Having bipolar disorder, I am often told that I should “reason with” my feelings in order to change them. Much easier said than done. But while reading the fascinating books Bivalent Logic and Aamrgan by Cliff Hays, I reconsidered. I wondered: If I could change my feelings with logic, how could it work? This story is in honor of the possibility that it could.
26 year old Katy stared at the “Pythagorean playground” with mistrust, a yard full of soaring geometrical structures leading to cube of a clinic. This was not like any psychiatric office she had ever seen. But then, that was the whole point.
Normal psychiatrists had failed her, had given her sedatives and asked her questions, which were pointless since she had already answered those questions to herself many times.
She needed therapy that could tell her things she did not already know. She had been told that this was the place for that. Here, she was told, therapy depended on learning. What she would be learning, she did not know.
The Rational Therapy Institute was secretive and reputed to be “experimental.” Patients could only enroll by invitation, though visitors, attracted by the unusual park, could explore the exterior grounds and take photographs.
The secrecy, some conjectured, was a publicity stunt. The patients who had received treatment from the institute had been forced to sign a contract promising not to divulge the type of treatment they had received.
The media had a field day. The institute stopped cars with its towering geometrical structures, its pyramids and orbs of blue and red marble. Katy followed the stone path to the the rectangular door, went up a short set of stairs, latched onto a circular door knocker, and banged.
A tall man opened the door, his hair steel-gray, sideburns framing his face severely next to an unsmiling face. “Ah. I see that you came,” his voice was deep and flat, but his eyes were alert and appraising.
She had expected “hello” or “how are you doing?” and had been prepared to answer accordingly. But what was the answer to the non-question, “you came,” a simple and obvious observation? She opened her mouth but nothing would come out.
She stepped inside, expecting soft lighting and antique furniture to match the door knocker. Instead she found an almost empty foyer with severe white walls and white marble floors. The only furnishing was a small wooden table next to the door stacked with papers. A mirror graced the wall across from her. The lighting above it was harsh and revealed her every flaw. She turned away.
“If you will come with me,” the man said. The flatness of his tone unnerved Katy. The office at her previous psychiatrist had been lushly furnished with puffy carpeting, soft lighting from lamps, and bucolic landscape paintings.
But here, nothing had been done to comfort patients. No flowers adorned the foyer, no magazines were displayed on a coffee table, and her host reminded her of Dracula, except not as charming. Still, Katy could do nothing else but follow.
Her sandals thumped self-consciously against the hard surface of the marble floor. The marble tiles made Katy anxious because tiles had lines and Katy did not like lines on floors. She tried to never to step on any of them. She could not explain why. But then, that was part of why she was here.
She expected to be taken to a waiting room, doctors always had waiting rooms, but instead she was ushered directly into a spare office with straight hard-back chairs, a desk, and sedate bookshelves made of plain, unfinished wood next to a whiteboard. The nameplate on the desk said “Maxmillion Elmsworth, Logical Practitioner.”
There was a rustling sound from an adjoining room. She tried peaking to see who it was, but before she could, a man emerged, wearing the same kind of suit men wore at funerals. He was younger than her original host. His hair was darker, a shoe polish black. “Oh good,” he said. “You came.”
The same mild surprise, the same unwelcoming greeting. This was like no medical facility she had ever visited. Where was the friendly “customer service” she had been taught to expect? She wondered if there was a manager she could complain to.
As if reading her thoughts, the man forced his lips to smile, though she could see little warmth in his eyes.
“Um, hi,” she said. “Good to meet you.” She held out her hand. The doctor only stared at it in mild amusement until, suddenly self-conscious, she settled into one of the hard wooden chairs.
Standing above her, he peered at her through a set of wire-rimmed spectacles. “So tell me,” he said. “What brings you here to Rational Therapy, Inc.?”
She stared at him. Though Katy remained wary, the question had put her on more comfortable, familiar ground. The truth was hard to say, but Katy made herself say it. “I am neurotic and afraid of life,” she said. “I am afraid of cars, water, and lines on the floor. Ever since my divorce, I have been afraid to get up in the mornings, afraid to do anything.
“I have abandonment issues from when I was little and my father left my mom, and my own divorce brought all the bad feelings back. Since then, I have destroyed all of my relationships. My friends said I was too needy and started avoiding me. And when I step outside myself and see what I am doing, I can see how awful I am acting, but I am unable to talk myself out of it.”
“I see,” the man said, “Perhaps I can help you.”
“Please,” Katy sighed. “I have tried everything, the anti-depressants and tranquilizers, the talk therapy, the group therapy, the self-therapy. I even read Freud, who is supposed to be the expert on this kind of thing.” She unsnapped her purse. Hoping to impress, she withdrew a dog-eared copy of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and showed it to the doctor.
When she held the paperback out for inspection, the doctor stared at the book. Then he took it by one corner and dangled it as if holding a dirty sock. Sensing reproach, she reached for the book, but he made no move to return it. Instead he opened the book and tore out the first page, then another.
\”Hey, what are you doing?” she said. “I paid money for that.”
\”Treating it as the rubbish it is.” He walked over to the paper shredder on his desk and fed the page into a slot. The machine whirred on reception and clacked. It was the loudest paper shredder Katy had ever heard.
Katy had stood without realizing it and stared at the “doctor” in frozen horror. “What the hell?”
With relish, the doctor tore out a new page and fed it into the slot, which clacked some more.
\”You just ruined my book. You…you owe me another.”
\”I assure you,\” the doctor said. \”I am doing you the biggest favor of your life.”
\”Oh yeah? How do you figure that?\”
He tossed the rest of the book into a wire waste basket next to his desk. Then he sighed, pulled a chair from behind his desk, and moved it forward to face Katy.
He sat down and studied her. “Despite its claims, the history of psychiatry has been mostly the history of human denial. Our society has done a terrible job of treating mental illness: the talk therapies that encourage emotional excess; the pills to alter unpleasant moods; the self-help books that promise easy answers. One day people will look back on all of it and think of our current methods the way we now think of bloodletting to cure disease.
“The goal of modern psychiatry is, itself, misguided. It seeks to create well-functioning and efficient citizens who can hold a job, raise their kids, and fuel the economy until they die. Our goal is different: to help you discover what is true. Psychiatry purports to do just that, but it has been lacking an essential tool.
“The answer to mental illness has been staring us in the face all along, but most of us have been unable – or unwilling – to see it because learning it takes effort and dedication.”
“Well? Go ahead, tell me,” Katy said. “What is the answer? What do I need to learn?” She leaned forward, propped her elbows on her knees, and stared beseechingly at him. “I will try anything.”
The doctor stood, moved toward a bookshelf, and selected a hardback before returning to Katy and handed the book to her. She took it and scanned the title: Principia Mathematica. “Math?” She shook her head. “Why are you giving me this?”
“I am answering your question. What is the real answer to mental illness? Considering that mental illness has its basis in reality distortion, the cure, the aim, and the prescription for mental illness must be the truth. And what truth is more timeless, more reliable than mathematics?”
Katy stared at him, expecting further explanation or some hint that he was teasing her. “Math? You are proposing to cure me of my phobias and insecurities with math?” Katy studied the doctor, but he still did not smile.
“Indeed.” He continued to look seriously at her. “And not just any kind of math, but the kind that requires the faculty of logic.”
She waited for him to say more, but he was silent, waiting for her response. “Please tell me you are kidding.” She began to look frantically around the room. “I failed ninth grade algebra.” She stood. “Math hates me, I avoid it whenever I can. Oh my God.”
Her host regarded her calmly.
She felt claustrophobic suddenly. She stared at the door, thinking that if she did not leave at once, the walls would come together and crush her. “Oh my God, this a nightmare, I thought you had real answers. I need fresh air. I feel dizzy.” She took a few steps and braced herself against the wall nearest to the door, her breaths coming quick, her heart thumping. “What is happening to me?”
The doctor stood and stared at her calmly. “It is commonly referred to as the fight or flight syndrome, activated by the autonomic nervous system during times of inordinate stress. Math induces that reaction in some. But I assure you: the feeling is quite normal and will pass.”
“Like I said,” she said between gasps, “math hates me, it will never cure me, you must be insane.”
“I suspect that your attitude is largely the source of your problem. Had you not succumbed to mathematical indolence, perhaps you would have had a better life and would not need to be here.”
She glared at him. “Look, I did not come here to be insulted. And who uses math as therapy?” She stared accusingly at the doctor. “No wonder you people are so secretive. If anyone knew what you really offered here, they would stay the hell away from you. No one has said hi to me since I got here. You are the unfriendliest doctor I have ever met and your office…,” she sniffed, “smells funny. What is that, licorice?”
\”I was only speaking out of concern for you, because if you are as disinclined to math as you say, remediation may be necessary as a first step to your emotional recovery,” he said. “Without an adequate foundation, you will be unable to comprehend the essential course work.”
\”Course work? You want me to take courses in math? What is this, a zoo? I already graduated from college, mister. That part of my life is over, thank God. No deal. You are crazier than I am. I am going home.”
\”Very well.” The man stared placidly at her. “But if you leave here, where will you go? What kind of life will you be returning to? Will you return to your phobic, friendless, loveless life so easily? Are you going to give up so quickly, without at least listening to what I have to say?”
She took a long deep breath. Her shoulders felt heavy and limp. She had to admit, he had a point. She moved back to her hard chair and almost stepped on a line but caught herself in time. She settled back into her chair.
The doctor stood and strolled once more toward the bookshelf against the wall near the door. He ran a long pale finger along the bindings and pulled a new book from a shelf. “For the duration of your treatment here, you will be required to keep a journal.”
“I already keep a journal,” she said. “I have since high school.”
“This journal will be different from any kind you have ever kept, a journal of logical statements. Have you ever heard of the fallacy called affirming the consequent?”
“No,” she said.
“Well, I will get to that in a moment.” He stepped over to her and offered her a thin book with a glossy cover. “Normally I like to start my patients off with Principia Mathematica as a primer. But given your mathematical disinclination, perhaps you would prefer this one, Fun with Numbers.”
She glared at him. “I know basic arithmetic.”
He exhaled. “Oh, excellent.” He set the book his desk, “that should make our task easier. However, what I am about to show you requires no math but only the ability to comprehend logic. It is an excellent starting place for showing you what we do here. You said your problem was that you are needy and afraid of life. These fears of yours can be written in the form of statements.”
\”Statements? What kind of statements?”
“Formal assertions.” He stood, went over to the whiteboard, and erased some scrawled formulas that were already on it. “Can you give me a specific example of a time when you drove away people whom you loved? Suspected you were behaving irrationally, but were unable to stop yourself?”
She tensed. \”No, not at the moment.”
“Well, tell me about one of you failed relationships.” He studied her. “When did it end and how?”
Resisting the impulse to bolt, she thought about the mess her life had become and forced herself to stay put. “My husband, he cheated on me.” She struggled to keep her voice steady and failed. “Denied everything, but I knew.”
“You knew. So tell me. There must have been clues. Was there any anything in particular you noticed? The smell of perfume on his clothes? Strange phone calls?”
“No, nothing like that. But he lied.\”
“He lied. Please. Elaborate.”
“Well, when I first met him, he was already engaged to another girl. He told her he had been other places when he was really with me. After a while he broke up with her.
“Months later, I married him. He worked late sometimes. One day he told me he would be spending the night at his office. That night I missed him, so I went there to visit him. The office was locked, but I had a key. The building was dark, there was no one there. I was afraid he might have gotten into an accident on the way.
“But the following morning he came home as usual. He looked and acted fine. I asked him if he had spent the night at the office like he planned. He said he had. He lied to me, and I knew. Knew he was cheating on me.”
“Ah,” he put his fingertips together. “You were afraid. Afraid because you suspected the same thing could happen to you that happened to his ex. The lying. The silence. The unpleasant reality. The devastating revelation.”
“Well yes.”
He nodded. “Your fear can be viewed as a kind of emotional prediction then. A belief. A premise. To you, an axiom. Therefore, we can write it as part of a conditional statement: If my husband ever cheats, then he will lie about where he has been. Though this is a highly questionable assumption, let us assume, for now, that it is true and write it out as a formula.”
The doctor picked up a marker and on the board wrote:
1. If P, then Q.
2. Q.
3. Therefore, P.
He looked at her.
“Well go ahead,” Katy sighed. “What does it mean? I have a feeling you’re not going to let me out of here until I know.”
“Affirming the consequent is a fallacy which says that given a conditional along with its consequent, we are able to deduce its antecedent.”
“Please,” Katy said. “Can you talk like a human?”
The man sighed. \”Maybe I should start with an example. Take this one: If an object is a star, then it must be hot. A candle flame is hot. Therefore, a candle flame must be a star.” He looked pointedly at Katy. “Do you see anything wrong with this reasoning?”
“Other than it not being true? I agree, it makes no sense.\” She sighed. \”No more than anything today has made any sense.”
“Good. Then we agree thus far. Let P – as the antecedent – represent the first part of our statement: ‘If an object is a star.’ The next part of the sentence, Q, is the consequent: ‘then it must be hot.’ But if you reverse the two parts of the statement and say, ‘If an object is hot, then it must be a star,’ it is obviously untrue. Agreed?”
Katy nodded.
“The inability to make a valid deduction by reversing the two parts of a conditional statement is called converse nonequivalence. But people use this false reasoning all the time to try to prove things that are less obviously false.”
“Let us apply the principle to your situation. The reverse of the your original statement is, ‘If my boyfriend lies to me, then he is cheating.’ Do you see? You have used faulty reasoning to reach your conclusion. A fallacy.
“To put it simply, there could be many reasons your husband lied to you. Perhaps he was going to A.A. meetings in secret. Perhaps he wanted time alone. Maybe he was planning a surprise birthday party. Given the complexity of human behavior, many scenarios are possible.”
At first she only stared at him. She looked at the letters on the board and they began to blur.
At the same time, something inside her shifted, alarming, almost electrical. She felt the way she sometimes did when a roller-coaster crested the rise and dropped her into space.“The day I broke up with him, it was my birthday. He seemed happy and excited that day, before I made him leave. Before I yelled at him.
“I remember so clearly how he changed, how his face looked, first hurt, then anger. What if he was planning a surprise birthday party? I never let him explain. I screamed at him. When he tried to talk I just spoke louder to drown him out. I remember the hurt on his face when I pushed him out the door, told him to never come back, said I never wanted to speak to him again. Oh my God, what if I drove him away for no reason?”
\”Perhaps, perhaps not. But clearly your unfounded assumptions have been affecting your decisions, indeed your entire life.”
Those words “your entire life” settled into her mind and would not leave. Every self-doubt she had ever had seemed to pull together and condense inside them.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I have been affirming the consequent all my life and I never knew. What if the biggest decisions of my life have been made based on – what did you call it – a fallacy? What I think and do because of it are what make me who I am. Who am I? Most of my memories, my interpretations…”
“Are probably false.” He paused. “My apologies. You seem distressed. Would you like some licorice?”
Katy raised her head and stared at thin black rope the doctor dangled in front of her nose. “You think licorice is going to help me? My whole life might be based on a lie, I am falling apart, and you offer me licorice?”
\”No pressure. I will be more than happy to eat it myself.”
“Oh God.” She snatched the string of licorice from his hand. “I should never have come here. Before I came, I knew. I knew he was cheating, it was so obvious, the divorce, it was such a nightmare. But I felt good about breaking up with him. What if I was wrong?”
“Congratulations, my friend. You have made significant breakthroughs on your first visit, despite your aversion to my formulas, which you must overcome if you wish to progress. You must begin to keep a journal of logical statements. Whenever you make an assumption based on your feelings, I want you to write them down as conditional statements. If one of them contains a fallacy, you will become aware of the illogic that has been governing your life.
“You must also examine your assumptions, such as ‘If my husband cheats, he will lie.’ Given the complexity of human behavior, it is impossible to make those kinds of predictions with reliable accuracy. But writing your thoughts in the form of conditional statements will expose flaws in your thinking and bring you closer to the truth.”
She sniffed. “I always thought I was intuitive.”
“For many people, the word intuition is only a way of saying that their emotions grant them special knowledge. But feelings tell you little or nothing about the outside world. Logic is a powerful tool for breaking through confusion.”
Katy raised her head. “So, what, are you saying that mathematicians are the sanest people on earth? I have met some crazy people who are good at math.”
“Mathematicians too seldom apply what they know to their emotions. For too long there has been a dichotomy. Feelings and logic are viewed as mutually exclusive. But emotions can be brought into adherence with logic. You said that you cannot talk yourself out of irrational feelings.
“Emotions and logic do argue quite frequently, but your emotions are winning all the arguments. If you want to think and act reasonably, then your logical voice must become better at arguing. The disciplined study of logic expressed in the language of mathematics will strengthen that side of you. But I am warning you: your emotional recovery will not be easily won. You must study. You must calculate. You must commit.”
Katy stared at the book the doctor had given her, Principia Mathematica.
\”Mental illness,\” he went on, “is only a form of the irrationality to which all humans are prone. Many people deemed sane by society delude themselves in order to go about the daily practice of living. But to look reality in the eyes, full on, and still embrace life, is a rare ability. So is embracing uncertainty, when uncertainty is all there is. The goal of this therapy is not to restore you to productive denial, but to open your eyes. The only cure for mental illness worth pursuing is the truth.
“I am going to encourage you to question your own thoughts and what others have told you. By the end of your training, you must question me as well. When you have tested your most basic assumptions, subjected them to the uncompromising light of logic and even been brutal to them, you will look at what remains and may catch a glimpse of the truth, which is hard won, but the greatest treasure there is. And when that happens, you will change, and your life will change too.”
Katy sat still for a long moment. During the speech, she had been clutching the book Principia Mathematica to her chest. Now she lowered it to her lap, sighed, and shook her head. “Okay,” she shrugged, “What choice do I have?”
The doctor grabbed a prescription pad from the desk, withdrew a pen from his shirt pocket, and began to scrawl. “You will need to purchase a scientific calculator, a book of annotated writings by Aristotle, and a book of graphing paper.”
“Graphing paper?” Katy looked at him. “Why on earth would I need graphing paper for a mental illness?”
He stared at her with eyes full of unblinking candor.
“Okay.” The word was almost a whisper. “But this is running up a bill.”
“If the 2.99 cost of graphing paper presents an insurmountable challenge for you, I heard the office supply store down the road is having an excellent sale.” He withdrew a sheet of paper from his desk. “Coupon?”
Katy stared at the coupon for a long moment. Then she sighed and took it. Was her whole life really just a fiction she had told to herself? She had nothing to say and felt heavy, like she could barely contain her own weight.
The doctor ripped out the prescription and handed it to her. “Next week, same time?” he asked.
Katy thought about her life at home, all the insanity, the moods, the uncertainty, the fear, a life forged from bad decisions. Beside all that, a little math did not seem so bad.
“Yeah, okay.” She rose and took the prescription. “Next week.”
\”Very well. You can pick up the schedule for the course work at the table next to the front door.”
On her way out the elderly man who had opened the door was sweeping the floor in the foyer. When he saw her, he lifted his head in mild surprise. “Ah, I see that you are leaving.”
She picked up one of the schedule sheets from the square table beside the door. “Ever heard of the words hello or goodbye?” she said. “Some people find them useful.”
The man stared silently at her.
She shook her head, folded the schedule, and stuffed it into her purse. When she opened the door, the sun-warmth struck her face, and she had a thought. After the agony of betrayal, after years of questioning of her self-worth, after all the phobias and destroyed relationships, it turned out that maybe it was all for nothing.
All for nothing. In the office, this revelation had been a nightmare. But now the words “all for nothing,” said to herself again and again, were like a song, tragic and melancholy, but also lulling.
There was no good reason to think her husband had ever cheated. No proof. No logic. What had the doctor said? She had affirmed the consequent. She had been doing it all her life.
She expected tears, but none came. Instead, her tense muscles yielded to the warmth of the sun and the lulling song inside her head. She stepped outside, shut the door behind her, and raised her head, startled to see that the sky looked bluer and clearer than it had in years.