Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

bubbling and joyous, `The great thing is that it doesn't do us any good at all.'

Laughing, I thumbed my nose at the laughing men in the sky - who laughed - and began walking through the library,

trailed by my attendant and leaving behind me like a big boat a wake of `shhhhhs' as I passed.

`It's all right,' I said loudly to everyone. `Knowing the answer doesn't matter. You don't have to know.'

Interestingly enough, no one approached me as I walked on through the central reading room of the New York Public

Library, my belly booming out its Answer to the stack upon stack of answers and the row upon row of seekers. Only at

the exit did I find someone who responded to me. An ancient portly library guard with flushed face and huge Santa

Claus pot came up to me as I was about to leave and, smiling as if his face would burst, said in a louder voice than

mine `gotta tone dawn the laughing during hours,' and then we both roared out into new laughter louder than ever until

I turned and left.

Chapter Forty-seven

The Die is my shepherd;

I shall not want;

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, I lie;

He leadeth me beside the still waters, I swim.

He destroyeth my soul

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness

For randomness sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Chance is with me;

Thy two sacred cubes they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies

Thou anointest my head with oil;

My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy and evil and cruelty shall follow ma

All the days of my life

And I will dwell in the house of Chance for ever.

from The Book of the Die

Chapter Forty-eight

The meeting of the executive committee of the Psychoanalysts' Association of New York took place early on the

afternoon of 30 June, 1969, in a large seminar room at Dr. Weinburger's Institute for the Study of Hypochondria in the

Dying. Dr. Weinburger, a bushy-haired, thickset man in his late forties, sat impatiently behind a long table with

Doctors Peerman and Cobblestone on one side of him and old Dr. Moon and Dr. Mann on the other. All the gentlemen

looked serious and intent except for Dr. Moon, who was sleeping quietly between Chairman Weinburger and Dr.

Mann, occasionally sliding slowly sideways to rest against the shoulder of the one, and then, like a pendulum that

badly needs oiling, after a hesitation, sliding slowly back across the arc to rest against the shoulder of the other.

The table at which the five sat was so long that they looked more like fugitives huddled together for mutual protection

rather than judges. Dr. Rhinehart and Dr. Ecstein, who was present as friend and personal physician, sat on stiff

wooden chairs in the middle of the room opposite them. Dr. Ecstein was slumped and squinting, but Dr. Rhinehart was

erect and alert, looking extremely professional in a perfectly tailored gray suit and tie and shoes shined to such a luster

that Dr. Ecstein wondered whether he hadn't cheated by using black Day-glo.

`Yes, sir,' Dr. Rhinehart said before anyone else had said a word.

`One moment, Dr. Rhinehart,' Dr. Weinburger said sharply. He looked down at the papers in front of him. `Does Dr. Rhinehart know the charges being brought against him?'

'Yes,' said Doctors Mann and Ecstein at the same time.

`What's all this about dice, young man?' Dr. Cobblestone asked. His cane lay on the table in front of him as if it were a piece of evidence relevant to the proceedings.

`A new therapy I'm developing, sir,' Dr. Rhinehart replied promptly.

`I understand that,' he said. `What we mean is that you should explain.'

`Well, sir, in dice therapy we encourage our patients to reach decisions by casting dice. The purpose is to destroy the personality We wish to create in its place a multiple personality: an individual inconsistent, unreliable and progressively schizoid' Dr. Rhinehart spoke in a clear, firm and reasonable voice, but for some reason his answer was greeted by a silence, broken only by Dr. Moon's harsh, uneven breathing. Dr. Cobblestone's stern lower jaw became sterner.

`Go on,' said Dr. Weinburger.

`My theory is that we all have minority impulses which are stifled by the normal personality and rarely break free into action. The desire to hit one's wife is forbidden by the concept of dignity, femininity and covetousness of unbroken crockery. The desire to be religious is stopped by the knowledge that orgy "is" an atheist. Your desire, sir, to shout "stop this nonsense!" is stopped by your sense of yourself as a fair and rational man.

The minority impulses are the Negroes of the personality. They have not enjoyed freedom since the personality was founded; they have become the invisible men. We refuse to recognize that a minority impulse is a potential full man, and that until he is granted the same opportunity for development as the major conventional selves, the personality in which he fines will be divided, subject to tensions which lead to periodic explosions and riots.'

`Negroes must be kept in their place,' said Dr. Moon suddenly, his round, wrinkled face suddenly coming alive with the appearance of two fierce red eyes in its ravaged landscape. He was leaning forward intensely, his mouth, after he had finished his short sentence, dangling open.

`Go on,' said Dr. Weinburger.

Dr Rhinehart nodded gravely to Dr. Moon and resumed.

'Every personality is the sum total of accumulated suppressions of minorities. Were a man to develop a consistent pattern of impulse control he would have no definable personality: ha would be unpredictable and anarchic, one might even say, free.'

'He would be insane,' came Dr. Peerman's high-pitched voice from his end of the table. His thin, pale face was expressionless.

`Let us hear the man out,' said Dr. Cobblestone.

`Go on,' said Dr. Weinburger.

`In stable, unified, consistent societies the narrow personality had value; men could fulfill themselves with only one self. Not today. In a multivalent society, the multiple personality is the only one which can fulfill. Each of us has a hundred suppressed potential selves which never let us forget that no matter how mightily we step along the narrow single path of our personality, our deepest desire it to be multiple: to play many roles.

`If you will permit me, gentlemen, I would like to quote to you what a dice-patient of mine said in a recent therapy session which I taped.'

Dr. Rhinehart reached into his briefcase beside his chair and drew out some sheets of paper. After leafing through them, he looked up and continued: `What Professor O. B. says here seems to me to dramatize the crux of the problem for all men. I quote "`I feel I ought to write a great novel, write numerous letters, be friendly with more of the interesting people in my community, give more parties, dedicate more time to my intellectual pursuits, play with my children, make love to my wife, go hiking more often, go to the Congo, be a radical trying to revolutionize society, write fairy tales, buy a bigger boat, do more sailing, sunning and swimming, write a book on the American picaresque novel, educate my children at home, be a better teacher at the University, be a faithful friend, be more generous with my money, economize more, live a fuller life in the world outside me, live like Thoreau and not be taken in by material values, play more tennis, practice yoga, meditate, do those damn RCAF exercises every day, help my wife with the housework, make money in real estate, and … and so on.

"And do all these things seriously, playfully, dramatically, stoically, joyfully, serenely, morally, indifferently do them like D. H. Lawrence, Paul Newman, Socrates, Charlie Brown, Superman, and Pogo.