RICHARD FEYNMAN FAILED THE PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION FOR THE MILITARY DRAFT

Mentally Unfit and Unstable Means - Uncle Sam Doesnt Need You!

The Psychiatrist says, "Do you ever hear voices in your head?" "Very rarely," and I'm about to describe the two occasions on which it happened when he says, "Yeah, sometimes when I'm shaving, or thinking; once in a while."He's writing down more stuff. "I see you have a deceased wife - do you talk to her?" This question really annoyed me, but I contained myself and said, Sometimes, when I go up on a mountain and I'm thinking about her." More writing. Then he asks, "Is anyone in your family in a mental institution?" "Yeah, I have an aunt in an insane asylum." "Why do you call it an insane asylum?" he says, resentfully. "Why don't you call it a mental institution?" "I thought it was the same thing." "Just what do you think insanity is?" he says, angrily. "It's a strange and peculiar disease in human beings," I say honestly. "There's nothing any more strange or peculiar about it than appendicitis!" he retorts. "I don't think so. In appendicitis we understand the causes better, and something about the mechanism of it, whereas with insanity it's much more complicated and mysterious." I won't go through the whole debate; the point is that I meant insanity is physiologically peculiar, and he thought I meant it was socially peculiar. Up until this time, although I had been unfriendly to the psychiatrist, I had nevertheless been honest in everything I said. But when he asked me to put out my hands, I couldn't resist pulling 1

a trick a guy in the "bloodsucking line" had told me about. I figured nobody was ever going to get a chance to do this, and as long as I was halfway under water, I would do it. So I put out my hands with one palm up and the other one down. The psychiatrist doesn't notice. He says, "Turn them over." I turn them over. The one that was up goes down, and the one that was down goes up, and he still doesn't notice, because he's always looking So the trick had no effect. Finally, at the end of all these questions, he becomes friendly again. He lights up and says, "I see you have a Ph.D., Where did you study?" And where did you study!" "Yale and London. And what did you study, Dick?" "Physics. "Medicine." "And this is medicine?" "Well, yes. What do you think it is? You go and sit down over there and wait a few minutes!" So I sit on the bench again, and one of the other guys waiting sidles up to me and says, You were in there twenty-five minutes! The other guys were in there only five minutes!" "Yeah." "You wanna know how to fool the psychiatrist? All you have to do is pick your nails, like this." "Oh," he says, "I wanna get in the army!" "You wanna fool the psychiatrist?" I say. "You just tell him that!" After a while I was called over to a different desk to see another psychiatrist. looking, this one was gray-haired and distinguished-looking - obviously the superior psychiatrist. I figure all of this is now going to get straightened out, but no matter what happens, I'm not going to become friendly. The new psychiatrist looks at my papers, puts a big smile on his face, and says, "Hello, Dick. I see you worked at Los Alamos during the war." "Yeah." "There used to be a boys' school there, didn't there?" "That's right." "Were there a lot of buildings in the school?" "Only a few." Three questions - same technique-and the next question is completely different. "You said you hear voices in your head. Describe that, please." "It happens very rarely, when I've been paying attention to a person with a foreign accent. As I'm falling asleep I can hear his voice very clearly. The first time it happened was while I was a student at MIT. I could hear old Professor Vallarta say, 'Dee-a dee-a electric field-a.' And the 2

other time was in Chicago during the war, when Professor Teller was explaining to me how the bomb worked. Since I'm interested in all kinds of phenomena, I wondered how I could hear these voices with accents so precisely, when I couldn't imitate them that well . . . Doesn't everybody have something like that happen once in a while?" The psychiatrist put his hand over his face, and I could see through his fingers a little smile (he wouldn't answer the question). Then the psychiatrist checked into something else. "You said that you talk to your deceased wife. I got angry. I figure it's none of his damn business, and I say, "I tell her I love her, if it's all right with you!" After some more bitter exchanges he says, "Do you believe in the supernormal?" I say, "I don't know what the 'supernormal' is." "What? You, a Ph.D. in physics, don't know what the supernormal is?" "That's right." "It's what Sir Oliver Lodge and his school believe in." That's not much of a clue, but I knew it. "You mean the supernatural." "You can call it that if you want." "All right, I will." "Do you believe in mental telepathy?" "No. Do you?" "Well, I'm keeping an open mind." "What? You, a psychiatrist, keeping an open mind? Ha!" It went on like this for quite a while. Then at some point near the end he says, "Sixty-four." "Why did you say 'sixty-four'?" "How are you supposed to measure the value of life?" "No! I mean, why did you say 'sixty-four,' and not 'seventy-three,' for instance?" "If I had said 'seventy-three,' you would have asked me the same question!" The psychiatrist finished with three friendly questions, just as the other psychiatrist had done, handed me my papers, and I went off to the next booth. While I'm waiting in the line, I look at the paper which has the summary of all the tests I've taken so far. And just for the hell of it I show my paper to the guy next to me, and I ask him in a rather stupid-sounding voice, "Hey! What did you get in 'Psychiatric'? Oh! You got an 'N.' I got

an 'N' in everything else, but I got a 'D' in 'Psychiatric.' What does that mean?" I knew what it meant: "N" is normal, "D" is deficient. The guy pats me on the shoulder and says, "Buddy, it's perfectly all right. It doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it!" Then he walks way over to the other corner of the room, frightened: It's a lunatic ! I started looking at the papers the psychiatrists had written, and it looked pretty serious! The first guy wrote: Thinks people talk about him. Thinks people stare at him. Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations. Talks to self. Talks to deceased wife. Maternal aunt in mental institution. Very peculiar stare. (I knew what that was - that was when I said,"And this is medicine?") The second psychiatrist was obviously more important, because his scribble was harder to read. His notes said things like "auditory hypnogogic hallucinations confirmed." ("Hypnogogic" means you get them while you're falling asleep.) He wrote a lot of other technical-sounding notes, and I looked them over, and they looked pretty bad. I figured I'd have to get all of this straightened out with the army somehow. At the end of the whole physical examination there's an army officer who decides whether you're in or you're out. For instance, if there's something the matter with your hearing, he has to decide if it's serious enough to keep you out of the army. And because the army was scraping the bottom of the barrel for new recruits, this officer wasn't going to take anything from anybody. He was tough as nails. For instance, the fellow ahead of me had two bones sticking out from the back of his neck - some kind of displaced vertebra, or something - and this army officer had to get up from his desk and feel them - he had to make sure they were real! I figure this is the place I'll get this whole misunderstanding straightened out. When it's my turn, I hand my papers to the officer, and I'm ready to explain everything, but the officer doesn't look up. He sees the "D" next to "Psychiatric," immediately reaches for the rejection stamp, doesn't ask me any questions, doesn't say anything; he just stamps my papers "REJECTED," and hands me my 4-F paper, still looking at his desk. RICHARD P. FEYNMAN