Well now that I’ve been told about the three Christs of Ypsilanti, I have to take a look at them.
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (1964) is a book-length psychiatriccase study by Milton Rokeach, concerning his experiment on a group of three paranoid schizophrenic patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital[1] in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The book details the interactions of the three patients, Clyde Benson, Joseph Cassel, and Leon Gabor, who each believed himself to be Jesus Christ.
Ah the eyes widen, the spine straightens, the attention zooms in. The possibilities are obvious, and abundant.
To study the basis for delusional belief systems, Rokeach brought together three men who each claimed to be Jesus Christ and confronted them with one another’s conflicting claims, while encouraging them to interact personally as a support group.
Ok admit it – who wouldn’t want to be behind the one-way mirror to watch those sessions? Who wouldn’t want to write a play with three characters who all think they’re Jesus? (Or Mo, or Abraham Lincoln, or the man who shot Liberty Valance?)
While initially the three patients quarreled over who was holier and reached the point of physical altercation, they eventually each explained away the other two as being mental patients in a hospital, or dead and being operated by machines.[2]
Interesting! One correct explanation, and one incorrect one. Was that reflected in their relative schizophrenia scores?
It’s a nice little allegory of human life, though. All the others are mental patients in hospitals, but I alone am
Wait…
Well, fuck. Somebody already playwrighted this:
As an aside, I guess someone could write something about three people who think they’re Sir John A. MacDonald or something, but Canadians don’t really have that same kind of thing for founding fathers. I doubt you could easily find three Canadians who could say more about JAM than “Confederation, the railway, alcoholic”, let alone anyone who believes they’re actually him.
I’ve known several people who appeared to be dead and operated by machines.
Have you seen Peter O’Toole in The Ruling Class? Only two Christs in that but O’Toole was brilliant.
Only two Christs in that but O’Toole was brilliant.
Yeah, but he lost to the old testament god. 🙂
I love that movie.
Ahhh I have seen that but it was a million years ago. I need to see it again.
Anthony K @1:
Perhaps three people who all think they’re William Lyon Mackenzie King. They can fight over which one of them his dead mother is really speaking to. Things get really weird in the third act when they start agreeing on what she’s saying.
Or there who think they’re Brian Mulroney. They’d all get along famously by getting soused on NyQuil and singing Irish songs.
Or Spartacus. Or Subcommandante Marcos. Or Baron von Munchausen.
Sorry, Scr… Archivist @ # 8, but I am Spartacus!
I hated the moving “the Ruling class.” It seemed to imply that treatment leads a man from being gentle like Jesus to being Jack the ripper. I did see it a long time ago, so my interpretation may be off. It is hard being a psychiatrist and watching movies about mental illness and psychotherapy. the movies almost always get it wrong.
In terms of the patients who thought they were Jesus: it is remarkable how patients will rationalize their delusions and find a way of holding onto those delusions. I have patients who think the government has placed a listening device in their bodies. And no rational argument will dissuade them from this belief. Of course, people who are not psychotic do this all the time
I find it hard to give much credence to anecdotal psychiatric case reports from 50 years back, but there is an interesting possibility that emerges from the case. All three people had paranoid schizophrenia and yet they all found ways to rationalise conflicting evidence despite having raging thought disorders. It makes me wonder if the process of rationalisation is much deeper than rational thinking itself.
I don’t care if it rains or freezes
‘Long as I have my Ersatz Jesus
Sitting on the dashboard of my car.
My uncle was a psychiatric nurse and had a situation like this on his ward (but there were only two Jesuses.) One was fairly violent and kept trying to beat up the other Jesus, but the other had a more peaceful nature and would say ‘He’s just fighting with me because he knows, deep down, that he ent Jesus.’ Uncle said neither of these guys had particularly religious backgrounds, knew much about Jesus, talked about religion, or tried to do anything unusual inspired by their delusion. They just ate and smoked and sat around like the rest of the patients. A play based on this would be pretty dull.
I’m pretty sure the world would be a better place if most people were machines…
(I’m a bit of misanthrope…)
Years ago there was a British TV series called Psychos about a psychiatric hospital. There was a subplot involving two patients who believe that they are Jesus. The staff were trying to prevent them from meeting but eventually they do. They get on really well because they have a shared interest and agree on a lot of things.
To me, the amazing thing about following this thread has been the bland acceptance of Rokeach’s running an uncontrolled psych experiment on three objectively ill patients involuntarily confined in a public health facility–and then making it into a for-profit publication. It’s like selling tickets to watch the crazies at Bedlam, brought up to the mid-20th c. WTF? It’s even less ethical than the Milgram and Zimbardo experiments, in which the subjects were–however much deceived–actually volunteers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedlam_Hospital
“The Ruling Class” wasn’t really about psychotherapy as such, it was about the British class system and its ability to turn decent people into raging arseholes. Psychotherapy and religion were just two of the weapons in the war, so to speak. I can totally see why that would distress a genuine psychotherapist, though.
I just have to stop lurking to mention that Terry Pratchett’s Making Money has a scene at the end where you see the Vetrinari wing of the city hospital – full of people who are convinced they are the real Patrician. They organise eyebrow-raising competitions.