I remember an Air Force major who all of a sudden turned up on my front doorstep and wouldn’t tell me his name. It was very weird. I did – I went along with this just as a gag almost. But I processed him every afternoon for an hour, and at the end of the hour-because he couldn’t give me his name and address, you see, and it was all not-know anyhow, and everybody- why, he’d hand me a fifty-dollar bill. Which is kind of-very amusing-handing me money anyhow-because I don’t-normally will take the money, because it’s curious and wondering what the reactions are with regard to giving and separating the money.
For instance, I charged somebody one time – I told somebody I’d cure his stuttering. And he was buggering around, boggling and yapping about curing it, and so forth. So I said, well, it would cost him five hundred dollars. Well, this made it worthwhile, but he couldn’t possibly give me five hundred dollars. You see, how this thing works out? This was-he was incapable of doing this. So to cure his stuttering, five hundred dollars. .
You see, if I’d cured his stuttering, he knew he would feel obligated to pay me something even though I didn’t ask for anything. You got the idea? This was the way it added up in his mind, anyway.
So I charged him five hundred dollars, but now he couldn’t have any processing, because the next item on the agenda was that he couldn’t separate from five hundred dollars. He had five hundred dollars. He had lots of five-hundred-dollarses, but he couldn’t separate from this. So what I did was process him, and I cured his inability to have or give money. And then he-then he paid me the five hundred dollars, and I cured his stammering and then gave him the five hundred dollars back again. (I never told anybody this whole story.) And he started to stammer instantly. I didn’t care about the five hundred dollars, you see? Very amusing.
Same guy, I pulled the same gag-another gag on him. I hypnotized him-this was early in research-and turned his stuttering off like that. Hypnotists do this rather well. The guy goes around in a total fog after this, you see, but he can talk just fine. Of course, he can’t think of anything to say, but… And I said he would cease to stutter until I said the word boggleboo or something to him. It was very funny. I called him up on the phone. And he was at work; he worked in a shipyard. And I called him up on the phone, and he answered the phone. And cheerily, cheerily, he was saying, “Well, well, well. How are you today, Ron? Yes. Oh, I’m getting along fine. Everything is going along fine.”
I said, “Boggleboo.”
And he said, “Bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu. Wha-what did you ssss-sss-ssssss-sssa-ssss-sss-sss-say?” Interesting. Ideas of post-hypnotic suggestion, and so forth. Actually, he felt much better after he didn’t have to not stutter. There’s no telling what he might say if he had to go on talking. It’s very interesting. And later on, this five hundred dollar gag came up. Anyway, he got along fine. He won in the long run.
But this Air Force major with his fifty dollars at the end of every session-not knowing the man’s name, not knowing anything about him, who had been sent in from someplace or another-I’d give him an hour’s session. All of a sudden, I pulled off this tremendous overt. He was talking motivator, motivator, father, motivator. And all of a sudden, I pulled this tremendous, fantastic overt. He had come in, and his old man evidently had had a couple of drinks, and he had just… This had been just a few years before. He had just rolled up his sleeves and beaten the old guy to a pulp. Just plastered the blood all over the walls. And at the moment he did this, why, it was just phessseew. Boy, the relief just fell off of him and lay in pools in the auditing room, you know? You could just feel it. Wow, man. And that was the end of that.
I’d really done something. He knew that. And he gave me this fifty dollar bill. I used to throw them in an ash tray along there. And I added it to the pile. And he disappeared. And I never saw him. Interesting thing. That was the first time, although we’d been working with overts rather continuously, that I actually got into a case that experienced a 100 percent total recovery on having gotten rid of one overt. These cases are rare, but they happen often enough to make the Freuds of the world and the Roman Catholic Church hopeful. So anytime you do anything wrong, you can always go whisper it into a secret confessional which guarantees to destroy the confession.
You know, they have these little private boxes. And the priest sits in the middle box, actually, and the person sits on one box and the other person sits on the other box, and they both talk in. And they don’t know whether the priest is listening or not. You get the not-know? You get how the church has Qed-and-Aed with the not-know of the withhold of the confessional. Got the idea? So it’s very easy to Q-and-A1 with the not-know of a not-know. See, it’s very easy.
He says-he’s right away thinking, “Look at all the not-know I’ve run on everybody. I want everybody to not-know this.” So he’ll ask you to destroy it or hold it secret or something. He’s saying not-know. And you’re saying, all right, not-know. Now he tells you. Of course, you haven’t run a not-know, because you’ve still got a not-know. That’s the end of that. There isn’t any-any argument further. 2