Read an Excerpt
32.
Excerpt from The Revisionist: A Case of Logokinesis Mania
Dr. Zachary Weiss
There was a disturbing sequel to the incident about the schedule mix-up: J had insisted we were to meet at 2:10 p.m. rather than our usual time, 2 p.m. As I’ve already noted, when I looked at the calendar, it definitely did appear that I had written 2:10 p.m., although I couldn’t recall any such time change. Again, as I’ve already noted, after drawing my attention to the time in my calendar, J let a broad smile spread across his face and merely winked at me. Now it strikes me that he perhaps felt this time change somehow demonstrated this gift he claimed to have for physically altering text by mental willpower. After he left that day, and after I’d finished responding to an email and was waiting for my next appointment, I couldn’t resist looking again at my calendar: J’s appointment time for the session at that point read 2 p.m., as I had insisted it was all along.
I was, of course, puzzled, but more than that, I wondered if I now had to entertain the idea that there might be something tangible to J’s belief in his ability to alter printed text mentally, albeit perhaps limited in duration. How could I not?
Of course, I know that in the mainstream psychiatrists are often referred to in a reductive and rather insulting way as “shrinks”, as if we are shrinking our patients’ minds or psyches or, at the least, altering them. In truth, I must confess, from a certain point of view, there is some merit to the notion that psychoanalysis does involve, in the process of what Freud called “the talking cure,” a large part of the analyst facilitating a change in the patient’s psyche, albeit toward a healthy change. But my work with J made me wonder if this normal analyst/patient dynamic was being challenged.
Was J trying to turn the tables on me? Was J attempting to facilitate a change in my psyche rather than the other, normal, way around? Was I now in a situation where my patient was playing at changing my psyche? And, if he was, what if J were succeeding?
On the other hand, (as I kept reminding myself I had to believe), if J’s alleged power of Logokinesis could be dismissed as mere delusion, might it be that J was somehow an extraordinary hypnotist? Might J be such an amazing hypnotist that he could convince a person—even a trained professional, such as myself, educated by years of experience at discerning the difference between what was real and what wasn’t—into blurring the line separating reality from delusion?
Lately, I’ve caught myself connecting J and my poor son, Abram, in my thoughts. Had I been too rigid in my rejection of my own son’s early belief in magic? Shouldn’t I have humored Abram when his interest first arose and let him work it through as he got older? If I had, maybe he would have realized that professional magicians use clever legerdemain tricks, like misdirection, to fool an audience into believing, for a moment, that their tricks are real—but magicians themselves never actually believe their own tricks are real. Might both my son and J share the bizarre case of resembling something like quasi-magicians who somehow suffered in the belief that their own tricks were real? At least, Abram, after his breakdown, seems to have managed to create his own reality after all. But hadn’t J, after his father’s death, done precisely the same thing?
Sadly, it’s too late for me to save my own son, Abram, or to go back in time and be less rigid with him; however, it just might not be too late to help J—though I must be careful not to let myself share J’s own delusions, which he clearly wants me to do.
On the one hand, I must be careful not to insist that J’s belief in his mental powers should be pigeonholed within some rigid psychiatric category such as psychosis. I have to tread carefully since, as early as our first session, I observed J’s inclination to become very agitated rapidly when discussing his Logokenesis mania. Yet, for the life of me, the longer I work with this patient, the more intensely curious I have become—even to the point of entertaining possibilities I heretofore would have adamantly dismissed as rubbish—I now often have difficulty sleeping and find myself listening less closely to my other patients than I ever have before in my entire career.
At our next session, which happened coincidentally to occur just after I had been rereading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams for background on a paper I was writing about the correlation of dreams to the creative process before my session with J, I had absentmindedly left the book on my desk when J entered.
As he sat down, he immediately noticed the book on my desk, excitedly pointed to it and said: “I know that book, Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. That’s the Modern Library edition. I recall a passage in The Interpretation of Dreams, right on page 223 that’s always annoyed me because it’s deliberately been translated into archaic English. The lines that bother me on that page are from a poem. I recall the translation reads: ‘The best that thou canst know thou mayst not tell to boys.’ I hate that sort of translating. It sounds so pretentious! It ought to read naturally, such as: ‘The best you can know, you can’t tell children.’”
Before I could look up the passage, there was a knock on my door. It was the building superintendent. He apologized for disturbing me but had to tell me that one of the pipes had burst in the basement and that the water would have to be shut off in the building. After the superintendent left, J and I finished our session. It was fairly unremarkable. J had complained that an older woman in his office had been promoted to a senior editorial position over him, which he resented, yet, despite his frustration with her promotion, he confessed he still found this older woman extremely attractive—even if he felt she’d robbed him of a job that should’ve been his and there was a twenty-year age difference between them. He went on to admit that he often found himself distracted by her at work, sometimes could not resist staring at her, especially when she came into the office wearing a Chanel suit, and J even confessed he’d had sexual fantasies involving her.
When I suggested a possible resemblance between his co-worker and his mother, J insisted angrily that my suggestion was absurd, even obscene, and had nothing whatsoever to do with his attraction to the older woman in his office. The session thus ended on a bit of a bad note, with J frowning as he quickly left my office.
A few minutes after J was gone, I recalled how our session had begun and took the book on Freud from my desk and turned to page 223. What I saw there was that the text J had spoken of at the start of our session now read exactly as J said it should, in modern English, not the archaic variety that I knew had been there before. It now read, ‘The best you can know, you can’t tell children.’ I thought: He really did it!
First the calendar, now this: yet again, I could not resist the feeling that J was turning the tables on me—rather than me facilitating a positive change in my patient’s psyche, J was challenging a part of the very foundation of my own psyche.
As I read and reread J’s modern translation in Freud’s book on my desk, appearing as undeniably as it did in black and white print on the page, I saw another proof that there was either something to J’s claim that he could actually re-edit text mentally, or that he was a master hypnotist, or that I was losing my own grip on reality.
As I drove home after finishing with my last patient that day (whose complaints about her husband’s infidelities I barely heard and was unable to respond to beyond offering her an occasional nod), I had the Freud book from my office in my briefcase lying on the passenger seat beside me, while my thoughts were racing along with the engine of my car. As soon as I got home, I rushed into my office, opened my briefcase, took out the Freud book, and opened it on my desk to page 223. Now, here on my desk at home, in the exact same book I’d perused with such astonishment in my office, I found the text on page 223 had reverted back to the archaic English that had originally been there: “The best that thou canst know thou mayst not tell to boys.” Tentatively, I concluded that either whatever power J had was only temporary in duration, like my calendar. Then I wondered whether this might be an incredible discovery, suggesting that the human mind had hidden abilities we had no idea existed except in the realm of fiction. I even could not resist thinking of the professional recognition I might receive if J’s case warranted a new entry identifying Logokinesis mania in the next DSM V and crediting me with the discovery of this new and singular mania.
But later, over dinner, my thoughts consumed me so intensely that I was unable to speak with Esther. I hardly touched the food on my plate and found myself worrying that I was now sharing my patient’s delusion. Had J won in the game of turning the tables or had I made a genuine discovery of an actual new mania—I had to figure out which it was.
Even after dinner, I continued wrestling the rest of the night with the uncertainty J’s case presented to me. Indeed, mulling over the possibilities kept me up all night.
33.
Private Report on Abram Weiss initiated by his father, Dr. Zachary Weiss
Spireman’s Confidential Investigations
Spireman & McPhail, LLM.
528 East 48th Street, suite 5B
New York, NY 10218
(212) 472-8463
SpiremanNyc@msn.com>
Case # A507b, Final Report # 5. October 24, 2011
Intra-Office Memorandum re. Investigation of Abram Weiss
This investigation’s subject, Abram Weiss, the son of our client, Dr. Zachary Weiss, initially went missing after dropping out of Harvard Universityin 2003. Although our client conveyed to us that he had hired multiple different Private Investigators over the past eight years, starting immediately after the initial disappearance of his son, none of the other investigators had succeeded in locating subject. However, our investigation, after exhaustive tracking and research, did locate our client’s son. Our detectives assigned to pin down the exact whereabouts of Abram Weiss, the son of our client, Dr. Zachary Weiss, discovered that Abram had, at some point, changed his name to Magnus Pater and established himself as the head of a cult religion of his own creation. Our investigation further revealed that Abram/Magnus had organized a commune for his followers located at Wild Brush Ranch just outside of Modesto, California 90634. This commune houses approximately 150 of the followers Abram/Magnus Pater has recruited to his cult and has a single phone number: (914) 634-6660.
Calling themselves the Society of the Divine Receptor, our investigation further found that Abram’s followers claim that our client’s son, their leader, whom they identify as Magnus Pater, receives divine messages from a quartet of sacred sages who are Moses, Jesus Christ, the Buddha and a mysterious fourth spirit the cult refers to only as the Spectral Handler.
This so-called new religion itself is mainly composed of an assortment of New Age ideas about channeling spiritual energy through special chants, while also entertaining a peculiar apocalyptic vision of a final confrontation between the forces of good and evil, which their leader (our client’s son), maintains will eventually take place in Los Angeles.
After we apprised our client, Dr. Zachary Weiss, of his son’s precise whereabouts and the means to contact him, we learned through our lead investigator that our client later shared with him that he had called his son, Abram/Magnus, but our client’s efforts to talk with his son, after so many years of not knowing where he was, apparently were not met with a positive response. Indeed, in a moment of unusual candor regarding the failed father-son reconnect our client had so desperately hoped for, Dr. Weiss related that his son refused to talk to his father, saying only that he, Magnus, now superseded his “former father” in all spiritual matters and felt any “earthly connection” between them was of no consequence and merely an annoyance, distracting Magnus from the important work his followers relied on him to be doing.
After this, Dr. Zachary Weiss thanked us for locating his son, but informed us that he no longer required our services. This report serves as our intra-office conclusion of this investigation.
Travel expenses and other ancillary costs incurred in the course of this case have been sent with our final bill for services rendered to the client.
34.
Website for the Society of the Divine Receptor
The Society of the Divine Receptor embraces the teachings of
Lord Moses Lord Buddha Lord Jesus The Spectral Handler & Magnus Pater.
We are dedicated to welcoming all looking to learn from love and, in so doing, advance humanity.
Our Spiritual Leader, Magnus Pater, welcomes all to The Society of the Divine Receptor. Whether you are wrestling with the demon of addiction, trapped in a relationship that oppresses you and may even physically endanger your safety, or you just find yourself knowing more is meant for your fulfillment in this lifetime beyond the course you are currently set on, We are here to help you.
We want nothing from you except to see you more powerfully and happily embracing life. Please do not hesitate to contact us and let us be a healing source of energy, overpowering all the negative energy that can overwhelm us all each day.
Our Headquarters are in Modesto, California. We have helped thousands since our Society was founded in 1984 to promote the awareness of the Protean variability of Life. Our philosophy, not placing any single religion above another, is a contemporary presentation of that cosmic, ever mutating, ever changing energyunderlying the world’s religions, sciences, and philosophies.
Email: IAMIT@receptor.org
Tel: (914) 634-6660,
Fax: (914) 634-6661
P O Box CC, Modesto, CA 91109-7107
USA
