Other Worlds by KATHY

upheaval. The onset of puberty in the female is marked by a dramatic physical change, with terrifying psychological implications. In earlier times the cultural-societal implications were equally traumatic. From the strictures of St. Paul to the medical opinions of nineteenth-century physicians, women were taught that they were vessels of iniquity; that no pure woman desired or enjoyed sexual intercourse; that their natural feelings and needs were sinful. It is a wonder, my friends, that any woman ever made a reasonable adjustment to this preposterous concept. It is no wonder that some of them found the adjustment impossible. Podmore's investigations indicated, correctly, that in the past the majority of poltergeist frauds were naughty little girls. The picture has changed in recent years, as outmoded sexual conventions have given way to a healthier attitude. We now find as many, or more, naughty little boys!
    In Betsy Bell's case, however, some more intense trauma must have caused the intense hatred of her father and the resulting dissociation. My suggestion is purely speculative. It will shock and appall some of you. But it is based on years of clinical experience in psychology.
    John Bell took sexual liberties with his daughter. This is the worst traumatic foundation for the development of later psychosis or neurosis.
    John Bell's physical symptoms were self-induced, by shame and guilt. They are classic examples of psychosomatic disorders. The swelling of his tongue and the pain in his jaws, which prevented him from speaking—from confessing his sin; the nervous tics and convulsions, signs of irrepressible conflict and self-punishment. Child molestation, gentlemen, is not confined to brutish, uneducated men. It has occurred in the best families and in men of outwardly puritanical habits. Betsy, too young to fully comprehend what had been done to her, repressed her horror until the shock of puberty produced a regressive earthquake. If a fragment of her personality had not split off under the unbearable strain, she would probably have ended up in a hospital for the insane. Therapeutically the "witch" saved her reason. By revenging herself on her father, and punishing herself by self-mutilation and the loss of her lover, she attained sanity and lived, as we have seen, to a ripe and healthy old age.
    But I see Sir Arthur is about to burst with indignation. Speak, my friend. I am ready for your criticism and your reproaches.

SEVENTEEN
    Doyle:
    A Voice from Beyond
     
    I don't know which appalls me more, Fodor—your dreadful suggestion, or the mind that could conceive such a thing. But I suppose you can't help it; you fellows who spend your lives prying into peoples innermost thoughts are bound to have a distorted view of the world. I know you mean well, and I don't condemn you.
    But I do reproach you—all of you—for the cavalier manner in which you blandly throw out any evidence that does not agree with your prejudices. "Discard this, ignore that, we need not take such tales seriously ..." If you can't fit a document into a pigeonhole, you throw it into a wastebasket.
    Your bundle of projected repressions, my learned friend, is a bundle of nonsense. Why, if everyone who suffered from suppressed emotions projected them in such a form, half the houses in the country would be afflicted with poltergeists. Your schizophrenia doesn't fit, either. You yourself said that the original personality is usually shy and puritanical. Betsy was cheerful, healthy, outgoing—the exact opposite of Miss Beauchamp, and "Eve" and the other cases we've read about.
    As for the suggestion of conscious fraud made by Houdini and Podmore—yes, many mediums and child poltergeists have been caught playing tricks. I admit that, but I believe they only resort to fraud when their spiritual powers fail for one reason or another. You investigators observe a youngster playing a trick and then conclude that all the phenomena, even the ones you didn't see,