Next Jason presented the case of a somewhat untidy and disorganized sixty-five-year-old man who began his interview saying he hated the therapist he was seeing. He felt he wasn’t making any progress. Jason turned off the tape and pointed out that the patient identified his frustration as connected with his therapy, but they should not assume that was really what was bothering him.
“What did he reveal? What should I ask?” He wrote their answers on the board.
Then he turned on the tape. Jason asked the man to tell a little more about his therapy, and the man revealed that the therapist was focusing on what an angry person he was. As the interview progressed, Jason began honing in on the man’s memory. It was soon revealed that his subject was suffering from dementia. He was becoming senile, and that was the reason for his anger. Jason did not blame the therapist for not catching the illness behind his anger, but concluded that this patient could not benefit from psychotherapy.
He had left the third segment for last because it was his favorite. He pushed the button. A male in-patient in his fifties was brought in by an attendant. He was a small man with a lot of graying hair slicked back. He smiled broadly, gesturing frequently with his hands.
“Look at me. I’m in so much fucking trouble, when I go out these days, I have to go with my keeper.” He sat down with a flourish.
“So, what happened to you?” Jason asked him.
“Hallucinations. Hallucinations happened to me.”
“That’s a pretty technical term. What do you mean? Do you hear things?”
“No. It was like I was feeling things, spiders running up and down my body just like in the movies. I had D.T.’s. I don’t have to tell you what that is. Every fucking person knows what D.T.’s are. It was the worst thing. Have you ever been drunk?”
Jason turned off the tape. “Here I have a choice. I can play psychiatrist, but what do you think the guy will think of me if I play psychiatrist? What should I say?”
The audience offered suggestions.
Jason pushed the button and watched himself say: “On occasion I’ve been known to get drunk.”
The audience laughed.
“But you’ve never had D.T.’s. I can tell. One look at you, I sized you up. I can tell from what you’re dressed like. You’re a guy who drinks an occasional social drink. A middle-class guy. You’re a teacher, a shrink. You’re interviewing me here on TV. You must have some clout. I wonder who this film is being shown to anyway—but what difference does it make? I’m so fucked up, I’m in so much trouble I couldn’t give a shit. I had a seizure. The ambulance came.” The man smiled genially, mugging for the camera.
“So that’s your reason for being in the hospital?” Jason said.
“Well, between you and me, Doc, there’s a little more to it. They happened to find a little cocaine on me.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “Recreational. Nothing heavy. Nothing like crack. Nothing like that. Recreational.” There was a silence before he went on.
“And—they busted some of the people I was with at the establishment I was frequenting.” Long silence.
“By establishment I was frequenting I bet you want to know what that is. Well, it was a whorehouse. I was in a fucking whorehouse and I had a seizure and the cops came and they busted me and they busted some of the —So now I’m here in a mental hospital. And I’m not responsible for any of this. I’m crazy and I’m not going to get in trouble with the law because—”
The audience erupted into little pockets of laughter. Jason stopped the tape.
“… Well, now we have some interesting questions. The guy’s talking about drugs. He’s talking about prostitution. He says he’s not responsible for his actions. At what point is someone responsible for his actions? Is he crazy?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. The tape came on. The guy was still talking.
“Well, and there was an organization that put money into my business and somehow there were some questions in the minds of the cops about the legality of it all. I myself don’t remember all the details. My memory has been fuzzy ever since I’ve been on the sauce. But the cops. I can tell you what the cops are interested in. They’re interested in the whole concept of crime. Crime. What is crime? If you want my opinion. The Exxon
“You think George Bush is a criminal?” Jason asked.
“He’s a criminal because he sells dope. He’s got an organization that sells dope for politics, starts wars for oil. These are the criminals. They steal money from the American people, big money. My organization isn’t involved with crimes like that. Nothing like that. A little prostitution maybe. Victimless crimes where people are not hurt personally. A little question of the law.” He spread his hands wide.
“And let me tell you about the law. Ever try and get a cop to help you when you got hurt, when someone broke a law in your neighborhood? You can’t talk to these people. They can’t speak English. They can’t even
“I bet you never think about who the real criminals are. Is it the ones who start the wars, steal our money, and ruin the ecology or is it somebody who helps horny men find a way out of their sexual tensions, huh? What’s good anyway? What’s evil?”
Jason switched off the tape for the last time and turned to his audience.
“Okay, what do we have here? This guy is getting us to think about what’s moral, what’s immoral. What’s legal and should be legal. Victimless crimes—what’s psychopathology? He says he’s crazy, but he doesn’t act crazy. He’s a ham. He loves being on the show, being entertaining. He’s uneducated but bright. He liked turning the tables on me, interviewing me. So what’s the story here? Is he immoral? Is he crazy?”
Forty-five minutes later Jason gathered up his things, and pushed out to the icy cold wind of Bloor Street.
It had gone very well. His audience loved it. He had reason to feel elated and up. But instead he was exhausted and uneasy. For some reason this time when he watched the tape he was struck by the remark about the cops not being there when you needed them. And not helping when they were there, because they were too busy worrying about what the crime was.
Jason had been beaten up pretty badly once when he was fifteen. In the Bronx where he came from, the cops had been less than sympathetic. They saw him as just another bellicose street kid in a fistfight. They searched him, found the knife he’d never had a chance to take out of his pocket, and threatened to take him in for possession of a concealed weapon.
Jason considered himself fully analyzed. He knew being middle-class was very important to him. He had liked the last patient’s analysis of him. But now, for a reason he couldn’t pinpoint, the tape upset him. The more he thought about the questions that were raised on it, the less sure he was about where he stood on them.
Suddenly he felt anxious again about his wife, as if he had left her too long, or overlooked something he should have noticed. It began to snow as he looked for a taxi.
2
Detective April Woo neatened up her desk for the night shift and covered a small yawn, even though the squad room was empty except for Ginora, the glorified secretary who answered the phone and took the messages, and Sergeant Sanchez. Both were at their desks hunched over their phones talking rapidly in Spanish. Neither looked her way.
Detective Bell was at the range in the Bronx. Detective Davis was at the range at the Academy, and Sergeant Aspiranti was in the field. It was three-thirty. If nothing new came up, April was due to go home in half an hour.
Her eyes slid over to the couple who had been sitting for almost an hour on the bench just inside the door. The Squad Supervisor, Sergeant Joyce, was out on a call. No one else could make an assignment. They’d have to sit there until Joyce got back, or the duty changed and Sergeant Rinaldi took over at four.
April studied them, wondering what the complaint might be. These were the kind of people who always made
