Mk Ultra

Project Mk Ultra was a CIA program into the manipulation of human behavior through a variety of methods for the purposes of controlling individuals and extracting information from unwilling interviewees.  Several methods were experimented with at a huge assortment of civilian institutions including prisons, hospitals, and colleges.  The methods utilized involved psychotropic drugs, verbal and sexual abuse, hypnosis, and sensory deprivation.  This was all done without the knowledge of the President, Gerald Ford, and he even launched an investigation into these programs with chilling results.

I had asked Henry to describe to me the most difficult part of his condition was.  He was lax to call it a condition.  Though he had seen a psychologist many years ago who diagnosed him with this condition, he felt that it was more a way of life or a philosophy.  Still, Henry describes a frustrating element of his life.  From his viewpoint, people are inherently unknowable.  Their behavior is confusing to him to the point that it seems alien.  They are emotional and interconnected.  People define themselves by the relationships they have and it is a concept that is difficult to for him to identify with, being a largely solitary person.

It is an issue for people who try to get close to him, too.  I am not the first.  Many people have reached out to him over the years, thinking that he was merely shy or reserved.  What they found was an emotional coldness and a profound lack of interest in developing personal relationships.  Most painful would be those individuals who sought romantic relationships with Henry and who would struggle against his isolation and emotional coldness in a futile attempt to connect with him.

He described a relationship he had with a woman, once, a beautiful, patient woman that he thought possessed the long-suffering virtue required to cope with his emotional distance.  He described, as if relating a story from one of his books, in cool, calm, unaffected tone, of a sexual encounter with this woman, where he sought to give her what she desired.  She had given so much of herself to him and he appreciated it, he wanted to give back to her.  Feeling that she valued a sexual relationship with her, he submitted to her advances.

He was there, he said, physically, but the intimacy she sought was not.  His mind, the real part of him, had withdrawn into his interior space.  He could perceive that things were happening to him, potentially wonderful things, but his reaction to her intense emotional vulnerability caused him to recoil from her and escape into his own mind.

In the end, these clumsy, passionless encounters would fail to satisfy.  She would tell him that she could look into his eyes and see that he was not with her anymore and it frustrated her that she could not follow after him when he retreated like that.  He could recognize the pain in her, but to him is was nothing more than the confusing, alien behavior of people he could not understand.  What he felt was relief from the anxiety of constantly trying to be for her what he could not.  He would staunchly refuse the advances of any woman for the rest of his life.  He was in his late twenties at the time.

Henry described a story he once read that used Project Mk Ultra as a plot element. The Project in this book removed the emotional capabilities from the subjects they experimented on in an effort to make them cold, calculating killers.  The book explored the lives of these pitiable subjects and the relationships that fell apart around them when they were unable to emotionally connect with the people in their lives.

Henry identified with these fictional characters and joked about the same, that he had had his emotions destroyed and lays in wait as a sleeper agent for the government to activate his hypnotically implanted assassin training.

It wasn't a very good joke, but I laughed.

Schizoid Personality Disorder

First and foremost, Schizoid Personality Disorder, while it shares common causation and mechanical characteristics, is distinct from Schizophrenia and Schizotypical Personality Disorder. In particular, it lacks the delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia that typify these other conditions.  It is -not- dangerous.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Schizoid Personality Disorder is characterized by the following traits. To be diagnosed with this condition, a patient must have four of the following:

1. Emotional coldness, detachment or reduced affect.
2. Limited capacity to express either positive or negative emotions towards others.
3. Consistent preference for solitary activities.
4. Very few, if any, close friends or relationships, and a lack of desire for such.
5. Indifference to either praise or criticism.
6. Taking pleasure in few, if any, activities.
7. Indifference to social norms and conventions.
8. Preoccupation with fantasy and introspection.
9. Lack of desire for sexual experiences with another person.

 In my interactions with Henry, numbers 2, 3, and 8 were almost immediately apparent.  Even in my email and message-board conversations with Henry, it was clear he had little interest in interpersonal exchange.  Where most of the message-board was alive with discussions about new and interesting acquisitions, Henry's visits were short and to the point, brokering a book trade and signing off.

It became clear to me that the fictions he imagined and populated with these books were far more valuable to him. Indeed, I would find that his books were littered with marginalia.  As our trade forum was routinely fond of lamenting, printed books seemed to be on the way out, replaced by a Kindle era.  Kindle seemed an ironic name for the e-reader du jour, as it may be turning our books into kindling.  With the passage of printed books from vogue, marginalia would disappear as well, a practice Henry engaged in with passion.

I now own a few of Henry's books (including my Hitchhiker's Guide) which include his marginalia in them.  The conversations he has with these texts are fascinating to the point that I've suggested he publish his own series of Annotated Works in the vein of Asimov's.

Now that I have had an opportunity to know Henry for a good while, I believe he rates a 9-out-of-9 rating in the DSM for Schizoid Personality Disorder.  In later entries in this blog, I would like to focus on a few of these symptoms, the ones that may be particularly difficult for friends of those with SPD to deal with.

These Dreams

Sorry for the radio silence in recent weeks.  I received a dream commission to work for one of the higher profile RPG properties and to put my usual writing process to work, I had to hide, completely petrified with fear, and get nothing done for several weeks.  My process is highly efficient, as you can see.

Last time I spoke about my friend Henry Darger, it was to discuss his name-sake, the real life Henry Darger.  Of all the attributes Real Henry Darger possesses, My Henry Darger shares his anonymity.  Few will ever know My Henry Darger, and he seems pretty content with that.  It was only through the magic of the internet that I was able to discover him and though I know he will always be distant and aloof, his eccentricities are endearing to me and I am quite glad I know him.

My Henry Darger (who I will now simply refer to as Henry, please try to keep up) suffered some water damage to his home.  A few years ago, there were some storm-water issues in Chicago and water backed up into his tiny townhouse and ruined several books he had been storing.  Henry possesses quite a library, if you are into pulp fiction, serial fiction, gothic literature, or horror. (I hate Byron, but love Shelley.)

One of the books that Henry lost was Isaac Asimov's Annotated Paradise Lost.  Turns out that this book is a bit hard to get a hold of unless you're willing to lay out five hundred clams.  I should know, I did.  Paradise Lost is one of two books that I feel had a dramatic effect on my young mind and heavily influenced my current opinions on religion.  Isaac Asimov is brilliant mind and self professed "humanist" and in his annotation of Paradise Lost helps illuminate all the disparate allusions densely clustered in this epic poem.

Unwilling to part from this book, Henry went to the internet and through a website dedicated to book trading, found me.  Paradise Lost is dense and difficult to read and when I was contacted by this man who clearly shared my esteem for the epic poem, I was excited to find someone else who was able to penetrate its steely hide and extract its delicious, metaphoric nougat.

After setting up the details of the trade (I would receive a first edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) we arranged to meet.  Since we didn't live incredibly far from each other, we decided to meet in person to exchange the books.

Even from that first meeting, it was clear to me that Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, and John Milton were more real to him than even me sitting right in front of him.  These are men he had been having conversations with, deep, philosophical conversations and they existed in a reality apart from the one I inhabited. 

Reality is the correct word to describe this world, I would learn.  It is as real and coherent as mine.  People may talk about how the truth is different based on the perspectives of those who view it.  I'm reminded of the movie, "Rashomon."  Henry say the world from a distance, as if through a fog.  Much more clear and real to him, was the world interior.  Douglas, Isaac, and John (all men who are deceased in this exterior reality) inhabited this world and the doorway into their insights were the books he had collected.

Far more than real people, Henry valued the relationships he had with his book.  At least that was my initial impression.  Over the years I would discover that it wasn't these books he valued so highly, but the fantasies they inhabited in his own internal world.

"These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life
These dreams that sleep when it's cold outside
Every moment I'm awake the further I'm away"
        -Heart