RITUALS OF THE ANTITHETICAL Reading: "Sibyl of Doom" from the novel Rituals of the Antithetical (A.Glass 2023)

 

A year ago.

Dialectic Psychiatry.

320, 5th Avenue. New York City

“Good to see you Amelia.”
“Likewise.” A woman replies, in her late thirties, holding out her hand to an older man in his mid forties. To which he reciprocates.
“Come this way…” David Elkman says, leading his former student Amelia Saunder down a narrow walkway to the office at the end of the hallway. “...Watch the walls…” He turns slightly looking at the dark haired woman walking beside him. “...They’ve just been freshly painted…” Reaching forward with his right hand, he inserts the key into the door clock. “...After five years, we got a new paint job.” Opening the door, he allows Saunder to enter his office, following behind, he turns and closes the door behind them both, as she looks around at the office space, with its books and collection of Eastern and Western ornaments.
“Coffee, tea?...” Elkman asks.
“No thank you. Just water.” She replies.
“...Please take a seat.” Pointing at the two chairs facing each other, sitting down, she places her dark brown leather sachet to her right side.
“So, you’re completing an internship with the New York Courts?”
“Yes, I mean, it’s been a big leaning curve, but after another year I hope to have set up my own practice. I was thinking maybe in Jersey City.”
“No, stay in New York…” Elkman hands Saunder a glass of water, as he sits opposite her with a mug of tea.
“...Orrlong tea…” He has a sip. “...I read a report in Two Thousand and Fourteen, that Orrlong tea has a got a lot of the amino acid Theanine. Apparently good for cognitive health. Ah, very nice…” He places the mug down onto a table to his left side. “...But then again, Theanine is also in coffee. Rents maybe higher in New York, but Jersey City, you’ll still have to travel back to the city for the clients and if court referrals are still on going.”
“Just a thought at this point,” Saunder replies, reaching down to her sachet with her right hand and lifting out a folder, to which she places it on her lap.
“So, you want to discuss a case?”
“Yes, and thank you for seeing me.”
Elkman nods in a professional manner, as Saunder places her glasses on. Opening the folder in front of her.
“About three months ago I was appointed by the New York Courts to evaluate a woman who was brought in on a gun charge. It was quite a serious charge, she did not have a license for a banned assault rifle and it was a military grade weapon. She pleaded guilty to the charge. With a claim to the Judge presiding why she harbored such a weapon, which was for her own personal safety. She is white and has no affiliation with gangs or a history of crime...” Taking her glasses off, she looks at her senior colleague. “...My initial evaluation to the courts was that she was no danger to society and that ongoing psychological assistance would be needed with monthly evaluations made by me. The court was in favor of my report and made it a final order.”
“Was it Six months of evaluations?” Her senior colleague asks.
“Yes it was, fortnight psychological appointments, with a monthly assessment with the client, after I looked over the appointed psychologist’s brief.”
“And what was your and the psychologist’s overall diagnoses?”
“Antisocial Personality Disorder”
“And you have a concern about your evaluation?” Elkman asks.
“I do. There was a few things that I and the psychologist did pick up on. Conclusively, we believed that she was…” Saunder’s removing her glasses with her right hand, while placing her left palm on the open file on her lap. “...manipulating us.”
“Well, then your original diagnoses would be correct,” Elkman says, sipping from his tea.
Placing her glasses back on, she looks over the file notes again.
“This is what the psychologist wanted me to follow up on in relation to the possibility that there could be both Dissociative Identity and Derealization Disorder, I just want to read this to you that the psychologist wrote in a detailed dialogue with the client.
‘You mentioned that your mother had you when you she was a lot older and that you felt detached from the family and the other siblings, you were of course the youngest.’
‘My mother had me when she was forty years old, she was impregnated by her lover. That was my father, I never really knew him. He died, I think in Nineteen Ninety Five, drugs. A heroin overdose. He was, Nineteen when my mother and him were having sex. I never really felt part of anything, you know family. No connection to my sister and brother. It didn't exist.’
‘It would have been hard not feeling connected to many things growing up.’
‘I just created a world, actually more like a realization of what it was always attended for me to be part of. It was always there.’
‘Your own place to reside in?”
‘Its kinda like, I feel disconnected, detached, removed, but necessary, for my training and my discipline. So, rather than being a negative, it opened up for me. To my own sliver, a world between worlds.’
‘Is this a spiritual place?’
‘Yes’
‘As a personal spiritual practice. What sort is it?
‘It’s a fusion of the transgressive esoteric and meditation’
‘Were you taught?’
‘No, I was born of the left-hand. As I said, the sliver between worlds. My discipline was aligning myself with the teachings that made sense to me.’
‘The left hand?’
‘The unorthodox way’
‘As your realization?’
‘Yes, like I would visit cemeteries, dark places, back alleys. It would be a ritual, sometimes I would trip out a bit…”
‘Drugs?’
‘...Yeah, alcohol mostly. It was all too reconnect and release the ghosts of suffering that would be stored in the structures around me. I later read about the unorthodox Hindu sect the Aghori, it seemed similar to what I do, more or less, as they release the bonds of suffering in the souls of Shiva, through indulging in unorthodox rituals, sex, alcohol, meat eating. So, what is interesting to me, is that my divination holds similarities to other aspects of say Occultism and esoteric left hand path teachings, but it is of my own domain. I follow the path that was already inscribed into my psyche”
‘It is very impressive that you can achieve this without a spiritual guide or master.’
‘I have always been able to separate myself from myself, I have had out of body experiences, particularly with sex and if I need to call on for support, the self is always there to assist. It’s all I have ever had.’
Saunder looks up at her senior colleague.
“I see…” Elkman replies, contemplating on the transcript of Essy Zabel and the court appointed psychologist. “...and you didn’t feel Schizotypal could be an element here?” He asks.
“I did, but she showed no hallmarks of paranoia or erratic speech pattern. Rather she was precise, methodical and balanced in her responses. And while she did not subscribe to any fixed religious or spiritual template…” Looking briefly around Elkman’s office at some of the Hindu and Buddhist ornaments. “...She, with what was disclosed in our appointments and the transcript I just read, had created or at least fused Eastern esoteric beliefs, such as magic more specifically a type of Black Magic practice.
“You see Amelia the objects in this room, I know you are aware. I have traveled to India and Tibet several times, including China and Japan, but, I would never see a client in here. For the reasons and depending on that person’s particular mental syndrome, it would most certainly have an affect on the therapy as you would be aware. I had a client several years ago, female, late thirties, never married, single. Worked in the finance industry, began to develop a depression with psychosis, she was bipolar. The Schizotypal developed after she came back from a trip to India, it further developed, in an unhealthy way, with the psychosis. She was a drug user, cocaine and amphetamines. The issue was and remains as a danger to herself, she was suicidal despite the claim she had magical powers. Was there at any point your client could have incorporated those obscure spiritual beliefs with the sessions you had with her? And did you check if drug use could have impacted her state of mind?”
“My office is very formal as for the psychologist, I wouldn’t know as I never personally met her, only as the referral. Our dialogue was over the phone and with emails. But, I feel that her beliefs were not just conjured up or influenced through the therapy. Yes, she was a user of alcohol and psychedelic mushrooms. Both, according to the client were taken only in a ritualized manner, not together and not regularly. Personally, I do not feel that drug use has created any psychosis here. I know what you are implying is that some clients, particularly manipulative ones can create a role. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, it is entirely possible for someone who is feigning elements of delusive psychological issues, for whatever reasons, more so in a therapy session as a way of controlling it. And this can occur over a Six month period, I say this, as you did assess your client with an Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Saunder’s smiles. “And that is why I am here speaking to you. I needed to clear up some of the dilemmas I had with this file. However, I do feel that spiritual elements were sincere, I mean there are…” She looks down at the file resting on her knees. “...pages of dialogue, she seemed very knowledgeable, particularly on why she has these rituals with alcohol and even sex, which was also brought up. But, yes you raised a very interesting point, we detected, as I mentioned, manipulation. I have to read you this, an email that I received from the psychologist after their last session. It was also their final brief.
“...Just an extra observation after my final session with Ms Zabel, which was from a professional perspective. Her interaction with me was slightly odd and more so allaying to what we both discussed as a manipulative element of Ms Zabel’s personalty. At the end of the session, we discussed the six months that I and her had seen each other. We went through every month as a count, she lead this and I observed, her dialogue is as follows:
“It was a very informative time, thank you. So it was six months right?” To which I replied “yes”, she then counted chronologically, using the fingers of her left hand, from March to August. She watched me clench my hands together when she said August, my engagement ring is on my left hand. Leaving my office, she said, “I hope you have a nice wedding in August of next year.”
This interaction was off the record.”
Elkman chuckles. “A psychopathic oracle.”
Saunder’s also laughs quietly. “Could it be a first?”
“If she is no danger to herself or anybody else, but yes, a first. I can’t recall having a client like this and I have to reiterate that you both made the appropriate diagnoses.”

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Reading:  "SIBYL OF DOOM" from RITUALS of the ANTITHETICAL (A.Glass 2023)