The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach Page B

heated, he would leave the meeting room more and more frequently to go to the toilet or get a drink of water. On August 31, we timed his departures—which were always preceded by the statement: “I’ll be right back, I’m going to get a drink of water”—5:47, 6:10, 6:13, 6:15, 6:17, 6:20. Still another device he used was changing the subject. “As for me,” he once said abruptly, “I know a good rain would do a lot of good right now.”
    Yet, after a period of withdrawal Joseph would feel the need to assert himself again; it was as if he was afraid that the others would “win” if he kept quiet too long. He would then go over to the counter-offensive, especially against Leon. Like Clyde, Joseph adopted some of Leon’s delusions as a weapon. He was, however, able to use them against Leon far more effectively than was Clyde. Once when Leon said: “Joseph has prejudice and jealousy against me,” Joseph retorted: “Darned if I know why he talks that way. Negativism!! Negativism! Negativism! Rex’s uncle and I have agreed that I was the right God.”
    As the arguments became more heated we noted, too, an increasein bizarre behavior and confusion on Joseph’s part, the full significance of which we did not presume to understand. The weather that summer was particularly hot, yet Joseph often wore three pairs of socks—yellow, then pink, then yellow. He wore a pair of women’s horn-rimmed glasses without lenses to which he managed to attach a lorgnette, thereby creating a sight not beheld since Coppelius gave Hoffmann his pair of enchanted spectacles. As Leon’s reprimand suggests, he also threw towels and loaves of bread into the toilet and tossed magazines and books out of the window. When Leon asked him why he did this, Joseph replied: “Everything’s all right—the world is saved.” But when on another occasion I asked him about it, he denied it. And when I said that I had seen him, he replied that he never threw anything out of the window.
    Along with these manifestations, we also noted a sharp rise in ritualistic behavior. One of Joseph’s gestures was to extend his right index finger in an upward direction. When I asked him why he did it, he explained that he was thinking about England and that what he was thinking was right. “Finger” in French is
doigt
and “right” is
droit
, he said—“Isn’t that a good symbol?” When asked about another gesture, that of making a circle with thumb and forefinger, he replied: “That’s a zero. It means nothing wrong for England. It also means an exclamation! correct! beautiful! perfect! O.K.! unmalicious! benevolent! charming! delightful!” This behavior subsided, however, after the first month or so.
    Around the tenth of August, Joseph and Leon had come to an implicit agreement, a kind of truce, that they would not attack each other, verbally or otherwise, during the meetings. Both of them said they did not want any more conflict. However, despite these avowed intentions, Joseph went over to the attack whenever I was on hand, because he believed I was his ally and he felt strengthened by my presence. Under these circumstances Leon refrained from counterattack until he could no longer stand it, and when he struck back, controversy ensued.
    And what about Leon? Leon was what clinicians would call anoverintellectualizer. He organized and interpreted his attacks and defenses in terms of a highly coherent delusional system. To Leon it was intolerable not to have answers for everything. Despite his apparent inability to take overt aggressive action, it was clear that, of the three, he aroused the most hostility in the others. He was the most overcontrolled, the most rigid, the most unbending, and he set the pace for Clyde and Joseph.
    In spite of Leon’s threat not to attend the meetings because they were “mental torture” and