Peter Stjernström - The Best Book in the World

‘Adding chemicals from outside can create more imbalances. Multi-therapy sees it all from the other side. We ensure that the body starts to produce the chemicals it needs. Since everything you experience depends on the chemistry in your brain, all your life is in a sense imagined. It follows from this that your illnesses and problems are imagined too. They are quite simply figments of your imagination concocted by the chemistry in your brain!’

‘So you mean that paranoid schizophrenia, for example, is purely a figment of someone’s imagination?’

‘Exactly!’ shouts Doctor Rolf. ‘That is indeed the case! Split personality is an idée fixe and there are some excellent therapies to deal with that. It is simply a question of tailoring a therapy that works specially for you. That is multi-therapy in a nutshell. If there is a problem – there is a therapy!’

‘It sounds extremely simple…’

‘Simple! On the contrary, it can be incredibly difficult to find the right therapy. Imaginary illnesses are often very deeply embedded in people’s brains. You might have to test hundreds of placebo therapies before one works.’

‘Placebo therapies!’ says Titus, who is having a hard time keeping up.

‘Like sugar-coated pills! The patient thinks that the medicine works and is healed because of that. Even though the only active ingredient is sugar. That is exactly how it is with multi-therapy. As long as you think you are being healed, it will work. When you finally realise that your have an imaginary illness, you will search high and low for an imaginary therapy that works. You will stop seeing yourself as a victim of unfortunate circumstances, genes, childhood environment, or whatever it is you blame. When you get your willpower back, you will blow the whistle and the factory starts working again. Your brain and body will suddenly start producing the chemicals that are needed for you to function properly again. Thus: when you want to be cured – you will be cured. That’s how it is! Now I think you have twigged how it all works, yes?’

‘What I regard as my life, you can actually govern with this placebo therapy?’

‘Ha! You are clever!’

‘Umm, I wonder if I believe this,’ says Titus doubtfully. ‘Can you give me some examples? What can you cure?’

‘Everything! I can cure anything at all. Everything, everything, everything! Paranoia, schizophrenia, agoraphobia, snake phobias, fear of flying. You name it! The whole caboodle! From Münchausen by proxy to Tourette’s syndrome.’

Then something clicks inside Titus’ head. He thinks about Lenny.

‘What, can you cure Tourette’s?’

‘Yes indeed! Yep. Tourette’s is straightforward imagination. A malicious trick of the brain, pure and simple. There is no good reason why people should go around twitching and saying stupid things. No, they do it purely because their brains think they must. For imaginary illness there is only one remedy. And that is…’ puffs Doctor Rolf and moves his hand in a circle so that Titus finishes for him.

‘…imaginary therapy.’

‘Bravo, Titus! Imaginary therapy, placebo therapy, multi-therapy. We have many names for what we love.’

‘But how do you go about it, then? I mean, how can you cure somebody with Tourette’s, for example?’

‘Hard to generalise. But it is almost always a matter of going to extremes. Of going beyond every possible boundary. And then taking one more step, over the precipice. It is about putting people in a context that is so ridiculously exaggerated that they realise their own behaviour is trivial and of no consequence in a larger context. Then one continues to reduce and reduce their problems until they disappear completely. For a Tourette’s patient, for example, it might involve forcing the person to be extremely spasmodic and shout out dirty words for hours at a time during each therapy session. Perhaps dressed up as a clown, or something similar. It can be extremely tough going for all involved. My theory is that Tourette’s cases have a certain number of spasms inside them. If they try to curb their excesses, the effect is simply that they keep the larder well stocked with terrible things. In the worst cases, the larder will keep them supplied all their lives. No, it is better to hunt down the Tourette’s like mad dogs, and force all the shit out of them in a short period. Ride them in like wild horses at a rodeo. In the end, they tire of all the nonsense. We quite simply empty them of their spasms and expletives. But it can take three months. Years in the worst cases.’

‘Oh, stop it. That sounds sick. Don’t you think it is an extremely degrading approach?’

‘So it might seem. And that is why it takes place within sealed rooms at an authorised multi-therapist’s. We have signed an oath of confidentiality,’ says Doctor Rolf, and smothers a yawn.

How can he be tired now, wonders Titus. He was going on overdrive just thirty seconds ago, when he described Tourette’s sufferers as mad dogs.

‘If it’s as good as you say, then how come multi-therapy isn’t better known?’ snorts Titus.

He thinks the whole thing sounds like a joke. It is too simple. Genuine traumas must be deeper than simply dressing like an idiot and exaggerating your problems to make them disappear. It would be like trying to lose weight by binge eating.

‘Better known?’ Doctor Rolf continues to rant. ‘It comes with the territory. Who wants to be an ambassador for us multi-therapists, do you think? A person with paranoia that we have forced to go around spying on people 24/7, wearing a trench coat and sunglasses? A schizophrenic who is forced to live in dozens of identities, although he only feels at home in two? Some poor guy who is afraid of pigeons and who has to spend the entire summer in the Piazza San Marco in Venice? The thing is, once they have been cured we never see a trace of them again. By then, we have completely tired them out. When they think about what we have put them through, they feel ashamed like cats that have had a drenching. In a way, I can understand them. Granted, these treatments can be really hard going, but that is roughly as far as the science of placebo treatment has come. Anyway, who complains about brutal chemotherapy as long as it knocks out the cancer? The main point is that the treatment saves lives. And there are a lot of people out there who have us multi-therapists to thank for their being able to function in society, I promise you. Or, as we like to say: wherever in the world you may go, you will see lots of friends of placebo!’

‘Oh, right…’

‘Besides, it’s an extremely tough profession being a multi-therapist. It wears you down.’

‘Oh, yes…?’

‘Yes, you see. We must test all therapies before we try them out clinically on people. That is one of our ethical rules. There are a lot of therapies. Just as many as there are people, or so sometimes feels.’

‘Oh, right…’

‘Take somnambulism, for example. That has affected my life fundamentally. I have cured hundreds of patients who have walked in their sleep and not been able to distinguish between dreams and being awake. A sleepwalker can fall asleep anywhere. When they dream, they think that what is happening in the dream is taking place in reality. They have no idea what is a dream and what is for real. You might think that sounds unbelievably ridiculous and silly, but in fact it is very difficult to cure. For them, an effective placebo therapy is like the sleep-and-food alarm clock that the absent-minded professor has to have in the children’s cartoon story. I am convinced that the professor is actually a somnambulist and that he has found a method of setting limits for himself. His sleep-and-food clock tells him when he should eat, when he should go to bed, when he should wake up. Damn it, it tells him when he should shit and piss too. So I give all my waking-dream patients a little bell. Every time they are going to do something, they must give the bell a ding-a-ling and say aloud what they are going to do. The slightest thing, and they must give a ding-a-ling. ‘Now I must yawn, ding-a-ling.’ ‘Now I want to talk, ding-a-ling.’ Everything they do must be preceded by a ding-a-ling of the bell. Everything, every single thing. And they can only go ding-a-ling when they are awake, can’t they? The sound becomes a conditioned reflex. Ding-a-ling means that they are awake. Silence means reward and sleep. Eventually, they can take the bell away and just pretend to go Ding-a-ling. They keep track of themselves. The Ding-a-ling becomes a cognitive brake in their life.’