Mindswap Read Online Free PDF Page B

probabilities are in my favour.'
    'Yes, sir,' Marvin said politely. 'But I hope you won't test that particular approach.'
    'No, no, of course not,' Urdorf said. 'It would be interesting, but some people might not understand. No, I shall pursue your case actively, especially since it is a sex crime, which is the sort of thing I am interested in.'
    'I beg yotir pardon?' Marvin said.
    'There is really no need to apologize,' the detective assured him. 'One should not be embarrassed or guilty by reason of being the victim of a sex crime, even though the deepest folk wisdom of many cultures attaches a stigma to being such a victim, on the presumption of conscious or unconscious complicity.'
    'No, no, I wasn't apologizing,' Marvin said. 'I was merely-'
    'I quite understand,' the detective said. 'But you mustn't be ashamed to tell me all the bizarre and loathsome details. You must think of me as an impersonal official function instead of as an intelligent being with sexual feeling and fears and urges and quirks and desires of his own.'
    'What I was trying to tell you,' Marvin said, 'is that there is no sex crime involved here.'
    'They all say that,' the detective mused. 'It is strange how the human mind is forever unwilling to accept the unacceptable.'
    'Look,' Marvin said, if you would take the time to read over the facts of the case, you would see that it was a case of an outright swindle. Money and self-perpetuation were the motives.'
    'I am aware of that,' the detective said. 'And, were I unaware of the processes of sublimation, we could leave it at that.'
    'What possible motive could the criminal have had?' Marvin asked.
    'His motive is obvious,' Urdorf said. 'It is a classic syndrome. You see, this fellow was acting under a specific compulsion, for which we have a specific technical term. He was driven to his deed in an advanced state of obsessive projective narcissism.'
    'I don't understand,' Marvin said.
    'It is not the sort of thing which the layman is apt to encounter,' the detective told him.
    'What does it mean?'
    'Well, I can't go into the entire etiology, but essentially, the dynamics of the syndrome involve a displaced self-love. That is to say, the sufferer falls in love with another, but not
as
other. Rather, he falls in love with the Other as Himself. He projects himself into the persona of the Other, identifying himself with that Other in all ways, and repudiating his actual self. And, should he be able to possess that Other, through Mindswap or allied means, then that Other becomes himself, for whom he then feels a perfectly normal self-love.'
    'Do you mean,' Marvin asked, 'that this thief loved me?'
    'Not at all! Or rather, he didn't love you as
you
– as a separate person. He loved
himself
as you, and thus his neurosis forced him to
become
you in order that he could love himself.'
    'And once he was me,' Marvin asked, 'he was then able to love himself?'
    'Precisely! That particular phenomenon is known as the incrementation of the ego. Possession of the Other equals possession of the primordial Self; possession becomes self-possession, obsessive projection is transformed into normative introjection. Upon achievement of the neurotic goal there is an apparent remission of symptoms, and the sufferer achieves a state of pseudonormalcy in which his problem can be detected only inferentially. It is a very great tragedy, of course.'
    'For the victim?'
    'Well, yes, that certainly,' Urdorf said. 'But I was thinking of the patient. You see, in his case two perfectly normal drives have been combined, or crossed, and thus perverted. Self-love is normal and necessary, and so is the desire for possession and transformation. But taken together, they are destructive of the true self, which is supplanted by what we term the "mirror-ego". The neurotic conquest, you see, shuts the door to objective reality. Ironically enough, the apparent integration of the self precludes any hope of real mental health.'
    'All right,' Marvin said,