Anyone around me. Maybe you.
W: And…the devil is going to make this happen, to hurt people?
D: Or God. It’s a crossfire. You can’t understand this. It won’t fit in your kind of head.
W: Then help me to understand.
D: It’s right in front of your eyes, but you can’t see it. I’m sorry. That detective did, though…Oh, Christ, oh Christ have mercy!
W: Emmylou? It’s very important that you talk to me. I just want to help you.
[Silence, one minute, twenty-two seconds]
W: Emmylou, what is it? Did you see something?
D: Could I go back to the jail now? I don’t feel like talking anymore.
I NTERVIEW T ERMINATED AT 11:38 A.M.
Lorna Wise listens to the tape a third time, checking it against the transcript, occasionally stopping the flow of words with the foot pedal and writing in her notebook. After that, she reads through her notes, feeling dissatisfied with the familiar jargon. Inappropriate affect. Hallucinations. Fabulation. Resistance. Religious mania. Particularly disturbing, this last. Is Emmylou Dideroff a religious maniac? How is that different from being merely religious, if mere religion means ascribing reality to what cannot be verified by others? And what happened there at the end? An actual hallucination? She leans back in her squeaking swivel chair, kicks off her shoes, puts her stockinged feet up on the table, and rubs her eyes.
She is in a room reserved for such interviews in a nondescriptcounty building on NW Thirteenth Street, convenient to both the Dade County Women’s Detention Center and the main jail. It is a small room, the size of a rich man’s bathroom, in two shades of brown, like a mutt. There is a wooden table with an artificial wood-grain surface, a swivel chair for the interviewer, a straight chair for the interviewee, one dirty window with a heavy grille on it, a four-tube fluorescent fixture with one tube dimmed out. And a wall clock, which she now consults. No time for this mooning, she thinks; she has another interview in twelve minutes. The county likes her to keep things churning.
Religious mania. Lorna picks up her copy of DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a thick maroon-colored paperback that exists to classify all the ills that mind is heir to, and thumbs through it. She does not recall such a classification, and if she does not, there is most probably none, for she has the whole volume practically by heart. Yes, here it is: a one-liner noting that some schizophrenic hallucinations took religious forms. And, helpfully, “Hallucinations may also be a normal part of religious experience in certain cultural contexts.” But not ours, typically. One can apparently no longer officially be a religious maniac. In the materialist religiosity of America we don’t see saints or demons anymore. Other than that, there was no way that Dideroff is schizo. She had a job, no history of hospitalization, was clearly alert, well spoken, in control, or at least in as much control as any number of mental health professionals Lorna knew. So: initial diagnosis is: 297.1 delusional disorder, grandiose type. The “grandiose” type is because of the religion stuff. If you think God is talking to you, that’s grandiose per se, according to the DSM.
Lorna writes this diagnosis down on the appropriate line on the court form. There is a larger space for describing the subject defendant, and here she inscribes a précis of her impressions, or as much of it as she thinks is to the point, and copies in the results of the tests—Rorschach, MMPI, Wechsler IQ—she has had administered to Emmylou Dideroff over the past week. Now her ballpoint hesitates, because here is where she must write down themagic formula, attesting that in her professional opinion the subject knows the nature of the charges against her, and the consequences if she is convicted, and that she is capable of assisting in her own defense. She finds that she is reluctant to write this statement.
She puts her pen down
W: And…the devil is going to make this happen, to hurt people?
D: Or God. It’s a crossfire. You can’t understand this. It won’t fit in your kind of head.
W: Then help me to understand.
D: It’s right in front of your eyes, but you can’t see it. I’m sorry. That detective did, though…Oh, Christ, oh Christ have mercy!
W: Emmylou? It’s very important that you talk to me. I just want to help you.
[Silence, one minute, twenty-two seconds]
W: Emmylou, what is it? Did you see something?
D: Could I go back to the jail now? I don’t feel like talking anymore.
I NTERVIEW T ERMINATED AT 11:38 A.M.
Lorna Wise listens to the tape a third time, checking it against the transcript, occasionally stopping the flow of words with the foot pedal and writing in her notebook. After that, she reads through her notes, feeling dissatisfied with the familiar jargon. Inappropriate affect. Hallucinations. Fabulation. Resistance. Religious mania. Particularly disturbing, this last. Is Emmylou Dideroff a religious maniac? How is that different from being merely religious, if mere religion means ascribing reality to what cannot be verified by others? And what happened there at the end? An actual hallucination? She leans back in her squeaking swivel chair, kicks off her shoes, puts her stockinged feet up on the table, and rubs her eyes.
She is in a room reserved for such interviews in a nondescriptcounty building on NW Thirteenth Street, convenient to both the Dade County Women’s Detention Center and the main jail. It is a small room, the size of a rich man’s bathroom, in two shades of brown, like a mutt. There is a wooden table with an artificial wood-grain surface, a swivel chair for the interviewer, a straight chair for the interviewee, one dirty window with a heavy grille on it, a four-tube fluorescent fixture with one tube dimmed out. And a wall clock, which she now consults. No time for this mooning, she thinks; she has another interview in twelve minutes. The county likes her to keep things churning.
Religious mania. Lorna picks up her copy of DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, a thick maroon-colored paperback that exists to classify all the ills that mind is heir to, and thumbs through it. She does not recall such a classification, and if she does not, there is most probably none, for she has the whole volume practically by heart. Yes, here it is: a one-liner noting that some schizophrenic hallucinations took religious forms. And, helpfully, “Hallucinations may also be a normal part of religious experience in certain cultural contexts.” But not ours, typically. One can apparently no longer officially be a religious maniac. In the materialist religiosity of America we don’t see saints or demons anymore. Other than that, there was no way that Dideroff is schizo. She had a job, no history of hospitalization, was clearly alert, well spoken, in control, or at least in as much control as any number of mental health professionals Lorna knew. So: initial diagnosis is: 297.1 delusional disorder, grandiose type. The “grandiose” type is because of the religion stuff. If you think God is talking to you, that’s grandiose per se, according to the DSM.
Lorna writes this diagnosis down on the appropriate line on the court form. There is a larger space for describing the subject defendant, and here she inscribes a précis of her impressions, or as much of it as she thinks is to the point, and copies in the results of the tests—Rorschach, MMPI, Wechsler IQ—she has had administered to Emmylou Dideroff over the past week. Now her ballpoint hesitates, because here is where she must write down themagic formula, attesting that in her professional opinion the subject knows the nature of the charges against her, and the consequences if she is convicted, and that she is capable of assisting in her own defense. She finds that she is reluctant to write this statement.
She puts her pen down
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