.

The Psychopath Addresses the Ladies
Auxiliary of the Mental Ward

“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears
outside as fate.”  —C.G. Jung

“Physician, heal thyself.”  —Luke 4:23

1.
Ladies, cease your mindless chatter
Lest I take a club and shatter
Your thick skulls and leave you bleeding
On the ground, alive but needing
Paramedical attention.
All your squawking and dissension
Makes me prone to savage violence.
Hold your tongues, and maintain silence.

.

2.
That’s much better. Doctor Kaiser
(Erstwhile head and supervisor
Of our little ward of loonies)
Has been transferred to the boonies.
Why you ask? Well, let me fill you
In on something. This’ll kill you:
He’s developed a psychosis
Of his own. The diagnosis
Isn’t good. The guards have strapped him
To a gurney, and they’ve tapped him
For electroshocks and dousing,
And he’ll get a thorough sousing
With the psychotropic potions
Used to quell untamed emotions.

.

3.
If poor Kaiser shows improvement
(That is, if his speech and movement
Show the slurred and sluggish stupor
That’s expected in our group or
Other medicated crazies)
He will join us. Though the days he’s
Wasted as a sane physician
Now are gone, he’ll share our mission:
Bearing witness, by his raving,
That the world’s not worth the saving;
Testifying, by his drooling,
That the mind’s immune to schooling;
Proving, by his unwiped feces,
That we are a helpless species.

.

4.
Think of the prestige we’re gaining—
A man of Kaiser’s depth and training
Shares in the bizarre diseases
He once treated! Madness seizes
A brilliant mind, whose fine discerning
Sinks into a fevered burning;
A clinician’s skill in observation
Polluted to hallucination!

.

5.
Well, that’s what I had to tell you.
Dinner’s coming—there’s the bell. You
Ought to set now, if you’re able,
A place for Kaiser at the table.

.

.

Poet’s Note

This is a dramatic monologue in the voice of a male psychopath, addressing some female patients in a mental ward. He is informing them that their supervisor, one Dr. Kaiser, has himself developed severe mental derangement and will soon join them in the lunatic asylum.

The name “Kaiser” is deliberately chosen. It is German for “emperor” or “Caesar,” and is meant to indicate the authority, control, and directive intelligence of a sane person who is in charge of an institution for the mentally disturbed. In this case, Dr. Kaiser has slipped into some form of serious mental illness, and will have to be committed once he is subdued and controlled by the psychotropic drugs and electroshock that are imposed on lunatics. The poem’s speaker celebrates this development as a prestigious addition to the mental ward.

The key to understanding the poem lies in the two epigraphs, from C.G. Jung and the Gospel of Luke. A repressed and unresolved psychological conflict will manifest itself as the “fate” of the individual who fails to address it; and even a physician cannot go about curing others, while expecting to escape sickness himself. The authority, control, and rationality of the governing conscious mind (“Kaiser”) can itself be subverted and overthrown and cast into powerlessness.

The speaker’s celebratory tone is partially due to pride (Dr. Kaiser will now be an inmate like all the rest of them), and partially to what the speaker sees as a ratification of his psychopathic view of the world: the filth, desperation, degradation, nihilism, and hallucination of madness are now proven to be valid responses to existence if a great doctor like Kaiser can now take part in them.

The poem is composed of trochaic tetrameter rhyming couplets, all of which end feminine. The heavy hammering of this kind of rhythm is consonant with insanity, violence, and an unhealthy psychological compulsion.

.

.

Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets.

The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary.

 

***Read Our Comments Policy Here***

 

43 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I cannot complement you enough on this raucous rendition of the demise or rise (depending on whether it is society or the inmates’ point of view) of Dr, Kaiser. How easy this was to read in anticipation of the ending. As I am becoming acquainted with your particular sense of humor, I am enamored with your picture-perfect presentation.

    Reply
  2. Mary Gardner

    From the first stanza, I was simultaneously repelled and attracted. Now that’s a good poem!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      To Roy and Mary — thank you both for your kind comments. I strive to make my dramatic monologues amusing, frightening, unexpected, thought-provoking, and above all else interesting, all at the same time.

      Reply
  3. Evan Mantyk

    Thank you, Joe, for the poem. I found the very last part of the analysis particularly interesting, the part about the connection between trochaic meter and mental instability. I recently became acquainted with Dickens’ Pickwick Papers and the character Mr. Jingle who seems to lack empathy for those he swindles and speaks, it seems, almost exclusively in phrases beginning with trochees.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Trochaic meter has a hammering insistence about it, which can suggest pressure, anger, immediacy, and maybe also a lack of empathy for the feelings of others. If I were to say:

      WHY the HELL can’t THEY be QUIet? (four trochees)

      it certainly would suggest my anger and impatience.

      Mr. Jingle in “The Pickwick Papers” does tend to speak in a jumpy, staccato, fragmentary style, with a lot of initial trochees. I suppose Dickens did that to emphasize the man’s tricky, deceptive, and uncharitable nature. When I taught the text many years ago, I recall students asking why his speech was so strange, and not always as clear as the prose of Dickens normally is. I suggested that this was because the character was “a fast talker,” which is a common way of describing a con-man or a grifter. When a person speaks (or writes) in fragments or disjointed phrases or incomplete sentences, there’s a good chance he’s trying to deliberately confuse you and put something over on you, and it’s not for your own interest.

      Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    I, too, thought that your explanation of the trochaic meter and rhyming couplets, and the term “Kaiser”, were fascinating. The reasons for the use of the trochees, especially, seems obvious once you think about it. The whole idea of the story, and the way you told it, are very thought-provoking, too. It does seem that someone whose livelihood is working with those who are already mentally ill, would be very prone to succumb to mental illness himself.

    Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    Thank you, Cynthia. Both choices were deliberate.

    The French have the phrase “deformation professionnelle” to describe what you mention. It could be physical (a longshoreman who lifts heavy boxes will often have one dominant arm that is longer than the other) or psychological (a teacher will think that everyone around him is a student to be lectured).

    I wanted Kaiser to represent not just the doctor in charge of a mental ward, but also the governing stratum of the West, who in many cases seem to have slipped into the madness and delirium of the most degraded members of the nations that they rule. How many of our rulers have come to worship BLM, Antifa, street criminals, the pro-Hamas demonstrators, the illegal aliens, the Democrat Party?

    There used to be an old saying about “the lunatics running the asylum.” Now it would be more apt to say “those in charge of the asylum have become lunatics.”

    A small added note of thanks to Evan Mantyk: No one on earth, in a million years, could have picked a better illustration for my poem than the one you picked. I gasped in recognition and sheer gratitude when I saw it. Evan, you are a magician!

    Reply
  6. C.B. Anderson

    Robert Frost might have said, “Too much explanation can ruin a poem,” but here you give just enough to guide us through a rather complicated exposition. The ironies alone are enough to drive a man to think.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Kip, I only add the notes because this is a teaching website visited by many students and younger poets, and not just a place to showcase our work. Persons learn a lot more about meter and poetic language here than they do anywhere else, and that’s because of the notes and follow-up commentary.

      Reply
  7. Yael

    Omg, this poem is disturbingly and hauntingly entertaining! I feel your sense of humor; great job! The picture is frighteningly appropriate too.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Yael, thank you. “Disturbing, haunting, and entertaining” — could a poet yearn to do more than write a poem of that nature?

      And yes — Evan Mantyk’s choice of an illustration was brilliant.

      Reply
  8. Shamik Banerjee

    This is much like a b/w movie with a classic plot: an asylum’s villainous head, who performs painful experiments on his patients, himself turns psychotic, while his subordinates, who were disgusted by his methods, rejoice at his downfall. I personally believe it’s a huge deal to flawlessly carry trochaic pentameter throughout a piece with five parts, in addition to including rhyme pairs that don’t look forced, such as: stupor-group or; tell you-bell you; crazies-days he’s. Also, thanks for the note, Mr. Salemi. It’s interesting that a Bible lesson is embedded here. A very informative and wonderful work!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you for your comments, Shamik. However, I did not intend to paint Dr. Kaiser as a cruel tyrant who mistreated the asylum’s inmates, but only as a good man who, for some personal reason, developed a mental illness. The psychopathic speaker in the monologue makes no complaint at all against Kaiser, and in fact sings the man’s praises as a doctor and clinician.

      The key to Kaiser’s fate is the epigraph from Jung — the man had some unresolved internal conflict which he did not deal with, and that internal conflict eventually emerged externally, as the thing that destroyed his sanity.

      The trochaic meter is not used much these days, not because it is difficult but because it is always noticeable as a literary rhythm, and that is taboo in the eyes of modernism. One of the best poets of the last century, Dorothy Parker, used it frequently to great effect. Here’s a small part of her poem “The Dark Girl’s Rhyme” —

      Who was there had seen us
      Wouldn’t bid him run?
      Heavy lay between us
      All our sires had done.

      There he was, a-springing
      Of a pious race,
      Setting hags a-swinging
      In a market-place;

      Sowing turnips over
      Where the poppies lay;
      Looking past the clover,
      Adding up the hay…

      These are trochaic trimeters, with the even-numbered lines omitting the last unstressed syllable. Doing this makes possible the alternation of masculine and feminine endings.

      There’s also Parker’s brilliant poem “The Satin Dress,” of which I’ll only give the first quatrain:

      Needle, needle, dip and dart,
      Thrusting up and down,
      Where’s the man could ease a heart
      Like a satin gown?

      Here too the meter is truncated at the endings, but it is still perfect.

      Reply
      • Shamik Banerjee

        I’m extremely sorry, Mr. Salemi. I didn’t intend to say that Kaiser himself was evil. Not at all. He was a good doctor to his patients. What I meant was that the plot of this poem is much like a classic where the protagonist (good or bad) himself goes into psychosis after years of treating mental patients. As your own poem says: Madness seizes a brilliant mind.

        Thank you so much for the note on Trochaic Metre. You’re right: It’s rhythm is noticeable, and contemporary journals will say a direct no. Since I am new to this, I am fascinated by it. So far, I’ve written only a few small poems set to Trochaic rhythm but would love to write longer pieces. 

        I love these two pieces. I would dig more into Parker’s work. Thank you so much for your valuable guidance. 

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        I think you would love the work of Dorothy Parker. A very convenient edition of much of her poetry and prose was brought out by the Viking Press in 1944, and has gone through many editions. I’m sure it is still easily available from any of the big on-line bookstores in paperback.

        The series was called “The Viking Portable Library,” and the Parker volume contains an excellent introduction by the English poet W. Somerset Maugham.

  9. Maria

    How much skill is used here to leave the reader repelled and fascinated , enraged and compassionate all at the same time!
    Forgive me if my comment does not do justice to this great poem. thank you

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      I’m very glad to have evoked all those varied emotions in a reader. Thank you for your kind comment.

      Reply
  10. Brian A. Yapko

    What an amazing dramatic monologue, Joe! There’s so much to unpack here that it’s hard to know where to start. First, the conceit. A dramatic monologue by a psychopath is not only a fascinating idea but highly creative, unique and mildly transgressive. I find that in writing dramatic monologues it is sometimes the most fun to write in the voice of an unpleasant or unheroic character. Browning did this a lot – Caliban Upon Setebos, Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister, My Last Duchess. You are in very good company. And it goes to show that a poem can be written on literally any subject and in any voice. The only limitations are those of the poet and so I much admire your willingness to push the boundaries a bit.

    You’ve explained in detail the reasons for your choices of meter and rhyme. I fully concur with your artistic decisions. I would add that your use of couplets (“antiheroic couplets”?) in a short line could have resulted in sing-songiness but didn’t because of your use of trochees. What the rhyme-scheme here actually does is emphasize the ruminating strangeness of the speaker’s mind. I am reminded of the character Lisa in the 60s play “David & Lisa” who was schizophrenic and spoke in rhyme. It rings true when depicting mental illness. Your use of feminine rhymes is simply brilliant. I especially liked psychosis/diagnosis. You betray the high level of education of your speaker.

    Your “psychopath” as an erudite one makes the poem more interesting for the reader. It means we have a speaker who we must take seriously even though we are wary of him. You mention “savage violence” but we don’t actually know why he’s labeled “psychopath” – what horrors he may have committed… so we don’t quite have reason to think of him as Hannibal Lecter. To the contrary, your leaving it open-ended means he is more relatable. Perhaps that’s the very point as you develop his “insane” views on Dr. Kaiser and the insanity of the world. I am curious why it was important for him to address a group of women. It’s an odd detail which nevertheless offers some sexual tension – especially when he threatens violence. It offers verisimilitude since an asylum would likely not be coed lest sexual crimes occur. It also implies thematically (if not literally) that the speaker has now assumed the overseeing role of Kaiser. The lunatics are officially in charge of the asylum.

    Your choice of Dr. Kaiser’s name is an interesting one which you have explained in great detail. But I see additional associations here which you may or may not have intended but which serve the poem and give it great relevance. It is hard not to think of the German Kaiser here, and in his psychiatric “fall” we have a parallel to the fall of civilization and order itself which occurred as a result of World War I which, arguably, marks the start of the dismantling of Western civilization. Adding to this is the strange sense of period in this poem. You do mention electro-shock therapy and psychotropic medications, but it still has the feel, for some reason, of being a period piece. Evan’s choice of photograph is spot-on, but is I think a reaction to the poem, rather than a temporal placing of it.

    Your poem focuses on the vulnerable primacy of the conscious mind and how it can be subverted by the subconscious, the repressed. Not just subverted, but actually directed. That, at least, is how I read the Jung quote. That does, of course, work here in addressing the downfall of Dr. Kaiser. But I see one other thing at play which makes Dr. Kaiser emblematic of us all: He has made it his life work to spend time with the insane and, presumably, to either cure them or make their lives at least more like his – more rational, more constructive, more meaningful. But in surrounding himself with the insane, the opposite happens. He is brought down to their level rather than the other way around. This is a phenomenon which has great application to the world at large – especially when we talk about unchecked, unvetted immigration that brings barbarism into the West. Those of a liberal persuasion are convinced that this will civilize and uplift those people and make a one-government world a better place. But the evidence indicates the opposite – they do not become more civilized, but rather civilization becomes more barbaric. There will not be more peace. There will be more crime. There will not be more love. There will be more violence, disrespect and hate brought right to the doorstep. Destructive influence accelerates entropy and brings goodness down to a lower level.

    Your Kaiser in personal psychiatric terms reflects this larger phenomenon. As does your speaker who is pleased to see Kaiser brought down to his level, proving that the world – and the human mind – has great potential for depravity and destruction and the triumph of meaninglessness. “Polluted to hallucinations” indeed. How modern this sounds. I want to argue with the insane man’s statement that we are a “helpless species” and find myself stuttering in the attempt. He may be right. There may be nothing more, except… unless… Joe, you have kept religion out of this poem – a correct choice, I think. But this may actually highlight the fact that there is no solution until we turn to faith. You’ve written a poem that seems almost divorced from fraith, but is faith truly a stranger to your poem? Not when you begin the poem with quotes from Carl Jung, who famously said “I don’t believe there is a God. I know there is a God.” And, of course, the Gospel of Luke. Now we are invited to explore the intersection between the mind, the subconscious and spirituality. But that would require a whole essay.

    I wonder, Joe, if I have read more into this poem than you intended. While I’m slightly embarrassed that I may have done so, I can’t help but wonder if such thoughts – especially the sociological barbarian-poisoning ones — were not on your mind as you wrote this…? That would be really interesting when the subject of your poem is itself the workings of the mind!

    You’ve given the reader — certaintly this reader — much to ponder here. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, thank you for your penetrating comments, but also I specifically want to thank you for reminding me of the play “David and Lisa” (I saw it as a movie, starring Keir Dullea). It had a great effect on me, especially Lisa’s need to speak only in rhyme. Do you recall David’s question to her?

      Lisa, Lisa, why must we rhyme?
      Rhyming always takes such time.

      One thing I should mention: I knew (from the personal experience of frequently visiting a relative who was in a mental ward) that mentally deranged persons are often quite aware of their condition, its proper diagnosis, and its varied symptoms. They can even discuss the question quite calmly and openly with others in the ward, or with visitors, touching upon possible treatments, and their chances for recovery. This is why I had no problem with writing a monologue in the voice of an articulate mental patient who could discuss something clearly, while being no less deranged.

      Yes, I hoped this poem could be read as a parable on the collapse of our civilization, which has been going on since 1914. And while I don’t necessarily blame Germany for the bloodbath of World War I, it is quite true that Kaiser Wilhelm’s blank check of support to Austria-Hungary in dealing with Serbia was a hideous mistake. But the plain fact is that every nation at the time was swept up by a belligerent madness that made war impossible to avoid. Kaiser’s Wilhelm’s childish militarism and posturing may have aggravated tensions, but he never dreamt that war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia would have been anything other than a low-intensity conflict, tamped down by Big Power diplomacy. The European mass psychosis was not limited to a single nation or leader.

      Germany’s real crime against Western civilization was sending Lenin and his troupe of fanatics in a sealed train to Finland Station in 1917, to spark the Bolshevik conflagration. As Winston Churchill remarked, it was like “sending a plague bacillus.” Leftism became a world-wide infection after that.

      I did not try to divorce religious faith from my poem, but merely to see the world without the rose-tinted glasses that too many religionists use to analyze every phenomenon. The quote from Luke is profoundly religious: every person must work to root out the sicknesses in himself, rather than trying to “cure the world.” What did the Beatles say? If you want to make the world a better place, just look in the mirror and make a change.

      Reply
  12. Paul Freeman

    ‘Kaiser’s comes from the word ‘Caesar’. Alas, there’s many a wannabe ‘Caesar’ around these days.

    Reply
      • Paul Freeman

        Your rage at female authority figures is noted.

    • Mike Bryant

      “The only good thing about Callaghan is that he paved the path for Maggie Thatcher. And the great thing about Thatcher is that she wrecked the career of the odious fake conservative, Edward Heath.” – Joseph Salemi

      Really Paul? I see no rage against women authority figures.

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        I also love Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen. I guess they don’t count as females for Paul.

  13. David Whippman

    Thanks for this skilfully written and grimly humorous poem. The narrator comes across (I know the comparison is obvious) as a bit like Hannibal Lecter: intelligent, eloquent, yet with a terrifying readiness to commit extreme violence.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, David. The phrase “grimly humorous” is one I would have chosen myself to describe the poem.

      Reply
  14. Adam Sedia

    A very clever and engaging dramatic monologue, and like Browning’s it constantly forces the reader to consider the mental state of the speaker – in this case the inmate of an insane asylum. Some clever rhymes spice it up (“feces” as an end rhyme is brilliant).

    I also read a timely political message into it, with the inmates, literally “running the asylum.”

    I will also note that trochees are natural to German (Schiller’s “A die Freude” comes to mind) which may have much to do with its perceived harshness. Consistent trochees in English require some effort.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Many thanks, Adam. I must confess that the rhyme of “species” and “feces” was suggested to me by a comedy skit from over 40 years ago on Saturday Night Live. I never forgot the pairing, but I didn’t use it until I wrote this poem a few years back.

      It’s interesting that many perceive Schiller’s Ode to Joy (and perhaps the German language itself) as having a harshness in its trochaic rhythms, even though the ode is about a triumphant and positive joy. I suppose trochees have an intrinsic aggressiveness to them.

      Reply
  15. Margaret Coats

    As you say, Joe, persons who are deranged, and undergoing treatment for it, can speak quite rationally of their condition and indeed of other matters. Your challenge of characterization in this poem is not, therefore, to portray a psychopath as rational, but to present a rational speaker as a convincing psychopath. You rely mainly on his thoughts and threats of violence as you introduce him in part 1. Many, many persons very far from insanity can relish the idea of a boss being demoted, can proudly take such a thing as evidence of their equality with the former superior, and can have a black view of humanity. And the speaker is not necessarily sane because he notices damaging effects of treatment in the general condition of his fellow asylum inmates. Their acceptance of his loud and long domineering is, to my mind, the only other clue beside his threats, about the repression that, in a Jungian analysis, makes insanity his fate. Here in the asylum he achieves the status an intelligent man aggressively demands, but might not have demanded elsewhere. Whether he would deserve it sufficiently to be thought Dr. Kaiser’s equal remains unclear–and he can take a perverse satisfaction in that.

    The genre of mad song comes to mind. While these are less common in literature of high repute, they did have a certain popularity from the 16th century “Tom o’ Bedlam” into the 18th century. Tom may have been crazy but was also a capable beggar–thus corresponding to the deranged and rational aspects of “The Psychopath” (and including the humor).

    About the trochaic meter, I can only agree that because it’s not iambic, it is noticeable. That makes it fitting for pieces like the witches’ spell in Macbeth, incantatory and in control. It provides distinctive effects in this poem, but recognizing those doesn’t mean it will always produce similar ones. You remarked, Joe, that trochaic was effective in my “Snowy Egret” to give emphasis to items in a catalog describing the egret’s habitat. And I freely admit choosing it mainly because I intended the word “egret” to be the final one in the poem.

    You create a normal and even familial final effect with your psychopath and fellows sitting down to dinner. Exciting news can only go so far toward entertaining, even when the hearers are insane!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Margaret, when I was growing up in Woodside there was one kid who was a kind of terror to the entire neighborhood, because he was violent, destructive, had a hair-trigger temper, and was unpredictable. We all went in fear of him. His name was Max, and when he reached adolescence he was eventually involved in all kinds of crime, including a murder. His family couldn’t control him, and he spent years in a mental ward.

      But he eventually wrote an autobiographical novel of his experiences (it is harrowing to read the thing) in fairly good prose, and he became a successful part-time actor. He could write very clearly about mental derangement and its symptoms, and what kind of horrors could be expected from patients in an asylum. He also openly admitted that his greatest wish was to be “normal,” like everyone else, so he clearly understood that his condition was pathological and socially unacceptable.

      The speaker in my poem is different. He acknowledges that he and his fellow inmates are deranged, but he speaks of this derangement as a valid protest against the world and the human condition. His feeling about Dr. Kaiser’s illness is that of satisfied confirmation — if a great man like Dr. Kaiser (whom he obviously admires and thinks highly of) can lapse into lunacy, then lunacy is an acceptable response to the nightmare of life.

      I didn’t want to suggest that the speaker wished to lord it over Kaiser, or become the ruler of the ward in Kaiser’s place. The speaker is a psychopath, and in a world of such persons strength and force and compulsion are ordinary tools of human interaction. I limited his threats of savage violence to the first part of the poem, where he utters them to get attention for his statements — a common practice with psychopaths.

      There is a tradition in English literature of the crackpot who speaks the truth, and I’m glad you brought it up. Tom o’ Bedlam is one example, but there are also the wise fools in Shakespearean plays like “King Lear,” and even Ophelia in “Hamlet,” whose mad ravings can make you shiver with their unvarnished realization of what is actually going on. I wanted some of that sort of thing in this poem, but the problem is that the speaker (unlike Max) is unalterably convinced that severe derangement is a proper response to existence. That became the core notion in the poem — the speaker’s argument lunacy is one valid way of looking at the world, and how that idea is gaining wide traction among our ruling class (the “Kaisers”).

      Yes, the trochaic meter (which can give emphasis, or show violence) and many other non-iambic-five meters often evoke a rather nasty and snobbish reaction among establishment modernist types. The source of this attitude is a deeply rooted hatred of anything that suggests “something literary,” or “belletristic,” or “rhetorical.” Establishment free verse today is as intellectually rigid in its core ideology as was the old Communist Central Committee in Soviet Russia. Meter is taboo, tropes and figures are taboo, abstract ideas are taboo, unusual diction is taboo, and subjects other than personal experience and emotional whingeing are taboo.

      I’ve written an essay titled “A Post-Literate Age,” which has just been published at Expansive Poetry Online. It touches on some of the symptoms of
      what is happening.

      Reply
  16. T. M. Moore

    Mr. Salemi: You might as well have been describing the intellectual and political elites of our day. A compelling verse. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Yes, thank you, T.M. Moore. That is exactly what I wanted to do.

      Reply
  17. Daniel Kemper

    Not sure how many other people here have seen a mental facility from the inside, but there’s certainly a variety. I’ve had several close friends who’ve experienced state hospitals, including a co-worker who met his wife (of 25 years now) there. (Welcome to California. lol.) Anyway, I do not have personal experience with the dankness and dreadfulness of the state hospitals, but much like all things state owned/run/etc… just ug. Ug.

    The idea of Dr’s slowly breaking down because of exposure (very loosely speaking) reminded me of Father Damien. I think it likely that over time Dr.’s, particularly those “in charge” deteriorate towards madness, but I think the corrosive effects of isolated and nigh-omnipotent power might be a larger contributing cause.

    Bleh.

    The poem. Trochees a great choice definitely. To add to your observations, many epithets are trochaic, right? S* it, F* it, etc. There are many. We’re both fluent. Nuff said. I think the icing on the cake here is rhyming the full trochee. It makes the lines trail off in a sinister way.

    Can’t help but think of James Carville speaking among the other illuminati, of our commander-in-chief’s pending arrival among them.

    “They can appear to themselves on closed-circuit T.V.
    to be sure they’re still real.
    It’s the only connection they feel.”

    Reply
  18. Joseph S. Salemi

    Daniel, thank you for your comments. There’s one important thing to point out here — several commenters on my poem have focused on the idea that “Dr. Kaiser” (a purely fictional character in a totally fictive artifact) became deranged as a result of too close a connection with his disturbed patients. Well, that’s one interpretation of a made-up character in a fictive artifact called a poem, and it is plausible, just like any speculation about the behavior of an imaginary character is plausible.

    But there is an important clue to understanding my poem that many commenters seem to overlook or disregard, and that is the epigraph from C.G. Jung. The basic meaning of that epigraph is that if one suffers from an unresolved internal (i.e. psychological) conflict or tension, and if the conflict or tension remains unconscious (i.e. if it is not brought up to one’s conscious mind and directly dealt with), then that situation will manifest itself as your doom or fate or destiny. It will cast a growing shadow over your life, it will determine what happens to you, and will in fact define you.

    In my poem, there’s no indication of what personal, internal conflict has driven Dr. Kaiser over the edge. All we are told is that it happened, and that one psychopath is gratified by it. As a poet, I hoped that this little story would be read as a parable of the collapse of rationality in the West today, and the triumphant celebration of perversion, lunacy, antinomianism, freak-worship, and left-liberalism that surrounds us and chokes us.

    Reply
  19. Joshua C. Frank

    Love this! The concept is great, the rhymes are great, and it reminds me of how the leaders of every institution in existence have similarly succumbed to the insanity of the modern world.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Joshua, the whole situation is as scary as hell. I have talked to persons who are apparently rational, and yet when you point out that something they have said or done is illogical or nonsensical, they simply gaze at you in baffled silence, like catatonics. And some of these persons are in positions of authority and great responsibility. Irrationality, illogic, and hallucination seem to have possessed them.

      Reply
  20. James Sale

    A wonderful poem , Joe: I am reminded of the great James Hollis who cited Jung: ‘Jung disturbingly observed that what we have ignored or denied inwardly will then more likely come to us as outer fate’, and this ‘discovery’ of Jung’s is hardly original since the Greeks – Oedipus for example – knew it and so for that reason only it must be true! But one small point of even further clarification is to remark on your use of Kaiser as a name: yes, it is from Caesar, and came to mean emperor or even king – the genius of that name resides in the fact that all mad people of the type you describe think they are ‘king’ of the cosmos/universe. The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach brilliantly describes this condition: hence why lunatics assume the identity of Napoleon or other ’emperors/famous leading people’ – Christ being pre-eminent amongst them. Hence why Rokeach, having 3 Christs in his institution, decided to see what would happen when 3 people claiming the same identity were introduced to each other! That’s a by-the-by, but the name Kaiser is inspired! Thanks.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Many thanks, James. It is true that one form of derangement (megalomania) takes the form of the patient deluding himself that he is a world-famous figure, and that this is a form of compensation for his conscious awareness of his insignificance or low status.

      Rokeach’s story of The Three Christs is probably the source of the screenplay for the film “The Ruling Class,” where Peter O’Toole believes himself to be Christ, and is only cured when a therapist brings another lunatic to visit him — one who also thinks that he is God Himself. The explosion that occurs at their meeting makes for a riveting scene.

      Reply
  21. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, this admirably written poem is highly entertaining, I was tempted by the title, drawn in by the opening stanza, and held captive by the eerie persona until the closing line. This poem haunts me.

    I find mental illness a contentious subject. After witnessing and hearing about treatments (including electric shock therapy) from friends and relatives with firsthand experience, I already had little faith in this field of medicine. “Admirable Evasions – How Psychology Undermines Morality” – an excellent book by Theodore Dalrymple, has removed any remaining trust, and your poem has stirred up all number of fears surrounding this subject.

    In an insane world where the “sane experts” tell us men are women, plant food (CO2) is a poison, and experimental jabs are safe and effective, how can these same “experts” be trusted to define madness? In an age where the governments in the Western world are funding psychology courses because mental health needs to be addressed, I am already imagining to what ends… and my imaginings involve lists and those who were once considered sane being carted away by ghouls in white coats to make way for the “New Normal”.

    The sheer magnificence of your words has disturbed me greatly – the sign of an excellent poem. I don’t know whether to thank you or not… but I will. Thank you!

    Reply
  22. Joseph S. Salemi

    Susan, I’m very glad that you found the poem entertaining and shocking at the same time. That’s usually the reader response that I aim at.

    The poem takes no position one way or the other on the value of current methods of treatment for the deranged. From what I have heard, electroshock and psychotropic drugs work in some cases but not in others. The same seems to be true for talk therapy. All I did in the poem was to use a mental ward and its inmates as a backdrop for my larger comments on how psychopathy in all forms is spreading widely.

    The political use of compulsory psychological treatment and internment as a way to control a recalcitrant population was initiated by the Communists in the 1920s. Of course, our left-liberals would like nothing better than to establish precisely that sort of regime world-wide, so that “experts” could arbitrarily decide who is not sane, and who needs to be locked up (sans any judicial proceedings). In such a case, psychotherapy would not longer be a legitimate field of mental health, but merely another political tool (like lawfare) to keep dissent silent and invisible.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.