From the papers of Dr.
Paol Kruthers, dated Feb.-Aug. 1947; digitally archived as of XXX.
XX, 2017. Links have been added to relevant sources to facilitate
comprehension of text.
“The
patient was first admitted to Heathville General Hospital on August
4th,
1946 after being located by Heathville, VA local; he had previously
disappeared from his home shortly after an appointment to the office
of a man whom he referred to as 'Dr. Dexter' three months prior to
his admission. Attempts to track down the individual known as Dr.
Dexter ended in failure.
“It
has taken me the last six months to properly hear the full account
that the patient prepared, and while I originally intended to publish
a transcript of his full account, the transcript was so full of
circular repetitions of previous incidents and the like that it would
have not merely been tediously lengthy but also unreadable.
Fortunately, I have received permission from the Hospital to deviate
from medical norm in my monograph on the patient's case and exercise
my skills as a writer to pen the monograph as an informal creative
piece, to better accommodate my present mental state. This monograph,
thus, will also be something of a therapeutic exercise for myself, as
part of my negotiations with the hospital regarding my recent
professional lapses. I thank Heathville General for this permission
and assure them that I will not betray their trust.
“There
is no need for me to elucidate further on my own troubles. My
monograph is more pressing, and of greater value to the psychiatric
community—suffice it to say that Mr. Kessler may present the most
fascinating instance of schizophrenia I have seen amongst the
mentally troubled. His elaborate ability to conjure up entire worlds
of fantastic creations beyond some of our most skilled fiction
writers is almost certainly linked to his obsession with persons who
are alternate incarnations of each other. I will spare any sort of
thematic analysis for the end (like any good paper or story), but
hearing Mr. Kessler speak reminds me of an idea that I had once—that
we are all much larger than we seem to be, and that there are other
people who are our components, or whom we are components of. It is
moments like these that do remind me that perhaps there is something
to that old saying that I am not meant to be part of the psychiatric
community, but again, I digress. I should note that my journey to
obtain a complete version of Kessler's story was not without
challenge, as the patient spends most of his time now trapped within
a coma; somehow still sustained, this endless sleep must be
burdensome to him. His body is twisted in an unnatural position
similar to the meditation poses of Buddhist monks—all attempts to
remove him from these positions regularly have failed and the staff
of Heathville General have abandoned trying.
“The
monograph will be given a layer of footnotes and annotations where
relevant. The narrative covers the dawn of Mr. Kessler's mental
disorder, regarding his wife Virginia, and his reference to Dr.
Dexter by another professional, Dr. Oliver Dran (deceased), including
the patient's own elaboration of the intriguing connection between
his relationship with his wife and an apparent anxious problem
involving intrusive thoughts of a murderous variety. It will then
move onto his journey to the 'B-Side,' and what that represents,
concluding with his association with the most prominent of his other
selves, 'Dr. Melcher,' and how that process allowed him to rally
against the cumulative source of his delusions and anxieties, in each
case documenting his alternate personae.
“Mr.
Kessler's case represents more prominently than any other in my
experience the important dichotomy our field seeks to solve: the
minimum requisite we ask of ourselves, as medical officials, to grant
hope to our patients. I wish that Mr. Kessler's case gave me hope,
and that in slaying that final demon in his mind he was free of his
problems. And yet unfortunately Mr. Kessler will remain our patient
for some time. It has not been long since he has told me his tale,
and so perhaps by the time of this monograph's publication, there
will be some improvement. Nonetheless, it seems as if Mr. Kessler's
intentional quest into the heart of his problems has ruined his
psyche, rather than rescued it.
“And
yet we must still apply our minds to the hopeless and attempt to
extract some notion of rescue from it. That is the goal of academic
research. With our boundless imaginations we must find a way to save
ourselves from the nightmares within us, the endless hordes of bats
that flutter at our psychological windows at night.”
There.
That is
good for now.
Certainly
I will have more hard data to add to this prologue to provide
reasoning for my “dramatization” of the life of the unfortunate
Mr. Kessler. And certainly I will purge these self-referential
diversions, along with the self-pitying commentary on my current
employment peril. I will change nothing by botching a chanced risk.
There
have been other psychiatric professionals who have fictionalized
their monographs before. I just cannot cite them now because the hour
is late, and I am embarrassed by wasting typewriter ink on getting
sidetracked so easily.
It is
time for the first draft. All of the above still stands. It's time to
tell the Kessler Story.
I
will annotate whatever I type up, as per my usual process—a first
set of footnotes to lay the ground for the real text
and its own real annotations. I should believe that I can write this
with the same professionalism as my other monographs.
It is
late, and rather than transform this foreword-turned-journal into an
exercise in exploring what I want to discuss in this journey through
Kessler's awful dreams, I find myself meditating on my own. I have
already revealed in that section I wish to use that this as an
exploration of my own troubles, which I do believe are at the root of
my professional discord. It is difficult to examine the minds of
madmen when one is going mad from insomnia oneself.
And yet
if I need to cite my own experiences to complete this monograph, I
will have my notebooks full of descriptions to cite. All that work
spent trying to figure out what it is about bats. I keep dreaming of
the bat, night after night, and I've done everything to look into it.
I've looked at the etymologies of everything one can call a bat in
every language that I can speak. I have studied bats in every
mythology encyclopedias write of; and of course, if any one
psychiatrist before me has written on interpretations of bats in the
schools of Jung, Freud, or any of their contemporaries or successors,
I have looked it over.
There
is presumably something mundane in mankind's fear of bats. Presumably
it's just the matter that our most ancient ancestors would have seen
the vampiric members of their order drinking the blood of our cattle,
and associated that over time with our repulsion from uncooked blood
and cannibalism and the disease potential therein. Similarly, bats
are denizens of the night, which holds the monsters of our caveman
memory. No matter what, everywhere one goes, bats are symbols of
dread, darkness, and evil. The natives of Mexico saw bats as symbols
of the underworld; in most of Europe they were the familiars of
witches; in Tanzania there is the bat-spirit popobawa,
which chases and sodomizes innocent people. Bats are a symbol of
darkness and darkness represents our fear of ourselves, our own
opposition to our super-ego and obedience to our id. The underworld
is our fear of death, witches our dreaded femininity, and sodomy our
sexual angst. And yet I understand that someday I will die, I accept
my inner femininity wholesale, and my wife and I enjoy ordinary
relations. I—
It
is late, and my doubts come back along with my nightmares. I have
been too self-centric, as well as self-pitying and self-referential.
I once more desire a career and a life. I do not know if I will
achieve that.
All of
this is down to the bat.
If I can
kill the bat, which kills those I love in my dreams, night after
night, then I can kill the bat that is the shadow over my work.
Part I >>
Part I >>
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