Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

More new customers signed up at higher fees than ever, and he found room for them by brutally curative dismissals of some current ones. There was no more time for receiving calls of idle inquiry. However, Miss Carter did feel it necessary to pass on the one name. “Very persistent,” she explained. “The woman’s been on the line again and again, a Mrs. Hinten.”

“Fame, like everything else, is a cross to bear,” he muttered. “Thank you so much, Miss Carter.”

When Stanler reached her on his private line, she said:

“Naughty, naughty—I always said it! Claiming Abe was your name!”

“Well, Mrs. Hinten?”

She was breathlessly pleased with her insight “I just wanted to congratulate you—all those newspaper items, and TV, too!—on your wonderful work. It’s always been the same with my best girls for the customers, they don’t gush, they don’t throw their hearts into it, they’re technicians. Controlled indifference, that’s what does their job best—and yours too!”

“The parallel may be overdrawn,” he sighed, “but, Mrs.—uh—yes, Mrs. Hinten, perhaps there’s something to what you say. Right now, though, I’m most pressed, so until—”

“One thing’s certain,” she exclaimed. “No matter what, I’ll never discuss your patronage. Anybody doing so much to fight suffering deserves every consideration!”

“I don’t know how to thank you enough, Mrs. Hinten, I am deeply touched,” he said, “so until another time—”

Putting down the receiver, he knew there was unlikely to be another time; the madame was as gushy as the average clubwoman. It was funny, though, to see how universal the misunderstanding (indifference, she’d actually said indifference!) could be.

By the last day of the psychiatrist’s convention, the doctors were forced to take into account the published encomiums to Stanler’s rough methods. This was achieved by appointing a study committee of seven delegates to investigate Stanler’s approach in detail before pressing further for legal action. “As already stated, we are sure the procedures indicated involve perils,” a spokesman explained to the press, “but, being scientists, we are interested in learning anything of potential value, no matter where it may be found.”

A photograph of this committee appeared in several newspapers. Looking at it, Stanler felt certain that one middle-aged doctor, a Jungian analyst, was largely homosexual and that both the aging Freudian and the chemotherapy enthusiast were obsessional neurotics. So when the group requested a meeting he readily agreed on the following Sunday.

Upon their arrival in his office he had to revise one assessment from largely to totally homosexual, but the previous, more ambiguous category did not remain empty as the doctors settled into chairs facing the desk; the leader of group-hysteria sessions, a surprisingly young fellow, was obviously deviant, from the slight limpness of his wrists to the infantile pout of his lips. Three other doctors remained undetermined quantities and he did not have time to determine what was wrong in their cases. One, a neat woman, was an advocate of cybernetic computer models for the ailing psyche. Another, in his late fifties, was a Catholic psychiatrist, and the third one, as young as the group-hysteria man, had been described in one newspaper as a “Marxist Revisionist Psychotherapist.”

“You have come to learn something about me,” Stanler smiled. “The reverse is already true.”

They laughed and the Jungian, evidently temporary chairman, said: “We’re not here because we’re impressed with your methods but because we’re impressed with your results and want to bridge the gap if possible. I have a feeling that, whatever your professed philosophy might have been, you’d be good at treating people. How did you develop what talent you have?”

Stanler shrugged. “I don’t know much about that myself, just enough.” He pointed at the caricatures which had attracted everyone’s attention. “Mine—just have a knack for spotting people’s weakest points.”

“Ah,” put in the Freudian, “but all talent is rooted in a life history. Something in the past. Your parents, for examp—”

“No, I doubt it, they were killed in a plane crash when I was fifteen—I’m now about double that—away at prep school then—”

“Ah, the great shock,” persisted the same doctor.

“No great shock. Mildly upset naturally, but I quickly got over that. There was enough money left to put me through college.” He sighed. “Gentlemen, I’ve had no shock in life, and I’m not interested in wasting everybody’s time on fruitless biographical details.”

“Agreed!” said the cybernetics lady. “We need less psychotherapies, more recognition that the mind’s a very involved electrochemical circuit in the present, a circuit of which we understand, so far, only several diagrams. You’ve hit on a few truths about this wiring, Doctor, and shown the superiority of valid technique over ineffective, well-intentioned ‘love’ as a curative approach.”

The group therapist’s nose twitched for a sneeze, but Stanler knew from well-worn lines appearing around his nostrils that the sneeze would, as usual, remain unachieved. “Ah-ah—” said the man—”well! We may often try to bring out aggressions but they must end in affection between the group members—not some coldly technical mutual manipulation of psyches!”

“No hasty conclusions!” cried the Revisionist. ‘Technique becomes all-important if devoted to a decent social goal. The ideal for a therapy system is to develop techniques so adequate to patients’ problems that any therapist-worker can automatically apply them.”

“Oh, no!” moaned several doctors.

“Oh, yes!” put in the chemotherapist. “Would you rather have a heart operation performed by a relative or by a skilled surgeon indifferent to you as a person? But our ‘revolutionary’ friend here, dragging out all our dirtiest linen before Mr. Stanler, is actually as verbal as the rest of you. Only fully developed psychochemical treatments will permit cures by a doctor who’s totally indifferent emotionally!”

Stanler let the wrangling continue for about ten minutes more, then slammed the desk for silence. “Some committee! I’ve seen about enough. Believe me, it’s not that complicated—I simply have a talent for identifying people’s shortcomings so clearly that they see what I see. And none of you have the slightest understanding of what I’ve just said!”

The accusation of nonunderstainding, the ultimate in professional insults, brought angry retorts from everyone. “Nonsense! . . . Everything has a reason! ... A charlatan, I said it all along! . . . God gave us— . . . Poor eating habi— ... Inferiority complex parading as utter self-confi— . . . Reactionary obscurant—” Stanler could almost feel their resentment as a solid wall closing in on him.

Suddenly disgust was too overwhelming for amusement and, before he could stop himself, he snapped: “Indifference? What did ‘technical’ indifference ever achieve? The only way to have useful insights into these people, any people, is to hate them—and I hate them all!”

A mistake, he thought, considering their stunned expressions; he had lost control and now they would surely find some law— But they were beginning to smile a little —knowing smiles of superiority—and then all looked unsurprised. “Utterest nonsense!” said the first to recover. “The one thing you can’t cure anyone with ever is hate, all schools of thought know that much. And you know it, too, Stanler, as well as any of us.”

“Right,” several doctors murmured, starting to get up.