April IS-I’m reading a lot these days and almost everything is staying in my mind. Besides history and geography and arithmetic, Miss Kinnian says I should start learning foreign languages. Prof. Nemur gave me some more tapes to play while I sleep. I still don’t know how the conscious and unconscious mind works, but Dr. Strauss says not to worry yet. He made me promise that when I start learning college subjects in a couple of weeks I won’t read any books on psychology-that is, until he gives me permission. He says it will confuse me and make me think about psychological theories instead of about my own ideas and feelings. But it’s okay to read novels. This week I read The Great Gatsby, An American Tragedy, and Look Homeward, Angel. I never knew about men and women doing things like that.
April 16-I feel a lot better today, but rm still angry that all the time people were laughing and making fun of me. When I become intelligent the way Prof. Nemur says, 34 i I I with much more than twice my I. Q. of 70, then maybe people will like me and be my friends.
I’m not sure what I. Q. is anyway. Prof. Nemur said it was something that measured how intelligent you were-like a scale in the drugstore weighs pounds. But ii Dr. Strauss had a big argument with him and said an I. Q. didn’t weigh intelligence at all. He said an I. Q. showed how much intelligence you could get, like the numbers on the outside of a measuring cup. You still had to fill the cup up with stuff.
When I asked Burt Seldon, who gives me my intelligence tests and works with Algernon, he said that some people would say both of them were wrong and according to the things he’s been reading up on, the I. Q. measures a lot of different things including some of the things you learned already and it really isn’t a good measure of intelligence at all. So I still don’t know what I. Q. is, and everybody says it’s something different. Mine is about a hundred now, and it’s going to be over a hundred and fifty soon, but they’ll still have to fill me up with the stuff. I didn’t want to say anything, but I don’t see how if they don’t know what it is, or where it is — how they know how much of it you’ve got. Prof Nemur says I have to take a Rorschach Test the day after tomorrow. I wonder what that is.
April 17-I had a nightmare last night, and this morning, after I woke up, I free-associated the way Dr. Strauss told me to do when I remember my dreams. Think about the dream and just let my mind wander until other thoughts come up in my mind. I keep on doing that until my mind goes blank. Dr. Strauss says that it means I’ve reached a point where my subconscious is trying to block my conscious from remembering. It’s a wall between the present and the past. Sometimes the wall stays up and sometimes it breaks down and I can remember what’s behind it. Like this morning.
The dream was about Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports. In the dream I sit down to write but I can’t write or read any more. It’s all gone. I get frightened so I ask Gimpy at the bakery to write for me. But when No 35 Kinnian reads the report she gets angry and tears the pages up because they’ve got dirty words in them.
When I get home Prof. Nemur and Dr. Strauss are waiting for me and they give me a beating for writing dirty things in the progress report. When they leave me I pick up the torn pages but they turn into lace valentines with blood all over them.
It was a horrible dream but I got out of bed and wrote it all down and then I started to free associate.
Bakery… baking… the urn… someone kicking me… fall down… bloody all over… writing… big pencil on a red valentine… a little gold heart… a locket… a chain… all covered with blood… and he’s laughing at me…
The chain is from a locket… spinning around.. flashing the sunlight into my eyes. And I like to watch it spin… watch the chain… all bunched up and twisting and spinning… and a little girl is watching me. Her name is Miss Kin-I mean Harriet. “Harriet… Harriet… we all love Harriet.” And then there’s nothing. It’s blank again. Miss Kinnian reading my progress reports over my shoulder. Then we’re at the Adult Center for the Retarded, and she’s reading over my shoulder as I write my osishuns compositions.
School changes into P. S .13 and I’m eleven years old and Miss Kinnian is eleven years old too, but now she’s not Miss Kinnian. She’s a little girl with dimples and long curls and her name is Harriet. We all love Harriet. It’s Valentines Day. I remember…
