RESPONDENT: Yes, dated 14 April 1967, it reads as follows:

This 20-year-old, single SA/USN with two years active service was referred by the Naval Shipyard Dispensary for evaluation of a possible schizoid personality. The subject presents a problem with his sexuality that he regards as excessive. Also, he reports a rather vague problem with adjusting to the shipboard environment.

Mental status examination reveals a well developed, clean cut, blond-haired young man who relates in a self-effacing manner. He does not appear to be anxious, but does convey the impression of being overly ashamed of himself. Flow of speech is smooth and thought content is focused on his concern about his compulsion for sex. His guilt regarding the behavior persists despite professional reassurance regarding the normality of the behavior. He describes distant relationships with his peers, indicating he has never formed long lasting or deep-seated interpersonal relationships. He denies any conflict with authority figures. He has experienced some recent impairment of sleep and appetite. His thinking is clear, coherent and goal directed. He is capable of spontaneity and appropriate emotional expressiveness. There is no evidence of loosened associations, delusions or hallucinations. Intelligence is in the high average to superior range; and judgment is considered essentially intact.

A brief review of background history reveals distant relationships with peers and lack of persistence in reaching goals. The patient’s natural father suffers from schizophrenia and has been hospitalized since the patient was three years old. The patient’s stepfather is described as an alcoholic who never established a meaningful relationship with the patient. The patient’s mother worked frequently and he has no warm feelings about her. He reports several episodes of stealing minor objects as a child. He progressed through high school making excellent grades, graduating at the age of 18. He briefly attended the Naval Academy, making excellent grades, but dropped out suddenly for vague, unspecified reasons. He attended another college and dropped out for similar reasons. He held several jobs briefly but terminated his employment following impulsive trips out of town. On one such occasion he was apprehended at a girl’s dormitory. He has dated only occasionally, usually upon the initiative of the girl, and is presently uncomfortable in the presence of women.

Impression: No psychiatric diagnosis is indicated at the present time. There is evidence of a basically schizoid personality makeup with some depressive features.

Comments & recommendations: The subject is considered capable of remaining on active duty. There is evidence, however, of an underlying instability, which may require periodic reevaluation and supportive therapy in the future.

Signed L. Bonney LTJG MSC USNR
Clinical Psychologist

And yet, I found myself falling in love with the very same spirit. “How could this be?“ I wondered. “How could I fall in love with what I couldn’t see?“ Yet the feelings I was experiencing were unmistakably clear. After all, hadn’t I fallen in love with Mary for the very same reason, the love of some spirit I couldn’t see? Who was this spirit, which so skillfully eluded my grasp? And why did I feel such a compulsion to unite with it—with what I did not yet know?

Suddenly, I felt an incredible hunger for self-knowledge. I wanted to know everything there was to know about myself. As tears welled up in my eyes, I felt excited about the prospect of getting to know myself from head to toe, inside and out. I looked forward to this new relationship with my Self, like a newfound love. Impatient, I wanted the relationship to develop more quickly than it was, for I’d been overcome by an insatiable desire to learn the true nature of this spirit.

“How amazing is this spirit!“ I thought to myself. “Where just a moment ago, I felt depressed and even expressed hate for this spirit, I now felt hope.“

For I was just as incapable of accepting my sexual feelings as they were theirs. Where they sought acceptance in the arms of a prostitute, I fled to the confessional for absolution from my guilt—to ease the burden of my pain. Whereas they sought to escape their pain in the forgetfulness of an alcoholic stupor, I wallowed in mine in one failed attempt after another to get to the bottom of it. And where they discarded the responsibility for their pain onto the outcasts of society, I held tenaciously onto mine, fearful of letting it go.

For oddly enough, I needed my pain as much as this crutch needed me, as I had the distinct feeling Nature was driving me to lose my self in some yet unknown task. If only I could let go of my self, long enough to taste how it felt to forget about oneself, I believed I would actually find myself. In imbibing the spirits of alcohol, I had sought the spirit of such an experience. Because my actions were self-serving, I drank excessively, ever seeking to find that state of mind which could ultimately free me from the pain of my self. Instead of losing my self to the Spirit crying out within me, I lost myself to the spirits of alcohol which then blacked out my pain and brought to life the soulless Hyde hiding behind Nature’s desire for unity with spirit.

Compelled to release the incredible tension that’d built up between Mother Nature and Father Spirit as a result of their long separation from each other, I realized I couldn’t accept just any ole way of life fate threw at me, like that of the Great Gray Bitch or any of her prostitutes, for only the real thing, the way of my soul, could ever cool this compulsion of mine.

I saw too, how both my fathers’ spirits had been broken before me. When my real father unwittingly traded his soul to the Great Gray Bitch, she broke him in two, stole his mind, and carried it off to the metaphysical realm where he roams in madness, to this very day, unconsciously trying to find his way out. In the case of my stepfather, who had offered his body to her as cannon fodder in an earnest attempt to die to himself, she snatched up his soul and imprisoned it in a bottle with the spirits of alcohol, who eventually granted him his wish. And though they both found soul in my mother, such solace came as too little, too late, to stave off the fate they had inadvertently bought from the Great Gray Mother with their souls.

So had I inherited from them this tendency to cash in on the same terrible fate. Having given the Great Gray Bitch my body but not my soul, I still had a chance to change my fate before it was signed, sealed and delivered to me in an even more despicable form. For I was not about to live ’n’ die as half a man, or some soulless beast, as had my fathers before me.