BLUFFER

There was once a patient who swore a crocodile was hiding under his bed. The doctor convinced the patient the crocodile was nothing more than a manufactured fabrication and sent the patient home. But, after going home, the patient never returned to see the doctor. The doctor called the patient’s friend and asked if the patient’s condition had improved. The friend responded, “Oh! You mean the guy who was eaten by a crocodile under the bed? That friend?” This is Jacques Lacan’s famous tale of the crocodile.

There is a similar tale contained in the French short story “Bella B.’s Fantasy.”

There once was a woman named Bella B who believed a spider was living inside her ear. A doctor and a professor told her that sexual repression and neurosis had caused her to develop arachnophobia. They also told her not to worry, as arachnophobia was a common phobia. At the advice of the professor, the woman went to a salon to have her hair cut. The doctor was hoping a change in physical appearance might be a nice distraction for the woman. However, while cutting Bella B’s hair, the hairstylist accidently cut her ear with a razor blade. And from the cut crawled hundreds of baby spiders.

So I want you to ask yourself this. Did the patient really see a crocodile? Did spiders really come out of the girl’s ear? Obviously, people will laugh at you if you answer yes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” they’ll say. “It’s just a made-up story.” And yet there are twenty thousand people around the world who claim to have a crocodile hiding under their bed or in their closet, and forty people die every year from krokodeilophobia. Sometimes they even have bite marks and wounds on them that resemble those from a crocodile attack. Crocodiles have a bite force of nearly a ton, and tear at their food; there’s no way another human could produce a wound like that. And there’s also no way someone could commit suicide and make it look like that. Now, ask yourself again: Was the crocodile hiding under their bed really fake?

Doctors Canes and Musta, experts in reptiles and psychiatry, respectively, work together researching krokodeilophobia at Cambridge University.

“We still don’t know why this phenomenon occurs, but stories about people seeing crocodiles under their bed are common and should not be a surprise. These stories are not unlike those about monsters in wells and bathrooms. Obviously, there is no way a swamp crocodile could end up in a person’s apartment. Most doctors send their patients home after convincing them that there is no crocodile under their bed and that the crocodile will disappear if only they believe it is not real. It’s common practice. But every once in a while, something dreadful happens. One patient I went to see was lucky just to keep his leg. The police and firemen searched every inch of a 10-kilometer radius, but there was not a crocodile or snake to be found. Mind you, it was Moscow in December.”

Angela, a woman from Venezuela who has extreme acrophobia, always walks by shuffling her shoes so that she won’t fall through the ground. If even one foot leaves the safety of the ground, she becomes paralyzed by fear. She can’t even be ten centimeters off the ground. Obviously, riding an elevator up a skyscraper is out of the question; she can’t even live in an apartment or two-story house because she’s afraid of the stairs. She can live in a single-story house, but that’s only after all the tall shelves and ledges have been removed or emptied.

“I was once invited to my friend’s place for a birthday party. I didn’t want to go, but I had no other choice; I had known her since elementary school and she had always been good to me. I had to drag my feet all thirty kilometers to her house. But when I arrived there and was about to step onto her lawn, I discovered a fifteen-centimeter ledge. I’d never been able to scale such a tall ledge before. I yelled out toward my friend’s house, but everyone was inside, chatting noisily. Not being able to lift even one foot from the ground, I felt so pathetic and began to cry. I cried for an hour, then went back home. All the while, dragging my feet on the ground.”

The first therapist Angela visited was inexperienced. That therapist told Angela that her phobia was just a figment of her imagination; that phobias could be overcome with a wave of the hand; that they were going to cure her of her phobia in no time. And such nonsense was probably written in the textbook the therapist had studied, too. In an attempt to convince Angela that stairs were completely safe, the therapist took her out to a sandpit with some play stairs for preschoolers and lifted Angela onto the stairs, against her protests.

“See, Angela. Even three-year-olds can play on stairs without any accidents. Stairs are completely safe. Can you imagine a world without stairs? That would be a dreadful place to live. Stairs are one of the safest things there are. Try stepping down; I’ll hold your hand.”

Stricken with fear, Angela yelled in further protest. And yet the therapist stubbornly continued his treatment. The therapist thought that Angela would be cured of her phobia if only she made up her mind to jump down from the step.

“Don’t worry, Angela. Nothing bad will happen.”

Then the therapist gave Angela a slight push from behind. Angela fell from the plastic steps onto the sand below.

When Angela landed, she ruptured her spleen, broke six ribs, and fractured her hip and spine. The ambulance came and took Angela to the emergency room. Her doctors said her injuries looked as though she had been struck by a car going at forty miles per hour. But the step she had jumped from was only a playground toy, no taller than thirty centimeters.

There are some people for whom the border between reality and fiction has dissolved. These people meet their fears, or perhaps the illusion of their fears, in the physical world. These people are killed by illusory crocodiles, break bones in falls from thirty-centimeter-high steps. These people shouldn’t imagine crocodiles. Because when they do, the imaginary crocodile will turn into a real crocodile and attack them. And once this happens, these people become locked in a vicious feedback loop. Having finally met the crocodile from their hallucinations, these patients begin to imagine even scarier crocodiles. When this happens, their next attacker is an even larger crocodile with sharper teeth. The first crocodile laps at the patient’s flesh; the second gnaws at the feet; the third takes the entire foot; and finally, the crocodile becomes so large, it swallows the person whole.

Now, let me ask you the same question again. Do you still think the crocodile hiding under their bed was fake?

“Of course it’s there. It’s a crocodile. The thing under my bed is most certainly a crocodile. I have to be careful of crocodiles. Of course I have to be careful. Each night as I wait to fall asleep, I see a crocodile that has slowly ballooned into a giant monster, crawling up my bed toward me. It has taken its time maturing, feeding on the prey in my imagination. With sharp teeth and thick leather armor, it slowly crawls toward me, swaying its gigantic tail back and forth with immense power. He’s there, all right. I see the bastard every night.”