On leaving university the subject put himself in the one environment he would not be able to tolerate—that of an expensive private school, the social transmitter of all those paternalistic and authoritarian traits the subject hates. Predictably he then felt himself forced both out of the school and out of his country, and adopted the role of expatriate, though he insured himself against any valid adjustment by once again choosing an environment—the school on Phraxos—which was certain to provide him with the required elements of hostility. His work there is academically barely adequate and his relationship with his colleagues and students poor.

To sum up, he is behaviorally the victim of a repetition compulsion that he has failed to understand. In every environment he looks for those elements that allow him to feel isolated, that allow him to justify his withdrawal from meaningful social responsibilities and relationships and his consequent regression into the infantile state of frustrated self-gratification. At present this autistic regression takes the form mentioned above, of affaires with young women. Although previous attempts at an artistic resolution have apparently failed, we may predict that further such attempts will be made and that there will be the normal cultural life-pattern of the type: excessive respect for iconoclastic avant-garde art, contempt for tradition, paranosic sympathy with fellow rebels and nonconformers in conflict with frequent depressive and persecutory phases in personal and work relationships.

As Dr. Conchis has observed in his The Midcentury Predicament: “The rebel with no specific gift for rebellion is destined to become the drone; and even this metaphor is inexact, since the drone has at least a small chance of fecundating the queen, whereas the human rebel-drone is deprived even of that small chance and may finally see himself as totally sterile, lacking not only the brilliant life success of the queens but even the humble satisfactions of the workers in the human hive. Such a personality is reduced to mere wax, a mere receiver of impressions; and this condition is the very negation of the basic drive in him—to rebel. It is no wonder that in middle age many such failed rebels, rebels turned self-conscious drones, aware of their susceptibility to intellectual vogues, adopt a mask of cynicism that cannot hide their more or less paranoiac sense of having been betrayed by life.”

While she had been speaking the others at the table listened in their various ways, some looking at her, others sunk in contemplation of the table. Lily was one of the most attentive. The “students” scribbled notes. I spent all my time staring at the woman, who never once looked at me. I felt full of spleen, of hatred of all of them. There was some truth in what she was saying. But I knew nothing could justify such a public analysis, even if it were true; just as nothing could justify Lily’s behavior—because most of the “material” this analysis was based on must have come from her. I stared at her, but she would not look up. I knew who had written the report. There were too many echoes of Conchis. I was not misled by the new mask. He was still the master of ceremonies, the man behind it all; at web center.

The American woman sipped water from a glass. There was silence; evidently the report was not finished. She began to read on.

“There are two appendices, or footnotes. One comes from Professor Ciardi, and is as follows: 'I dissent from the view that the subject is without significance outside the matter of our experiment. In my view one may anticipate in twenty years’ time a period of considerable and today almost unimaginable prosperity in the West. I repeat my assertion that the threat of a nuclear catastrophe will have a healthy effect on Western Europe and America. It will firstly stimulate economic production; it will secondly ensure that there is peace; it will thirdly provide a constant sense of real danger behind every moment of living, which was in my opinion missing before the last war and so contributed to it. Although this threat of war may do something to counteract the otherwise dominating role that the female sex must play in a peacetime society dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, I predict that breast-fixated men like the subject will become the norm. We are entering an amoral and permissive era in which self-gratification in the form of high wages and a wide range of consumer goods obtained and obtainable against a background of apparently imminent universal doom will be available, if not to all, then to an increasingly large majority. In such an age the characteristic personality type must inevitably become auto-erotic and, clinically, auto-psychotic. Such a person will be for economic reasons isolated, as for personal ones the subject is today, from direct contact with the evils of human life, such as starvation, poverty, inadequate living conditions, and the rest. Western homo sapiens will become homo solitarius. Though I have little sympathy as a fellow human being for the subject, his predicament interests me as a social psychologist, since he has developed precisely as I would expect a man of moderate intelligence but little analytical power, and virtually no science, to develop in our age. If nothing else he proves the total inadequacy of the confused value judgments and pseudo-statements of art to equip modem man for his evolutionary role.'”

The woman laid down the paper and picked up another. “This second note comes from Dr. Maxwell, who of course has had the closest personal contact with the subject. She says: 'In my view the subject’s selfishness and social inadequacy have been determined by his past, and any report which we communicate to him should make it clear that his personality deficiencies are due to circumstances outside his command. The subject may not understand that we are making clinical descriptions, and not, at least in my own case, with any association of moral blame. If anything our attitude should be one of pity towards a personality that has to cover its deficiencies under so many conscious and unconscious lies. We must always remember that the subject has been launched into the world with no training in self-analysis and self-orientation; and that almost all the education he has received is positively harmful to him. He was, so to speak, born short-sighted by nature and has been further blinded by his environments. It is small wonder that he cannot find his way.'”

The American woman sat down. The old man in the white beard nodded, as if pleased with what had been said. He looked at me, then at Lily.

“I think, Dr. Maxwell, that it would be fair to the subject if you repeated what you said to me last night in connection with him.”

Lily bowed her head, then stood up and spoke to the others. She glanced at me briefly, as if I was a diagram on a blackboard. “During my relationship with the subject I of course experienced a certain degree of countertransference. I have analyzed this with the help of Dr. Marcus and we think that this emotional attachment can be broken into two components. One originated in a physical attraction for him, artificially exaggerated by the role I had to play. The second component was empathetic in nature. The subject’s self-pity is projected so strongly on his environment that one becomes contaminated by it. I thought this was of interest in view of Professor Ciardi’s comment.”

I didn’t; I knew it was simply another turn of the screw of humiliation.

The old man nodded. “Thank you.” She sat down. He looked up at me. “All this may seem cruel to you. But we wish to hide nothing.” He looked at Lily. “As regards the first component of your attachment, sexual attraction, would you describe to the subject and to us your present feelings?”

“I consider that the subject would make a very inadequate husband except as a sexual partner.” Ice-cold; she looked at me, then back to the old man.