The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai Read Free Book Online Page B

opponent, not by arguing aggressively, but by listening carefully, pinpointing the opponent’s emotional thinking, and determining what compels the adversary to behave as he does. Solving differences, Kelley maintained, is much easier when one understands the signals that drive others.

    Kelley’s passion for magic intensified. By the mid-1930she had become an officer in the august Society of American Magicians and had authored several instructional articles in GENII , a magazine for conjurers. One described how to use false shuffling to make an audience member unknowingly pick four aces out of a deck of cards, and he introduced readers to such other stunts as “The Kelley Gamble-Trophy Trick” (another card trick), the “City Desk Trick” (a feat of mentalism), and “Let Him Guess” (a prop trick). “Long before the name psychology was on everybody’s tongue,” Kelley wrote, “magicians employed its principles under the term misdirection.”
    He sparked Korzybski’s interest in magic, which the Pole often invoked when trying to explain the principles of general semantics. Magic tricks, Korzybski said, no longer deceive us when we understandtheir workings. The shell-and-pea game loses its magic when we see how the pea is concealed inside the shell. “A matter of structure,” Korzybski said. “And as you know, all of science is a search for structure. When we understand the structure of something then we avoid deception and self-deception. That is one reason why I work to explain the structure of common experiences—war included—and language. But it is not obvious to the naked eye.”
    Douglas Kelley studied for three years in New York and wrote his Columbia dissertation on using the Rorschach test to assess alcoholics. He took a series of personality and vocational tests during this time. In one vocational appraisal, he scored poorly in the categories that measured fitness for such occupations as psychologist, architect, and engineer, and best matched the test’s parameters for real estate salesman and such solitary pursuits as farmer, printer, musician, and author. Kelley’s self-confidence allowed him to ignore the profile’s suggestions when he made his next career move in 1941, to manage the psychiatric ward at the San Francisco Psychopathic Hospital, an institution affiliated with the University of California Medical School, where he also accepted an instructorship in psychiatry.
    Back in the Bay Area, near his family and closest friends, Kelley drew attention by trailblazing a type of occupational therapy that was perhaps unique in American psychiatry. He taught patients how to perform magic tricks, an activity he claimed was more effective in rehabilitating the mentally ill than many other forms of therapy. In an article for the journal Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation in 1940, he noted the importance of the conjurer’s intelligence and imagination in entertaining his audience, described how the mind—not the eye—is deceived, and laid out the qualities of stage magic that most attracted him: “No other type of entertainment can be so effectively presented with so little practice. After a single lesson, one can deftly perform easy mechanical effects. Yet the feeling of success engendered by a clever act, so readily learned, stimulates the student to attempt more difficult presentations. He thus gradually develops the true skill and finesse of the finished artist of magic.”
    Well suited as occupational therapy for depressed, schizophrenic, and neurotic patients, magic could restore their self-esteem, distinguish them in a social group, and prevent them from feeling ignored, Kelley believed.(For the same reasons, he found it inappropriate for those suffering from paranoia, delusions, and overinflated egos.) “Magic gives the patient a feeling of superiority every time he fools an audience,” he told a newspaper reporter. “As a result, it will also promote a mild trend toward