The Thanatos Syndrome

and treat it. I became grandiose, even Faustian.
    Prison does wonders for megalomania. Instead of striking pacts with the Devil to save the world—yes, I was nuts—I spent two years driving a tractor pulling a gang mower over sunny fairways and at night chatting with my fellow con men and watching reruns of Barnaby Jones.
    Living a small life gave me leave to notice small things—like certain off-color spots in the St. Augustine grass which I correctly diagnosed as an early sign of chinch-bug infestation. Instead of saving the world, I saved the eighteen holes at Fort Pelham and felt surprisingly good about it.
    Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
    The great American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, said that the most amazing thing about the universe is that apparently disconnected events are in fact not, that one can connect them. Amazing!
    Here are a few disconnected facts, as untidy as these pesky English sparrows buzzing around the martin house.
    Ellen.
    Is she sick?
    There is this:
    Change in personality: from a thrifty albeit lusty, abstemious albeit merry, Presbyterian girl to a hard-drinking, free-style duplicate-bridge fanatic.
    Her sexual behavior.
    Her gift for bridge: Van Dorn says that after three rounds of play she can calculate the probabilities of distribution of cards in individual hands as accurately as a computer.
    Her relationship with Van Dorn.
    The Azazel convention.
    Bob Comeaux and John Van Dorn. Lucy says they are “up to something.” The only evidence so far: Both are overly friendly toward me. Both want something. What? Bob wants me to work with him at Fedville. Why? Van Dorn wanted me to go to Fresno with Ellen. Why?
    Three new patients (short case histories follow) who couldn’t be more different, yet there is a certain eerie similarity, certain signs and symptoms in common, such as
    Change of personality. From the familiar anxieties, terrors, panics, phobias I used to treat to a curious flatness of tone. Their old symptoms are in a sense “cured,” but are they better? Worse?
    Change in sexuality: Sexual feelings more openly, yet more casually, expressed. Less monogamous? More promiscuous? Or simply more honest, part and parcel of the sexual revolution? Plus certain clues to changes in sexual behavior in women: less missionary positioning, front to front, and more front to rear, six to nine, Donna backing into me. Also a hint of estrus-like behavior in Mickey LaFaye, who speaks of her “times,” not meaning her menses. Check menses in future histories.
    Language behavior: Change from ordinary talk in more or less complete sentences—“I feel awful today,” “I am plain and simply terrified,” “The truth is, Doc, I can’t stand that woman”—to two-or three-word fragments—“Feel good,” “Come by me,” “Over here,” “Donna like Doc”—reminiscent of the early fragmentary telepathic sentences of a three-year-old, or perhaps the two-word chimp utterances described by primatologists—“Tickle Washoe,” “More bananas.”
    Context loss: They respond to any learned stimulus like any other creature but not like an encultured creature, that is, any human in any culture. Example: Ask them out of the blue, Where is Schenectady? and if they know, they’ll tell you—without asking you why you want to know.
    Idiot-savant response: They’re not idiots but they’re savants in the narrow sense of being able to recall any information they have ever received—unlike you and me, whose memory is subject to all manner of lapses, repressions, errors, but, rather, like a computer ordered to scan its memory banks. An ocular sign: eyes rolling up behind closed lids as if they were “seeing” a map when asked, Where is St. Louis?
    Is this a syndrome? If so, what is its etiology? Exogenous? Bacterial? Viral? Chemical?
    In a word, what’s going on here?
    Can’t say. My series of patients is far too short. Three patients. I need fifty. I need blood chemistry, seven different kinds of brain scans, especially CORTscans.
    Here comes a patient. Enrique Busch. I spy him a block away and hurry to get inside. Wouldn’t do for a shrink to be caught sitting on the porch zinging paper P-51s at a martin hotel. Ellen taught me that when she was my receptionist-nurse. Act like a respectable