Ch.90

Returning to the office, Scully called Arkham Mental Hospital. She needed to speak with Dr. Oslon. Fortunately, he was available, allowing Scully to fill in several gaps about Rysler. Things Oslon couldn’t bring himself to document in the records. Things he found unsettling but overlooked. And other advice that might help treat Rysler.

After exchanging information, the conversation between them turned somewhat personal. It was more like an exchange between industry colleagues rather than a friendship between two people.

“I understand you use controversial methods, Agent Scully. I actually read your paper, and it was… quite radical.”

“In what way?”

“I felt it was a strange fusion of mystery and science. As if you systematized superstition through scientific approaches.”

Scully burst out laughing.

“What’s the difference?”

“Well. Mysteries inherently lack reproducibility. They can’t be universalized. But scientific approaches are ultimately standardized procedures, aren’t they? You wrote about fantastic things in such an organized and systematic way, as if anyone could do it with proper training.”

“That’s true. Anyone can do it.”

“Anyone can enter the inner depths of another person’s mind?”

“You did read my paper, right?”

Of course, Scully was joking, and Oslon took it as such.

“That passage still impresses me. If fragmented memories are like a book, then a person’s inner mind is a vast library. Some books are read often, while others are not. An ordinary person has their own rules for arranging books. But those with broken minds do not. Is that correct?”

“Precisely.”

“So, are you saying the human mind follows something like the Dewey classification system?”

“Not exactly. The Dewey Decimal System is essentially a single system followed by all libraries. The human mind isn’t like that. We only know for certain that rules exist, but what those rules are exactly can only be discovered by going down into it.”

“Then what does a doctor do? Are they a librarian?”

“Metaphorically speaking, yes.”

Scully elaborated.

“Books are metaphors, symbols, and signs. In the mind of someone who is mentally weakened, these systems are twisted, distorted, or completely out of place. Our job as doctors is to correct these systems. To reshelve books according to that person’s inherent system, to gather scattered pages.”

“But what if there are completely destroyed books? What if the system is too fluid to remain intact? Or what if the person is so damaged that there aren’t even shelves to hold the books?”

“That’s when we walk down the spiral staircase.”

“I’m sorry, but even if the theoretical framework was established by Old World scholars, I find it too extreme. After all, if it’s a scientific methodology, shouldn’t it undergo verification by other researchers? Isn’t that what science is about? Comparison, verification, refutation and counter-refutation, dialectics…”

“You’re right. But Dr. Oslon, we’re not physicists dealing with a theoretically perfect world. We’re in a discipline that deals with complex, nuanced human beings. We can’t approach everything purely scientifically or mechanically.”

“That’s precisely the problem, Agent Scully. Patients are people, and so are we. Do you really believe a person is strong enough to descend into another’s inner mind and observe it as it is? When facing not the inner self restrained by language or expression, but the primitive, wild inner self of instinct and nature. How many people could maintain their sanity?”

Scully remained silent. She could hear Oslon raising his voice.

“It’s not just facing the abyss—it’s walking down into it.”

After gathering her thoughts, Scully responded.

“As you said, our technique involves looking into a person’s primal inner self. So there may be cases where someone gets swept away, overwhelmed, or repulsed by another’s inner mind. But humans have a primitive mechanism for such situations.”

“What is that?”

“Fear.”

This time, Oslon fell silent.

“Fear is the alarm system that has kept humans alive until now. What a healer truly needs to be mindful of isn’t being overwhelmed, swept away, or influenced by someone else’s inner mind. It’s how to handle their own fear. Not being overwhelmed by their own fear, but using it as a guide and steering wheel, utilizing it rationally. That’s the core of what Dr. Jung taught.”

“Sounds like Platonic philosophy. The politics of the Übermensch.”

“A psychological analysis of the Übermensch. Wouldn’t that be quite interesting?”

The conversation ended on a relatively warm note. Scully recommended a couple more papers for Oslon to read. In a much brighter mood, Oslon said he’d love to meet her at the next conference before hanging up.

Feeling lighter, Scully took out a blank sheet of paper. She drew a snake. A snake biting its own tail.

* * *

Dr. Jung’s lectures were always lucid. During his lectures, students felt confident that no problem in the world was unsolvable. But the moment they left the lecture hall, they fell into the despair of realizing they knew nothing.

“Assistant, is this a problem with my teaching ability?”

Whenever he received such letters, Dr. Jung would wipe his bony hands on his vest.

“Your communication skills aren’t lacking.”

“No, I meant to say I think I teach too well.”

Scully smiled faintly.

“Professor Freud doesn’t say that, does he?”

“Ha. That’s my master’s flaw. People don’t remain infantile forever. Sometimes I wonder if my teacher was an extreme reductionist.”

“I’ll ask him next time I see him.”

The master put his hands together as if in prayer.

“Well then, let’s begin again.”

“Yes.”

Emma. Their topic was always Emma. Jung had pointed out that Emma occupied too large a space in Catherine’s inner mind.

‘I’m not saying to remove Emma, Catherine. You need to accept, understand, and organize. You shouldn’t let memories of her influence you. To do that, you need to see Emma clearly.’

‘But I always think about Emma?’

‘That’s not thinking, Catherine.’

The master shook his head.

‘You’re captured and held by thoughts. You’re frightened. The Emma you remember is scaring you. But that might not be the real Emma. The actual Emma and ‘the Emma Catherine saw’ could be very different people. Let’s try to feel the Emma beyond your thoughts, your fantasies, your emotions and feelings—the Emma who is a person just like you.’

But progress was slow. Although Catherine had successfully completed the master’s other assignments, the part about Emma remained unresolved.

It felt like going in endless circles, Catherine thought.

But today, the master seemed to have prepared something different.

“Write down all of Emma’s symptoms as you know them.”

This was something they had done many times before. What she remembered clearly, what was unclear—Catherine wrote down Emma’s symptoms. Then she reclassified them.

“Now let’s write down solutions. What treatments might help.”

The difficulty in treating Emma lay in the complexity of her symptoms. A treatment for symptom A would interfere with the treatment for symptom B, and to address C, one would need to look at D first.

Catherine did everything she could. From verified classification methods to very dangerous approaches. She examined all possible means. Each time, it was pencils that wore down.

‘I am a doctor. If I can’t heal my own family, who can I heal? I can cure Emma.’

Pencils kept wearing down, sometimes breaking, but Catherine didn’t give up. She sharpened new pencils and attacked the problem again.

‘She’s my family. My sister. I have to find a way to fix her. I can do it. I can! I can do it!’

Snap.

“Damn it!”

Catherine slammed the desk. Professor Jung looked at her. Her hand was numb; she couldn’t hold the pencil anymore.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know…”

“What did we say people are made of?”

“The sum of their memories.”

“If memories are books, then the mind is a library. Every library has a classification system. It’s slightly different for each person, but most people we call ‘normal’ have similar systems. But occasionally, there are people with very strange systems. Where you wonder, ‘Why does this book come after that one?'”

Jung picked up the symptom notes Catherine had written. He arranged them carefully on the desk. Not just the notes. Textbooks. Lecture notes. Jung’s own clinical records took their places around Catherine’s notes. Like a great general deploying troops, the flow was natural and unobstructed.

“But remember, people always try to find patterns, no matter the circumstances. Even in chaos, they establish their own rules. Some people’s inner minds are so chaotic that they create more rules. Rules that seem chaotic to others. Obsessions. Delusions.”

Jung placed a stubby pencil among them. Trivial, useless things pointed to each other as if they were connecting lines.

“What do you see?”

Having hoped for clarity in Jung’s rearrangement, Catherine felt even greater despair.

What was there was a circular snake. A snake biting its tail. A snake that grows endlessly by eating its own tail. A metaphor for the self that, even after devouring the world, is never satisfied and continues to expand endlessly.

“Ouroboros.”

“That’s what I see too.”

This meant only one thing. Emma could never be healed. Emma’s symptoms interfered with each other, only getting worse, never recovering.

“I’m sorry.”

Incurable. An incurable disease. An eternal vicious cycle. Endless malice. Hatred that wouldn’t end until the heart stopped beating on its own. Is this my sister’s fate?

Catherine slammed the desk.

“You!”

She slammed it again. Blood flowed from her fist. The desk creaked and shook.

“What do you know! About my sister, about me, about our home!”

Jung’s eyes emitted light.

From deep within the soul,

The red-hot flames of a furnace swallowing molten iron.

“My sister who ruined my life!”

Her broken and cracked fingers swelled purple. The desk creaked again, twisting. Catherine Scully raised her already smashed and shattered fists high.

“What do you know about that fucking bitch!”

Unable to withstand any more, the legs broke and the desk flipped over. Torn books, blunt pencils, and crumpled papers rose into the air.

That’s when Scully saw it.

What had appeared as a complete circle from above,

When viewed from the side, had a beginning and an end. Something you could walk up and down.

It transformed into a spiral staircase with an entrance and an exit.

Jung suppressed a laugh. What was clear to the disciple was also clear to the master.

“I always wondered when you would get angry.”

Jung took out medicine from the cabinet.

“When talking about Emma, you never showed any emotion. Like a doctor dealing with a patient. But before that, Emma is your sister. She was your family. That’s where you need to start, Catherine. The reason Emma isn’t just a simple patient is partly because she contains truly complex problems, but also *because you view her in a complex way*.”

The master applied medicine to the disciple’s hand and wrapped it in bandages.

“I… can’t I cure Emma?”

“What are you saying?”

Jung smiled kindly.

“Now you understand Emma better. You’re family, and an enlightened doctor. What more do you need?”

Catherine, her face flushed, lowered her head. She was embarrassed about the shattered desk.

“It’s alright. I saw a desk at the furniture store last week that I quite liked… I can deduct a bit from your salary, right? You earn well.”

Jung giggled like a child.

* * * * *

After that day, Catherine could enter a patient’s mind.

A person’s mind is a staircase you can walk down.

At the very top is a library containing memories, and as you walk down the spiral staircase, you encounter rooms filled with memories.

The rooms at the top are the ones people want to show others.

As you go lower, you reach intimate memories that even the person themselves might not know exist.

This doesn’t mean the earliest memories. Rather, the decisive memories that made this person who they are now. The rock in the stream. The curved alley…

“Agent?”

The medic cautiously spoke to her. She checked the clock. It was time to visit “Jezebel.”

“I’ll go now.”

Catherine Scully rose from her seat.

Jezebel wasn’t just a simple opium addict. She had seen too much, and it was clearly connected to Senator Annette Cole.

But to Catherine, someone like Annette Cole wasn’t important at all.

She forgot about the pressure to treat Jezebel in order to expose Cole’s corruption.

If she could heal one more patient.

If she could bring back even one person.

Someday, she would reach Emma.

Catherine Scully composed herself and opened the door to the hospital room.