'How long were you in spacer'
'I aged about seven of your months, if that's what you mean.'
'You didn't feel a need to have someone to talk to for all that time?'
'No.' I jotted down: Patient dislikes everyone?
'What did you do to keep yourself occupied?'
He wagged his head. 'You don't understand, gene. Although I became seven EARTH months older during the trip, it really seemed like an instant to me. You see, time is warped at super light speeds. In other words-'
Unforgivably, I was too annoyed to let him go on. 'And speaking of time, ours is up for today. Shall we continue the discussion next week?'
'As you wish.'
'Good. I'll call Mr. Kowalski and Mr. Jensen to escort you back to your ward.'
'I know the way.'
'Well, if you don't mind, I'd rather call them. Just routine hospital procedure. I'm sure you understand.'
'Perfectly.'
'Good.' The orderlies arrived in a moment and the patient left with them, nodding complacently to me as he went out. I was surprised to find that I was dripping with perspiration, and I remember getting up to check the thermostat after switching off the recorder.
While the tape was rewinding I copied my scribbled observations for his permanent file, making mention of my distaste for what seemed to me his arrogant manner, after which I filed the rough notes into a separate cabinet, already stuffed with similar records. Then I listened to part of the tape, adding a comment about the patient's lack of any trace of dialect or accent. Surprisingly, hearing his soft voice, which was rather pleasant, was not at all annoying to me. It had been his demeanor.... Suddenly I realized: That cocky, lopsided, derisive grin reminded me of my father.
DAD was an overworked small-town doctor. The only time he ever relaxed-except for Saturday afternoons, when he lay on the sofa with his eyes closed listening to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts-was at dinnertime, when he would have exactly one glass of wine and relate to my mother and me, in his offhand way, more than we wanted to know about the ringworms and infarctions of his day. Afterwards he would head back to the hospital or make a few house calls. Unless I could think up a good excuse he would take me with him, assuming, erroneously, that I enjoyed the noxious sounds and smells, the bleeding and vomiting as much as he did. It was that insensitivity and arrogance, which I hated in my father, that had annoyed me so much during my first encounter with this man who called himself 'prot.'
I resolved, as always when something like this happens, to keep my personal life out of the examining room.
ON the train home that evening I got to thinking, as I often do after beginning a difficult or unusual case, about the human mind and reality. My new patient, for example, and Russell, our resident Christ, and thousands - like them live in worlds of their own, realms just as real to them as yours and mine are to us. That seems difficult to understand, but is it really? Surely the reader of this account has become, at one time or another, thoroughly involved in a film or absorbed in a novel, utterly 'lost' in the experience. Dreams, even daydreams, often seem very real at the time, as do events recalled during hypnosis. On such occasions, who is to say what reality is?
It is quite remarkable what some of those with severe mental disorders are able to do within the boundaries of their illusory worlds. The 'idiot' savants are a case in point. Unable to function in our society, they withdraw into recesses of the mind which most of us can never enter. They are capable of feats-with numbers, for example, or music-that others cannot begin to duplicate. We are still in the Dark Ages as far as understanding the human mind is concerned-how it learns, how it remembers, how it thinks. If Einstein's brain were transplanted into Wagner's skull, would this individual still be Einstein? Better: Switch half of Einstein's brain with half of Wagner's-which person would be Einstein and which Wagner? Or would each be someone in between? Similarly, in the case of multiple personality syndrome, which of the distinct 'identities' is really the person in question, or is he/she a different person at different times? Are we all different people at different times? Could this explain our changing 'moods'? When we see someone talking to himself-to whom is he speaking? Have you ever heard someone say, 'I haven't been myself lately.'? Or 'You're not the man I married!'? And how do we account for the fundamentalist preacher and his clandestine sex life? Are we all Drs. Jekyll and Messrs. Hyde?
I made a note to dwell for a while on prot's imaginary life on his imaginary planet, hoping of course that this would reveal something about his background on Earth-his geographical origin, perhaps, -his occupation, his name!-so that we might be able to track down his family and friends and thus, in addition to allaying their fears about his health and whereabouts, get to the underlying cause for his bizarre confabulation. I was beginning to feel the little tingle I always get at the beginning of a challenging case, when all the possibilities are still open. Who was this man? What sorts of alien thoughts filled his head? Would we be able to bring him down to Earth?
Session Two
I have always tried to give my examining room as pleasant an atmosphere as possible, with cheerful pastel walls, a few sylvan watercolors, and soft, indirect lighting. There is no couch: My patient and I sit facing each other in comfortable chairs. There is a clock placed discreetly on the back wall where the patient cannot see it.
Before my second interview with prot I went over Joyce Trexler's transcript of the first week's session with him. Mrs. Trexler has been here almost forever and it is common knowledge that it is she who really runs the place. 'Crazy as a loon' was her uninvited comment as she dropped the typed copy onto my desk.
I had looked up 'tachyons' and found that they were, as he had indicated, entities traveling faster than light. They are purely theoretical, however, and there is no evidence suggesting their actual existence. I had also tried to check out the 'Zairese,' but couldn't find anyone who spoke any of its more than two hundred dialects. However, although his story seemed perfectly consistent, it was no less problematic.In psychoanalysis, one tries to become the patient's peer. Gain his confidence. Build on what grasp he still has of reality, his residue of normal thoughts. But this man had no grasp of reality. His alleged travels around the world offered some sort of earthbound experience to pursue, but even that was suspect-he could have spent time in the library, or watched travelogues, for example. I was still pondering how to gain some kind of toehold on prot's psyche when he was escorted into my examining room.
He was wearing the same blue corduroys, dark glasses, and familiar smile. But this time the latter did not annoy me so much-it had been my problem, not his. He requested a few bananas before we began, and offered one to me. I declined, and waited until he had devoured them, skins and all. 'Your produce alone,' he said, 'has made the trip worthwhile.'
We chatted for a few minutes about fruit. He reminded me, for example, that their characteristic odors and flavors are due to the presence of specific chemical compounds known as esters. Then we reviewed briefly our previous interview. He maintained that he had arrived on Earth some four years and nine months ago, traveled on a beam of light, etc. Now I learned that 'K-PAX' was circled by seven purple moons. 'Your planet must be a very romantic place,' I prodded. At this point he did a surprising thing, something that no other patient of mine has ever done in the nearly thirty years I have been practicing psychoanalysis: He pulled a pencil and a little red notebook from his shirt pocket and began taking notes of his own! Rather amused by this, I asked him what he was jotting down. He replied that he had thought of something to include in his report. I inquired as to the nature of this 'report.' He said it was his custom to compile a description of the various places he visited and beings he encountered throughout the galaxy. It appeared that the patient was examining the doctor! It was my turn to smile.Not wanting to inhibit his activities in any way, I did not press him to show me what he had written, though I was more than a little curious. Instead, I asked him to tell me something about his boyhood on 'K-PAX' (i.e., Earth).
He said, 'The region I was born in-incidentally, we are born on K-PAX, just like you, and the process is much the same, only-well, we'll get into that later, I suppose....'
'Why don't we go into it now?'
He paused briefly, as if taken aback, but quickly recovered. The little grin, however, was gone. 'If you wish. Our anatomy is much like yours, as you know from the physical examination. The physiology is also similar, but,
