"So why would we only have noticed it since-'

"Please," said Dr. Weeks. "An open mind. The stress of the move changed his pattern, you see, and it was the change you noticed, not the actual onset of his condition."

"And the condition would be..."

"Atypical dissociative disorder," she said. "This has been primarily documented in people who have undergone int ense brainwashing experiences, but it is my belief that it shows up far more commonly and merely remains undiagnosed."

Step was baffled. What experience could Stevie have undergone that would produce the same effects as brainwashing?

"Actually, most children in America are subjected to a particular form of indoctrination from their earliest years, in which they are repeatedly reinforced in their belief in a powerful figure who does not actually exist.

However, evidence is given to them to sup port that belief, accompanied by stories to make the child believe that the whole world believes in this particular mythic figure."

"You're saying Stevie's problems are because we taught him to believe in Santa Claus?" asked Step, incredulous.

"On the contrary. I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed-or forced-to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time."

"So Santa Claus is good," said Step.

"Santa Claus is usually not maladaptive," said Dr. Weeks, "and can be turned to a good end. I doubt many parents actually have that outcome in mind when they tell their children the ludicrous chimney story."

"No, I imagine not," said Step.

"Santa Claus is certainly not at the root of Stevie's problem. He has a healthy skepticism toward that story already."

We paid you ninety bucks an hour to find out whether Stevie believed in Santa Claus?

"Stevie has been subjected to another nonconsonant belief system whose implications are far more all-pervasive in his interpretation of events in his life. He feels an enormous weight of pressure to demonstrate his loyalty to this belief system, and therefore has for a long time been forced to come up with sup porting personal experiences to tell you and your wife about. However, Stevie also has been taught to have an absolute commitment to truth, and cannot do as many children do and simply lie, claiming to have experiences that they do not have. Nor, being a child of a rather placid temperament, has he been able to work himself up to a level of emotion in which hysterical phenomena appear, which is the most common means of satisfying these expectations."

"You're talking about religion, aren't you?" asked Step.

"And the Mormon religion in particular, since yours is, as I understand, a somewhat, though not extremely, charismatic sect. As I have learned from Lee, there is considerable emotional dis play at your testimony meetings once each month, at which many people stand up and weep while they speak. This is clearly a hysterical phenomenon, and is not unhealthy- many churches throughout the South have long had a similar tradition and it has served them well as an emotional release. However, Stevie is one of those unfortunate enough not to be able to produce the appropriate hysteria, and he is also unwilling or unable to lie or pretend. Therefore, he produces hallucinations."

"Dr. Weeks, the only hallucinations Stevie has had are his imaginary friends, dating from our arrival in Steuben."

"On the contrary," said Dr. Weeks. "Stevie has told me that he had several experiences in early childhood in which he sensed a very evil presence, threatening to destroy him. I immediately recognized this as the father- fear that is not unusual in boys of that age and which they usually outgrow. However, he says that he told you and your wife about these 'frightenings' and 'bad feelings,' as he called them, and you both informed him that these feelings were from the devil."

"We said they might be," said Step. He was trying to stay calm, but it made him feel invaded, to have her skeptical eye turned on those tender moments from Stevie's childhood, when he and DeAnne had tried so carefully not to impose their own interpretation on Stevie's dreams.

"To a child of his age at the time, of course, there was no meaningful distinction between 'might be' and 'is.'

But I would not have expected you to know that, since you are also caught up in the same belief system. In any event, Stevie began to associate all spiritual phenomena, about which he heard much but of which he experienced nothing, with this oedipal anxiety from his earlier childhood-"

"When he felt afraid at night," said Step, "I would lie by his bed for an hour or two hours, until he fell asleep, singing or humming to him. It wasn't me he was afraid of."

"Of course he did not know it was you he was afraid of. He had displaced the fear and shifted it to a nameless imaginary entity which you conveniently named for him. From that point forward, then, his response to the pressures of your culture was to hallucinate, and in every case you labeled these hallucinations as spiritual experiences. Thus he was able to be part of the culture. He was brainwashed."

"I'm surprised that you allowed Lee to join our church if that's what you think we're about," said Step.

"I'm a scientist, Mr. Fletcher, " she said. "I mean no offense by this. I simply feel that we would be doing Stevie a disservice if we did not recognize that he has long had hallucinations unconnected with the move to North Carolina, and therefore treating only the symptoms that arose since your move here would leave his basic underlying condition unresolved."

"1 f it turns out that this is the correct diagnosis," said Step.

"As I said, I only lean toward this interpretation. But you must understand that when he told me about his baptism, and how during that experience he saw a bright light in the water, which entered him and drove all the darkness out of his body, well, that shows me that he is hallucinating more than just imaginary friends."

Stevie had told no one about this experience, no one but Dr. Weeks, who thought of it as madness. "Do you know that it was a hallucination?" asked Step.

"You were there, Mr. Fletcher," said Dr. Weeks. "Did you see that light?"

"No," said Step.

"When one person in the midst of witnesses sees something that no one else sees, we are generally safe in identifying these experiences as hallucinations."

"Or maybe he has clearer sight than the others," said Step.

"Oh? You think there really was some underwater light source that no one else was able to see?"

"I think," said Step, "that it's possible for something to be both subjective and real at the same time. Just because only one person sees something doesn't necessarily mean that what he sees isn't there."

"But by that standard, Mr. Fletcher, I fail to understand why you have even brought Stevie to me. After all, what worried you and Mrs. Fle tcher was the fact that Stevie was seeing imaginary friends that no one else could see."

Step had never thought of the imaginary friends this way. It made him angry, her linking spiritual experiences with Stevie's delusions. But she had linked them, and if she was right, if they really were alike, then all of Stevie's extraordinary sensitivity to other people, his ability to perceive good and evil, his aliveness to the spiritual side of life-all of that was also imaginary, hallucinatory.

On the other hand, it might also mean the opposite. That just as Stevie's sensitivity to spiritual things was real, so also his ability to see imaginary friends was real. In which case Dr. Weeks was right, and they had made a colossal mistake bringing him to her. Just as he had been telling them the truth with his absurd-seeming story about Mrs. Jones's mistreatment of him, so also he was telling them the truth about these imaginary friends.