The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Read Free Page A

interpretation.
    I alone must bear full responsibility for the experimental procedures employed and for the interpretations set forth in this work.
    It was my good fortune to spend the academic year 1961–62 as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavorial Sciences. I wrote the present report in this scholarly and idylliccenter of learning overlooking Stanford University. But my good fortune did not end here. Miriam Gallaher, of the Center staff, patiently showed me the many ways in which it was possible to communicate to the reader the drama of research without sacrificing scientific accuracy or integrity. Whatever literary merit this work possesses is due in large part to her editorial judgment and wisdom.
    I have also richly profited from my association with Professors David Krech and Richard S. Crutchfield, consulting editors for Knopf publications in psychology, and with Nancy E. Gross, Knopf’s trade editor. The final revision of this manuscript was a happy experience for me because I had the benefit of their many thoughtful and painstaking editorial suggestions.
    Finally, I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to Anna Tower, of the Center staff, and also to Alice Lawrence and Dixie Knoebel, of Michigan State University, for relieving me of all the cumbersome concerns connected with the preparation of this manuscript for publication.
    MILTON ROKEACH
    East Lansing, Michigan
    July 1, 1963

THE THREE CHRISTS OF YPSILANTI

TO THREE MEN
    WHO WILL HEREIN BE CALLED
    Clyde Benson
    Joseph Cassel
    Leon Gabor

“Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.”
    BERTRAND RUSSELL
    Power

Prologue
    THE ENCOUNTER
    T HE THREE C HRISTS met for the first time in a small room off the large ward where they live. The date was July 1, 1959. All three had been transferred to Ward D-23 of Ypsilanti State Hospital a few days before and had been assigned to adjacent beds, a shared table in the dining hall, and similar jobs in the laundry room.
    It is difficult to convey my exact feelings at that moment. I approached the task with mixed emotions: curiosity and apprehension, high hopes for what the research project might reveal and concern for the welfare of the three men. Initially, my main purpose in bringing them together was to explore the processes by which their delusional systems of belief and their behavior might change if they were confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity. Subsequently, a second purpose emerged: an exploration of the processes by which systems of belief and behavior might be changed through messages purporting to come from significant authorities who existed only in the imaginations of the delusional Christs. These purposes were intimately connected with my own special field of interest in psychology. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychoanalyst, whose primary concerns are psychopathology and psychotherapy. My training is in social psychology and personality theory, and it is this background that led me to my meeting with the three Christs.

    I began the meeting by saying that for the next few months we would all be working together in the hope that they would feel better and that each of them would come to a better understanding of himself. Pointing to the tape recorder, I asked if they had any objections to its use. They offered none; all of them were familiar with it from prior interviews.
    The room in which we were meeting was a high-ceilinged, rectangular antechamber off the main recreation hall of D-23, one of several ordinarily used by patients to receive visitors. Arranged against the four bare walls were a dozen or so heavy wooden straight-backed chairs, and a matching wooden table, which we had moved from its position in the center of the room to give us more space. Two shadeless windows, the lower portion of which could be opened slightly