'Hello, I'm David. Janet Spier's son.' David realized too late that he'd neglected to mention his father.
'Oh my goodness.' The woman's eyes grew watery. Her hand described a fretful arc in the air with the tissue. 'David, I haven't seen you since God knows. I just can't believe it. How handsome you are.' She reached out and stroked the front of his white coat once, reverently.
'It's good to see you, Mrs. Connolly.'
'I remember you used to run around wearing your mother's white coat. It would be down to your shins.' A faint, sad grin etched itself on her face. 'I was so sorry to hear about her.'
'Thank you. My father too.'
'Oh dear,' Mrs. Connolly said. 'Oh dear.'
'And I'm sorry about your husband. I don't believe we've spoken since he passed. Dr. Connolly was a great psychologist.'
'Yes.' Her head bobbed with tiny nods, perhaps a Parkinson's tremor. She stepped back, opening the door. 'Please come in. It's been so long since I've had a visitor. What prompted you to stop by?'
'I… I actually wanted to know if your husband kept any of his old files and records.'
Her face fell with disappointment, and David could have killed himself for it. 'Oh, of course. You stopped by on a work matter. You must be awfully busy.'
She turned and shuffled slowly back into the musty interior of the house, steadying herself by setting her trembling hands on counters and the backs of chairs.
'My J.P. kept all his files and records. They're in his study, every last one of them, organized by date, color, size. He was very protective about them, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind Janet Spier's son having a look around.' She raised her arm up in the air with a giggle, and David recognized, for the first time, the younger Mrs. Connolly he remembered. He followed her patiently down a long, thickly carpeted hall, gripping her arm gently from behind. She paused before a door. 'You'd better open it, dear. It sticks. I'm afraid I don't have the strength anymore.'
David found he had to throw a little shoulder into the door to get it open. Dr. Connolly's office sat virtually untouched. A magisterial desk and leather chair, a wall of filing cabinets, rows of meticulously organized medical journals. A thick film of dust covered everything, and the smell of pipe smoke that David recalled still tinged the air.
Mrs. Connolly stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the room. 'I haven't seen the inside of this room in some time.' She shook her head once, as if throwing off sad thoughts, and forced a smile. 'Take your time, dear,' she said. 'I'll be in the living room, watching the TV.'
David waited to make sure she safely navigated the dark hall, then closed the door and surveyed the room. Dr. Connolly kept his office impeccably organized, and David located the relevant files in the cabinets in no time. Fear's Legacy-1973.
He pulled out the two general files and set them on the desk. Swirls of dust lifted from the leather blotter and refused to settle. The abstract sat at the front of the first folder. It was titled
FEAR'S LEGACY: SORROW,DISTRESS, AND ANGER.
Fear arousal can be obtained using several stimuli, including but not limited to: noise; sudden change in illumination; sudden unexpected movement; rapidly approaching objects; height; strange people; familiar people in strange guises; strange objects and strange places; threatening animals; darkness. Often, two or more of the above items can be combined to achieve a higher degree of fear arousal (i.e., darkness and the noise of a growling dog's rapid approach). When confronted with fear, children respond in three distinct and predictable ways: They grow immobile, or 'frozen'; they increase their distance from one type of object (snakes, loud noises, flashes of light); they increase their proximity to another type of object (mother figures).
Twenty-seven boys between the ages of six and ten were selected from foster homes, orphanages, and delinquent holding facilities. Each subject was removed from his 'home' for a period of six weeks and taken through a twelve-phase series of fear-arousal experiments, four trials a day, seven days a week, increasing in intensity. Each set of subjects lived together through the six-week trial, barracks-style, so the contagious effects of fear might also be analyzed. All trials occurred within a controlled environment.
Feeling a growing sense of nausea, David paused to rub some dust from his eyes. Dr. Connolly had chosen children without families. That way, there were no parents to complain. No one to notice if the children deteriorated emotionally as a result of the experiments, or developed abnormal attachment patterns. Further, the study evinced bad science. There was no control group-Connolly had selected children who already, in all likelihood, were emotionally fragile. The experiments were biased before they even got off the ground.
Remembering Dr. Connolly's kindly blue eyes and his well-trimmed white beard, David could not recast him as the perpetrator of these experiments. But his mother had told David cautionary tales about Dr. Connolly, who had deteriorated in his later years beneath the burden of tongue cancer and a rapidly diminishing reputation. He'd become reclusive, holing up in his house. For the last three years of his life, the professional community heard from him only in the form of his letters to psychology and psychiatry journals, angry diatribes decrying the work of more- renowned rivals.
David's mother, he recalled, had gone to great lengths to distance herself from the man. Now he knew why. The study had taken place during his mother's tenure as chief of staff-he was appalled and surprised she had permitted it. When he glanced back at the abstract, he felt the soothing glow of relief. Results were inconclusive, as the study was terminated on October 15, 1973. David's mother had, in fact, stopped the experiments. The paper continued:
However, several of the results are worthy of note, perhaps for incorporation into future studies. We found that once the subjects reached a state of acute distress, they were not easily comforted. In social workshops following the trials, they were permitted to role-play with dolls, interact with nurses, and draw pictures. We noted an increase in hostile behavior following each trial, particularly hostile behavior directed toward the nurses, who carried out the logistics of the experiments and acted as attachment (mother) figures. The subjects seemed to hold the nurses at fault. Those subjects who did not act out their aggression harbored a tremendous amount of latent resentment.
Through each six-week trial period, the subjects tended to develop along one of two distinct routes, either becoming intensely clinging and anxious, or growing increasingly emotionally detached. Those who became detached expressed three central beliefs: (1) The attachment figure would not respond to calls for support and protection, (2) They did not judge themselves to be the sort of person toward whom an attachment figure would respond in caring fashion, and (3) Their actions had no consequences on the external environment.
All three beliefs are reinforced by classic conditioning. As the subjects were rewarded randomly and punished randomly, they came to view themselves as powerless within their environment.
Some intense bonding occurred between subjects during off-hours between trials. When one subject perceived that another could offer comfort or respite from fear, an intense, almost obsessive relationship developed, reminiscent of collective confabulation, the shared fantasy worlds that sometimes develop between castaways and POWs. Through these relationships, the subjects attempted to wrest back some means of control over their lives.
The next few pages had been ripped out. Feeling slightly light-headed, David pushed back in the chair, sending up a miniature cloud of dust, and returned to the filing cabinet. The subsequent alphabetically arranged files were bulky and labeled by name-all males: JOSH ADAMS, TIMOTHY DILLER, FRANK GRANT. David scanned them, his finger coming to rest on the tab reading CLYDE SLADE.
He pulled the file, returned to the desk, and sat staring at it, gathering his courage. Katydids shrilled in the darkness outside the window.
He flipped open the file to reveal a bad Polaroid atop a stack of papers. Clyde, age ten, squinting into a background light. His posture was uncomfortable and defensive-head lowered, shoulders hunched, skinny arms dangling awkwardly at his sides. The points of his shoulders were visible through his threadbare T-shirt. David recognized the dark flat eyes and wide nose, but little else.
The top papers contained Clyde's history, most of which Ed had already told David about. Moved from foster home to orphanage to foster home. Beneath the history were Clyde's clinical results. He had grown increasingly withdrawn throughout the study, the document reported, displaying a fair amount of latent aggression toward the nurses. The experiments had been conducted against Clyde's will; he had begged repeatedly to be left alone, to be permitted to return to his last foster home. His requests were recorded merely as data. He had no parents to lodge more persuasive complaints or to demand that his rights be protected.
