Free The Mind of Mr Soames by Charles Eric Maine Page A

now.’
    Mortimer nodded. ‘Precisely. The three of you, under the general supervision of Dr Conway, will operate on a twenty-four hour duty roster so that there is always a psychiatrist available at any time of the day or night. Obviously we must regard Mr Soames as unpredictable, for some months, at least, until reliable habits have been formed. Apart from that there will be the normal routine duties in the psychiatric wards generally, but I’m hoping to arrange things so as to ease the pressure in that respect. In fact, Dr Breuer is planning to appoint two additional psychiatrists to the staff for a temporary period to take over the schizo and paranoiac wards.’
    ‘Good,’ Dr Bird murmured in some relief.
    ‘Well, then, we have our daily routine orders, as it were, and I shall always be ready to advise or refer back to Dr Breuer when necessary. As for the rest—it is up to us to act as a team, as efficiently and effectively as possible, always bearing in mind that what we accomplish will certainly be reported in newspapers throughout the world, not to mention the various official medical publications on both sides of the Atlantic. Our treatment of Mr Soames could, and I hope will, enhance the prestige of the Institute to an unbelievable degree.’
    Dr Mortimer clicked his heels formally. ‘Gentlemen, you have my complete confidence.’
    ❖
    Conway borrowed the schedule from Dr Mortimer that evening and studied it in the privacy of his room. It was a thorough and comprehensive catalogue of the psychological parameters which were to determine the limits and dimensions of Mr Soames’s thinking and living, overlapping to some extent part of the educational ground which would obviously be covered in due course by the appointed tutors, but only in so far as the ideas concerned were part of a pattern for establishing basic psychological associations. For instance, the schedule recommended that colours should be related to certain natural affinities: red, warmth, heat, fire, blood, danger; green, glass, leaves, sea, peace safety; white, bright, light, snow, ice, cool, awake, day; black, dark, shadow, empty, sleep, night—and so on. Obvious enough in their way, in terms of common usage, but in a sense of establishing an arbitrary pattern by no means reflecting all aspects of reality. The red sunset, for example, wherein lay the danger? Or was the setting of the sun symbolic of the approach of eternal night, or death? What about red pillar boxes? Or rubies? Or claret or burgundy? Green for safety, such as fluted poison bottles and venomous snakes? The white wakefulness of pillows, sheets and shrouds? Or the somnolence of black lingerie, caviare and coal (with its latent fire—cross index to red)?
    Elsewhere in the schedule were functional associations (air, breathe, fly, bird; water, drink, swim, fish); structural associations (stone, steel, building; flesh, bone, man), grammatical associations (me, you, us, them), anatomical or physiological associations (eye, see, ear, hear, mouth, speak), and a host of other categories of psychological associations many of which were in the nature of vocabulary building, if one concentrated on semantics, but all of which were basically designed to amplify simple facts or concepts by filling in a background of connected ideas. Arbitrary, in a way, and in many respects too arbitrary, but nevertheless the simple structure from which Mr Soames would eventually build his own mental and intellectual architecture.
    There were also, of course, a large number of instructions concerned with practical aspects of physical training, most of which implied the exercise of authoritative discipline, though what precise form such discipline was to take was not specified. Mr Soames could, perhaps, be cajoled and threatened, and perhaps pushed and poked in a tentative manner, but the tone of the schedule implied that anything so primitive as a firm cuff or swipe could not be countenanced. That was a