Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin Page A
Authors: Lawrence Sutin
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of dizziness that forced Phil to lie in bed, unable even to raise his head. Phil described it at the time as "vertigo." Kohler (now an M.D.) conjectures that the dizziness was caused by labyrinthitis, an inflammation of the inner ear. Kohler further stresses that "at no time was he mentally confused."
For two years, Phil recalled, he kept up weekly sessions with a Jungian analyst who "overworked" Phil's "intuitive processes." Phil's attitude toward therapy included a healthy dose of anger. The phobias had temporarily disabled him, but they hadn't diminished his intellect. Phil didn't like being told he was crazy. In this 1977 interview, genuine defiance cuts through the add-on story polish:
I remember I was in my teens and I saw a psychiatrist-I was having trouble in school-and I told him that I had begun to wonder if our value system-what was right and what was wrong-were absolutely true or whether they were not merely culturally relativistic. And he said, "That's a symptom of your neurosis, that you doubt the values of right and wrong." So I got ahold of a copy of the British scientific journal "Nature," which is the most reputable scientific journal in the world. And there was an article in which it said virtually all our values are derived essentially from the Bible and cannot be empirically verified, therefore must fall into the category of the untestable and the unprovable. I showed this to him, and he got very angry and said, "I consider this nothing but horseshit. Horseshit, I say!" Here I was, a teenager in the '40's, and here he was, a psychiatrist; now I look back and I see this man was cemented into a simplistic mode. I mean his brain was dead as far as I could determine.
A 1970 letter provides this account of a 1946 Rorschach test: "the tester in her report said that the strongest drive in me was to refind my twin sister who died about a month after she and I were born [... ]" This drive may have contributed to the psychic state that allowed for Phil's awareness of a voice during his exam-yet another of his names for the voice, in the Exegesis, was "Jane."
According to Phil, his Jungian therapist pronounced him "agoraphobic." Another diagnosis that Phil himself often employed with respect to that time was "schizophrenia." He confided to third wife, Anne Dick, that he had been so diagnosed in high school-whether this diagnosis was made by his Jungian therapist or another source is unknown. In any event, his use of the term does not necessarily render it accurate; as Anne Dick points out, "Phil was hypochondriacal about his mental condition."
The key factor in Phil's ability to weather these storms was his employment-which had begun at age fifteen, while he was still in high school-as a clerk at University Radio and later at Art Music, two Berkeley shops owned by one Herb Hollis, who became the father figure Phil needed.
It was within the confines of his job as salesclerk for Hollis-the only job, aside from SF writer, that Phil ever held-that he fought his successful rearguard action against the phobias that beset him in academia. Not that selling radios, TVs, and records to the public was without its anxieties, but Phil blossomed under Hollis's tutelage and the daily music debates, soulful revelations, and silly banter with his fellow employees.
The values Hollis and his strange crew embodied-craftsmanship, loyalty, independence of spirit, the little guy over the soulless corporate cartel-formed the social credo Phil held to through all the otherwise shifting realities in his fiction. The Berkeley of Phil's youth was a hotbed of political activity left and right. No one who knew Phil in the late forties regarded him as politically engaged. He was liberal, a Henry Wallace supporter in 1948, an admirer of C. Wright Mills's leftist sociological critiques of capitalism. But at the heart of Phil's thinking on the big issue of how the world ought to be run were lessons under the wing of driven, eccentric, droll,
For two years, Phil recalled, he kept up weekly sessions with a Jungian analyst who "overworked" Phil's "intuitive processes." Phil's attitude toward therapy included a healthy dose of anger. The phobias had temporarily disabled him, but they hadn't diminished his intellect. Phil didn't like being told he was crazy. In this 1977 interview, genuine defiance cuts through the add-on story polish:
I remember I was in my teens and I saw a psychiatrist-I was having trouble in school-and I told him that I had begun to wonder if our value system-what was right and what was wrong-were absolutely true or whether they were not merely culturally relativistic. And he said, "That's a symptom of your neurosis, that you doubt the values of right and wrong." So I got ahold of a copy of the British scientific journal "Nature," which is the most reputable scientific journal in the world. And there was an article in which it said virtually all our values are derived essentially from the Bible and cannot be empirically verified, therefore must fall into the category of the untestable and the unprovable. I showed this to him, and he got very angry and said, "I consider this nothing but horseshit. Horseshit, I say!" Here I was, a teenager in the '40's, and here he was, a psychiatrist; now I look back and I see this man was cemented into a simplistic mode. I mean his brain was dead as far as I could determine.
A 1970 letter provides this account of a 1946 Rorschach test: "the tester in her report said that the strongest drive in me was to refind my twin sister who died about a month after she and I were born [... ]" This drive may have contributed to the psychic state that allowed for Phil's awareness of a voice during his exam-yet another of his names for the voice, in the Exegesis, was "Jane."
According to Phil, his Jungian therapist pronounced him "agoraphobic." Another diagnosis that Phil himself often employed with respect to that time was "schizophrenia." He confided to third wife, Anne Dick, that he had been so diagnosed in high school-whether this diagnosis was made by his Jungian therapist or another source is unknown. In any event, his use of the term does not necessarily render it accurate; as Anne Dick points out, "Phil was hypochondriacal about his mental condition."
The key factor in Phil's ability to weather these storms was his employment-which had begun at age fifteen, while he was still in high school-as a clerk at University Radio and later at Art Music, two Berkeley shops owned by one Herb Hollis, who became the father figure Phil needed.
It was within the confines of his job as salesclerk for Hollis-the only job, aside from SF writer, that Phil ever held-that he fought his successful rearguard action against the phobias that beset him in academia. Not that selling radios, TVs, and records to the public was without its anxieties, but Phil blossomed under Hollis's tutelage and the daily music debates, soulful revelations, and silly banter with his fellow employees.
The values Hollis and his strange crew embodied-craftsmanship, loyalty, independence of spirit, the little guy over the soulless corporate cartel-formed the social credo Phil held to through all the otherwise shifting realities in his fiction. The Berkeley of Phil's youth was a hotbed of political activity left and right. No one who knew Phil in the late forties regarded him as politically engaged. He was liberal, a Henry Wallace supporter in 1948, an admirer of C. Wright Mills's leftist sociological critiques of capitalism. But at the heart of Phil's thinking on the big issue of how the world ought to be run were lessons under the wing of driven, eccentric, droll,
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