Evening star., 1952-05-16
Old Man Living in Stors
Was Really q Little Boy
Psychiotists Told Of Odd Case
Of Timid Child in Kunsos
By Thomos R. Henry

By Thomos R. Henry
ATLANTIC CITY. May 16.-The little
boy was an old man who lived In the
stars.
Millions of light years away IN the
sky he controlled the universe and won
great space-ship battles with the hosts
of monsters on the Whirling galaxieS.
He was lonely, cruel, terribly vim.
dictive old man.
All the time he was an extremely
timid child, full of obsessions and fears.
spurned of love.
Theoretically 1t was case Of the
weird phenomenon, in the parlance OF
the psychiatristS, of internal distance"
It is apt to be part of the strange
syndrome of schizophrenia and it is all
mixed up, the way the psychoanalysts
look at it, with such things as uncon-
scious sex, thwarted ego and a lot OF
other such ideas.
It All Happened in Kansas.
The case of the little boy who was an
old man in the stars was presented be-
fore the American Psychiatric Associa-
tion here today by Drs. Rudolph Eek
stein and Dorothy Wright of Topeka.
Kans. 1t all happened in Topeka and
ISN'T something out of Joyce or Gertrude
Stein.
The psychiatrsts deal a good deal
with flights from reality" This space
child" as they termed him. had made
the ultimate flight from reality. He
had gotten as far away from it as was
possible to go, except through the grave.
He was nine years old. He had been an
omniverous reader, especially of science
fiction.
His parents, the two doctors reported,
were good people who tried to do the
best they could for their only child But
they didn't know how to get along with
him. They never showed him the love
he craved.
He had created this omnipotent, ter
rible old man in the stars out of part
of himself as an agent of revenge against
a world of childhood which seemed to
thwart all his natural impulses.
At first they designated the case as
childhood schizophrenia. It didn't
sound quite right. He was too young.
Probably all children, after all. have
phantasieS Of omnipotence and revenge.
1t was recognized early that the old
man, the space ships. the great battles
and so forth had little significance. The
thing that worried them was the demen-
tia praecox symptom-"internal dis
tance." From then on, DR.. Eckstein said,
the problem was to reduce this distance.
Finally the old man disappeared. The
child created another second self with
whom he became entirely identifled--a
great scientist with terrible secrets who
was working on a new kind of atomic
bomb to blow up the world He was in
the Arizona desert.
Child Continues PhantaSy.
Still there was no concern about the
phantasy, other than the distance. It
was. however big gain to reduce light
years to thousand miles and get the
boy back on earth again. Finally they
overcame the Arizona desert idea. The
child wasn't through. Then he insisted
that he had no human parents-that he
came out of an egg laid by dinosaur
100 million years ago. The psychiatrists
saw that he was substituting distance
in time for distance in space.
Topeka was about to be blown up by
an atomic bomb, the child said. 1t
didn't worry him because he was going
to retire to his dinosaur farm up in the
mountains. There he had herd of
few thousand dinosaurs to care for.
BY some sort of treatment the psy-
chiatrists managed to rid the child Of
this idea. At last they got him back to
here and now. They wished, at first.
they hadn't. They thought an atomic
bomb had really hit the place. DR.. Eek
stein said.
The two parts Of the little boy had
been brought together at last-the ex-
tremely timid personality and the de-
structive elements of himself he had pro-
jected into far times and great spaces.
But when little boy is back where he
can be reached there are ways of deal
ing with him. Psychonalysits. Of
course, don't approve of the methods
that Immediately occur to most parents
and which have worked quite we'll with
the majority of kids for the past mil
lion years. At any rate. they reported,
they have been quite successful after q
period when he was the most destructive,
malevolent imp any Of them ever had
imagined.
Now, DR.. Eckstein said, he has quieted
down. They no longer describe him in
terms peculiar to psychiatry. He IL
turning out bright, normal child but,
they admit, they still have a long way
to 60.