Read Online The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

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?”
    â€œVery well,” said Miss R.
    â€œHowever,” I said, “we must not therefore assume—”
    â€œSo 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.”