Psychiatrists -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so--so--not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But _is_ everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle--if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde--only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later--and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
* * * * *
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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