Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
like the gears of a clock.' The psychoanalyst became a
co-conspirator in his patient's delusion. He began to reject
psychological explanations of Allen's story. How sure are we that
it couldn't really be true? He found himself defending the notion
that another life, that of a spacefarer in the far future, could be
entered into by a simple effort of the will.
At a startlingly rapid rate . . . larger and larger areas of my
mind were being taken over by the fantasy . . . With Kirk's
puzzled assistance I was taking part in cosmic adventures,
sharing the exhilaration of the sweeping extravaganza he had
plotted.
But eventually, an even stranger thing happened: concerned for
the well-being of his therapist, and mustering admirable reserves
of integrity and courage, Kirk Allen confessed: he had made the
whole thing up. It had roots in his lonely childhood and his
unsuccessful relationships with women. He had shaded, and then
forgotten, the boundary between reality and imagination. Filling
in plausible details and weaving a rich tapestry about other worlds
was challenging and exhilarating. He was sorry he had led Lindner
down this primrose path.
'Why,' the psychiatrist asked, 'why did you pretend? Why did
you keep on telling me . . .?'
'Because I felt I had to,' the physicist replied. 'Because I felt
you wanted me to.'
'Kirk and I reversed roles,' Lindner explained,
and, in one of those startling denouements that make my
work the unpredictable, wonderful and rewarding pursuit it
is, the folly we shared collapsed ... I employed the rationalization
of clinical altruism for personal ends and thus fell into
a trap that awaits all unwary therapists of the mind . . . Until
Kirk Allen came into my life, I had never doubted my own
stability. The aberrations of mind, so I had always thought,
were for others ... I am ashamed by this smugness. But
now, as I listen from my chair behind the couch, I know
better. I know that my chair and the couch are separated only
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