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The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Dave is here with us today
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Speaker 1: and we're all just quietly holding hands. Now we have
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Speaker 1: to stop and come into the real world and start
0:23
Speaker 1: talking to you find people for this episode of Stuff
0:27
Speaker 1: You Should Know. My my lip got caught in my
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Speaker 1: tooth when I said you, and it came out a
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Speaker 1: little weird. It's funny. My daughter finally lost her first tooth,
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Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's changing the way she talks.
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Speaker 1: She's got a little funny little lisp and she's always
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Speaker 1: took tongue in on it. And I'm like, I'm gonna
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Speaker 1: be there with you soon. You know, I gotta get
0:47
Speaker 1: this front one redone right, So yeah, I'm gonna wait
0:52
Speaker 1: until right before we have live shows so I can
0:56
Speaker 1: pull that front tooth again. Nice. That'll be a special
1:00
Speaker 1: treat for everybody, especially me. Oh, you were used to it.
1:04
Speaker 1: I really was, um. But the worst was when when
1:07
Speaker 1: you had that little case that you would put it
1:10
Speaker 1: in and that they had event so the smell could
1:12
Speaker 1: waft out of it. Yeah. I gave up after the
1:16
Speaker 1: first one on wearing that thing. I was just like,
1:18
Speaker 1: who cares? Yeah, No, it's great. It was very liberating.
1:22
Speaker 1: It was as is this podcast episode. I think this
1:26
Speaker 1: is going to be a good one, because Chuck, I've
1:28
Speaker 1: been wanting to talk about this for a really long time.
1:30
Speaker 1: This is one of those things that you like hear
1:32
Speaker 1: about and you're like, wait what that That can't be right,
1:36
Speaker 1: And then you read a little more about it and
1:38
Speaker 1: a little more and it just keeps getting worse and worse.
1:41
Speaker 1: But yet it's. Um, it's just kind of one of
1:43
Speaker 1: the like a landmark study in the field of psychology
1:48
Speaker 1: that we're talking about today. Yeah, the Three Christs of
1:52
Speaker 1: hip Salanti and I studied this. I remember this from
1:57
Speaker 1: studying it in psychology class in college and got kind
2:01
Speaker 1: of into it at the time. And um, you started
2:05
Speaker 1: wearing like three Cristi shirts and stuff. I followed them
2:08
Speaker 1: on tour. It was great. I don't for some reason,
2:13
Speaker 1: I thought I read the book, But I don't think
2:15
Speaker 1: I read the book. I think we just covered the
2:17
Speaker 1: book in college and in the psychology class, Like, I
2:20
Speaker 1: don't think they made you read the whole book that
2:22
Speaker 1: we basically just kind of went over it. But I've
2:24
Speaker 1: been pretty fascinated for years, and uh, you know, eventually,
2:28
Speaker 1: when Hollywood made a movie about it four years ago,
2:31
Speaker 1: I was excited and even paid to rent that thing.
2:36
Speaker 1: That pretty good. I watched the first half hour and realized, Man,
2:42
Speaker 1: they've just sort of disneyfied this thing and it's not good.
2:46
Speaker 1: Although our buddy Kevin Pollock isn't it and he's always great. Hey,
2:49
Speaker 1: that guy can steal a scene better than the Hamburglar. Yeah.
2:55
Speaker 1: The movie, uh, just so everyone knows, is called The
2:57
Speaker 1: Three crist of Hipslani from John Abnett, starring Richard Gear
3:01
Speaker 1: as the name changed doctor and then the Three Christs.
3:05
Speaker 1: In the movie, you're portrayed by Peter dink Lidge. Uh.
3:09
Speaker 1: One of my favorite actors, Walton Goggins. Yeah, he's great, man,
3:13
Speaker 1: I went back. I told you I was watching The
3:15
Speaker 1: Shield again. That guy was amazing in that. In that yeah, yeah,
3:19
Speaker 1: he played one of the main characters. He's just the best.
3:22
Speaker 1: And then, uh, what's the guy's named Bradley Whitford, who's
3:26
Speaker 1: also great. Everyone is good. It just it's one of
3:29
Speaker 1: those movies that they I think just over sanitized and
3:33
Speaker 1: should have made a documentary instead. M hmm. But they
3:37
Speaker 1: didn't and that's okay, and we don't have to talk
3:39
Speaker 1: about that movie ever again. Now then we have instead,
3:43
Speaker 1: I think we should start by giving a little background
3:45
Speaker 1: and the guy whose idea the three crist of Ipsilani
3:48
Speaker 1: experiment was, and it was a researcher, a psychologist, a
3:52
Speaker 1: social psychologist, your favorite named Milton row keach Um and
3:59
Speaker 1: Milton Rokey, had some ideas about what it was to
4:03
Speaker 1: to make up an identity, what made up a person's
4:06
Speaker 1: sense of who they were, and he basically had broken
4:10
Speaker 1: it out into beliefs, a series of different kinds of beliefs,
4:13
Speaker 1: which we we'll kind of talk about here. They're a
4:15
Speaker 1: little more. But there's this anecdote that's frequently passed around
4:19
Speaker 1: that kind of like lays the early groundwork for this
4:23
Speaker 1: idea that that someone's belief in who they are could
4:27
Speaker 1: conceivably be challenged. And it came one night when he
4:30
Speaker 1: was sitting around the dinner table with his wife and
4:32
Speaker 1: his two young daughters, um and he accidentally, in like
4:36
Speaker 1: a moment of frustration telling them to settle down at dinner,
4:40
Speaker 1: called one another by their opposite names. And the girls
4:44
Speaker 1: just thought that was like the funniest thing that ever heard.
4:46
Speaker 1: At first, yes, was that is that? Mike? You? Yeah?
4:52
Speaker 1: I even stuck my finger up like all right now
4:54
Speaker 1: you but you can't see it, can you know? Because
4:57
Speaker 1: we just listened to each other. Uh yeah at first,
5:00
Speaker 1: and it was a little fun game. And then I
5:01
Speaker 1: think the five year old even said, you know, this
5:04
Speaker 1: is just a game, right dad, And Dad said no,
5:08
Speaker 1: it's real, and uh, I hear him saying it in
5:11
Speaker 1: that voice, and you know, pretty soon they were begging
5:14
Speaker 1: for him to stop. And I can verify that this
5:18
Speaker 1: is a thing I've been I think his a parent.
5:20
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll call your kid by another name as a joke,
5:23
Speaker 1: like I know I've done it, like called uh my
5:26
Speaker 1: daughter my dog's name. If she's like she'll come into
5:29
Speaker 1: the room and like bark or something as a joke,
5:31
Speaker 1: say oh, you're Nico, and she'll say, yeah, I'm Nico,
5:34
Speaker 1: and then for a few minutes later, I'm like, hey,
5:37
Speaker 1: come here, Nico, and then it's fun for about five
5:39
Speaker 1: minutes and then she's like, no, I am not. So
5:43
Speaker 1: there is very much a thing to a child's identity,
5:48
Speaker 1: especially from their parents, where they kind of get their
5:51
Speaker 1: identity and seek their identity. When that has challenged it,
5:54
Speaker 1: it is very quickly kind of traumatic. Yeah, he learned
5:58
Speaker 1: a couple of things that one, you can very quickly
6:01
Speaker 1: challenge somebody, or you can very very quickly push someone
6:04
Speaker 1: to a state of like trauma or anxiety or panic,
6:07
Speaker 1: even by just by simply challenging their identity by calling
6:11
Speaker 1: them the wrong name purposefully. He also write, yeah, I
6:16
Speaker 1: know Jerry, each other, Jerry, I think it would cancel.
6:20
Speaker 1: Let you they're out do it one more time and
6:22
Speaker 1: I will crumble, okay, Jerry Chifford. But he also learned, like, Okay,
6:28
Speaker 1: there's consequences to this. You can't take somebody with a
6:30
Speaker 1: with a well formed, well developed sense of identity and
6:34
Speaker 1: and and I guess a normal sense of identity and
6:37
Speaker 1: push push them to the edge, mess around with that
6:40
Speaker 1: sense of identity. There's there's harmful consequences to that. So
6:45
Speaker 1: he's started to kind of explore this, and like I
6:47
Speaker 1: was saying, like he had broken everybody's um belief system
6:52
Speaker 1: into a handful of different types of beliefs. And the
6:55
Speaker 1: belief that you are who you are, which is what
6:59
Speaker 1: we call our identity. He ascribed to primitive beliefs which
7:02
Speaker 1: are just like basic truths and the same neighborhood as Um.
7:07
Speaker 1: You know, I'm wearing a headphone on one ear and
7:09
Speaker 1: I have the other one behind my head right now,
7:11
Speaker 1: I have brown hair. My name is Josh, your chuck, Like,
7:15
Speaker 1: just basic truths of the universe that anyone you talked
7:19
Speaker 1: to is going to generally agree with. Right, That's where
7:23
Speaker 1: the personality comes from. Yeah, and that that is the
7:26
Speaker 1: very bedrock and foundation of how we think about ourselves.
7:32
Speaker 1: And he already saw messing with that can be bad,
7:35
Speaker 1: so he was like, hey, why not take it a
7:38
Speaker 1: step further right, right, So what I was saying a
7:41
Speaker 1: minute ago with like how we saw that there's consequences
7:44
Speaker 1: to messing with uh sane person, I just made air quotes.
7:48
Speaker 1: If you couldn't tell from my intonation, Um, messing with
7:51
Speaker 1: a sane person's identity, you can't really do that. But
7:55
Speaker 1: this is the mid century in America, and there's a
7:59
Speaker 1: whole group of people that you can do basically whatever
8:01
Speaker 1: you want to with as far as mental stuff goes.
8:04
Speaker 1: And that were people who are suffering from mental conditions
8:08
Speaker 1: who were locked up in state institutions at the time,
8:11
Speaker 1: and so row Keech came up with this idea like, Okay,
8:14
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what if I what if I got
8:17
Speaker 1: my hands on some mentally unstable people, some possibly diagnosed people,
8:23
Speaker 1: and and messed with their sense of identity, took their
8:26
Speaker 1: delusion and challenged it. That could be okay, because hey,
8:30
Speaker 1: their lives are basically useless anyway, I'm paraphrasing row Keech here,
8:35
Speaker 1: and if if something does come of it, there's a
8:37
Speaker 1: good chance that it could be positive instead. So let
8:41
Speaker 1: me have it, let let me add them basically. Yeah,
8:43
Speaker 1: there's a quote here from the book. And big thanks
8:46
Speaker 1: to Dave Ruse for putting this one together. I know
8:48
Speaker 1: this was a it's a tough one to wrangle, but
8:50
Speaker 1: he did a great job. Here's the quote from the book.
8:54
Speaker 1: Because it is not feasible to study such phenomena with
8:56
Speaker 1: normal people, he didn't even put in quotes. Uh, it
9:00
Speaker 1: seemed reasonable to focus on delusional systems of belief in
9:03
Speaker 1: the hope that and subjecting them to strain that would
9:05
Speaker 1: be little to lose and hopefully a great deal to gain.
9:09
Speaker 1: And like, I read that sentence and I'm like, stop there, dude, right, yeah,
9:14
Speaker 1: that's like the perfect motto for the misguided intentions of
9:18
Speaker 1: the study. Yeah. Yeah, he was like indicted himself with
9:21
Speaker 1: that one quote exactly just right out of the gate.
9:25
Speaker 1: And I read this some commentary magazine article from nineteen
9:28
Speaker 1: sixty four by um Oh. I can't remember who it was.
9:32
Speaker 1: I don't have it pulled up, but he's a famous
9:34
Speaker 1: poet at the time, and he was basically saying, like,
9:37
Speaker 1: you know, surely Rogue Keeach, the guy who's writing the book, well,
9:41
Speaker 1: it understands that Rogue Keeach, the character this doctor, it's
9:44
Speaker 1: like out of his mind, and he likes he's like
9:46
Speaker 1: slowly realizing, oh wait, this guy, even the author of
9:49
Speaker 1: the book, has no idea that the doctor character who's
9:52
Speaker 1: himself has has any idea just how unethical this is.
9:56
Speaker 1: And that's a that's a that's a great example of it,
9:58
Speaker 1: that demonstrates it right off the bat. Yeah, there's, um,
10:02
Speaker 1: there's I don't know if you listen to the Snap
10:04
Speaker 1: judgment on this, did you hear that? No? It was
10:07
Speaker 1: good Snap, you know, great podcast or public radio program
10:11
Speaker 1: turned podcasts. Sure, I've heard public radio before. I used
10:17
Speaker 1: to I used to listen to a lot more of it.
10:19
Speaker 1: Same here, um Fresh Air, I always still love fresh Air,
10:23
Speaker 1: but I just it's one of those things where I
10:24
Speaker 1: just bulk it up and then, like when I'm painting
10:27
Speaker 1: a room in our house, I listened to just fresh
10:29
Speaker 1: Air the whole time or something, you know what I mean. Yeah,
10:30
Speaker 1: what is Terry Gross gonna have us on? Do we
10:32
Speaker 1: need to get to twenty years? Would that do it? Yeah?
10:37
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even begin to bother her until we hit
10:39
Speaker 1: twenty years and then maybe yeah, and then we just
10:42
Speaker 1: started asking basically, hi, Terry hi. Uh. So in that
10:47
Speaker 1: snap judgment um, they pointed out that he uh that
10:52
Speaker 1: Rokich actually read a Harper's article about two women who
10:56
Speaker 1: believe they were the Virgin Mary, and that put an
10:59
Speaker 1: idea into his head. And I know that in his
11:01
Speaker 1: book he also talked about being inspired a little bit
11:04
Speaker 1: by some some stuff that Voltaire wrote about it. Right, Yeah,
11:07
Speaker 1: there was a man in the seventeenth century that Voltaire
11:10
Speaker 1: wrote about named Simone Morin who was deranged in the
11:14
Speaker 1: parlance at the time, and he thought that he was
11:17
Speaker 1: Christ and so he was locked up in a madhouse
11:20
Speaker 1: and he um met in that place in the institutional asylum.
11:25
Speaker 1: Another man who thought he was Christ and Simone Morin
11:29
Speaker 1: saw just how how like crazy this guy seemed and
11:33
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, maybe I'm crazy. And in
11:36
Speaker 1: confronting this other guy who claimed to have the same identity,
11:40
Speaker 1: he regained his sanity to a certain extent, and unfortunately
11:43
Speaker 1: he relapsed and ended up being burned at the stake
11:46
Speaker 1: for heresy. But there was a moment there where he
11:50
Speaker 1: had kind of like been knocked out of his delusion.
11:55
Speaker 1: That's a huge deal. Like if you if you if
11:57
Speaker 1: you have schizophrenia or delusionable leaves, like if your mental
12:01
Speaker 1: disorder um is to the degree where you hold delusions.
12:06
Speaker 1: And we should say a delusion is not like, you know,
12:09
Speaker 1: a made up belief, for you know, you made your
12:12
Speaker 1: belief up, Like this is what you think is real.
12:15
Speaker 1: It is real to you, and you will defend it
12:17
Speaker 1: when it's challenged. So the idea that somebody who was
12:20
Speaker 1: delusional could be knocked out of their delusion by being
12:23
Speaker 1: confronted with somebody else who had the same delusion, that
12:27
Speaker 1: is groundbreaking. And I can see why roe Keach was like,
12:30
Speaker 1: there we go, that's it, there's my there's my methodology
12:33
Speaker 1: for this or for this this experiment. Yeah, and I'm
12:37
Speaker 1: sure he was, you know, he was turned on a
12:41
Speaker 1: little bit about the idea of three Christs or however
12:44
Speaker 1: many Christs he could find. Well, I mean not even
12:48
Speaker 1: like that, you know what I mean though, but a
12:50
Speaker 1: social he was probably like, you know, this would make
12:53
Speaker 1: for a pretty uh mind blowing experiment plus a great
12:58
Speaker 1: book title. It's one of great understated book titles of
13:01
Speaker 1: all time. Yeah, it's not like the three Richard Nixon's
13:05
Speaker 1: of his Bilanti No, and I mean like Ippsilanti is
13:08
Speaker 1: like this. It's just this this town outside of ann
13:11
Speaker 1: Arbor where where you know, that's where one of the
13:14
Speaker 1: mental asylums were in um, in Michigan at the time. Um.
13:18
Speaker 1: And and it's just like you know, it might as
13:20
Speaker 1: well be Walla, Walla or Lackawanna, or it's just an
13:26
Speaker 1: unusual name in a town that doesn't really have much
13:29
Speaker 1: of a claim to anything, you know what I mean. Yeah, sure,
13:32
Speaker 1: all three of those towns are like, is he insulting
13:34
Speaker 1: all of us or none of us? No, No, it's
13:36
Speaker 1: not an insult. It's just it's just, um, it's not
13:41
Speaker 1: like a hot happen in town. And it's been like
13:42
Speaker 1: the Three crist of New York that loses something or
13:45
Speaker 1: the price of London. It's just a rather generally unremarkable place, guys, Ippslani.
13:53
Speaker 1: If you live there and you don't know that it's
13:54
Speaker 1: generally unremarkable. I'm sorry to be breaking this news to you.
13:58
Speaker 1: I don't mean it in a in a unkind way
14:00
Speaker 1: at all. I know you don't. Uh, And I think
14:03
Speaker 1: generally back then, that's where a lot of these institutions
14:06
Speaker 1: were because they needed like lots of land. And uh
14:10
Speaker 1: so let's just leave it at that, and okay, maybe
14:12
Speaker 1: take a break, okay to let everybody really stew on
14:16
Speaker 1: what I said. We'll take a break and we'll find
14:19
Speaker 1: out how he found his his patients right after this, alright,
14:49
Speaker 1: so we're back. Uh. There were twenty five thousand total
14:53
Speaker 1: patients in the system in Michigan State, uh, at Michigan
14:57
Speaker 1: State hospitals. And he went all all of these, you know,
15:01
Speaker 1: he sort of tried to call them down two uh
15:05
Speaker 1: too ideally to Christ figures. Uh. He found a man
15:08
Speaker 1: who thought he was Cinderella. He found it Mrs God uh,
15:12
Speaker 1: and then about six people who thought they were Christ.
15:15
Speaker 1: And three of them were really into this idea and
15:20
Speaker 1: really consistent with their belief that they were Jesus uh.
15:23
Speaker 1: And two of them happened to be at Hippsilanti. So
15:26
Speaker 1: he was like, this is perfect, I'll just transfer the
15:28
Speaker 1: third end and we'll get going. Yeah. And so these
15:31
Speaker 1: guys being inmates of the state at a time where yeah,
15:34
Speaker 1: Ipsilanti had like four thousand people, four thousand patients in
15:40
Speaker 1: just this one institution. Yeah, it's a and if you
15:44
Speaker 1: were already like on the margins society and then moved
15:46
Speaker 1: into a place where you're with four thousand other people
15:49
Speaker 1: on the margins of society, it's a really good place
15:51
Speaker 1: to get lost, to not get any real help. And
15:55
Speaker 1: so one of the things that that was um was
15:59
Speaker 1: part of this this experiment design is to make participating
16:04
Speaker 1: in these discussions this group of these three Christs as
16:08
Speaker 1: attractive to these three men as possible. So they were
16:11
Speaker 1: moved toward d twenty three. They were given their own
16:14
Speaker 1: private day room to eat in, to sleep or not sleeping,
16:17
Speaker 1: but to hang out in away from everybody else. They
16:20
Speaker 1: got some like place to stretch out and to have
16:23
Speaker 1: some company. They got a lot of attention, a lot
16:26
Speaker 1: of perks. Like basically their lives were changed in like
16:31
Speaker 1: incalculable ways by being part of the study. And so
16:35
Speaker 1: when they say, like, these were voluntary meetings and these
16:38
Speaker 1: men were voluntary members of the study, that's that's definitely true.
16:41
Speaker 1: They were. They were voluntary participants. But the perks on
16:44
Speaker 1: offer were just so amazing. They were like you would
16:47
Speaker 1: you could not turn down, you know, participating in some
16:50
Speaker 1: degree exactly. So they were willing participants, uh, insofar as yeah,
16:56
Speaker 1: they got these great perks worth throwning out. So he
17:00
Speaker 1: changed the names of the guys. Uh, to protect their
17:04
Speaker 1: families and to protect them to some degree. But um,
17:07
Speaker 1: we should go over sort of the bios of the
17:10
Speaker 1: three men. Um should we say who played them in
17:13
Speaker 1: the movies? Willot help people? I don't think so, Okay,
17:18
Speaker 1: I don't want to disparage those great actors names again. Well,
17:22
Speaker 1: I mean the acting, they did a good job. It
17:24
Speaker 1: was just the material. They're all great actors, you know. Yeah,
17:27
Speaker 1: I know, it's just when you write, I don't want
17:30
Speaker 1: to call out the script writer. But it wasn't that good.
17:35
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this sause I didn't see
17:36
Speaker 1: the movie, was it like? And I loved the fact
17:39
Speaker 1: that they made a movie about Freddie Mercury and the
17:41
Speaker 1: other members of Queen. But was it like in the
17:46
Speaker 1: um in in the movie what was the name of
17:50
Speaker 1: that movie, the the Queen movie. That's what I called.
17:54
Speaker 1: It's okay, that's right. Do you remember like every time him,
18:00
Speaker 1: like Freddie Mercury did something brilliant, they would have Brian
18:03
Speaker 1: May they do a pan in close up of him
18:06
Speaker 1: just looking like in awe and astonished. And that's maybe
18:11
Speaker 1: pushing it doing that once in a movie, but they
18:13
Speaker 1: did that every like fifteen or twenty minutes. Was it
18:16
Speaker 1: kind of like that same sentiment. It wasn't so much
18:19
Speaker 1: that And again only watched the first act before I
18:21
Speaker 1: realized it was just it was just really sanitized and
18:25
Speaker 1: like a feel good type of thing. Sounds similar, Yeah, right, exactly.
18:33
Speaker 1: This is not a This is not a feel good story.
18:35
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was performance. Aren't you accidentally stumbled upon?
18:38
Speaker 1: I mean that was there was some tough stuff in there.
18:40
Speaker 1: It's not like it was completely like, hey, this is great,
18:43
Speaker 1: but it kind of reeked of like an Awakenings kind
18:46
Speaker 1: of thing, and I like to waken I got it, alright, Alright,
18:49
Speaker 1: I liked Awakenings too, But it sounds like what you're
18:51
Speaker 1: describing as more along the lines of the Greatest Showman,
18:54
Speaker 1: like that kind of sanitization. I didn't see that, okay,
18:58
Speaker 1: did you no? But he did that episode just tearing
19:01
Speaker 1: it apart. Yeah, we hadn't even seen it. We're comfortable
19:04
Speaker 1: doing that at times. So the first guy was in
19:08
Speaker 1: his late fifties, Joseph Cassel fifty eight. He had been
19:13
Speaker 1: in the hospital for about twenty years and was Canadian
19:16
Speaker 1: born and raised in Quebec. And he was named after
19:20
Speaker 1: his after Josephine, his female relative in his family named
19:25
Speaker 1: Joseph And I think the the big takeaway from his
19:29
Speaker 1: childhood was that it was not good very abusive father, UM,
19:35
Speaker 1: very quick tempered man who abused his mom, and his
19:38
Speaker 1: mom actually died while giving birth to her ninth kid,
19:41
Speaker 1: and so he had a rough go of it from
19:43
Speaker 1: the beginning. I think his name actually was Josephine as well,
19:47
Speaker 1: and he went by Joseph. So he he wanted to
19:51
Speaker 1: be a writer. He I think, did you say he
19:52
Speaker 1: was fifty eight at the time, Yeah, okay, and um
19:56
Speaker 1: he uh did not really take to working outside of
20:01
Speaker 1: the house. Um. He and his wife, UM did not
20:05
Speaker 1: have a very like good relationship. Necessarily, he didn't want kids.
20:09
Speaker 1: She did. They ended up having three daughters, and he
20:12
Speaker 1: later on came to believe that um they were not
20:15
Speaker 1: his children after all, and that that may have been
20:18
Speaker 1: correct Um. But then things started to take kind of
20:20
Speaker 1: a turn for the worse, and that Um, he started
20:23
Speaker 1: to become really paranoid. He started to accuse people of
20:26
Speaker 1: poisoning his food. He became a bit of a hoarder,
20:29
Speaker 1: especially with books, and um probably the greatest crime a
20:33
Speaker 1: man could commit in the mid century America. He did
20:36
Speaker 1: not want to work, so that was basically that he
20:39
Speaker 1: ended up um getting sent to uh An asylum in
20:43
Speaker 1: Canada and then onto Ipsilani eventually. And he had been
20:48
Speaker 1: Um been in Ipsilani for I think about twenty years,
20:53
Speaker 1: or at least in and out of the hospital system
20:55
Speaker 1: for about twenty years. And for about ten of those
20:58
Speaker 1: years he had been he had cited that he was
21:01
Speaker 1: he was God or Jesus Christ or both. Yeah, And
21:05
Speaker 1: by the time he got around to Rokey Each or
21:07
Speaker 1: Roke Each found him, he was in a pretty bad state.
21:11
Speaker 1: After those twenty years, he had about half of his
21:13
Speaker 1: teeth left in his mouth. He was still hoarding books,
21:18
Speaker 1: carrying around books everywhere and when you know, when asked
21:22
Speaker 1: who he was, he said his name was Joseph, and
21:25
Speaker 1: he said that I am God, and I guess Rokeach said, well,
21:29
Speaker 1: you'll do just fine, very splendid. Um. Yeah, So Joseph,
21:35
Speaker 1: despite you know, the his inability to take care of
21:38
Speaker 1: himself and you know, um, the fact that he hoarded
21:41
Speaker 1: in all of that, he was a very sharp person.
21:44
Speaker 1: So yeah, remember remember to keep that in mind. Like
21:47
Speaker 1: that he was. He was very sharp and a good
21:49
Speaker 1: writer as well. Clyde um and these are these men's
21:53
Speaker 1: names were changed. Clyde Benson. He was seventy, he'd been
21:58
Speaker 1: hospitalized for the last seventeen years. He was in pretty
22:01
Speaker 1: rough shape, he really was. And Rokeach definitely starts to
22:05
Speaker 1: recognize that pretty quickly after meeting Clyde and ends up
22:09
Speaker 1: almost letting him just stay in the group even though
22:12
Speaker 1: he's not really participating any longer. But um, Clyde was
22:16
Speaker 1: apparently raised in an overprotected manner and didn't really learn
22:21
Speaker 1: how to make his own decisions and kind of ended
22:23
Speaker 1: up stunted as a result. Um, which you can make
22:28
Speaker 1: your way through life like that if you if you
22:31
Speaker 1: want to, but he ended up turning to alcohol and
22:34
Speaker 1: became a really hardcore alcoholic to where it was starting
22:39
Speaker 1: to wreck his life. Um. And apparently that came into
22:45
Speaker 1: um collision with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia at some point, right, yeah,
22:52
Speaker 1: And you know, it seems like the drinking was the UM.
22:56
Speaker 1: Anytime you have an undiagnosed condition like this and you
22:59
Speaker 1: you pour alcohol, was him on top of it or
23:02
Speaker 1: any kind of you know, drug addiction, it's gonna it's
23:04
Speaker 1: just gonna be even worse. And eventually he was arrested
23:08
Speaker 1: for public drunkenness. Uh. It was a pretty violent arrest
23:12
Speaker 1: and in jail he was violent, and he was saying
23:14
Speaker 1: he was Jesus Christ, that he was God, and that
23:18
Speaker 1: he was reborn through his first wife, Shirley. I believe
23:22
Speaker 1: she had passed away and he did get remarried. Um
23:25
Speaker 1: and it was surely the queen of heaven. And at
23:27
Speaker 1: this point they committed him to a mental hospital when
23:30
Speaker 1: he was fifty three where he got that diagnosis, and
23:35
Speaker 1: he was he was the one that was easily the
23:38
Speaker 1: most far gone and tough, toughest to reach and sort
23:42
Speaker 1: of walked around mumbling. He also didn't have many, if
23:46
Speaker 1: any of his teeth and uh, but occasionally would like
23:50
Speaker 1: still had that violence in him where he would have
23:53
Speaker 1: these sort of violent outbursts but then kind of calmed
23:56
Speaker 1: down again. Yeah, and when he did, he was very
23:58
Speaker 1: direct into the point. And um, by, I don't think
24:01
Speaker 1: he was actually physically violent, was he? I don't think so.
24:04
Speaker 1: I think it just could be scary at times. Right,
24:07
Speaker 1: So he would say things like I am him. See
24:10
Speaker 1: now I understand that, like that was the extent of
24:13
Speaker 1: how he would explain that he was God and he
24:15
Speaker 1: didn't need it to be challenged, and if you did
24:17
Speaker 1: try to challenge it, he would just shut you down
24:19
Speaker 1: kind of thing in a very um yeah, like you said,
24:23
Speaker 1: kind of a scary way. So Leon was perhaps one
24:27
Speaker 1: of the saddest of the three cases, and that he
24:29
Speaker 1: was had only been hospitalized for about five years. He
24:33
Speaker 1: was younger, he was thirty eight years old, and he
24:36
Speaker 1: was um the the snap judgment is great because they
24:39
Speaker 1: had his two initial graduate assistance on, Richard Bonnier and
24:45
Speaker 1: Ron Hoppy, so like real firsthand experience on the podcast,
24:49
Speaker 1: and they were saying that he was the one that
24:52
Speaker 1: broke their heart the most because he was the one
24:54
Speaker 1: that most likely could have been rehabilitated, and uh, it
24:59
Speaker 1: just tore them up that they and they liked him
25:02
Speaker 1: a lot. He was a real personable guy and what
25:05
Speaker 1: it was very engaging with his stories and they really
25:08
Speaker 1: thought that they could have helped him had it not
25:10
Speaker 1: been uh, you know, in part by what happened with Rokeiach,
25:14
Speaker 1: which is sad because that means that Rokeiach made things
25:16
Speaker 1: much much worse for these people. And that's something to
25:19
Speaker 1: really understand. That there were three men who were living,
25:21
Speaker 1: you know, their delusional lives in this statemental hospital, but
25:25
Speaker 1: they were generally unmolested until they were they were dragged
25:29
Speaker 1: into this study and messed with like in ways that
25:33
Speaker 1: you just don't do to other people, you know, and
25:35
Speaker 1: that their lives probably were worse, far worse than they
25:39
Speaker 1: would have been had they never met Milton Rokey. Yeah.
25:42
Speaker 1: So Leon's deal was his mother was um almost certainly
25:46
Speaker 1: schizophrenic as well and had delusions, religious delusions. So he
25:51
Speaker 1: was raised in the household with these uh with basically
25:55
Speaker 1: a religious fanatic, and uh that impacted him from the
26:00
Speaker 1: very beginning. Of course, he was ended up diagnosed with
26:03
Speaker 1: schizophrenia as well. But growing up, and I mean in
26:07
Speaker 1: that kind of environment, definitely, I think led to the
26:10
Speaker 1: Christ thing for sure. Yeah, And he had like there
26:13
Speaker 1: was a time where he was living a normal life.
26:16
Speaker 1: He served in World War two, UM, he worked at
26:19
Speaker 1: different jobs back in Detroit. UM, he tried to go
26:23
Speaker 1: to college. He was trying to make a life for himself.
26:26
Speaker 1: But he UM suffered from fatigue, which I looked up
26:29
Speaker 1: is apparently a really tough co morbidity with UM psychotic
26:33
Speaker 1: disorders UM, and it's like got a terrible positive feedback
26:38
Speaker 1: where you know, the more tired you get, the worshire
26:42
Speaker 1: disorder is, and the worship disorder is, the harder it
26:44
Speaker 1: can be to sleep, and it's just not good. So
26:47
Speaker 1: he had that, and then he also started hearing voices himself,
26:51
Speaker 1: UM that we're telling him that he was Jesus Christ.
26:54
Speaker 1: And that didn't really jibe very well with his mother's
26:56
Speaker 1: own religious fanaticism because he saw that she was, you know,
27:00
Speaker 1: worshiping these other what he considered idols. And he went
27:04
Speaker 1: on um a bit of a violent tear once removing
27:08
Speaker 1: all of the all the pictures of the saints and
27:11
Speaker 1: breaking all of the figurines and all that stuff in
27:13
Speaker 1: demanding that his mother worshiped him as Jesus Christ and
27:17
Speaker 1: threatening that is she didn't, he would strangle her. Um.
27:20
Speaker 1: And so that was enough to get him locked up
27:23
Speaker 1: for good. He'd already been locked up one time for
27:25
Speaker 1: a brief period, and then about six months after that
27:27
Speaker 1: he was locked up um from then until the time
27:31
Speaker 1: that he met Milton row Keach. And that was Waldon
27:34
Speaker 1: Coggins Man. So he uh, he went by not Leon,
27:40
Speaker 1: and again Leon was a fake name that Rokeach gave
27:43
Speaker 1: him for the book. But um he went by Dr
27:46
Speaker 1: Domino Dominorum at rex razerum, simplest Christianius, purest mentalist doctor,
27:52
Speaker 1: which is Latin for lord of lords, king of kings,
27:55
Speaker 1: simple Christian boy, psychiatrist. But he asked everyone to call
27:59
Speaker 1: him Rex for short, and they said thanks sure. And
28:03
Speaker 1: he was he was, like you said, like the most
28:06
Speaker 1: probably the most personable. He like Joseph, he was very
28:09
Speaker 1: sharp too, but also like from a very um, a
28:12
Speaker 1: very early stage, he saw quite clearly what roe Keats
28:18
Speaker 1: was trying to do, and he thought that it was
28:20
Speaker 1: morally repugnant um that that it was not a nice
28:24
Speaker 1: thing to do to somebody that you shouldn't mess with
28:26
Speaker 1: people like that, and he said as much multiple times
28:29
Speaker 1: throughout the study. Yeah, so this is when he hires
28:32
Speaker 1: those two grad assistance, is when he finds the guys
28:36
Speaker 1: gets this experiment going in earnest and um, you know,
28:41
Speaker 1: his hypothesis was that if I can have these three
28:44
Speaker 1: men confront one another about them being the real Christ,
28:49
Speaker 1: that it could rock them into what he saw as
28:53
Speaker 1: reality and uh and get them out of these delusions.
28:57
Speaker 1: And that didn't happen. Well, it didn't happen at all
29:00
Speaker 1: through the experiment, but initially they what they did was
29:04
Speaker 1: they really dug in and uh. They each had their
29:08
Speaker 1: own way of doing so, but they each dug in
29:10
Speaker 1: and said no, no, no no, I am the real Christ.
29:13
Speaker 1: And they each had different sort of methods of dealing
29:15
Speaker 1: with the others, but none of them wavered initially no.
29:20
Speaker 1: And and it was really really um, it was kind
29:23
Speaker 1: of in and of itself, just that finding that not
29:27
Speaker 1: only did they not have their identities shattered, but they
29:30
Speaker 1: just re rebuilt and reinforced their identities. However they could
29:34
Speaker 1: find a way to do it to their own satisfaction.
29:37
Speaker 1: That's a pretty big psychological finding in and of itself,
29:40
Speaker 1: you know, although it doesn't seem worth putting these men
29:43
Speaker 1: through that just to find that out, you know, Yeah,
29:46
Speaker 1: for sure. Um, I think Joseph said, Uh. Joseph was
29:51
Speaker 1: more one to sort of laugh it off. Uh. He said,
29:54
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong. Yesterday I knew I was what I am. Today,
29:58
Speaker 1: I am what I am. I'm not worried about losing
30:01
Speaker 1: my identity. Uh. And we also should point out that
30:03
Speaker 1: Joseph uh and this was portrayed in the movie too
30:06
Speaker 1: by Peter Dinklage. He was spoke with an English accent.
30:10
Speaker 1: He thought he was convinced himself that he was from England,
30:13
Speaker 1: that he was descendant of royalty, and that the hospital
30:17
Speaker 1: was an English stronghold. Don't think I didn't notice you
30:20
Speaker 1: just slipped Peter Dinklage in there. I know that only
30:23
Speaker 1: leaves one worts. I don't need to do the third.
30:27
Speaker 1: So um. One of the other things about Joseph was
30:30
Speaker 1: his his interpretation of why they were there in this study.
30:33
Speaker 1: Why the three of these men had been brought together
30:36
Speaker 1: was so that they could sort out with the other
30:38
Speaker 1: two that they weren't Christ, that he was the one
30:41
Speaker 1: who was actually Christ, so he could do his work
30:43
Speaker 1: here on earth better without having these two, um basically
30:48
Speaker 1: harassing him or whatever. So then Leon, um, like I
30:52
Speaker 1: was saying, Leon was the one who kind of saw
30:55
Speaker 1: the most through ro keeaches. Um saw roeach his intentions
30:59
Speaker 1: and saw that were just wrong. Um. And like Clyde,
31:05
Speaker 1: I think Clyde said that, um, that they were a rerise,
31:09
Speaker 1: that's what he considered the other two or a hick um.
31:14
Speaker 1: Joseph said, you know, I am who I am, and also,
31:17
Speaker 1: by the way, we all know that I'm really God.
31:18
Speaker 1: And then Leon he said that, Um, he said the
31:21
Speaker 1: other two were instrumental gods. They were hollowed out gods. Uh.
31:25
Speaker 1: They were possibly dead already, and machines were operating them
31:29
Speaker 1: and making them say these things. But even in that like,
31:33
Speaker 1: he wasn't attacking them personally. It was what he felt
31:37
Speaker 1: forced to explain his position. And so that's what he
31:39
Speaker 1: said his position was. But he what he after. As
31:42
Speaker 1: he was saying this, he would turn to Joseph. He
31:44
Speaker 1: would turn to Clyde and he would say, you know,
31:48
Speaker 1: I I mean this, you know respectfully, I I don't
31:51
Speaker 1: mean to be to tear you down. Whatever your belief
31:54
Speaker 1: is your belief and I don't want it. I'm not
31:56
Speaker 1: trying to take it from you. I have my beliefs
31:58
Speaker 1: and you have your beliefs and that that's good enough.
32:02
Speaker 1: And so through that kind of um like truce that
32:08
Speaker 1: was kind of established between these three men, they basically
32:11
Speaker 1: kept the researchers at bay. The researchers would try to
32:13
Speaker 1: come in and bust things up and get them to
32:15
Speaker 1: like argue or you know, make them confront one another.
32:19
Speaker 1: But if when left alone, those three men just generally
32:22
Speaker 1: did not argue about who was God. They avoided the
32:25
Speaker 1: subject altogether and just let the other ones be and
32:28
Speaker 1: and just kind of entered this live and let live
32:31
Speaker 1: kind of position, which I think is is pretty heart heartening,
32:34
Speaker 1: you know it is. And that was that was one
32:36
Speaker 1: of the things that came through on that uh snap
32:39
Speaker 1: judgment with the two research assistants was that their take
32:43
Speaker 1: was that these men were generally, like after the initial
32:46
Speaker 1: sort of denial stuff um that they were generally pretty
32:50
Speaker 1: respectful and wanted to give each other the space to
32:53
Speaker 1: believe that they were christ if they wanted to. And
32:56
Speaker 1: this what that showed was empathy and that's something that
33:00
Speaker 1: none of them saw coming. Um. At this point, ROKEI
33:04
Speaker 1: is being Um kind of hassled by these two grad assistants, saying, hey, listen, man,
33:11
Speaker 1: these guys are kind of okay with this, and you're
33:13
Speaker 1: taking this thing too far, and eventually he was he
33:17
Speaker 1: ignored them basically, and eventually they quit before this next
33:21
Speaker 1: phase starts, and because they didn't agree with what was
33:25
Speaker 1: going on, because they saw these three guys that were
33:27
Speaker 1: generally respectful for one another, they saw Um Rokich would
33:31
Speaker 1: do things like a journalist wrote a story about them
33:34
Speaker 1: at one point that was obviously not flattering at all
33:37
Speaker 1: to the three Christs, and Rokich read this allowed to
33:40
Speaker 1: them like he was just trying to push their buttons
33:43
Speaker 1: and initiate this conflict, and the two grad assistants eventually
33:46
Speaker 1: we're like, we're out of here. Yeah. That story, in particular,
33:49
Speaker 1: it was about how Roki was treating three psychotic men
33:52
Speaker 1: who thought they were christ and to read that to
33:55
Speaker 1: them as it really mean Again, he was trying to
33:58
Speaker 1: see what would happen if they they were confronted with
34:01
Speaker 1: their identities being considered delusional by other people. And Um
34:05
Speaker 1: and Leon in particular didn't like that He said that
34:09
Speaker 1: a doctor is a um or a person who's supposed
34:11
Speaker 1: to be a doctor is supposed to lift up, build up, guide, direct, inspire.
34:15
Speaker 1: He said that what what you've just done is deploring,
34:19
Speaker 1: and Rokeach said, you know, deploring. I've traveled seventy five
34:22
Speaker 1: miles in snow and storm to come see you. And
34:25
Speaker 1: Lean said, yes, but what was your intention in coming
34:27
Speaker 1: to see me, sir um? And so he didn't. He
34:30
Speaker 1: didn't put up with rokits Bs at all, which is
34:32
Speaker 1: pretty cool, you know, to to to hold delusions and
34:36
Speaker 1: to have your delusions attacked like that, and then to
34:39
Speaker 1: to to be able to push back, but also in
34:41
Speaker 1: still a respectful ways. I think Leon's one of these,
34:44
Speaker 1: one of the great unsung heroes of of twentieth century America.
34:49
Speaker 1: Should we take a break before phase two? Yeah, I
34:52
Speaker 1: say we take a break, man, all right, We'll be
34:54
Speaker 1: right back. So before stage two starts, when things get
35:24
Speaker 1: really unethical, well not before this was kind of part
35:28
Speaker 1: of the unethical. The two Gratis assistants had left, and
35:31
Speaker 1: he hires this new young pretty woman as a grad
35:34
Speaker 1: assistant and basically tells her to flirt with Leon and
35:38
Speaker 1: to see if he can make her, make him fall
35:41
Speaker 1: in love with her, And that's exactly what happened, and
35:45
Speaker 1: Leon fell in love with her and was destroyed when
35:47
Speaker 1: he basically came to realize on his own that that
35:50
Speaker 1: was never gonna happen for him. Man, it's just brutal.
35:54
Speaker 1: He's getting better and better. Yeah. Yeah. When those when
35:57
Speaker 1: those grad assistants said you've gone too far, I think
36:00
Speaker 1: Rokeach probably said something along the lines of too far.
36:03
Speaker 1: I haven't begun to go too far. Just watch what's next. Yeah,
36:07
Speaker 1: but there was like upbeat music while he was saying yeah,
36:10
Speaker 1: like Salisbury Hill exactly. That is exactly what I was
36:15
Speaker 1: thinking of. Thank you for putting it into words, Chuck.
36:18
Speaker 1: So what happened next? So what happened next is as
36:21
Speaker 1: follows their Rokeach basically saw, like, these guys are not
36:24
Speaker 1: going for this. For this, the level of prodding that
36:27
Speaker 1: I've been doing, I'm going to really kind of turn
36:29
Speaker 1: up the heat. And he wondered if you took the
36:34
Speaker 1: members people that were m part of these these patients
36:37
Speaker 1: delusional belief systems and personified them like pretended you were them, say,
36:42
Speaker 1: started communicating with them through letters or whatever. Um, what
36:46
Speaker 1: would happen. Could you conceivably get these people to abandon
36:50
Speaker 1: their delusions under the guidance of these authority figures that
36:53
Speaker 1: were actually part of their delusions. It's really kind of
36:56
Speaker 1: mind boggling when you lay it out in like a
36:58
Speaker 1: float chart like that. You know, yeah, that this like
37:01
Speaker 1: just kept getting worse and worse. So he identified these
37:04
Speaker 1: authority figures in all three of them. I guess to
37:08
Speaker 1: his credit, he laid off of Clyde because I mean,
37:13
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was so much empathy as
37:15
Speaker 1: it was, he knew he wasn't getting very far with Clyde,
37:18
Speaker 1: or maybe he was scared of what would happen if
37:20
Speaker 1: Clyde maybe you know, yeah, because Clyde was definitely could
37:23
Speaker 1: be a little scary. But so he laid off of Clyde.
37:26
Speaker 1: But he found that um Joseph said that a superintendent
37:30
Speaker 1: of the hospital named Dr Yoder y O d Er
37:34
Speaker 1: was his dad, and Leon said that he had a wife.
37:38
Speaker 1: He had a couple. His wife the Blessed Virgin Mary
37:41
Speaker 1: Uh who was an uncle reincarnated as Michael the archangel
37:46
Speaker 1: Archangel Archangel. Those are two different. So he was married
37:50
Speaker 1: to the Blessed in Virgin Mary and had that uncle.
37:52
Speaker 1: Yeah he had those two mm hmm, but that there
37:55
Speaker 1: was there was his He wasn't married to his uncle.
37:57
Speaker 1: He had another wife later on named Madam Yetti Woman
38:02
Speaker 1: after he stopped being married to the Blessed Virgin Mary
38:05
Speaker 1: because his uncle Michael the Archangel married blessed the Blessed
38:09
Speaker 1: Virgin Mary. It sounds a little confusing, but when you're
38:13
Speaker 1: the only stuff like this, I think it just has
38:15
Speaker 1: to be a little confusing. Well, the upshot of it
38:18
Speaker 1: is Roki started posing as Um as Madam Yeti woman
38:24
Speaker 1: um and started a letter writing campaign as Madam Yetti Woman,
38:28
Speaker 1: basically reaching out to say, hey, Leon, Um, I just
38:32
Speaker 1: want to say hi, and I'm thinking of you and
38:35
Speaker 1: let's start talking. So there was correspondence that was established
38:39
Speaker 1: as Um as Leon's delusion delude like wife Madam Yetti Woman. Yeah,
38:47
Speaker 1: and he we should point out that he supposedly had
38:49
Speaker 1: gotten not supposedly. I think he did get the hospitals
38:53
Speaker 1: permission to sign off on this. As long as he said, listen,
38:56
Speaker 1: it's all gonna be positive stuff. I'm not gonna be
38:59
Speaker 1: writing them letters say and to go start a fight
39:01
Speaker 1: or anything like that, Um, so I'm gonna send them
39:03
Speaker 1: positive message messages and I'm gonna stop if this becomes
39:08
Speaker 1: upsetting to these guys, and so they said, sure, go ahead, yeah,
39:11
Speaker 1: and so he did. He did go ahead um first
39:14
Speaker 1: with Leon and I believe, and by this time Leon
39:17
Speaker 1: had um. One of the things that he had done
39:19
Speaker 1: to transform his identity was to become Doctor Righteous Ideal
39:24
Speaker 1: Dong or Dr r I Dong, And apparently the head
39:27
Speaker 1: nurse asked him directly like can I please not call
39:29
Speaker 1: you Dr don And he said, yes, you can call
39:32
Speaker 1: me r I, but everybody else called him Dr r
39:35
Speaker 1: I Dong. And he did this, Rokich concluded to basically
39:39
Speaker 1: make himself not worthy of of being harassed anymore. But
39:43
Speaker 1: he was still secretly God, like he knew he was God.
39:46
Speaker 1: He was just pretending to be something else. And during
39:50
Speaker 1: that period he became married to Madam Yetie woman. So
39:53
Speaker 1: ru Keich started addressing letters as to Dr r I
39:56
Speaker 1: Dong and basically saying, Um, you know, here's a dollar, um,
40:01
Speaker 1: why don't you go buy yourself something nice in the
40:03
Speaker 1: hospital store and then share the change with Clyde and
40:06
Speaker 1: Joseph and or um. One of the things that they
40:10
Speaker 1: would do is they would take turns between the three patients.
40:13
Speaker 1: Is who was going to lead the session that day.
40:15
Speaker 1: And one of the things you did when you liked
40:17
Speaker 1: the session was you chose what song everybody's song at
40:20
Speaker 1: the beginning and at the end of the session, which
40:22
Speaker 1: is adorable. Um. And so Madam Yeti Woman suggested that
40:26
Speaker 1: he choose Onward Christian Soldiers, and he chose Onward Christian Soldiers.
40:31
Speaker 1: And so like two rokichi, seeing like there's this there's
40:35
Speaker 1: like an actual influence that that is being exerted by
40:39
Speaker 1: this delusional figure. And also it demonstrates that that Leon
40:43
Speaker 1: is showing like he definitely believes Madam Yeti Woman is
40:45
Speaker 1: a person for sure. Yeah, And eventually what broke it
40:49
Speaker 1: was as posing as Madam Yeti Woman asked Leon to
40:54
Speaker 1: stop using the name Dr Dong. Uh the name things
40:58
Speaker 1: seems to have been a sticking point a lot of people.
41:01
Speaker 1: Or maybe he just thought that that would since he
41:04
Speaker 1: held onto that so strongly, that would have been like
41:06
Speaker 1: the toughest thing to make him do, and uh, that
41:10
Speaker 1: was sort of it. He was asked about the letter,
41:12
Speaker 1: and Leon doesn't really say anything about asking to be
41:17
Speaker 1: to drop the name Dr Dong. He just starts talking
41:20
Speaker 1: more and more about God being both male and female
41:23
Speaker 1: and insane and sane, and said I don't care for
41:26
Speaker 1: the insanity of God and then said I don't want
41:29
Speaker 1: any more letters and basically kind of shut it down.
41:31
Speaker 1: And so with with those. Um, with Leon's letters in particular,
41:35
Speaker 1: there was a couple of like really sad things, like
41:37
Speaker 1: the whole thing was sad to begin with, but um,
41:40
Speaker 1: there's this passage in the book where Leon gets a
41:43
Speaker 1: letter and and Rokich realizes that he's holding back tears
41:48
Speaker 1: and he starts to ask him, like, why are you, like,
41:51
Speaker 1: you know, are you happy? He said, yes, I'm very happy.
41:53
Speaker 1: It's a very pleasant feeling to have someone think of
41:56
Speaker 1: you like like he was. He was moved to t
42:00
Speaker 1: was by the idea that Madam Yeti woman was was
42:02
Speaker 1: writing to him and talking about caring for him and
42:05
Speaker 1: sending him money to go buy himself things with um
42:09
Speaker 1: And rather than just say like, oh, we might want
42:11
Speaker 1: to back this off, Rokich used it to step that
42:15
Speaker 1: up and arranged for a meeting with Madam Yeti Woman.
42:19
Speaker 1: But there was no Madam Yeti Woman who was supposed
42:21
Speaker 1: to show up. He was just he was going to
42:24
Speaker 1: get stood up from the outset. But still um uh.
42:29
Speaker 1: Leon went to go meet Madam Yeti woman and had
42:32
Speaker 1: his heartbroken. I think it was after that that he
42:33
Speaker 1: stopped responding to the letters. Yeah, and you know when
42:37
Speaker 1: he said, I don't want these letters anymore. I don't
42:39
Speaker 1: want to receive them. You would think that that's when
42:42
Speaker 1: Rokeich would say, all right, well, let's just stop this
42:44
Speaker 1: all together, but he didn't because he remembered that Leon
42:49
Speaker 1: had another authority figure in his life, which was his uncle,
42:54
Speaker 1: George Bernard Brown a k a. The archangel Michael. And
42:58
Speaker 1: so he said, hey, have someone call and pose as
43:02
Speaker 1: his uncle now. And this didn't work from the beginning, Leon,
43:06
Speaker 1: I guess the voice was just so far off, or
43:08
Speaker 1: maybe Leon was just really wise to it at this point.
43:12
Speaker 1: Uh said you know, no, no, no, this isn't this
43:15
Speaker 1: even close to the voice, goodbye and hung up. And
43:18
Speaker 1: then they asked him about the call, and he said,
43:21
Speaker 1: I don't believe in mental torture, sir. So it seems
43:24
Speaker 1: like he was sort of onto him at this point,
43:26
Speaker 1: or you know, it was onto him from the beginning,
43:28
Speaker 1: but onto him about this ruse I don't think he
43:30
Speaker 1: was onto him from the beginning. I think that he
43:33
Speaker 1: I mean, from the beginning of the experiments. He was
43:36
Speaker 1: wearing got you, I see what you're saying. But yeah,
43:38
Speaker 1: but it's really easy to forget because you're reading rogue
43:40
Speaker 1: teaches accounts that these men weren't in on the idea
43:44
Speaker 1: that it was from Rowe Keeach. They believed that these
43:47
Speaker 1: letters were coming from their their delusional figures. That's the
43:51
Speaker 1: whole point, which makes it just even more gut wrenching
43:54
Speaker 1: when you stop and remember that, you know. So then
43:58
Speaker 1: he says, okay, all right, Leon's on, I'm I'm done
44:00
Speaker 1: writing letters to him. Who can I write letters to next?
44:03
Speaker 1: And he moves on to Joseph. Right, Yeah, So this
44:06
Speaker 1: was the one where the superintendent, the fictional Dr. Yoder,
44:11
Speaker 1: was the authority figure for Joseph, who he saw his
44:15
Speaker 1: a father figure. And so of course Rokich is gonna
44:18
Speaker 1: play up this whole father figure thing in the letters,
44:21
Speaker 1: saying that he loved him like a son. He just
44:24
Speaker 1: wanted the best things for him. And if you remember
44:27
Speaker 1: from the original sort of quick bio, Joseph's father was
44:31
Speaker 1: awful and abusive, so he's really playing into his deepest
44:35
Speaker 1: sort of insecurities here. Yeah, he said, be assured that
44:38
Speaker 1: I will always love you, just exactly like a father
44:41
Speaker 1: who deeply loved his own son. It's really tough to
44:44
Speaker 1: even research this stuff. Yeah, so um so, just like
44:49
Speaker 1: with um with Leon uh, through these letters, as Dr Yoder,
44:53
Speaker 1: he tried to get Joseph to start doing stuff, finocuous
44:56
Speaker 1: stuff at first, like it's saying stop, he didn't, he
44:59
Speaker 1: stops saying that he was from England and he was
45:02
Speaker 1: from Quebec, started going to church services, that kind of stuff.
45:05
Speaker 1: So there was an influence on Joseph, just like there
45:08
Speaker 1: was on on Leon using their delusional UM characters or
45:13
Speaker 1: delusional friends, authority figures whatever. And I think even Dr
45:17
Speaker 1: Yoder prescribed for the fake Doctor Yoder prescribed placebo for
45:23
Speaker 1: Joseph's stomach ailments. He had like digestive problems or stomach
45:26
Speaker 1: hurt and these placebo pills just fixed him right up. Yeah,
45:31
Speaker 1: so the stomach pills placebo supposedly worked. And then he said,
45:35
Speaker 1: all right, well that works, so I'm gonna give you
45:38
Speaker 1: pills to basically cure your mind and if you want
45:42
Speaker 1: to fix fix yourself for good take these pills. Uh,
45:47
Speaker 1: which is I mean, this is so far off the
45:50
Speaker 1: charts of unethical, Like I can't even describe how far
45:54
Speaker 1: off the charts it is. And he said, basically, I
45:57
Speaker 1: think he said he gave him an ultimatum. He says,
46:00
Speaker 1: I'm only going to continue to give these pills that
46:02
Speaker 1: will supposedly make your mind right if you admit that
46:07
Speaker 1: you're in a mental hospital. And it's not an English stronghold.
46:11
Speaker 1: And Joseph finally said, it's like signed something. And Joseph said, no,
46:14
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sign this, and he cut off
46:17
Speaker 1: this placebo medication that he believed might be fixing his brain.
46:21
Speaker 1: And it kind of petered out after that, and it
46:23
Speaker 1: was just like, it's just brutal to think about these
46:26
Speaker 1: guys going through this like hope that they're getting better
46:29
Speaker 1: and it was all fake. Yeah, he apparently stopped writing
46:33
Speaker 1: to Dr Yoder and um moved on to JFK, started
46:37
Speaker 1: writing letters to JFK asking to be one of his speechwriters,
46:39
Speaker 1: because remember he was a writer as well. So KEI
46:43
Speaker 1: is like, okay, alright, let's see what's next. Oh, nothing's next.
46:46
Speaker 1: This is the end of the line. He finally realized like, Okay,
46:49
Speaker 1: this is not going anywhere. Not only had he not
46:53
Speaker 1: at all moved Clyde's delusions or Joseph's delusions, the only
46:58
Speaker 1: persons whose delusions changed at all was Leon's, and his
47:02
Speaker 1: had just gotten more complex and intricate, certainly not any
47:05
Speaker 1: closer to reality. They got further away from reality because
47:09
Speaker 1: of this influence from Um from Rokitchen, his his experiment,
47:15
Speaker 1: and he has like a pretty rich little admission in
47:19
Speaker 1: the book that he says that we do not know
47:23
Speaker 1: to what extent our very presence behavior in questions may
47:26
Speaker 1: have influenced the results obtained, which is bizarre to say,
47:30
Speaker 1: because the whole point of the experiment was to influence
47:35
Speaker 1: these people through these this experiment. So it's a really
47:38
Speaker 1: weird thing that he even put it in there. Um
47:41
Speaker 1: from some of the stuff that I've read, kind of
47:43
Speaker 1: picking apart this book at the end, it really just
47:46
Speaker 1: kind of peters out and like he's just kind of
47:48
Speaker 1: slashing in the air with his sword trying to figure out,
47:51
Speaker 1: you know, what the point was of all of this stuff.
47:54
Speaker 1: Um And even without like a satisfying conclusion or end
47:58
Speaker 1: uh and ended up getting published in nineteen sixty four
48:01
Speaker 1: and became like a really big success in the field
48:05
Speaker 1: of psychology, but also got widely criticized right out of
48:07
Speaker 1: the gate because even though this was mid century America
48:10
Speaker 1: and we're talking about mental patients in mid century America
48:14
Speaker 1: who have very little rights or retreated very poorly, Like,
48:18
Speaker 1: there were still like a lot of people around were like,
48:20
Speaker 1: you don't do this to human beings. This is not okay.
48:23
Speaker 1: Not everybody did, but some, you know, some critics definitely
48:26
Speaker 1: came out immediately. Yeah, it took Rokich a long time though,
48:31
Speaker 1: to really kind of come to terms with what he
48:34
Speaker 1: had done. And uh, he eventually did, though, about seventeen
48:38
Speaker 1: years later. They re reissued the book in nineteen eighty
48:41
Speaker 1: one and he wrote a new forward. He admitted in
48:45
Speaker 1: interviews in other places as well, that he was also,
48:51
Speaker 1: you know, innocence suffering from godlike delusions and that he
48:54
Speaker 1: was playing God with these men and regretted it. He
48:58
Speaker 1: regretted publishing. He said, I regret having written and published
49:02
Speaker 1: a study when I did. I don't know if that
49:04
Speaker 1: means that he wishes he could have reflected more on
49:07
Speaker 1: it or what, but he did sort of recant and
49:11
Speaker 1: say he didn't do the right thing. Um, It's worth
49:13
Speaker 1: pointing out that this was uh, six years into his
49:19
Speaker 1: suffering from spinal cancer. So I don't know if that had,
49:23
Speaker 1: you know, of knowing the end was near for him,
49:25
Speaker 1: had something to do with his sort of self reflection.
49:29
Speaker 1: But he eventually died in nineteen eighty eight at the
49:31
Speaker 1: age of seventy after a thirteen year battle with spinal cancer,
49:35
Speaker 1: and you know, left the social psychology world sort of rocked.
49:42
Speaker 1: Uh Like, Like I said, I studied this in college
49:44
Speaker 1: and it became sort of like the Stanford prison experiment.
49:49
Speaker 1: It became worth studying, but not for the reasons that
49:52
Speaker 1: they initially launched the study to begin with. No, he
49:55
Speaker 1: finally figured out the point of the book, and the
49:57
Speaker 1: point of the book where was for him to figure
49:59
Speaker 1: out that it was it's unethical what he was doing
50:01
Speaker 1: and finally come to terms with what he'd done to
50:04
Speaker 1: these poor men, and that you have a right to
50:06
Speaker 1: just be left alone and not have your identity challenge
50:08
Speaker 1: no matter what you believe you are, who you believe
50:11
Speaker 1: you are. And so he actually changed his his methods,
50:14
Speaker 1: he his his general belief in the idea of belief
50:18
Speaker 1: systems um remain the same, but he changed his tactics
50:24
Speaker 1: and that he got involved in self confrontation, where you
50:26
Speaker 1: would try to present people with you know, self examination,
50:30
Speaker 1: where they would examine what their values were, what their
50:32
Speaker 1: beliefs were, and then they would kind of be challenged
50:36
Speaker 1: on that like, Okay, you believe in freedom, you place
50:39
Speaker 1: a high value on freedom, but you also rated equality
50:42
Speaker 1: pretty low. But isn't equality freedom for everybody? So you
50:46
Speaker 1: care about your freedom but not other people's freedom? How
50:48
Speaker 1: does that really jibe? And then the hope was that
50:51
Speaker 1: they would go back and self reflect and be like, no,
50:53
Speaker 1: I really do care about freedom and do care about
50:55
Speaker 1: other people. Maybe I should care about more about equality
50:57
Speaker 1: and improve as a person. And that's ultimately how he
51:00
Speaker 1: ended up making his name starting in the seventies. Yeah,
51:04
Speaker 1: and I gotta tell you when when you read some
51:06
Speaker 1: of his um regret about it, he says things like
51:11
Speaker 1: or he said things like you know, and in in
51:14
Speaker 1: in the end someone was cured and it was me. Uh,
51:18
Speaker 1: It's it just that all bothered me a little bit too.
51:21
Speaker 1: How he he still made it about himself somehow, even
51:25
Speaker 1: though he did say he regretted it and everything. I
51:27
Speaker 1: just I never heard as much um regret about these
51:32
Speaker 1: three men and and just and and putting them in
51:36
Speaker 1: the positions of like they were the ones who helped
51:39
Speaker 1: me out in the end. It was just I didn't
51:41
Speaker 1: like that. I know exactly what you mean. It's just
51:44
Speaker 1: it's still smacks of self involvement and you get and
51:47
Speaker 1: also like what happened to these men after the experiment
51:50
Speaker 1: was done. They were just cast right back into the
51:52
Speaker 1: general populations, like used cleanex basically to deal with what
51:57
Speaker 1: they've just been through. It's just it's just rot and
52:01
Speaker 1: all around for sure. And at the very least it
52:03
Speaker 1: does exist to to to make Mountain row Keats feel better. Right,
52:09
Speaker 1: You got anything else? No? I mean, if you want
52:11
Speaker 1: to see some of his later work that you were
52:13
Speaker 1: talking about the value stuff, there all kinds of really
52:16
Speaker 1: wacky YouTube videos from people about that stuff. Nice. And
52:19
Speaker 1: if you want to see the movie that they remade
52:22
Speaker 1: about this, don't ye. Um, Well, since I said don't
52:27
Speaker 1: see that movie, it's time of course for a listener
52:30
Speaker 1: mail everybody. I'm gonna call this a guy who has
52:37
Speaker 1: the same step on a crack thing as I do. Okay,
52:40
Speaker 1: this is from Jared Miller. Hey, guys, I gotta say,
52:43
Speaker 1: Chuck is the only other person I've heard to express
52:46
Speaker 1: the same compulsion that I have. If I step on
52:48
Speaker 1: the surface that is different from the majority of where
52:51
Speaker 1: I'm walking, I try to get my other foot to
52:52
Speaker 1: have the same sensation. This can be the line between
52:55
Speaker 1: the sidewalk segments, or a traction sticker, an unpaved patch, cetera.
53:01
Speaker 1: I gotta say, Jared, it's the same with me. It's
53:02
Speaker 1: not just cracks, can be anything, even which part of
53:06
Speaker 1: the foot is affected. Same with me, Dude, If I
53:09
Speaker 1: do it on my heel, I have to do the
53:10
Speaker 1: next one with my heel. It's very interesting. I've even
53:14
Speaker 1: found myself doing it with the colors of tiles on
53:16
Speaker 1: a pattern floor. Same here for me. It's about symmetrical sensations.
53:21
Speaker 1: I sometimes realize I'm doing it when I'm eating uh,
53:24
Speaker 1: and have equal chewing time on each side. I don't
53:26
Speaker 1: do that. Uh. Once Yeah, you're really out there. Uh.
53:32
Speaker 1: Once I became aware of it at a fully conscious level.
53:35
Speaker 1: I also became self conscious about it and tried different
53:38
Speaker 1: things to break myself of the habit. At times, it
53:40
Speaker 1: spins an extreme, as extreme as forcing myself to maintain
53:44
Speaker 1: an even gait no matter what. Yeah, I've done that
53:48
Speaker 1: while consciously reminding myself that sensations are temporary and that
53:52
Speaker 1: it will even uh even out or go away, especially
53:55
Speaker 1: if I ignore it. Thanks for all the hours of entertainment.
53:58
Speaker 1: You were an early discovery of mine in the podcast
54:01
Speaker 1: world back in two thousand nine, and almost none of
54:03
Speaker 1: the shows I started listening to back then are still
54:06
Speaker 1: going m That's our motto, Jared, just keep doing it,
54:10
Speaker 1: just no matter what everybody tells you to stop, please
54:13
Speaker 1: God stop, don't quit. You don't listen. So that's Jared
54:17
Speaker 1: and Anaheim by way of Idaho. Way to go, Jared
54:21
Speaker 1: from all over the place or was it Iowa? I
54:23
Speaker 1: don't remember, Sorry Idaho. And that's the worst thing that confused.
54:27
Speaker 1: I apologize. Um. So let's see if you want to
54:31
Speaker 1: get in touch of this, like Jared did, um, please
54:35
Speaker 1: email us, won't you? You can send us an email
54:38
Speaker 1: to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you
54:45
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more
54:48
Speaker 1: podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
54:52
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.