The Deep Range

CONFIDENTIAL — To Be Kept in Sealed Envelope

Attached is the medical report on Walter Franklin, who has now successfully completed his training and has qualified as third warden with the highest rating ever recorded. In view of certain complaints from senior members of Establishment and Personnel Branch that earlier reports were too technical for comprehension, I am giving this summary in language understandable even to administrative officers.

Despite a number of personality defects, W.F.”s capability rating places him in that small group from which future heads of technical departments must be drawn — a group so desperately small that, as I have frequently pointed out, the very existence of the state is threatened unless we can enlarge it. The accident which eliminated W.F. from the Space Service, in which he would have undoubtedly had a distinguished career, left him in full possession of all his talents and presented us with an opportunity which it would have been criminal to waste. Not only did it give us a chance of studying what has since become the classic textbook case of astrophobia, but it offered us a striking challenge in rehabilitation. The analogies between sea and space have often been pointed out, and a man used to one can readily adapt to the other. In this case, however, the differences between the two media were equally important; at the simplest level, the fact that the sea is a continuous and sustaining fluid, in which vision is always limited to no more than a few yards, gave W.F. the sense of security he had lost in space.

The fact that, toward the end of his training, he attempted suicide may at first appear to argue against the correctness of our treatment. This is not the case; the attempt was due to a combination of quite unforeseeable factors (Paragraphs 57–86 of attached report), and its outcome, as often happens, was an improvement in the stability of the subject. The method chosen for the attempt is also highly significant in itself and proves that we had made a correct choice of W.F.”s new vocation. The seriousness of the attempt may also be questioned; had W.F. been really determined to kill himself, he would have chosen a simpler and less fallible method of doing so.

Now that the subject has reestablished — apparently successfully — his emotional life and has shown only trivial symptoms of disturbance, I am confident that we need expect no more trouble. Above all, it is important that we interfere with him as little as possible. His independence and originality of mind, though no longer as exaggerated as they were, are a fundamental part of his personality and will largely determine his future progress.

Only time will show whether all the skill and effort lavished on this case will be repaid in cents and dollars. Even if it is not, those engaged upon it have already received their reward in the rebuilding of a life, which will certainly be useful and may be invaluable.

IAN K. STEVENS, Director, Division of Applied Psychiatry, World Health Organization