578
PARTISAN REVIEW
patient: where others feared to speak, Berryman confronted the man
boldly. Despite his kindness and insight, however, Berryman managed
many times to turn the conversation towards the subject of sl;licide. He
was often detached.
One memorable day, Jim Zosel tackled Berryman about a personal
habit. During a conversation Berryman would go into a form of trance,
his legs locked together, and hum to himself. With the words, "Let's
talk to the hum," Zosel brought gestalt therapy to bear on the problem.
Berryman himself remembered the occasion with awe:
"I have a low tuneless unconscious hum: one awful morning Jim
made me put it on a chair in front of me
&
talk to it, then move the
chair, be the hum
&
talk back-it was hallucinatory. Finally he made
me talk to what was
under
the hum."
According to Chris Fall who was present, when Berryman was asked to
name the tune he was humming, he knew only that it dated from the
time of his father's death-1926.
On 28 May, Berryman took his Fifth Step with the Rev. William
J.
Nolan; according to the book, he "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and
to Another Human Being, the Exact nature of Our Wrongs." The
purpose of Step Five is to reduce the burden of moral anxiety and guilt
which the patient's new degree of self-awareness has brought into
conscious focus. The alcoholic frankly reveals his character. "In other
words," advises the
Clergyman's Handbook,
The purpose is not simply to list a long series of wrong actions or to
review a pattern of shameful behaviour; though this will undoubt–
edly happen as either preface or proof, but to reveal the exact
nature
of the person who did these things. The behaviour is in the past
tense, but the defects are present and persistent. ... The goal is to
have the alcoholic speak of himself directly and unequivocally ....
The alcoholic begins now to see the truth that these defects of
character are the signs of his sickness and that upon their removal his
recovery depends.
While he may have lacked a lasting personal faith, Berryman was
able to pray for others. Of one fellow patient, he wrote shortly after–
wards:
Let one day desolate Sherry, fair, thin, tall,
at 29 today her life the Sahara Desert,
who never has once enjoyed a significant relation,
so find His lightning words.
