The Bird’s Nest (6 page)

“How?” she asked, surprised. “If I don't want you to?”

The look of entreaty which accompanied these words caused me to continue, as firmly, “It would be foolish to suppose that I could or would treat you against your will, nor would I wish to do so, but surely you cannot find any objection to continuing our conversation of your last visit? I found it most enjoyable.”

Warily, as though afraid that I might perhaps leap at her and force upon her my horrendous treatments, she moved toward her usual chair, and I found myself experiencing a strong relief when she was at last induced to sit quietly, and fix her gaze, as always, upon some unoffending object.

How to begin was not a problem; Miss R. having once been brought to consent to treatment, needed no further persuasion, I knew; what Miss R. needed was some method, palatably presented, whereby what she actually wanted (and of this I was positive by now, that she
did
want treatment, and by the means I suggested) could be offered her in disguise, as it were, so that her objections, however unreasonable, might be circumvented with her own unconscious aid. At any rate, with Miss R., whose mental resources were, to say the least, untapped, nothing so patently on the surface as her rejection of treatment needed to be dealt with by any more than the most perfunctory deviousness; I smiled amiably down at my desk and remarked that
at least
I might have the pleasure of conversing with her; she looked at me swiftly and away, perceiving the heavy emphasis I used and seeing what I meant her to see, that I was both vexed and disappointed.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and such a voluntary statement from Miss R. was worth almost any effort to me, in the step ahead it represented. “I wish I could let you hypnotize me.”

I bowed politely, as befits a gentleman whose generous offers have been civilly rejected (Victor Wright, Marquis of Steyne!) and I repressed my smile as I said smoothly, “Perhaps at another time; when we know one another better you will trust me.”

“I trust you,” Miss R. said uncertainly to the floor.

I endeavored to turn the conversation onto Miss R.'s family and her work, since discussion of her physical condition had found her so reticent, but discovered, as I had more than half expected, that Miss R. was ready with no more comprehensive descriptions of her family life or the museum where she was employed; indeed, at one point, despairing, I was almost persuaded that the girl was largely unaware of place and time, and might, if asked suddenly, have difficulty remembering her own name! I learned—through a cross-examination of which the Spanish Inquisitors might have been proud—that she was at this time doing a kind of menial clerical work at the museum, typing (the kind of a formal learned activity, requiring no imagination or inventive qualities in discovering the correct letters, which Miss R. might be expected to do splendidly) and dealing with routine correspondence (again, I ascertained, requiring no initiative) and matter-of-fact listings which required only the ability to copy down names and numbers.

It was this work which had suffered so extremely from her ill health, since she depended upon its income for her livelihood (although I strongly doubted whether her unknown aunt, no matter how heartless, would have let poor Miss R. starve for lack of an income, since various of Miss R.'s answers to my questions indicated that her aunt was in possession of what must have amounted, even today, to a fairly handsome fortune) and she would, without her occupation, have lost even that shred of independence left to her, and as a result—
mutatis mutandis—
suffered the worse. Her aunt had found her the job, persuaded her to take it, and encouraged her to continue at it, and I did Aunt the discourtesy of supposing that she, too, might have found Miss R.'s daily, regular absence a source of some refreshment. In answer to searching questions Miss R. admitted to having her headache still, and was further persuaded to agree that she did, after all, suffer from headaches almost constantly, and backaches almost as often. That Miss R. was entirely inert I soon had reason to doubt, for, seeing me glance once at the clock, she rose immediately, although I had supposed her regarding, as usual, the corner of the desk, and, remarking that her aunt expected her home, made as to take her leave. I assured her that I noted the clock because of an appointment of my own which was still almost two hours away, but could not prevail upon her to stay, although I felt most strongly that we were making a kind of progress.

“Doctor Wright,” she said unexpectedly, pausing on her way to the door but not turning to look at me, “I think this is wasting your time. I have nothing wrong with me.”

I smiled reassuringly, although unnecessarily, at her back. “If you were able to diagnose your own case, Miss R.,” I said, “you would hardly have to come to a doctor. Moreover,” I went on, before she could point out that she had not come to a doctor at all, but had been sent, “one or two hypnotic sessions will surely show if there is nothing wrong.”

“Goodbye,” Miss R. said, and took her departure.

 • • •

I need not further detail for the impatient reader (you are patient, sir? Then you and I are left behind, inhabitants of a slower and more leisurely time, when we were not restless with an author for his painstaking efforts to entertain us, and demanded paragraphs of rich and rewarding meditation, and loved our books for the leather and the weight; we are forgotten, sir, you and I, and must take our quiet contemplation in secret, as some take opium and some count their gold)—I need not further trouble the reader, then, with a meticulous account of the progress which I made in persuading Miss R. to permit hypnosis; she was finally brought to agree to a brief experiment, although I am assured that she thought herself yielding to a kind of sinfulness rather than an honest attempt at therapeutic assistance, since she insisted upon the provision that she should not be required to answer any “embarrassing” questions, and was not to remain under hypnosis for more than a minute or so—too little time, I could not help noting cynically (although privately, sir; I am not a monster!) for any overt nefarious act on my part. To all of these stipulations I acceded willingly, knowing that even a brief experiment would certainly ease Miss R.'s fears, and might even prove of some assistance in quieting her nervous illness. As I had long suspected, she was, once she had brought herself to the point, a willing and cooperative subject, and in a very short space of time I had subdued her into a light hypnotic slumber.

When she was breathing easily and quietly, her hands and face relaxed, and her feet resting comfortably upon a small footstool, I was agreeably surprised at her appearance of pleasant, intelligent comeliness and reflected at the time that very possibly Miss R.'s nervous constraints stretched even farther than headaches and sleeplessness, and threw over her whole personality an air of timidity and stupidity; I recall that I even wondered briefly if Miss R. might not be a gay and merry companion under her mask of illness. Marveling at the relaxation in her face, which for the first time seemed to me pretty, I asked her quietly, “What is your name.”

“Elizabeth R.”—without hesitation.

“Where do you live?”

She named her street and city address.

“Who am I?”

“You are Doctor Wright.”

“And are you afraid of me, Miss R.?”

“Of course not.”—smiling slightly.

It was most gratifying to see that, just as the anxious lines upon Miss R.'s face smoothed out under hypnosis, just as the tightness of her mouth relaxed and her voice lost its reluctance, so her funds of information were ready-tapped, as it were, and she answered my questions readily and without hesitation, although I had before heard from her only the briefest of replies and those spoken falteringly and with much hesitation; I foresaw, what I had believed all along, that with the priceless assistance of Miss R.'s own mind, freed of its pressure of constraint, we might easily and without terror soon have her as free from nervous ailments as the best of us.

At this first attempt, I was most unwilling to rouse Miss R. from her happy sleep, but, mindful of my promise to keep her in trance for only a minute or two, I emphasized in her mind (in the form of what is called
post-hypnotic suggestion,
a most compelling influence) the conviction that she would sleep soundly and dreamlessly that night, and awaken the next morning refreshed (concluding that, once we had Miss R.'s insomnia under control, we might be strengthened to attack the headache and backaches, which I half believed to be little more than the result of fatigue) and awakened her. Immediately she became the Miss R. of my previous acquaintance, sullen, silent, looking anywhere but at me as she asked immediately, “What did I say?”

Silently I passed her my notes across the desk, and she glanced at them hastily and then said in great astonishment, “Is this all?”

“Every word,” I told her truthfully, although, needless to add, I had prudently kept back my own words which were to instill in her the suggestion of a night's dreamless sleep.

“Why did you ask me if I was afraid of you?”

“Because naturally a doctor's first duty is to establish trust between himself and his patient,” I said glibly, and, no doubt still marveling at my tremendous restraint when she was—as I have no doubt she thought of it vividly—in my power, she arose shortly afterward and took her leave.

My treatment, as generally planned at that time, was simple enough for the most untutored layman to understand. Shorn of technicalities, my intentions were thus: through the use of hypnosis, under which I suspected Miss R. might speak and act far more freely than in a waking state, to discover and eliminate whatever strain was causing her deliberately to confine herself in an iron cage of uncommunicativeness and fear. I was positive that at some time lost to conscious memory, Miss R. had forsaken herself as she was meant to be, and imposed upon herself the artificial state of stupidity in which she had been living for so many years; I may liken this state and its cure to (if my reader will forgive such an ignoble comparison) a stoppage in a water main; Miss R. had somehow contrived to stop up the main sewer of her mind (gracious heaven, how I have caught myself in my own analogy!) with some incident or traumatic occurrence which was, to her mind, indigestible, and could not be assimilated or passed through the pipe. This stoppage had prevented all but the merest trickle of Miss R.'s actual personality from getting through, and given us the stagnant creature we had known. My problem was, specifically, to get back through the pipe to where the obstruction was, and clear it away. Although the figure of speech is highly distasteful to one as timid of tight places as myself, the only way in which I might accomplish this removal is by going myself (through hypnosis, you will perceive) down the pipe until, the stoppage found, I could attack it with every tool of common sense and clear-sighted recognition. There; I am thankful to be out of my metaphor at last, although I confess I think Thackeray might be proud of me for exploring it so persistently, and it does, I fear, portray most vividly my own diagnosis of Miss R.'s difficulty and my own problem in relieving it. Let us assume, then, that the good Doctor Wright is steeling himself to creep manfully down a sewer pipe (and I wonder mirthfully, whether by calling poor Miss R.'s mind a sewer I might not be approaching wickedly close to your psychoanalytic fellows, those plumbers to whom all minds are cesspools and all hearts black!). Oh, Miss Elizabeth R., to what a pass have you brought your doctor!

One other matter remains (and now I speak more seriously) which, in the interests of future clarity, ought now to be clearly understood. It has long been my habit—and I believe the practice of many who use hypnosis professionally as a therapeutic method—to distinguish between the personality awake and the personality in hypnotic trance by the use of numerical symbols; thus, Miss R., awake and as I originally saw her, was automatically R
1
, although use of the prime number did not necessarily mean that I regarded R
1
as Miss R. well, or healthy, or fundamental; R
1
was Miss R. the first, in my mind and in my notes. Miss R., then, in the light hypnotic trance in which I had already seen her, was R
2
, and in my notes I was of course easily able to distinguish between Miss R.'s comments and answers awake or asleep by noting whether my questions had been answered by R
1
or R
2
, with already in my own mind a distinct preference for the answers, and, indeed, the whole personality, of R
2
.

Indeed, when Miss R. came again to my office two days later, I thought I detected already traces of R
2
in her manner; her step was lighter, perhaps, and although she did not look directly at me she contrived to speak, beyond the sulky “Good afternoon” with which she always responded to my greeting; “I feel better already,” she remarked, and I thought I saw a brief lightening in her face.

I was heartened, as any doctor must have been. “Splendid,” I said. “Have you slept well?”

“Very well,” said Miss R.

“However,” I said, “we must not therefore assume—”

“So I won't be hypnotized again,” said Miss R.

I was sorely tempted to speak to her tartly, to point out to her that her purely temporary feeling of well-being might without my assistance suddenly forsake her and lower her once more into the deep despondency from which I had a little way lifted her, and yet I only said gently, “Any treatment, even any clear diagnosis, of your case, dear Miss R., is impossible without adequate knowledge. I do not believe that voluntarily you can or will give me the information I need; in a state of hypnosis you will answer me freely and truly.” Had I at this moment remembered her stricture upon “embarrassing” questions, I might not have been so blunt; at any rate, she subsided sullenly into her chair and did not answer. Regretting immediately my sharp words, I fell silent for a moment, so that my self-annoyance might not find utterance in remarks which might seem to be taking out on Miss R. my own irritation. So silent we sat both, and then at last, fetching a deep sigh, I smiled at myself and said frankly, “I do not ordinarily become angry with my patients; perhaps, my dear Miss R., you will do
me
good.”