The Mind of Mr Soames by Charles Eric Maine Page B

I shall ask Dr Bennett to read out to you, and then we can discuss them informally. If you wouldn’t mind, Bennett...’
    Dr Bennett riffled through his file of papers in a methodical fashion, and Conway settled down to what was obviously going to be a fairly lengthy meeting.
    ❖
    ‘The brainwashing of John Soames is more or less cut and dried,’ Conway said to Ann Henderson later in the evening. They were in The Green Man, a local pub about half a mile from the Institute, sitting in the lounge bar drinking light ales. Half a dozen local residents sat at the small circular tables quenching their respective thirsts with various alcoholic fluids, and the prevailing atmosphere was, if anything, drowsy.
    ‘Basically they propose to treat him as a child,’ Conway went on. ‘The difference is that they hope to concentrate within a few years, not more than five, what normally requires ten years or more in the case of a child, and all this without any of the practical experience of living that a child enjoys.’
    Ann frowned and accepted a cigarette which Conway offered her. ‘Well, it sounds fairly reasonable, Dave. Soames has got to start somewhere, so why not at the beginning? He’s got to learn to talk, and read and write, add, subtract, multiply, and so on.’
    ‘Superficially, yes. And all the other baby things, too. He’s even got to learn to walk.’
    She blinked at him in surprise.
    ‘Walking is an acquired facility, like swimming or cycling. It requires co-ordination of the muscles in response to the direction of the balancing organs—the semicircular canals of the ear. Soames has been lying in a horizontal position for thirty years. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was terribly sick the first time he tried to stand erect—and that kind of sensation is likely to cause a feeling of insecurity. The same applies to other fundamental bodily functions. For weeks he will become habituated to all the paraphernalia of bedpans, urinal bottles and so on, and he’ll come to accept them as normal. Then one day they’ll make him stand and walk and use an ordinary lavatory, and that in itself may produce an inhibition. At all events there’s a possibility he’ll associate bedpans with bed and lavatories with standing up. You don’t get that problem with babies. They’re more flexible, and one can use nappies and hold them over a pot but you can’t do that with Mr Soames.’
    She smiled ruefully. ‘You seem to know quite a bit about babies for a man who never had one, anyway.’
    ‘It’s the bit that everyone knows,’ he pointed out.
    ‘What you’re saying in effect is that Mr Soames can’t be trained and educated in physical terms as a baby.’
    ‘Well, more or less. Simply because he’s not a baby. He’s a fully grown man.’
    ‘Then how would you go about training him?’
    He sighed, sipped his beer, and shrugged. ‘That’s the trouble. I can see what’s wrong, but I can’t readily suggest a constructive alternative.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Let’s suppose he happened to be a total amnesia case—a man, due to some frightful shock, had suffered a complete blackout of every mental faculty, and had to be completely re-educated. I think one might proceed in a rather different way on certain fundamental things. At least he wouldn’t be regarded as mentally infantile. One might establish habits and behaviour patterns by exploiting the simian and human urge to imitate—to do as the rest of the herd do. He could be taught simple sanitation procedure in that way. And the same principle could be extended in other directions,’
    ‘But he would still need to learn his ABC and his multiplication tables in the age-old fashion.’
    ‘Agreed. That’s a question of academic teaching. One must differentiate between teaching and training. In teaching one has to implant new information in such a way that it will be automatically remembered as and when necessary. Training, on the other hand, is largely a