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The reader of this narrative of three lost men is in for a unique and richly rewarding experience. Milton Rokeach, a social psychologist, is to be highly commended for taking profitable advantage of the availability of three such men as Joseph, Clyde and Leon, all patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan.
In this study, one of the most interesting to be carried on in the field of psychodynamics, Rokeach tells what happened to
three men, during two of the years they lived together in the hospital, all of whom claimed the same identity, namely God.
In Neurosis and Human Growth, Karen Horney observed that “the individual alienated from himself needs … something that will give him a hold, a feeling of identity. This could make him meaningful to himself and, despite all the weakness in his structure, give him a feeling of power and significance … Gradually and unconsciously the imagination sets to work and creates in his mind an idealized image of himself. In this process he endows himself with unlimited powers and with exalted faculties.”
Rokeach first planned to “explore the processes by which their delusional systems of belief and their behavior might change if they were confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity.” Later, he explored the process “by which systems of belief and behavior might be changed through messages purporting to come from significant authorities who existed only in the imaginations of the delusional Christs.”
The investigation was based on three assumptions: 1) not all beliefs are of equal importance to a person but range from central to peripheral; 2) the more central, the more it will resist change; 3) change in a central belief will have far wider repercussions in the rest of the system than changes in peripheral ones. The central or primitive beliefs he refers to are those that are taken for granted, the basic truths one holds about physical and social reali