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Why did she kill herself? The photograph

Shows only the look for the photographer.

[ Exit ANTHONY, as MRS. BERGEN and DR. NEWMAN enter, MRS. BERGEN nodding to ANTHONY.]

MRS. BERGEN: Please smoke if you care to do so, Dr. Newman. There are cigarettes next to you.

DR. NEWMAN: Thank you, Mrs. Bergen. Suppose you tell me all that concerns you and exactly what you think I can do.

MRS. BERGEN: Dr. Newman, it was only after I had tried every other alternative that I decided to speak to you. If I were not desperate, I would not discuss these matters with anyone not of the family; but God only knows what will happen to us next, and my sister Emma has been urging me to speak to you for a long time.

DR. NEWMAN: I understand perfectly, Mrs. Bergen. You can be sure that no one else will hear of your family troubles. But on the other hand, I should remind you that complete frankness is necessary from you, even though you are not the patient. Only the full truth can enable me to do any good, and yet I have never had a patient who from the start hid nothing.

MRS. BERGEN: I will try to be the exception. As you know, my eldest child, Eleanor, killed herself, or seemed to do so, three months ago. She had taken too many sleeping powders. That is why we are not sure that it was a deliberate act. No one knows her reason for killing herself, although my husband, for reasons of his own, says that he does know. She seemed to be happy enough, although always an over-emotional girl. But we knew little of what she did during the past few years. She insisted, as she would say, on leading her own life. She wrote verse, she studied dancing, she studied for the theatre, she had many friends whom we did not know, she went from one interest to another, and although we were anxious about her moods and her unrest, her habits seemed typical of the girls of today. When she became engaged, I thought all my anxiety was over. And then, a few weeks before her marriage, she killed herself—

DR. NEWMAN: Perhaps before you go on to speak of your husband, I had better say now that I knew your daughter well, and intended to visit you, after she died, but hesitated for various reasons.

MRS. BERGEN [ surprised ]: You knew Eleanor? Was she a patient of yours?

DR. NEWMAN: Yes, she was. But I think we had better speak of that later. Now tell me about your husband.

MRS. BERGEN: A year ago, after a year of despondency, Dr. Bergen began his religious society, which has brought us so much trouble, and now I am afraid, Dr. Newman, that everything is becoming worse. My son Titus and I refuse to accept Dr. Bergen’s ideas and practices, and he considers that we are betraying him. We interfere only when he tries to do such things as giving away immense sums of money to his disciples, who are in the house night and day, and whom he supports. There are eight and my youngest child, Martha, and at least two of them are obviously after my husband’s money, which is to be used for various projects having to do with my husband’s religion. I am sure, however, that some of the others are quite sincere. [ A short pause. ]

Dr. Newman, I love my husband dearly. He is a kind and good man, and in the past we were very content. I am horrified when I think of attempting to have him declared legally insane and shut up in an asylum, but I will have no other recourse, there is so much conflict, so much money is being thrown away. Worst of all, my daughter’s death is taken as a great example by my husband who says that she killed herself in obedience to his doctrines, his imperatives, as he calls them, so that I am afraid that another one will kill himself.

DR. NEWMAN: What are these doctrines of your husband?

MRS. BERGEN: Perhaps it would be best if you found out from him. However, the main belief is that God’s blue eye is the sky. It is God’s organ of perception, he says, and he thinks that when the whole world can be brought to an awareness of this fact, then human life will be transformed and such horrors as wars and the oppression of the poor will cease.

DR. NEWMAN: I do not understand. Why will a belief that God regards human life do away with evil? Most religions have said that the deity knows all things at all times.

MRS. BERGEN: My husband thinks that he has found the true medium by which the deity acts and moves nature and human life. He thinks that other previous religions had only an abstract idea of the divine will, but he has found the direct experience. You must look at God’s blue eye, he says, then you will know what is good and what is evil. He calls this the intuitive understanding or inspiration. But it is all very complex. Perhaps I do not understand him. He says I do not, and that it is the evil of my nature which prevents me from understanding and believing.

DR. NEWMAN: You know, in America during the 19th century there were hundreds of such cults and societies, though few as original, and even today there is a man in Harlem believed to be God by thousands. 1

MRS. BERGEN: Yes, I know. My husband is not at all disturbed by such comparisons. He says that no other religion showed how to get a direct experience of the divine will. And he has a whole schedule of rituals, which his disciples perform, and which is supposed to bring this experience to all who will believe. No one of the disciples, no one but my husband, has had this intuitive experience as yet.

DR. NEWMAN: The whole matter is probably beyond my sphere. As you probably know, the psychiatrist deals with difficulties which are relatively contained in the individual — fixations, compulsions, fetiches which usually have their origin in some childhood event or misunderstanding, or some kind of deep-seated frustration. But your husband’s fantasy may not be pathological in this sense at all. The fact that he has won disciples suggests that it is not.

MRS. BERGEN: His disciples have good practical reasons for listening to him. He helps them financially and otherwise.

DR. NEWMAN: Still, your husband’s belief may be a response to the kind of world in which we now exist, not a personal fantasy. Our society is breaking up, tearing itself to pieces, being transformed, and that is why many curious schemes are invented by individuals who have a blind but intense awareness that their world, their way of life, everything dear to them, is turning into something else, slipping from them, becoming strange, repugnant, too difficult for them.

MRS. BERGEN [ sighing ]: I feel that way myself, Dr. Newman.

DR. NEWMAN: If such is the case, I cannot help your husband, and I assure you that he is not insane in the legal sense. Of course, I can as a reasonable person try to persuade him that he mistakes the source of his belief, but I would surely fail.

MRS. BERGEN: Speak to him, Dr. Newman, do what you can. I am afraid another person will kill himself now that they believe that Eleanor’s death was the most wonderful act possible.

DR. NEWMAN: I should have come here before this, knowing your daughter as I did. But I hesitated.

MRS. BERGEN: Please stay for their daily ceremony, which will begin on the terrace shortly, and you will see that something is wrong with them and that my husband’s doctrines are dangerous. Eleanor is dead, I am not concerned about her now, but perhaps you can speak to the others, especially my daughter Martha, who mistakes a devotion to her father for a belief in what he says.

DR. NEWMAN: Very well, if you wish me to do so. But I am afraid I can do nothing to help you. [ Rising, he goes to the mantelpiece, and takes Eleanor’s photograph in his hand. ] I should have come to you before this, but I did not want to intrude in a home of mourning, I did not know how your daughter’s death was understood, I was sure that my news would be unwelcome.