The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach Page A

“That would be foolish. You’re a bullheaded fool!”
    â€œI’m speaking the truth!” Joseph shouted, and Clyde shouted back: “You’re the biggest liar!”
    Now, for the first time, Leon spoke very quietly: “Duping can cause phenomena that are actually real to the person. I’ve had experience with it in this place.”
    Strategies of Attack and Defense
    During all the time we observed the three Christs, the only outbreaks of violence among them were those just described: the firstbetween Clyde and Leon; the next between Joseph and Leon; and the last between Clyde and Joseph. The impression we gained was that all three men were extremely eager, following these outbreaks, to avoid further ones. This is not to say that there were not other quarrels, often bitter in tone. But they emerged despite the efforts of the three men to avoid them and they subsided quickly, without interference from us, once a certain level of intensity had been reached.
    Of the three Christs, Clyde was the least in touch with social reality, the most primitive and childlike. His typical defense was what psychoanalysts would call
denial
; he repeatedly and consistently denied that the other two were alive. He lacked finesse and, when he felt himself menaced, could only resort to vague blustering threats, childish braggadocio, and authoritarian assertions of his power. “You’re going to listen to the truth. I’m the Jesus and you’re going to follow. I am the boss, and you better believe it. You serve me first!” At the meetings he participated least in the discussions. He reminded us of a slumbering bear who preferred to revel in his fantasies but who, when enraged, would try to scare off his attackers with loud, ominous-sounding growls so that he could hurry back to his own familiar world. On occasion he would try to cope with the others by borrowing one of their concepts to use as a weapon against them. He borrowed Leon’s term “habeas corpus,” which for Leon was an effective weapon of attack and defense, but in Clyde’s lexicon remained childlike and ineffectual. He could only use it to say: “There’s a habeas corpus and that represents the resurrection. I’m not assigned to the hospital like they are. I’ve got good guns too, Mister!”
    Although Joseph seemed more aware than Clyde of what was going on, his typical response also involved denial. In the initial encounter, for example, he had responded by “laughing it off.” Denial was, in fact, Joseph’s main defense against everything, including recognition of his own illness. Once, when I asked him whether Clyde’s and Leon’s claims to be Christ or God bothered him, he replied: “It doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m too smart to sayit bothers me.” Or, on another occasion: “There is nothing wrong. Yesterday I know I was what I am. Today I am what I am. I’m not worried about losing my identity.” Still another time: “If anything bothers me, I soon can get rid of it. Before I have a headache or any thought I don’t want to have, I just snap it.”
    But Joseph’s attempts at denial were not completely effective as a defense against confrontation. As early as the first week, he began to make use of various withdrawal mechanisms, and he used them with increasing frequency as time went on. He came to the daily meetings armed with books and magazines, and during the meetings spent much of the time apparently reading or compulsively leafing through a book from cover to cover and then starting all over again. At other times he merely sat, smoking cigarettes and staring into space for the whole hour, letting Leon carry on long soliloquies. Or, when asked if he had anything to say, he would reply: “I feel like saying nothing. I’ll lose my values, I’ll never go back to England if I say anything.” When the arguments became more