Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD like the gears of a clock.' The psychoanalyst became a co-conspirator in his patient's delusion. He began to reject psychological explanations of Allen's story. How sure are we that it couldn't really be true? He found himself defending the notion that another life, that of a spacefarer in the far future, could be entered into by a simple effort of the will. At a startlingly rapid rate . . . larger and larger areas of my mind were being taken over by the fantasy . . . With Kirk's puzzled assistance I was taking part in cosmic adventures, sharing the exhilaration of the sweeping extravaganza he had plotted. But eventually, an even stranger thing happened: concerned for the well-being of his therapist, and mustering admirable reserves of integrity and courage, Kirk Allen confessed: he had made the whole thing up. It had roots in his lonely childhood and his unsuccessful relationships with women. He had shaded, and then forgotten, the boundary between reality and imagination. Filling in plausible details and weaving a rich tapestry about other worlds was challenging and exhilarating. He was sorry he had led Lindner down this primrose path. 'Why,' the psychiatrist asked, 'why did you pretend? Why did you keep on telling me . . .?' 'Because I felt I had to,' the physicist replied. 'Because I felt you wanted me to.' 'Kirk and I reversed roles,' Lindner explained, and, in one of those startling denouements that make my work the unpredictable, wonderful and rewarding pursuit it is, the folly we shared collapsed ... I employed the rationalization of clinical altruism for personal ends and thus fell into a trap that awaits all unwary therapists of the mind . . . Until Kirk Allen came into my life, I had never doubted my own stability. The aberrations of mind, so I had always thought, were for others ... I am ashamed by this smugness. But now, as I listen from my chair behind the couch, I know better. I know that my chair and the couch are separated only 166
The Dragon in My Garage by a thin line. I know that it is, after all, but a happier combination of accidents that determines, finally, who shall lie on the couch, and who shall sit behind it. I'm not sure from this account that Kirk Allen was truly delusional. Maybe he was just suffering from some character disorder which delighted in inventing charades at the expense of others. I don't know to what extent Lindner may have embellished or invented part of the story. While he wrote of 'sharing' and of 'entering' Allen's fantasy, there is nothing to suggest that the psychiatrist imagined he himself voyaged to the far future and partook of interstellar high adventure. Likewise, John Mack and the other alien abduction therapists do not suggest that they have been abducted; only their patients. What if the physicist hadn't confessed? Might Lindner have convinced himself, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it really was possible to slip into a more romantic era? Would he have said he started out as a sceptic, but was convinced by the sheer weight of the evidence? Might he have advertised himself as an expert who assists space travellers from the future who are stranded in the twentieth century? Would the existence of such a psychiatric speciality encourage others to take fantasies or delusions of this sort seriously? After a few similar cases, would Lindner have impatiently resisted all arguments of the 'Be reasonable, Bob' variety, and deduced he was penetrating some new level of reality? His scientific training helped to save Kirk Allen from his madness. There was a moment when therapist and patient had exchanged roles. I like to think of it as the patient saving the therapist. Perhaps John Mack was not so lucky. Consider a very different approach to finding aliens - the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence. How is this different from fantasy and pseudoscience? In Moscow in the early 1960s, Soviet astronomers held a press conference in which they announced that the intense radio emission from a mysterious distant object called CTA-102 was varying regularly, like a sine wave, with a period of about 100 days. No periodic distant source had ever before been 167
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THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD<br />
like the gears of a clock.' The psychoanalyst became a<br />
co-conspirator in his patient's delusion. He began to reject<br />
psychological explanations of Allen's story. How sure are we that<br />
it couldn't really be true? He found himself defending the notion<br />
that another life, that of a spacefarer in the far future, could be<br />
entered into by a simple effort of the will.<br />
At a startlingly rapid rate . . . larger and larger areas of my<br />
mind were being taken over by the fantasy . . . With Kirk's<br />
puzzled assistance I was taking part in cosmic adventures,<br />
sharing the exhilaration of the sweeping extravaganza he had<br />
plotted.<br />
But eventually, an even stranger thing happened: concerned for<br />
the well-being of his therapist, and mustering admirable reserves<br />
of integrity and courage, Kirk Allen confessed: he had made the<br />
whole thing up. It had roots in his lonely childhood and his<br />
unsuccessful relationships with women. He had shaded, and then<br />
forgotten, the boundary between reality and imagination. Filling<br />
in plausible details and weaving a rich tapestry about other worlds<br />
was challenging and exhilarating. He was sorry he had led Lindner<br />
down this primrose path.<br />
'Why,' the psychiatrist asked, 'why did you pretend? Why did<br />
you keep on telling me . . .?'<br />
'Because I felt I had to,' the physicist replied. 'Because I felt<br />
you wanted me to.'<br />
'Kirk and I reversed roles,' Lindner explained,<br />
and, in one of those startling denouements that make my<br />
work the unpredictable, wonderful and rewarding pursuit it<br />
is, the folly we shared collapsed ... I employed the rationalization<br />
of clinical altruism for personal ends and thus fell into<br />
a trap that awaits all unwary therapists of the mind . . . Until<br />
Kirk Allen came into my life, I had never doubted my own<br />
stability. The aberrations of mind, so I had always thought,<br />
were for others ... I am ashamed by this smugness. But<br />
now, as I listen from my chair behind the couch, I know<br />
better. I know that my chair and the couch are separated only<br />
166
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