Father O’Malley came home to the rectory after his weekly hospital visit, as usual, drained of energy. Adopting his regular antidote, he sat in his library, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts returned to Noam Lewin, the hermit in the woods. He wondered how he was getting on and, not for the first time, asked himself whether the man had a mental disorder. The priest consulted a volume from his shelves, this time, RD Laing, an expert on psychosis.
The more the priest read, the more worried he became. It is not always wise to adopt medical diagnoses for a specific case. The danger of convincing oneself that a theory fits an individual is very real. Aware of this, Father O’Malley sighed heavily and decided to revisit Noam to see whether the hermit’s sanity had been compromised by his traged
