The Diceman

They talked, as they had for several months, primarily to each other. Whenever they directed a question or comment to me they did it warily, like animal trainers feeding a wounded lion. This particular afternoon they were talking about the hospital's policy of releasing patients conditionally, and I, staring hysterically at Jake's sirloin steak, was drunk with hunger. Dr. Ma

`Got to keep 'em in,' he said. `Harmful to us, the hospital, society, everybody, if a patient is prematurely released. Read Bowerly.'

Silence. (Actually chewing [I heard every nibble], other restaurant voices, laughter, dishes clattering, sizzling [I heard every single bubble explosion] and a loud voice which said, `Never again.') `You're-absolutely right, Jake,' I uttered unexpectedly. They were my first words of the afternoon.

`Remember that Negro released on probation who killed his parents? We were idiots. What if he'd only wounded them?'

`He's right, Tim,' I said.

Dr. Ma

`I'll bet,' he went on, `that two-thirds of the patients released from QSH - and the other state hospitals - are released far too early, that is, when they're still a menace to themselves and society.'

`That's true,' I said.

`I know that the professional opinion in vogue is that hospitalization is at best a necessary evil, but it's a stupid vogue. If we've got anything to offer our patients, then our hospitals do too. There are three times as many doctor-hours for a patient as he gets in the best out-patient treatment. Read Hegalson, Potter and Busch, their revised edition.'

'And they don't miss appointments, either,' I added.

'That's right,' Jake went on, `there's no home life to mess up their lives.'

'No wives or husbands or children or home-cooked meals.'

'Yeah.'

Dr. Felloni interrupted: 'Isn't adjustment to the home environment what we're striving for though?'

"Adjustment to some environment,' Jake answered. `I try to get my Negro patients in group therapy to see the sickness of the white world so that they will end their resentment and find themselves satisfied with either their lives on the ward or their necessary ghetto existence.'

'And God knows,' I said, `that the white world is sick. Look at the starving millions in East Germany.'

This slowed Jake down for a moment: he lived the rhythm of agreement but wasn't certain that my statement here was entirely satisfactory. With that brilliance which was his essence he hedged: `Our job is to shoot psychological penicillin into the whole social fabric, white and black, and we're doing it.'

'But with regard to Mrs. Lansing,' Dr. Felloni said, `you do feel she should be released.'

'She's your baby, Renata, but remember, "When is doubt, don't let 'em out."

'Dr. Ma

`Jake,' he said. `You would have been at home as commander of a concentration camp.'

Silence.

Then I said: `What a lousy thing to say. Jake wants to help his patients not exterminate them. And besides, in

concentration camps the commander sometimes … didn't give them food: Silence. Dr. Ma

`Quite right,' Dr. Ma

Dr. Ma

`No, I wouldn't,' I said. `If I were commander I'd increase food allotments two hundred percent and do experiments

with the inmates which would advance psychiatry a hundred years past Freud in twelve months.'

`Are you-talking about Jewish inmates?' Jake asked.

`Damn right. Jews make the best subjects for psychological experiments.'

I paused about one and a half seconds, but as Jake started to speak, I went on. `Because they're so intelligent,' sensitive

and flexible.'

That slowed Jake down. Somehow the racial stereotype I had created with my three adjectives didn't seem to leave him

much to shoot at.

`What do you mean by flexible?' he asked.

`Not rigid - open-minded, capable of change.'

`What experiments would you perform, Luke?'

Dr. Ma

`I wouldn't touch the inmates physically. No brain operations, sterilizations, that stuff. All I'd do is this: Turn all the

ascetics into hedonists; all the epicureans into flagellants; nymphomaniacs into nuns; homosexuals into heterosexuals, and vice versa. I'd train them all to eat non kosher food, give up their religion, change their professions, their styles of dress, grooming, walking and so on, and train them all to be unintelligent, insensitive and inflexible. I would prove that man can be changed: Dr. Felloni looked a little startled; she was nodding rather emphatically: `We're going to do this at Queensborough State, Hospital?'

`When I become director,' I answered.

`But I'm not certain it would be ethical,' she said.

`How would you do all this?' asked Dr. Ma

`Drole therapy.'

`Drole therapy?'

Jake asked.

`Yes. Honker, Ronson and Gloop, APB Journal, August, 1958, pages sixteen to twenty-three, a

It's short for drama-role therapy.'

'Dessert menu, please, waiter,' said Dr. Ma

'The same thing as Moreno?' Jake asked.

`No. Moreno has patients act out their fantasies in staged playlets. Drole therapy consists of forcing patients to live

their pressed latent impulses.'

'What's the APB Journal?' Jake asked.

`Jake, I agree with everything you say,' I said pleadingly. Don't challenge me. The whole thin tissue supporting our

argument will tear and collapse the whole thing on us.'

`I wasn't urging experimentation on patients.'

`Then what do you do during a typical hour?'

`Cure 'em.'

'Dr. Ma

ended as a fit of coughing.

But, Jake,' I said, `I thought it was our idea to gradually increase the facilities of and enrolment in mental hospitals one

percent a year until the whole nation was being cured.'

Silence.

`You'd have to be first, Luke,' Jake said quietly. ""Let me start now, today. I need help. I need food.'

`You mean analysis?'

`Yes. We all know I need it badly.'

`Dr. Ma

'I've lost faith in him. He's got bad table ma

`You knew that before.'

`But I didn't know until now the importance of food:'

Silence. Then Dr. Felloni:

`I'm glad you mentioned Tim's table ma

'How about it, Tim,' Jake said. `Can I take on Luke?'

`Certainly. I only work with neurotics.'

That ambiguous remark (was I schizophrenic or mentally healthy?) essentially ended the conversation. A few minutes