, and said nothing.
"Have you forgotten what your name is?" I tried to sound sympathetic, but it felt false.
"Forgotten myself, yes. And maybe you should do the same."
"Do you remember where you live?"
"I also am homeless."
"Homeless? Did you ever have a home, or some place where you lived?"
"Homelessness IS my home."
"You probably had a home at one time. Do you remember where you came from?"
No response. He looked down into the magazine.
"Where are you going, then?"
No response.
"Do you remember?"
"My, my, you're filled with questions, aren't you?" he replied gently, "and so concerned about remembering."
Something about his reply bothered me. Something about this guy bothered me. I felt very bothered. As a rule, psychoanalytic therapists are ambivalent about practicing their trade. We love it and hate it because it's an impossible profession trying to understand and cure other people without getting in your own way. We all harbor fantasies of pursuing another career - something more tangible, concrete, something that has specific rules and outcomes. At that moment, the thought of being a potter flashed through my mind.
"I want to help you, and to do that I need to know about your background, about your history. Is that O.K.?"
"History is a good idea... as ideas go," he answered.
"Good, then tell me about your past."
"There is no past."
"Oh, come on! I thought you were going to cooperate with me." I was getting frustrated. That bothered me too.
"Aren't I?"
"No, you said you would tell me about your past."
"I did?"
"Yeah, you said it was a good idea."
"Oh, I didn't mean that."
"Well, then what did you mean?"
"Never mind, it's gone now."
My frustration was turning to anger. I wanted to pop this guy in the nose. "Well, tell me anything you remember about yourself, no matter what it is, no matter how trivial it may seem. Anything at all."
"Do you want to know what my face looked like before my parents were born?"
"What?"
He just stared back at me, looking completely serious, but totally calm, even peaceful. This guy wasn't playing with a full deck. Both oars weren't in the water. The elevator didn't go all the way to the top. The lights were on, but no one was home.
"I don't understand," I finally replied. "Could you please explain what you mean."
"Never mind."
We were going in circles. Something about him reminded me of Mobin - an inaccessible, inner craziness that jumped out and poked me when when I least expected it. Hopefully, he wasn't violent or suicidal. I had enough of that for one night. Just relax and take it slow, Tom.
"The police said they found you walking along the highway, picking up run-over animals."
"It's a living."
"What were you doing with them?" An image instantly flashed into my head. I don't know where the hell it came from - an image of being on my hands and knees, in the middle of a road, my face buried into a squashed, putrid carcass as I chewed on its gooey guts. My stomach wrenched. I felt like I could throw up.
"Nothing so personal," he said.
"Wh.. What?" I felt dizzy, disoriented. I couldn't tell if I was thinking to myself or talking out loud. My throat ached. My nose dripped. I attempted to sniff the juice back up, but to no avail. As I silently cursed myself for not having a tissue, Doe reached towards me. He was holding a tissue in his hand.
"It's time to clear your head," he remarked.
"Thanks." I blew my nose and stuffed the tissue into my open knapsack. "Sorry," I said. "Coming down with a little cold."
"Not so little."
"Well, it's really no big deal.... Uh, what were we talking about?"
"Rotting."
"Huh? Oh... yeah. The run-over animals. What did you say you did with them?" I was still trying to compose myself.
Doe reached over to my knapsack where my journal stuck out. He had something in his hand. I hadn't noticed where it came from. When he opened his fingers, dirt poured down onto my notebook.
"Dirt?" I asked.
Brilliant, Tom.
"Dirt." he replied.
My brain clunked and wheezed. What did this have to do with what we we talking about? What WERE we talking about? Why am I always asking myself questions? It seemed like years, but an answer finally went thud.
"You were burying them?"
"It's only polite to return the favor."
Burnout. I had reached the point of burnout. It was too late. I was too tired. This guy was too crazy. Just do the mental status exam and call it a night. If they tear me apart in morning report because I don't have enough information, well, that's just the way it's going to be.
"I'd like to ask you a few more questions - different than before. They may seem silly or irrelevant, but they'll help me. Answer them as best as you can. O.K.?"
"Jeopardy."
"Uh... yeah, it's something like the game show. Is that what you mean?"
"Never mind."
"Fine... O.K. What's today's date?"
"I see no dates... or time."
Probably a rationale, a cover-up for his memory loss. I decided not to press the question but just orient him instead.
"Today is Tuesday, November... November..." Blocking again! Holy shit! My brain really was fried!
"See what I mean, Dr. Thomas Holden?" he said calmly.
"Uh.... O.K...." Fumbling again. Better move on. "Do you remember what my name is?"
He just smiled calmly. It took me a second to realize why. Have you completely lost it, Tom? I was trying to get by on auto-pilot but I was veering off course. "Oh, I'm sorry. You just said my name, didn't you?... Uh, O.K. Do you know where you are right now?"
"Right here, aren't I?"
"But where is 'here,' do you know?"
"Here. Is there any other place?"
"But do you know the name of this place?"
"Does it matter?"
"It matters if you don't remember where you are, if you feel disoriented."
"Here, there, up, down, in, out. It's all the same place, now, isn't it?"
"Never mind," I replied. Doe smiled again. "O.K., how about this question," I continued. "If you accidentally locked your keys in your car, what would you do?"
"I don't have a car."
"Well, if you had a car what would you do?"
"I don't believe in having a car."
"Well, if you met someone who locked his keys in his car,what would you suggest that he do?"
"Get rid of his car."
"Alright. How about this. You're in a movie theater and you are the first to see a fire. What do you do?"
"I don't go to the movies."
"You know, you're making my life very difficult." I couldn't believe I said it. I was sinking to previously untouched depths of unprofessionalism.
"Difficult?" Doe replied. "I've got a difficult one for you. A man kept a goose inside a bottle. But it grew and got too big to stay inside. If the man tries to smash the bottle open, it would kill the goose. If he lets the goose be, it will smother inside the bottle. What should he do?"
"Please, let me ask the questions."
"But that one's just for you."
"Please. Just answer my questions as best as you can. O.K.?
He nodded.
I tried to remember what came next. "Uh.... Let's see..."
"Washington," Doe said.
"What?"
"Washington. And before?"
"Oh, the other question, that I asked before - that's where you think you are right now - in Washington?"
"Never mind."
I sighed. When was this going to end? I moved on to the digit span test, although I had this vague feeling that I had forgotten something. "I'm going to say some numbers and when I finish I want you to repeat them after me. So, for example, if I said 3-6-9, you would say what?"
"3...6...9."
A spark of hope. "Right. Now try this: 1-2-7-5"
"1, or 2... now that's really the question, isn't it?"
"No, you're supposed to repeat the whole sequence. Can you do it?"
"3-6-9-1-2-7-5.... But I like 6-9 the best."
This guy was playing games with me! He could remember the digits! "I'm going to say three things. I want you to remember them, then in a few minutes I'll ask you what those three things were. They are Bob Jones, 19 Elm Street, and blue. Got that?.... O.K. Now what does this expression mean - a rolling stone gathers no moss."
"Oh, now THIS is interesting. Of course a sitting stone also rolls, as does moss."
"But do you know what that saying means?"
"What meaning? A rolling stone gathers no moss. That's all there is."
"How about this saying: All that glitters is not gold."
"Good, but it needs a slight modification. Everything glitters, and only the one is gold."
What a loon. Only one more question left. Hang in there Tom.
"What brings you here?"
"The police brought me."
I wasn't going to accept any concrete thinking as a reply. I knew that he understood the actual intent of the question.
"REALLY, why do you think you are here?"
Doe fell silent. He seemed to withdraw into himself - not exactly as if he were thinking, but more a quiet, almost vacant state of mind. He seemed vulnerable. I was surprised that he would allow me to see him that way. Definitely not a behavior typical of a paranoid. Consider ruling out that diagnosis.
"Do you know the oak tree in the back parking lot," he finally said.
An image appeared before my mind. I remembered drinking coffee in the cafeteria, looking out the window at that tree pointing to the twilight sky, my car parked beneath its outstretched branches. A feeling came to me - a feeling of loneliness, separation, of wanting to be home.
"Yes, I know it."
Doe paused a beat. "That's why I'm here," he said quietly.
My frustration melted away. Like a swinging door on its way back, my attitude suddenly changed towards this guy. A gap had closed between us. I felt close to him, like he understood - like he cared. In fact, I felt like crying.
"I think its good that the police brought you here," I said, struggling to contain myself. "I think we can help you. I'd like to do my best to understand you, and so far I think we've done pretty well here together. How do you feel about our talk?"
Doe smiled. "A man was walking down a dark alley when he saw a stranger searching for something under a street lamp. When he asked the stranger what he was doing, he replied that he had lost his keys. 'Where do you think you dropped them?' the man asked. The stranger pointed towards the dark alley. 'If you lost them over there,' the puzzled man answered, 'why are you looking for them over here?' The stranger looked up, 'Because this is where the light is.'"
Doe looked straight into me. His eyes captured me. They were turbulent, boundaryless portals into another world. I felt I was looking through a mirror - there was me, a reflection, on one side, and pure chaos on the other. I knew with absolute certainly that he had one foot in this world and the other in a dimension only he, a lunatic, understood. I was mesmerized, dizzy, like passing out - and I would have passed out if not for the fact that words were forming on Doe's lips. All my attention focused on his mouth, all that kept me intact was my anticipation of what he was about to say. I waited.... The words sailed across an infinite space and penetrated my skull:
"Bob Jones... 19 Elm Street... blue."
I just stare, my mind a blank. Not anxious, or angry, or anything - just blank. Then I blink. A blink in the blank. It's in slow-mo. Through the blank I think, "This blink seems like slow-mo."
"Are we done?" a voice says, a thousand miles away. Another voice, closer, replies. I think it's me. "Yeah," the voice says. Another slow-mo blink and Doe disappears. Just the magazine sitting on his empty chair... The picture of that native woman.
I tilt through a cellophane-prop world towards the door. "How did it go?" a third voice says. Cleopatra.
"Fine, I'll be in the resident's lounge if you need me," auto-pilot says.
"Did you write your intake report?"
"Oh."
I pull down a chart from the rack. I scribble. Eyeballs are on me. What's-her-name is watching.
My brain is blank between the blinks.... Walking.... This carpet needs a shampoo. I find the door, and step out... Thank you, dear doorknob.... More walking... Thoughts start seeping back... I remember a song:
He rolls around in the dirt all day
I call his name but he won't obey
He always runs the other way
He rolls around in the dirt all day
I call his name but he won't obey
He always runs the other way.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch
Crazy going slowly am I
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, switch
The interview with Doe started to come back to me. What was that story he told?... Looking for keys under a street lamp. Don't dismiss it as psychotic gibberish. Everything the patient says, no matter how bizarre, is an unconscious communication of some kind. There was probably an element of transference in it - a reference to how he perceived and felt about me, something derived from an important relationship in his past.Who was the stranger and who was the man looking for the keys? Doe was searching - he had lost the keys to his sanity. He was the guy wandering along the highway looking for dead animals. But that seems too easy. Maybe I was the one who had lost the keys. What's the symbolic significance of the keys? The key to understanding Doe, to understanding his unconscious. And the meaning of looking under the street lamp, in the wrong place? That's where the light is. My methods during the intake lit up some areas but not the right ones. I was looking where I could see, where I was used to seeing, but that wasn't where he was at.
My dog Rags, he loves to play
He rolls around in the dirt all day
I guess you could take it even further than that. The images that make up the characters in a novel can only be extensions of the writer's personality. The writer's subjective world molds them, gives them substance and meaning. The characters are filtered through the writer's life - through his or her thoughts, attitudes, and emotions - acquiring the contours of those idiosyncratic structures through which they pass. The creator always leaves his imprint on the created. The characters may represent what you are, or used to be, or hope to be, or fear to be. They reflect the complex constellations and subcomponents within your personality - parts that you have neglected, denied, or forgotten - but you can't help but project them into the plot. Facing a pristine page is like facing card 16 of the Thematic Apperception Test - a blank, white card. You are supposed to make up a story, any story. Unconsciously, you know that no matter what characters you create, no matter what plot, it's all you and your life, in your reality or in your fantasies. You may even try to heal yourself through your characters. It's just like the child's imaginative play with dolls or toy soldiers - just a little more sophisticated.
Maybe, when combined, all the characters in a book make up one personality. The book IS a personality. It's the same in real life. A group consisting of two, ten, or ten million people has a collective personality that transcends the sum of its parts. It's a group mind, a group consciousness. And vice versa, a single person is group, a collection of introjections, internalizations, and identifications derived from significant others - a whole group of homunculi congregating inside your head. The writer simply digs them up, mixes and matches them, projects them onto the page and into the plot that their collective personalities demand.
The real kicker is that you can lose control of your characters. They may seem like pawns in your fictional chess game, but they can take on a life of their own. Like mutant knights, they move in directions that you did not predict. They rebel, jump off the board, slap you in the face and spin you around. They teach YOU a thing or two. As extensions of the hidden "It" that is your unconscious, they possess you. You become their creation.
Who is the subject and who is the object? Who is the creator and the created? It gets a little confusing, when you think about it. And it makes me wonder about the difference between fantasy and reality. Is there a difference? Maybe fictional characters are more real than the real author who thinks he has created them. No wonder schizophrenics cling to their beliefs of being Christ or Napoleon. There is a reality in that delusion more solid than the ground beneath your feet.
I looked up from my notebook, rubbed my eyes with both hands. Must try to get some sleep now. I put down the journal and stretched out on the sofa - but my brain refused the supine posture.
My dog rags, he loves to play
I felt tired, so tired. But my brain just wouldn't stop. The subliminal voice inside my head rattled on and on, relentlessly, mercilessly. A stress reaction. I tried to divorce myself from it. I tried to retreat from my own obsessive thoughts.... retreat, that's it! If only I could retreat - from everything. Hide away in the mountains somewhere, in the wilderness. Now that would be an ideal environment for writing. All alone, just you, and nature, and your ideas. Writers often are schizoids. They retreat into their imagination to avoid the pain and unpredictability of the real world. But does it work?
I looked at the clock. 2:10! Damn! Have to get some sleep!
My head started to hurt. My thoughts were bouncing around like superheated molecules. I tried to empty my mind, but I succeeded for only a brief span of seconds - and even then a hiss of white noise filled the space between my ears.
My dog Rags, he loves to play
"Stop!" I said to myself.
My dog Rags, he loves to -
"Stop!"
My dog Rags -
"Stop!"
My dog -
"Stop!"
Writing a novel -
"Stop!"
My dog -
"Stop!"
.....
It seemed to be working. I was able to block the voice. In other circumstances blocking would be a curse - writer's block, for instance - idea constipation. Boy, that could be painful. But it's not a blockage or barrier per se. You come in contact with a void, a blankness inside you, at the heart of your creativity. It's a hole in your self.
Shit! It was happening again! The theorizing/philosophizing voice sneaked in without my even knowing it!
"Stop!"
Stop what? Stop a thought. But "Stop" is a thought. Can you stop a stop-thought?
It wasn't going to work. The thoughts kept creeping back in no matter how fast I tried to push them out. Like digging a hole in the wet sand at the beach. You dig and scoop, dig and scoop, but the gloppity glop keeps sliding back.
I looked at the clock. 3:00! Dear God, let me go to sleep! Please, let me!
Why not count sheep? I'd try anything at this point. I imagined them jumping over a stack of novels...1...2...3...4... dumb, mindless, unambivalent animals, they glided gracefully over the hurdle without a care in the world.... 5...6...7...8...9... it's working.... 10...11...12... I'm winding down, relaxing... 13...14...15... thoughts fading ...16...17... in the distance.... 18... 19... my old friend Sleep.... 20....21... rounding the corner.... 22.... waving hello ...23...24... closer.... 25... 26... with open arms ... 27... drifting... 28...29... closer... 30.... 31... peacefully...... 32 ...... emptying ...............
"You're falling asleep!" said the tiny voice inside my head. It startled me, plucked me out of my graceful dive into nocturnal bliss. Damn! Damn!
I returned to counting sheep. For a moment I thought it might work again - but rather than hypnotizing me with their silent, rhythmic bounds, the sheep started to sing:
My dog rags, he loves to play
He rolls around in the dirt all day
I call his name but he won't obey
He always runs the other way
That's an idea! Maybe I could use a paradoxical trick to stop my babbling brain. Deliberately put MORE pressure into my thoughts, speeding them up, faster and faster. They start to whiz by like hungry cheetahs in pursuit of antelope. Can't focus on any one of them. They move too fast. In an attempt to counter this new strategy, my mind abandons words and resorts to images instead. Like disjointed frames from a motion picture, they flicker in and out - a phone call from the police, a dragon at the bottom of a dress, fingers ripping a page, a native woman with her hands in the soil. But my rebel-mind can't keep up the pace. It's slipping... sinking... relinquishing control... I'm no longer standing back and holding my thoughts at arms length, wrestling with them like they are agitated snakes. The distance closes... I become what I think.
The cup of coffee warms my fingers. I look across the cafeteria. It's empty. I look out the window. The sun has already fallen below the hillside, leaving only a faint red glow that hovers over the cold landscape. Next to the parking lot, the silhouette of a large oak tree stretches upward, its long branches pointing like eerie crippled fingers towards a patch of darkness in the corner of the sky. Below the tree sits my car, quiet and patient - waiting to take me home. I lean my head against the window and close my eyes. The glass lays cool and smooth against my cheek. I feel it against my nose, my chin - against the back and sides of my head. It closes in around my arms, legs, and stomach - compressing, confining, all around me.
"It's just a hypnagogic dream," the voice whispers.
Everything fades, unravels. "Sleep," we sigh - and slip off into blackness.