582
PARTISAN REVIEW
Worst temptations
to
drinking:
parties, poetry-readings-refuse both for a year-& verse-writing:
problem won ' t come up for 18 months or 2 years.
Replacements for drinking:
work on my Shakespeare biography mornings &afternoons-I drink
v. little when doing scholarly work or writing prose: 2 or 3 drinks a
day . Evenings : reading or music or conversation. Need more social
life, tho' not parties.
Absolutely certain my wife will leave me if I start drinking again;
afraid I might then kill myself.
Absolutely certain any more drinking will mean insanity or suicide,
perh. quite soon, 2 or 3 years.
Hopes for sobriety : a reformed marriage, trust in Jim, reliance on
God: outpatient treatment, AA.
Berryman felt that his exposition was sincere; everyone who heard
was very moved. What his immediate audience did not discern,
however, was that the schematic qualities and clarity of the declaration
veiled a fundamental delusion. The piece may have been authentic, but
it was almost wholly insincere, a fault masked by its coherence.
Berryman was working on the level not of feelings, but of ideas. The
statement that he recited was a confession of past events dissociated
from his present sensibility. A delusion persists, for example, in his
determination
to
write more prose because he drank less-"2 or 3
drinks a day" -while doing so, when it was absolutely essential for a
recovering alcoholic never
to
drink
at all.
(Similarly, his efforts
to
pinpoint the causes of his alcoholism were scarcely relevant
to
the
present course of treatment.)
During the last week of treatment, Berryman retrenched firmly.
For one reason or another, he was not prepared or perhaps enabled to
cauterize his disease, but only to suck the wound. On June 8th, Jim
Zosel noted, "P(atien)t not coming on straight with anger
&
hostility.
Will transfer to another group a few days." Accordingly, another
counselor tried Berryman in her group-without success: "Saw him as
hostile, deluded and regrouped."
Berryman was discharged from hospital on June 12th. "P(atien)t
to be released today," Jim Zosel wrote. "Plan to have p(atien)t return
for group for at least 2 wks. Physical health is not such that it may
