I cringed under the doctor’s thoughtfully gaze and tried to make myself smaller on the sofa. All at once my bladder cut loose and a large yellow stain began appearing in the bulge of my diaper. I started to whimper in shame at what had happened. The doctor nodded and said, “I see what you mean and I’m afraid I agree with you. You husband needs institutional treatment and quickly, before this develops into a full blown psychosis. I have the papers here necessary to begin proceedings to commit him. With what I’ve seen here today, I don’t think there’ll be any problem in getting a judge to agree to a ninety day commitment for observation.”
He turned to me and said, “Unless of course you wish to agree to a voluntary commitment? You understand that if you commit yourself there won’t be any court records. If you arrange to pay for the treatment yourself without going through your insurance company I don’t think there’ll be any problem with keeping your treatment confidential. You can tell your employer that you’ve gone into the hospital for treatment of your ulcer. If you cooperate I think we can have you out of the hospital in two to three weeks. Of course that assumes you are willing to continue treatment on an outpatient basis. What do you say?”
I nodded and he said, “Good! Now there are some other matters we need to discuss. Pauline, your husband’s neurotic sexual fixation has developed into an obsession that threatens to become psychosis. I’d like your permission to give him electro-convulsive therapy to break up the compulsive patterns that are destroying his personality. We’ll do that in the hospital. I’ll also give him treatments with a drug called Versed. It’s a hypnotic/amnesiac that will allow me to dig deeply into his subconscious. It will also allow me to give him posthypnotic suggestions to modify his behavior and improve his subconscious self-image. Statistically there’s an eighty percent chance that the suggestions will be followed by the patient exactly. The amnesiac properties of the drug will keep him from remembering the treatments and amplify the amnesiac properties of the ECT treatments. He’ll be unable to remember the details of this entire episode. It will just be a hazy memory to him. After we release him, I’ll begin treatments for his sexual deviation. I’m afraid that that the treatments will affect his sex drive for some time to come. I’ll have to give him medications that will reduce his sex drive to nothing for a while. In time his obsessions will lose their power over him and disappear. Since there’s nothing organically wrong with him, I think I can promise you that he’ll regain his bowel and bladder control by the time he leaves the hospital. If the treatment I’ve suggested is acceptable to you, then we’ll begin right away. I’ll take him to the hospital myself. All you need to do is sign the papers.”
The psychiatrist took some papers out of his desk and began filling the forms out and pushed them across his desk toward Pauline when he was done. She sign and then the two of them looked meaningfully at me waiting for my response. I had no choice, if I didn’t sign, they’d get a judge to commit me and my position at the lab would be forfeit. I signed reluctantly and the psychiatrist made a phone call to arrange for my admission.