the three jesus experiment

The True Story Behind The Failed Psychological Experiment Of The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

Dr. milton rokeach forced three men who all believed themselves to be the messiah to live together for two years in an effort to bring them out of their irrationality. but what rokeach learned had little to do with the men themselves..

Wikimedia Commons The three Christs were Schizophrenics Leon, Jospeh, and Clyde.

In 1959 three schizophrenic patients who all identified as Christ were brought together at a psychiatric hospital in Ypsilanti, Mich. The three Christs were engineered to live together for two years by Psychologist Milton Rokeach in an effort to break their delusions.

Rokeach figured that if he could introduce three men who all shared the same delusion then perhaps they could be reasoned out of their insanity. The experiment was dramatized in the 2017 dark comedy starring Peter Dinklage, Three Christs , but before you check out the film, read up on what happened to the real-life three Christs of Ypsilanti.

The Three Christs Of Ypsilanti Meet

Wikimedia Commons Milton Rokeach, Polish-American social psychologist circa 1970.

Milton Rokeach heard about a random grouping of two women who both believed themselves to be the Virgin Mary at a different psychiatric hospital. One of the Marys realized that if another person claimed to be the only Virgin Mary, then surely she must be mistaken about her own identity. She subsequently snapped out of her delusion.

Rokeach, who was already a respected psychologist when he came across this study, was inspired and thought to try it for himself. His reasoning was based on the simple biblical notion that there is only one Jesus Christ. Perhaps, then, if he deliberately introduced multiple people who all believed themselves to be Jesus Christ, this would challenge their delusions and in turn break through their irrationality — just as the one Mary had.

Wikimedia Commons Inside a mid-century mental hospital, like Ypsilanti.

The three Christs were Joseph Cassel, Clyde Benson, and Leon Gabor . They ranged in age from their late thirties to early seventies, and the severity of their delusions varied as well.

Mild-mannered, 58-year-old Joseph had been institutionalized for two decades. Prior to falling to his delusions, Joseph was a writer and though he had never been to England, claimed to be English and needed to return. 70-year-old Clyde suffered from dementia and often recalled simpler times working on a railroad and fishing. Leon, 38-years-old, was committed as a boy when he commanded his mother to forsake false idols and worship him as Jesus. He was intelligent and coherent but had been raised by an ill woman. He of all the self-proclaimed Messiahs most resembled Jesus.

Rokeach first introduced the men on July 1, 1959. Although they used their given names, each made sure to also reveal himself as Jesus.

“It so happens that my birth certificate says that I am  Dr. Domino Dominorum et Rex Rexarum Simplis Christianus Peuris Mentalis Doktor,” Leon said at this introduction. This meant “Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, Simple Christian Boy Psychiatrist.” He then said that his birth certificate also declared him Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Joseph protested this and Clyde joined in resulting in a chaotic first meeting. Clyde and Joseph screamed at each other: “Don’t try to pull that on me because I will prove it to you… I’m telling you I’m God!”

“You’re not!”

“I’m God, Jesus Christ, and The Holy Ghost!”

Leon would describe the session as mental torture. He claimed that Rokeach was trying to brainwash them.

The “Study”

Jillian Baughman and Jeffrey Stroup at Great Lakes Urban Exploration Ypsilanti state hospital in Michigan.

Rokeach assigned the men rooms next to one another and seats in the cafeteria together as well as jobs in the laundry at the same time. He made sure that the three Christs couldn’t get clear of each other and consequently were constantly forced to confront the core belief of their identity.

Weeks went by and they argued continuously. None of the men gained any ground with each other but instead, each became more and more frustrated and frazzled. So Rokeach decided to mess with them.

Rokeach sent the three Christs letters. Leon’s were from his newly invented wife “Madame Yeti Woman.” Joseph’s were from the head of the hospital.

The letters started as an innocuous conversation and included such mundane things as tips to better improve their care. But when Rokeach began to question the three Christ’s identity’s in the letters, the patients broke off contact.

The three Christs of Ypsilanti remained exactly that, three Christs. They argued every day and sometimes came to blows. When cornered, they blamed the others are crazy, or controlled by machines.

Rokeach then printed a fake article about himself in which he gave a lecture concerning his study of the three men in Ypsilanti Hospital, all believing themselves to be Jesus. Then Rokeach read the letter to them.

The three Christs broke down momentarily but regained their delusions.

Rokeach was reported by his students involved in the study as being not only absent but also relatively cruel. His students often came to question their own sanity when spending so much time amongst patients. Rokeach also questioned his three patients severely and was hailed as “confrontational” by his students.

He had at one point hired a beautiful research assistant to flirt with Leon in an effort to use desire as a means of pulling him out of his delusion. Leon did, of course, fall in love with the assistant. But he did not give up his delusion and became all the more confused because it was just a tease. Leon figured this out and withdrew into himself.

“Truth is my friend, I have no other friends,” Leon said.

Rokeach’s use of manipulation and illusion against the patient’s delusions proved only more detrimental.

The Conclusion

As time went on the men started to humor one another’s delusions. They even became friends, defending each other against other patients. They stopped arguing and talked about mundane things and avoided the subject of Jesus entirely.

With nothing much doing, Rokeach prepared to end the study. Even after two years, he had accomplished next to nothing. The only difference was that Leon had changed his name to Dr. Righteous Idealized Dung.

The 2017 film is based on Rokeach’s experiment, with the doctor played by Richard Gere (of a different name, Dr. Alan Stone) and one of the three Christ’s — Joseph — by Peter Dinklage. Clyde is played by Bradley Whitford and Leon by a Walton Goggins. The assistant Rokeach had Joseph fall in love with was also featured in the movie, albeit with some dramatization.

But from what we’ve read, the true story and the memoir that followed may prove better entertainment than the screen version.

Rokeach wrote a book, aptly titled  The Three Christs Of Ypsilanti in which he claimed to have helped the three Christ’s and made substantial discoveries. He hadn’t, of course, and many years later, in 1984, he wrote a personal expose in which he admitted :

“…while I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing mine-of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives within the framework of a ‘total institution’.”

What Rokeach failed to accomplish within his patients — overcoming their delusion — he was able to realize was a condition he suffered from himself, as he himself had been under the false belief of omnipotence while at Ypsilanti. He explained that in the intervening years he had grown “uncomfortable about the ethics” of his experiment, and admitted that he “really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere round the clock with their daily lives.”

Now that you’ve learned about the Three Christs of Ypsilanti, check out what was wrong about Sigmund Freud’s psychology . Then, learn how the Milgram Experiment proved that anybody could become a monster. Finally, read up on Yeshua, the true name of Jesus Christ .

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The True Story Behind The Experiment Of Three Christs Of Ypsilanti

So imagine you're a doctor — a psychologist, in fact. One of your patients comes up to you one day and says, "Hey doc, guess what? I'm Jesus Christ ." Sometime later, another patient comes up to you and makes the exact same claim, and after that, a third. None of the patients have ever met. Do you just roll with it and ask some questions? Get some therapeutic practice with one and move on to the next? Or, do you try to break their delusions?

Far from being a mere thought experiment or an extra credit question on a sophomore psych student's mid-term exam, this actually happened. As The New York Times  recounts in an original 1964 story, Dr. Milton Rokeach treated three patients in the late 1950s, each of whom claimed to be Jesus. Rokeach, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University, wrote about his experiences in his book,  "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti."  Each patient had schizophrenia, one of the most severe psychotic disorders that, at worst, causes a complete dissociation from reality, as the National Institute of Mental Health describes. 

Rokeach, in an era of widespread electroshock therapy (via Scientific American ), decided on a rather unorthodox treatment. He decided to do what some, in hindsight, have criticized as cruel and unethical: He put his three Christs together in one room and made them talk to each other. His hope was that, when confronted with the illogic of multiple Jesuses, the men's delusions would fracture.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website .

Multiple Jesuses, multiple Marys

By the time Milton Rokeach came across his three Christs in the late 1950s, he was already a respected psychologist. He'd emigrated from Hrubieszów, Poland to the U.S. with his family at the age of 7, as New York Review Books says. He'd gotten his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1941 and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Berkeley, California in 1947. From there, he went on to teach at Michigan State University, the University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the University of Southern California. In other words, Koreach had the clout necessary to make an unorthodox study like the Three Christs of Ypsilanti happen.

Koreach didn't come to his "put all the Jesuses together" idea by himself, however. As All That's Interesting explains, and as unlikely as it sounds, he learned about a different treatment of two women believing themselves to be Mary, the mother of Jesus. That study decided to tackle the women's delusions by posing a rational question that also, in the posing, seemed to temporarily buy into their claims: Only one of them could be the real Mary, right? Normally, this isn't how psychopathology and disorders like schizophrenia work; delusions persist despite evidence to the contrary, as the World Health Organization says. And yet, the strategy seemingly broke one woman's delusions. This was enough for Koreach to figure he could apply the same method to his own patients, who were fixated on self-identifying with another Biblical figure.

A shared delusion

Just in case you think someone claiming to be Jesus is a rare event, Milton Koreach also had historical precedent to back up his strategy. As Slate recounts, 18th-century French writer and philosopher Voltaire once wrote about an "unfortunate madman" named Simon Morin who was burned at the stake in 1663 because he said he was Jesus. Morin had even come across another patient claiming to be God the Father, rather than God the Son, when committed to a "madhouse." At the time, Morin "was so struck with the folly of his companion that he acknowledged his own, and appeared, for a time, to have recovered his senses," Voltaire wrote in 1767 in "An Essay on Crimes and Punishments."

There are other examples, too. In his 1991 book "My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson," psychiatrist Sydney Rosen described placing two Christ-claiming patients face-to-face. "I'm saying the same things as that crazy fool is saying," one of the patients said (via Slate). "That must mean I'm crazy too." And in the modern day, we've apparently got loads of would-be Jesuses running around outside of therapy.  The Collector cites no less than eight such people, including Vissarion, cult leader and "Jesus of Siberia" who was eventually arrested by Russian authorities in 2010 for abuse of his followers, per  CBS News . With so many people experiencing mental illness and/or charlatans claiming to be Christ, we've got to ask, "What in God's name is going on?"

Gathering the Christs under one roof

In Milton Koreach's case, he gathered his three Christs together at Ypsilanti State Hospital outside of Saline, Michigan. He arranged to have various live-in assistants work with them around the clock and also devised ways of getting the men to interact with each other. These three men — Joseph Cassel, Clyde Benson, and Leon Gabor — ranged in age from late 30s to 70. Aside from their general, shared delusion about being Jesus, the particulars of their illnesses varied quite a bit, as did their personal histories.

As All That's Interesting says, Leon was the youngest of the three at 38 years old. He'd apparently been committed to institutions from boyhood after telling his mother to "forsake false idols and worship him as Jesus." He introduced himself to Koreach by saying, "It so happens that my birth certificate says that I am Dr. Domino Dominorum et Rex Rexarum Simplis Christianus Peuris Mentalis Doktor," meaning "Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, Simple Christian Boy Psychiatrist." 

Joseph was a 58-year-old former writer who had been institutionalized for 20 years prior to Koreach's treatment. He'd continually claimed to be English even though he'd never been to England. Clyde was the oldest of the three at 70 and experienced dementia. The first time Joseph and Clyde met, they got into a shouting match, with one screaming, "Don't try to pull that on me because I will prove it to you ... I'm telling you I'm God!"

The birth of Dr. Righteous Idealized Dung

Suffice it to say, some interesting stuff went down over the duration of Milton Koreach's study, or as All That's Interesting says, "study." Koreach started with hands-off, orchestrated interactions between the patients via the placement of rooms, daily schedules, etc. When that resulted in little less than ongoing arguments, Koreach took to more extreme methods. 

The patient Leon, for instance, at one point invented an imaginary wife, "Madame Yeti Woman." And so, Koreach started writing letters to Leon from this fictional wife and used the letters to question Leon's identity. Joseph, the middle-aged patient, received fake letters from the head of Ypsilanti State Hospital. When the letters didn't work, Koreach printed a fake article about himself giving a lecture about the three Christs' delusions and read it to the men. It worked momentarily, but no longer. At a later point, Koreach hired a female assistant to flirt with Leon and pull him into the real world, so to speak. It backfired tremendously — Leon actually fell for the girl, and when he realized he'd been set up, retreated even further. In the end, no man was cured, and Leon changed his name to "Dr. Righteous Idealized Dung." That's it.

Of course, any first-year psychology student can point out that Koreach's methods were utterly lacking in statistical validity and reliability, as defined in the journal Evidence-Based Nursing . But in the absence of modern treatment or newer medication, would it have mattered if Koreach had done anything differently?

The fate of Ypsilanti

When Milton Koreach originally published his 1964 book,  "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti,"   The New York Times  glowingly called his treatment method an example of "sympathy and considerable psychological sophistication." The article explored Koreach's work in an oddly abstract way, using overwrought language like, "Why do we misread the metaphors of madness by attributing to them a literalness they do not possess?" Since then, historical retrospectives have come across as a bit more direct and biting, with outlets like IFLScience calling Koreach's work "unethical" and  Slate calling it "manipulative."

In a revised edition of his book, Koreach apologetically wrote (per Slate), "I really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere round the clock with their daily lives," and (via All That's Interesting ), "While I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing mine-of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives within the framework of a 'total institution.'"  

In 2017, Richard Gere and Peter Dinklage starred in a movie adaptation of Koreach's work, "Three Christs." Even only judging by the trailer on IMDb , the film was framed as a dark yet ultimately touching comedy. Ypsilanti State Hospital eventually got its funding cut in 1991 and fell into complete disuse, as the urban exploration site World Abandoned says. The facility became an abandoned and hollowed-out wreck that stood until 2006, when it was finally torn down.  

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Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

In the late 1950s, three men who identified as the son of god were forced to live together in a mental hospital. what happened.

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. “You oughta worship me, I’ll tell you that!” one of the Christs yelled. “I will not worship you! You’re a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!” another snapped back. “No two men are Jesus Christs. … I am the Good Lord!” the third interjected, barely concealing his anger.

Frustrated by psychology’s focus on what he considered to be peripheral beliefs, like political opinions and social attitudes, Rokeach wanted to probe the limits of identity. He had been intrigued by stories of Secret Service agents who felt they had lost contact with their original identities, and wondered if a man’s sense of self might be challenged in a controlled setting. Unusually for a psychologist, he found his answer in the Bible. There is only one Son of God, says the good book, so anyone who believed himself to be Jesus would suffer a psychological affront by the very existence of another like him. This was the revelation that led Rokeach to orchestrate his meeting of the Messiahs and document their encounter in the extraordinary (and out-of-print) book from 1964, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti .

Although by no means common, Christ conventions have an unexpectedly long history. In his commentary to Cesare Beccaria’s essay “Crimes and Punishments,” Voltaire recounted the tale of the “unfortunate madman” Simon Morin who was burnt at the stake in 1663 for claiming to be Jesus. Unfortunate it seems, because Morin was originally committed to a madhouse where he met another who claimed to be God the Father, and “ was so struck with the folly of his companion that he acknowledged his own , and appeared, for a time, to have recovered his senses.” The lucid period did not last, however, and it seems the authorities lost patience with his blasphemy. Another account of a meeting of the Messiahs comes from Sidney Rosen’s book My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson . The renowned psychiatrist apparently set two delusional Christs in his ward arguing only for one to gain insight into his madness, miraculously, after seeing something of himself in his companion. (“ I’m saying the same things as that crazy fool is saying ,” said one of the patients. “That must mean I’m crazy too.”)

These tales are surprising because delusions, in the medical sense, are not simply a case of being mistaken. They are considered to be pathological beliefs, reflecting a warped or broken understanding that is not, by definition, amenable to being reshaped by reality. One of most striking examples is the Cotard delusion , under which a patient believes she is dead; surely there can be no clearer demonstration that simple and constant contradiction offers no lasting remedy. Rokeach, aware of this, did not expect a miraculous cure. Instead, he was drawing a parallel between the baseless nature of delusion and the flimsy foundations we use to construct our own identities. If tomorrow everyone treats me as if I have an electronic device in my head, there are ways and means I could use to demonstrate they are wrong and establish the facts of the matter—a visit to the hospital perhaps. But what if everyone treats me as if my core self were fundamentally different than I believed it to be?  Let’s say they thought I was an undercover agent—what could I show them to prove otherwise? From my perspective, the best evidence is the strength of my conviction. My belief is my identity.

In one sense, Rokeach’s book reflects a remarkably humane approach for its era. We are asked to see ourselves in the psychiatric patients, at a time when such people were regularly locked away and treated as incomprehensible objects of pity rather than individuals worthy of empathy. Rokeach’s constant attempts to explain the delusions as understandable reactions to life events require us to accept that the Christs have not “lost contact” with reality, even if their interpretations are more than a little uncommon.

But the book makes for starkly uncomfortable reading as it recounts how the researchers blithely and unethically manipulated the lives of Leon, Joseph, and Clyde in the service of academic curiosity. In one of the most bizarre sections, the researchers begin colluding with the men’s delusions in a deceptive attempt to change their beliefs from within their own frame of reference. The youngest patient, Leon, starts receiving letters from the character he believes to be his wife, “Madame Yeti Woman,” in which she professes her love and suggests minor changes to his routine. Then Joseph, a French Canadian native, starts receiving faked letters from the hospital boss advising certain changes in routine that might benefit his recovery. Despite an initially engaging correspondence, both the delusional spouse and the illusory boss begin to challenge the Christs’ beliefs more than is comfortable, and contact is quickly broken off.

In fact, very little seems to shift the identities of the self-appointed Messiahs. They debate, argue, at one point come to blows, but show few signs that their beliefs have become any less intense. Only Leon seems to waver, eventually asking to be addressed as “Dr Righteous Idealed Dung” instead of his previous moniker of “Dr Domino dominorum et Rex rexarum, Simplis Christianus Puer Mentalis Doctor, reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” Rokeach interprets this more as an attempt to avoid conflict than a reflection of any genuine identity change. The Christs explain one another’s claims to divinity in predictably idiosyncratic ways: Clyde, an elderly gentleman, declares that his companions are, in fact, dead, and that it is the “machines” inside them that produce their false claims, while the other two explain the contradiction by noting that their companions are “crazy” or “duped” or that they don’t really mean what they say.

In hindsight, the Three Christs study looks less like a promising experiment than the absurd plan of a psychologist who suffered the triumph of passion over good sense. The men’s delusions barely shifted over the two years, and from an academic perspective, Rokeach did not make any grand discoveries concerning the psychology of identity and belief. Instead, his conclusions revolve around the personal lives of three particular (and particularly unfortunate) men. He falls back—rather meekly, perhaps—on the Freudian suggestion that their delusions were sparked by confusion over sexual identity, and attempts to end on a flourish by noting that we all “seek ways to live with one another in peace,” even in the face of the most fundamental disagreements. As for the ethics of the study, Rokeach eventually realized its manipulative nature and apologized in an afterword to the 1984 edition: “I really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere round the clock with their daily lives.”

Although we take little from it scientifically, the book remains a rare and eccentric journey into the madness of not three, but four men in an asylum. It is, in that sense, an unexpected tribute to human folly, and one that works best as a meditation on our own misplaced self-confidence. Whether scientist or psychiatric patient, we assume others are more likely to be biased or misled than we are, and we take for granted that our own beliefs are based on sound reasoning and observation. This may be the nearest we can get to revelation—the understanding that our most cherished beliefs could be wrong.

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Old News, Vintage Photos & Nostalgic Stories

3 men believed they were jesus and were forced to live together – it ended badly.

• Strangeness

What happens when you get three men in the same room who all claim to be the same person? That was the question that psychologist Milton Rokeach had asked himself while preparing for a psychological experiment that would breach the lines of ethics and morality in the pursuit of finding a cure for delusions.

Milton Rokeach had found a magazine article from Harper’s Magazine that spoke about two separate women who were under the belief that they were the Virgin Mary.

When these two women were brought together, the connection between both claims caused one of the women to snap out of her delusion, curing her of her illness.

Milton reasoned that if this worked the one time, perhaps it would work in a formal study. In 1959, he found the subjects of his experiment: three men who all claimed to be Jesus Christ. They were brought to a hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan, to be monitored underneath Milton’s care.

His reasoning was that they would quickly snap out of their delusions once confronted with two other men who both claimed to be the same person.

After all, there was only one Jesus Christ. Yet the three men, Clyde Benson, Joseph Cassel, and Leon Gabor, would not so easily accept reality. Each man, suffering from a paranoid schizophrenic state, refused to let go of their own beliefs, even in the face of others who made the same claims.

Anger was present at the initial meetings between the three men. Since the title of Jesus Christ was exclusive, arguments and fighting broke out amongst them. Each man was hostile to the idea of another man making false claims, but none of them were willing to accept the truth about their own identities.

Milton Rokeach’s work had started out with the simple hopes of seeing that these men would be able to cure one another by their proximity.

When it became apparent that this would not be the case, he began to move into much more unethical territory. His fascination with the notion of identity led him to begin a series of manipulations meant to force change in his patients.

One such manipulation was to begin sending letters to Leon Gabor. One of Leon’s newest delusions had been that he was married to a woman whom he called Madame Yeti Woman.

This woman was no more real than his claim to divinity. Milton penned these letters as if he were Madame Yeti, giving him suggestions to change parts of Leon’s daily routines. He even went as far as to write that Madame Yeti was indeed in love with her husband.

Once Leon began to correspond with the fabrication, Milton continued the charade, using the letters to eventually challenge the idea that Leon was the Son of God. Milton’s reasoning was that perhaps by using one of Leon’s own delusions against another one, he would be able to cure the man. But that was not the case. Leon instead broke off all correspondence, refusing to acknowledge the fictional woman’s claims.

Another attempt to cure Leon involved getting one of the female research assistants to flirt with him. Milton hoped that her flirtations would pull the man out of the delusional state. Leon fell in love with the woman, but of course, she had simply been a part of the experiment and would not reciprocate those feelings. He was unable to break free of his mental struggles and instead held even tighter to his delusions.

Milton sent letters to the other two men and tried to manipulate them as well, but to no avail. They would not budge from their delusions. Their stay at Ypsilanti was unpleasant. With each man being forced to spend time with two other men who upset them and would sometimes even come to physical blows with one another, many believe the patients were not receiving proper treatment. The case can be made that, good intentions aside, they were simply guinea pigs against their will, chosen by a psychologist who used manipulation and falsehood as his methods of finding a cure. However it’s hard to judge in a case such as this.

In the end, Milton Rokeach was unable to find a way to break the delusions of the three men. While they managed to eventually grow used to one another and were able to learn enough to avoid the topic of Christ when talking to each other, they weren’t cured of their conditions by Milton.

A book was published in 1964 by Rokeach, titled The Three Christs of Ypsilanti , sharing the entirety of his research on the subject of curing delusions. The truth was that the two-year experiment was a failure. It had served no purpose than to cause undue grief to men who were already suffering from madness.

Read another story from us: The Theory that Jesus Healed his Followers Using Cannabis Oil

Eventually, Milton would come to the conclusion that the work he had done was unethical and had breached serious boundaries. He issued an apology in the reprint of his book in 1984, stating that “while I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing mine — of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives within the framework of a ‘total institution’.”

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Psychological Study

Milton rokeach.

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

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Late at night. All fifteen patients in the dorm are in their beds, but there is a great deal of restlessness because one of the patients is snoring loudly. Finally one of the patients, exasperated, yells: “Jesus Christ! Quit that snoring.” Whereupon Clyde, rearing up in his bed, replies: “That wasn’t me who was snoring. It was him!”

Leon’s initial response is disbelief. Without divulging the contents of the letter, he tells the aide that although he has never seen his wife’s handwriting he knows that she didn’t write or sign this letter. He says further that he doesn’t like the idea of people imposing on his beliefs and that he is going to look into this. A couple of hours later, during the daily meeting, we notice Leon is extremely depressed and we ask him why. He evasively replies that he is meditating, but he does not mention the letter. This is the first time, as far as we know, that he has ever kept information from us. August 4. This is the day Leon’s wife is supposed to visit him. He goes outdoors shortly before the appointed hour and does not return until it is well past.

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The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

In 1959, psychiatrist Milton Rokeach brought together three schizophrenic men who believed they were Jesus Christ. He hoped to cure their delusions. Overtime, the process became dangerously amoral.

What Happened to Milton Rokeach’s Jesus Experiment?

The Jesus experiment of Rokeach happened in the latter part of the 1950s involving three psychiatric patients who were put to live together and firmly believed they were the Son of God, Jesus Christ. But what happened to this experiment?

Milton Rokeach did not uncover anything grand about the Jesus experiment. He then concluded the experiment to be manipulative in nature. Freudians suggested the delusions of the subjects sparked their sexual identity confusion.

Who was Milton Rokeach?

Dr. Milton Rokeach was a Polish-American born on December 27, 1918, in Hrubieszow, Poland. When he was seven, he moved to Brooklyn, New York with his family.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Brooklyn College in 1941 and achieved his master’s degree in Social Psychology from the University of California in Berkeley in the same year.

His studies were interrupted when he joined the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II and served in its Psychological Testing Unit until the end of the war. Rokeach’s studies continued soon after and got his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1947.

Rokeach moved to East Lansing, Michigan where he started working as a professor.

Rokeach became a professor and taught at several prominent universities, like Michigan State University, University of Western Ontario, Washington State University, and the University of Southern California. (Source: Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections )

What Are The Books Rokeach Is Known For?

During those years when he was a professor, he wrote and published several books. Here is a list of a few of them.

• The Open and Close Mind (1960)
• Beliefs, Attitudes and Values: A Theory of Organization and Change (1968)
• The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Psychological Study (1964)
• The Nature of Human Values (1973)
• Understanding Human Values: Individual and Societal (1979) (Source: Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections )

What Was the Jesus Experiment?

One of the famous works of Rokeach was the Jesus experiment, more known as the Three Christs of Ypsilanti . The study started in the late 1950s at Ypsilanti State Hospital, in Saline, Michigan.

The three psychiatric patients were tested and later diagnosed with schizophrenia. They were forced to live together and to be in contact with one another in the facility for two years. These patients strongly believed that they were Jesus Christ. These patients were Clyde Benson, Joseph Cassel, and Leon Gabor. (Source: World Abandoned )

Rokeach was intrigued by the narratives of the Secret Service agents who felt like they lost contact with their identities, and wanted to find out if the man’s sense of himself may be challenged in a controlled environment.

Uncommon for a psychologist, Rokeach found an answer from the Bible. The holy book stated that there is only one God, anyone who believed himself to be Jesus would suffer a psychological affront by the very existence of another like him. This revelation made Rokeach want to meet with the Messiahs where he documented and inspired him to publish his study in 1964, in a book entitled The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

In September 2017, a film based on the book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti was released and starred Bradley Whitford, Peter Dinklage, and Walton Goggins who played the three lead patients, and Richard Gere who played the role of Dr. Alan Stone, as the doctor in the facility. (source: Slate )

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The three Christs of Ypsilanti

Lucas Grenier

How do people react when they meet someone who claims to have the same identity? A US psychologist once tested this in a now famous experiment: His three test subjects thought they were Jesus Christ.

In 1959, in a psychiatric ward in Ypsilanti, Michigan, psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three men: 38-year-old Leon Gabor, 58-year-old Joseph Cassel, and 70-year-old Clyde Benson, each of whom believed Jesus was born again to be the Christ of Nazareth.

Rokeach wanted to find out how people deal with this contradiction — namely, meeting someone who claims the same identity. Would this confrontation lead to curing the personality disorder?

For two years he let the three live together in the clinic. They slept in the same room, ate at the same table, and did similar jobs in the laundry. Within days of their first encounter, the participants began to justify the presence of the other two Christs. One claimed the two were controlled by machines, the other accused them of acting.

A few weeks later, heated discussions broke out, followed by brief physical attacks. But after a while the three came to terms with the other two Christs. And so they spent the rest of the time in peaceful coexistence — although everyone continued to insist that only they were the real Jesus.

Milton Rokeach recorded the experiment in a book: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti .

Written by Lucas Grenier

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‘Three Christs’: Film Review

Richard Gere plays a psychologist with grandiose delusions in a dull good-doctor drama that bends facts in its attempt to be another 'Awakenings.'

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Sixty years ago, a psychologist named Milton Rokeach hatched an unconventional experiment, in which he gathered together at Ypsilanti State Hospital three mental patients who’d been diagnosed with grandiose delusions — each was thoroughly convinced that he and only he was Jesus Christ — to test whether confronting them with “the ultimate contradiction” of their claims might impact their beliefs. “While I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing me of mine — of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives,” Rokeach wrote decades later in the 1981 reprint of his book, “The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.”

There’s a wonderful irony to that line upon which a fascinating film might be based, perhaps even a rowdy weekly sitcom. Instead, director Jon Avnet (whose terrific adaptation of “Fried Green Tomatoes” gives hope that perhaps he has another great film in him) and co-writer Eric Nazarian (whose credits do not inspire great optimism) have served up a stiff, unconvincing and recklessly wrong-headed reinterpretation of events. Operating in the vein of movies like “Awakenings,” the pair have gone back to Rokeach’s book-length report, mining it for colorful details, while positioning the controversial experiment as some kind of noble breakthrough for talk-based treatment over more barbaric methods, such as electroshock therapy.

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Mind you, to the layperson, anything is better than clamping paddles to someone’s forehead and cranking up the voltage. What “Three Christs” ignores are not only the plentiful ethical criticisms of Rokeach’s work (as one of the patients put it in the book, “When psychology is used to agitate, it’s not sound psychology any more. You’re not helping the person. You’re agitating.”) but also its author’s own admission that his study was a failure. Going in, Rokeach had assumed that he might be able to fix these patients, whereas in retrospect, he realized that he had been attempting to play God. Turns out there weren’t only three Christs in Ypsilanti but four, Rokeach concluded with a certain rhetorical flair.

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In any case, Richard Gere would not be my first choice to play Rokeach. Don’t get me wrong: Gere’s a fine actor, although he’s far better at projecting cow-eyed sympathy — his version of the saintly, all-patient therapist that earned Robin Williams an Oscar for “Good Will Hunting” — than a doctor wrestling with his own delusions of grandeur. Gere’s simply too nice, and as an audience, we instantly forgive the character his foibles, while Avnet redirects his criticism at the hospital director, shock-happy Dr. Orbus (Kevin Pollak).

Obviously, the real acting opportunity here falls to the three patients, as Avnet allows Bradley Whitford, Peter Dinklage and Walton Goggins to parade about in varying shades of paranoid schizophrenia. Whitford is a twitchy motormouth, taker of long showers, and chronic masturbator, whereas Dinklage (with whom he frequently scuffles) projects a more urbane personality, with his taste for opera records and references to his native England.

Rokeach, who has been renamed “Dr. Stone” in the film, finds a third Christ — “but not from Nazareth,” this one insists — at another hospital. This last patient looks like Jack Nicholson, not so much the spastic “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” version as the wild-eyed, greasy-haired lunatic who runs around swinging an ax at the end of “The Shining.” A good fit for Goggins, who offers up one of the more restrained performances of his career. Frankly, all three are quite good, if very much on different pages.

Rokeach’s idea was to force these three false prophets to cohabitate for two years and see what happened. Avnet’s idea is to create a tug-of-war between Stone and the hospital staff, who disapprove of his methods at first, but later want to take credit for the attention after he publishes his first article. Stone convinces them to stop shocking his patients (for a time), but rest assured, there will come a scene in which your favorite Christ becomes agitated, and the orderlies seize the opportunity to strap him down and plug him into the electroshock machine. Cut to a distressing close-up as something that looks like ectoplasm burbles forth from his mouth.

It will not surprise you — read: spoiler alert — that one of the three Christs commits suicide. None of Rokeach’s patients did so in real life, but in the lazy dramatists handbook, that trope is by far the most efficient way for movies about prisons, psychiatric hospitals and uptight boarding schools to announce that the administrators of such institutions are in the wrong (see yet another self-righteous Robin Williams movie Avnet no doubt had in mind, “Dead Poets Society”). It also serves to explain why Stone, in the opening scene, addresses a disciplinary committee with the words “I am guilty of underestimating the enigma that is the mind.”

By now it is probably amply clear that “Three Christs” is not a faith-based movie — at least, not in the conventional sense. The movie has almost nothing to do with religious belief, beyond that its titular trio all believe themselves to be the Messiah (eventually, one does waver slightly in his identity, requesting to be called “Dr. Righteous Idealed Dung”). To an extent, faith still factors into the experience: As audiences, we trust filmmakers to do a reasonably accurate job of representing stories based in truth, and we get angry when they take the kind of liberties Avnet and company allow themselves here. As if it weren’t bad enough that “Three Christs” were boring, it’s impossible to believe, and for that, there is no cure.

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, Jan. 6, 2019. (In 2017 Toronto Film Festival.) MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 115 MIN.

• Production: An IFC Films release, presented with Narrative Capital of a Narrative Capital, Brooklyn Films, Ostar, Hassell Free Films production, in association with Highland Film Group. Producers: Daniel Levin, Jon Avnet, Molly Hassell, Aaron Stern. Executive producers: Steven Haft, Bill Haber, Arianne Fraser, Delphine Perrier, Henry Winterstern, M.H. Steinhardt. Co-producers: Stepanie Pon, Glen Trotiner.
• Crew: Director: John Avnet. Screenplay: Avnet, Eric Nazarian, based on the book "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti" by Milton Rokeach. Camera: Denis Lenoir. Editor: Patrick J. Don Vito. Music: Jeff Russo.
• With: Richard Gere, Peter Dinklage, Walton Goggins, Bradley Whitford , Charlotte Hope, Kevin Pollak, Julianna Marguilies.

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Could there be three Jesuses?

The strange story of a 1950s psychologist who — eager to understand identity — forced men who believed they were Jesus to confront each other. The experiment, says Vaughan Bell in Slate, was madness

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In an unusual twist on playing God, psychologist Milton Rokeach took three psychiatric patients who each believed himself to be Jesus Christ, the one true son of the Father, and had them live together for two years in the 1950s. As neuropsychologist Vaughan Bell explains in Slate, Rokeach — somewhat unethically — had the men argue, fight, and correspond with fake wives and hospital chiefs, to see if any of them would see their madness. Rokeach's book, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti , reveals that it wasn't just the Jesuses who were a little mad. Here's an excerpt of Bell's article:

"[The three men's] early meetings were stormy. 'You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!' one of the Christs yelled. 'I will not worship you! You're a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!' another snapped back. 'No two men are Jesus Christs. … I am the Good Lord!' the third interjected, barely concealing his anger....

"Frustrated by psychology's focus on what he considered to be peripheral beliefs, like political opinions and social attitudes, Rokeach wanted to probe the limits of identity. He had been intrigued by stories of Secret Service agents who felt they had lost contact with their original identities, and wondered if a man's sense of self might be challenged in a controlled setting. Unusually for a psychologist, he found his answer in the Bible. There is only one Son of God, says the good book, so anyone who believed himself to be Jesus would suffer a psychological affront by the very existence of another like him."

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Three Christs

• Three Christs follows Dr. Alan Stone who is treating three paranoid schizophrenic patients at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, each of whom believed they were Jesus Christ. What transpires is both comic and deeply moving.
• Three Christs tells the story of an extraordinary experiment that began in 1959 at Michigan's Ypsilanti State Hospital, where Dr. Alan Stone treated three paranoid schizophrenic patients who each believe they are Jesus Christ. Dr. Stone pioneers a simple, yet revolutionary treatment: instead of submitting the patients to electroshock, forced restraints and tranquilizers, he puts them in a room together to confront their delusions. What transpires is a darkly comic, intensely dramatic story about the nature of identity and the power of empathy.
• 1959. Lured away from a career in academia, psychotherapist Dr. Alan Stone, hired by Dr. Bill Rogers, has just started a job at the Ypsilanti State Hospital to work with delusional patients, accepting it on the promise that he be able to treat them in a more humane and what he hopes effective way than the typical institutional interventions of frontal lobotomies, insulin to induce comas, other placating drugs, and electroshock therapy. Coincidentally stumbling upon a first and then a second both at the hospital, therefore searching for any others in the Michigan mental health institutional system resulting in a third, he decides to conduct a research study on paranoid schizophrenics who believe they are really Jesus Christ , the research despite or perhaps in light of his own non-religious background and belief. In receiving the somewhat reluctant and skeptical approval from the hospital's Superintendent Dr. Eldrich Orbus, he is able to bring together and house the "Three Christs" - Joseph Cassel, Clyde Benson and Leon Gabor - each who manifests his belief in a very different way from the other two, in a separate ward away from the general patient population, with the understanding that they are his patients under his direct care, with no one else authorized to administer any treatment, especially the most oft used electroshock, without his approval. Beyond Dr. Stone dealing with the three very different men in needing to view them both individually and as a collective, the research study is affected by: the presence of his young, attractive research assistant Becky Henderson, who accepted the job for ulterior motives, and who, as a further consequence, unwittingly throws a wrench into his personal life in the reaction to her by his wife, Ruth Stone; and the ongoing conflicts with Dr. Orbus, who really wants nothing to do with the study, that is unless it garners any positive publicity for the hospital and thus himself. In the process, Dr. Stone will have to evaluate his own methods, namely if he is crossing the line of ethics, and if he, like his patients, is acting like God. — Huggo

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‘Three Christs’ Film Review: Richard Gere Treats a Trio of Would-Be Jesuses in Simplistic Drama

The holy trinity of Peter Dinklage, Bradley Whitford and Walton Goggins is undone by mental-health-crusader clichés

There’s a moment in Jon Avnet’s “Three Christs” when the movie’s central psychiatrist Dr. Stone (Richard Gere) suffers a Freudian slip so on-the-nose, you could tell it would happen before he says it: In defending his unorthodox treatment of three men who referred to themselves as Jesus Christ, Dr. Stone accidentally refers to four men, not three, to his supervisors.

This prompts some awkward discussion, but the purpose of the scene is clear: The good doctor also suffers from some godlike illusions of grandeur himself.

However great Gere or his co-stars are, none of them can soothe all that ails “Three Christs,” a milquetoast January release. The movie has that one terribly obvious moment of clarity, but the rest of it seems to stand by Dr. Stone’s crusade unquestionably. Only he recognizes the cruelty of mental institutions in 1959. Only he knows what he’s doing, and everyone else is just in his way. He’s in tune to a future where his favorite comic Lenny Bruce will be more revered and where electroshock therapy will be a thing of the past. It’s a simplified, reductive portrait of a complex story, and it feels as if there’s more to it that hasn’t made it to the screen.

Adapted by Avnet and Eric Nazarian from Dr. Milton Rokeach’s book “The Three Christs of Ypsilanti,” the film skims what the doctor learned in the course of his two-year study of three paranoid schizophrenics who claim to be Jesus Christ. “Three Christs” looks back at the events in flashbacks with voiceover; it’s a clunky way into what’s happened, but eventually this device falls away to let the story unfurl on its own. Dr. Stone is convinced he can cure and rehabilitate his patients to lead normal social lives again if only protocol and bureaucracy were not in his way.

To his credit, Gere does an amicable job of balancing the calming presence of a psychiatrist who truly wants to reach his patients and the drive of a researcher hellbent on finding the right answer. With his patients, he’s comforting, tough but firm when need be, but when Dr. Stone is off to see his bosses, Gere plays it almost childishly petulant and pushy. It’s in these scenes when his savior complex is most insufferable although, for the most part, Gere’s performance is relatively dependable, at least until he tries to employ a warbling Brooklyn accent that none of the five boroughs would claim.

As for Dr. Stone’s patients — Joseph (Peter Dinklage), Leon (Walton Goggins) and Clyde (Bradley Whitford) — they’re the stars of the story, although also with mixed results. The story attempts to empathize with their tortured backgrounds, stories of severe loss and rejection that possibly triggered their holy delusions. They are at their most interesting when exploring the awkward push-and-pull rapport between three men that claim to be the Son of God.

At first, they sit far apart and snipe at each other, but over time, those boundaries soften and they begin to bond in ways their former doctors never expected. However, there are moments, when the actors subtly give way to moments of full-out overacting, that it almost feels as if the movie is voyeuristically enjoying its characters’ pain.

“Three Christs” also falls short of doing justice to the two women in the film, Becky (Charlotte Hope) and Ruth (Julianna Margulies). Becky is Dr. Stone’s assistant, and aside from a potentially interesting backstory that’s referred to only once, she is there for one of the patients to leer at and make uncomfortable. The movie even seems to suggest she’s almost charmed by his unfiltered platitudes. But aside from enduring sexual remarks and marveling at the genius of Dr. Stone, there’s not much of a reason for her character.

Ruth, Dr. Stone’s wife, is similarly limited in that she fulfills only the part of a sexually-satisfied partner who loves her husband and senses there might be some competition in his fondness for Becky, especially since Ruth was his previous research assistant before they were married.

“Three Christs” follows a relatively well-tread formula, which is perhaps why it feels so inert. It’s a good, relative surface-level reading of events, but the man-on-a-crusade approach feels so much more dramatic than it needs to be. The cast can’t cure all the movie’s problems, from its abrupt ending to a random acid-test scene, but it’s not without its curious appeal as a star-studded failed “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” experiment.

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Three thrown over the cuckoo’s nest.

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Sometime in the 1940s, an improbable encounter occurred at a mental institution in Maryland. Two women, each of whom was institutionalized for believing she was the Virgin Mary, chanced upon one another and engaged in conversation. They had been chatting for several minutes when the older woman introduced herself as “Mary, Mother of God.”

“Why you can’t be, my dear,” the other patient replied, unable to conceive of such a notion. “You must be crazy. I am the Mother of God.”

“I’m afraid it’s you who are mixed up,” the first asserted, “I am Mary.”

A hospital staff member eavesdropped as the two Virgin Marys debated their identities. After a while the women paused to quietly regard one another. Finally, the older patient seemed to arrive at a realization. “If you’re Mary,” she said, “I must be Anne, your mother.” That seemed to settle it, and the reconciled patients embraced. In the following weeks the woman who had conceded her delusion was reported to be much more receptive to treatment, and she was soon considered well enough to be discharged from the hospital.

This clinical anecdote was retold in a 1955 issue of Harper’s Magazine , and a highly-regarded social psychologist named Dr. Milton Rokeach read it with great interest. What might happen, he wondered, if a psychologist were to deliberately pair up patients who held directly conflicting identity delusions? Perhaps such psychological leverage could be used to pry at the cracks of an irrational psyche to let in the light of reason. Dr. Rokeach sought and secured a research grant to test his hypothesis, and he began canvassing sanitariums for delusional doppelgängers. Soon he found several suitable subjects: three patients, all in state care, each of whom believed himself to be Jesus Christ. And he saw that it was good.

Rokeach initiated his research experiment at the Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan in 1959. He instructed the medical superintendent Dr. Yoder to arrange the transfers that would bring the three patients together. Yoder dutifully sent them to Ypsilanti’s Ward D-23, and then washed his hands of the matter. Three days later, when the “Three Christs” arose, they were summoned to a small antechamber adjacent to Ward D-23. And behold, it was not very good.

It was a plain room with bare walls and deliberately unstimulating furniture. As was always the case when Dr. Rokeach was present, a nebula of tobacco smoke hung in the air. The doctor introduced himself and his three research assistants, and he explained that they would all be spending a lot of time together over the next few months. The patients sat across from the researchers in heavy wooden straight-backed chairs. One patient was elderly, another was relatively young, and the third was in between. Rokeach asked the third to introduce himself to the group.

“My name is Joseph Cassel,” the man said. Joseph was a 58-year-old patient who at that time had been institutionalized for almost twenty years. He was quite bald, and he grinned often despite missing half of his front teeth. His shirt and trouser pockets were bulging with belongings such as eyeglasses, tobacco, pencils, handkerchiefs, books, and magazines. Joseph tended to inexplicably fling the reading material from the windows when he thought no one was looking. Although he was not from England, nor had he ever even visited the place, he yearned to return there someday. He was the most mild-mannered of the Three Christs.

“Joseph, is there anything else you want to tell us?” Rokeach prompted.

“Yes.” he replied. “I’m God.”

The next to speak was the eldest of the three. “My name is Clyde Benson,” he mumbled in a low voice that characterized most of his speech. “That’s my name straight.” At 70 years old, Clyde suffered from dementia, but in moments of lucidity he tended to reminisce about working on the railroads, and fishing. He was quite tall and almost entirely toothless.

“Do you have any other names?” Rokeach replied.

“Well, I have other names, but that’s my vital side and I made God five and Jesus six,” Clyde replied.

The third Christ to introduce himself was Leon, the youngest at age 38. He had been raised by a single mother, a militant Christian woman who had struggled with her own mental health. Some five years earlier his mother had come home from her daily church session to find Leon in the process of destroying the crucifixes and other Christian ornamentation that covered every wall of the house. Leon then commanded his mother to reject such false images and worship him as Jesus. He had been committed soon thereafter. He was tall, thin, articulate, and he constantly kept with his hands in front of him to keep them in sight.

“Sir,” Leon introduced himself to Rokeach, “it so happens that my birth certificate says that I am Dr. Domino Dominorum et Rex Rexarum, Simplis Christianus Pueris Mentalis Doktor .” This prolonged moniker was Latin for “Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, Simple Christian Boy Psychiatrist”. Leon continued, “It also states on my birth certificate that I am the reincarnation of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.”

Joseph, the one who had first introduced himself, was also the first to protest. “He says he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. I can’t get it. I know who I am. I’m God, Christ, the Holy Ghost, and if I wasn’t, by gosh, I wouldn’t lay claim to anything of the sort. I’m Christ. I don’t want to say I’m Christ, God, the Holy Ghost, Spirit. I know this is an insane house and you have to be very careful.”

After allowing Joseph to rant a bit longer, young Leon interjected. “Mr. Cassel, please! I didn’t agree with the fact that you were generalizing and calling all people insane in this place. There are people here who are not insane. Each person is a house. Please remember that.”

Dr. Rokeach allowed them to argue in this way for a few moments before he turned to Clyde, the eldest, and asked his opinion. “I represent the resurrection,” Clyde replied. “Yeh! I’m the same as Jesus. To represent the resurrection…” He trailed off into indistinct mumbling.

Rokeach attempted to clarify, for the record: “Did you say you are God?”

“That’s right. God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.”

The decorum disintegrated as Clyde and Joseph, the two older patients, began to bellow at one another. “Don’t try to pull that on me because I will prove it to you! I’m telling you I’m God!” … “You’re not!” … “I’m God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost! I know what I am and I’m going to be what I am!” And so on. They argued thus for the remainder of the session as Leon watched in attentive silence. When they adjourned for the day Leon denounced the sessions as “mental torture.”

Dr. Rokeach’s hypothesis was that it might be possible to alter or eliminate schizophrenic delusions if he forced patients to confront what he described as ‘the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings’: more than one person claiming the same identity. To this end, he contrived a battery of experiments to challenge the Christs’ identities over the coming months. The researchers also set up a control group consisting of three female inmates who would receive the same amount of staff attention as the three male inmates. These women likewise exhibited identity delusions, however in the interest of science the researchers would be careful to not dispute the women’s identities. By measuring the delusional drift in these control patients Rokeach hoped to quantify and correct for the effects of increased psychologist interaction.

Rokeach attempted to maximize inter-Christ contact by assigning the three men to adjacent beds in Ward D-23, assigning them adjacent seats in the dining area, and arranging for them to work side-by-side in the laundry. His research assistants were instructed to conduct a daily group session, and to follow the Christs and inventory their activities during the rest of the day. Once per week Dr. Rokeach himself would descend upon the facility to personally prod at the patients’ psyches.

On one occasion, Rokeach asked the group, “Why are you in this hospital?”

Clyde, the oldest, mumbled that he owned the building and adjacent lands and that he stayed on as caretaker. Joseph proudly explained that the hospital was an English stronghold, and that he was there to defend it. Leon, the youngest and least institutionalized, was the only one to acknowledge that he himself was a mental patient, but he stopped short of admitting to delusion. He blamed some ambiguous, jealous persecutors for unjustly subjecting him to the torment of a mental ward.

“Why do you suppose I brought you all together?” Rokeach prompted.

Clyde⁠—who the others began to refer to as “the old man”⁠—stubbornly refused to speculate. As for Joseph, he insisted that his attendance was to convince the others that they were insane, and that he himself was the one and only God. Leon had arrived at a partially correct conclusion, inferring that Dr. Rokeach was pitting the patients against one another, but Leon also asserted that the researchers’ ambition was to use “electronic voodooism” to brainwash patients.

Weeks of such discussions ensued. As the novelty of the sessions wore off the tension began to rise. Debates became passionate as each Christ attempted to disabuse the others of their misguided beliefs. In the meantime the researchers’ questions became more confrontational. Each patient strained to maintain a rational demeanor, nevertheless outbursts, obscenities, and threats became increasingly commonplace both inside and outside of the daily sessions. On one occasion, as Leon waited in the supper line, a bothersome patient approached him and asked, “Do you still think you’re Jesus Christ?”

“Sir, I most certainly am Jesus Christ,” Leon replied.

The agitator turned to another man waiting in line and said, “This guy thinks he’s Christ. He’s nuts, isn’t he?”

“He’s not Christ, I am!” the man replied angrily. It happened to be Joseph.

Old Man Clyde was not far away, and was heard to bellow, “No, he’s not! I am!”

The first physical violence occurred three weeks into the experiment. During the daily group session, Leon contended that Adam of the Bible was a “colored man.” Clyde confronted him angrily, to which Leon replied, “I believe in truthful bullshit but I don’t care for your bullshit.” The old man struck him on the cheek with a solid right smite. Leon sat with his hands folded and made no effort to retaliate or defend himself. Dr. Rokeach and his assistant wrestled Clyde away, allowed him to compose himself, and before long the conversation continued as though nothing had happened.

This was not the only time the self-styled Christs came to fisticuffs over philosophical differences, but gradually the spirited discourse gave way to a shaky, mutually patronizing peace. The men sometimes humored one another’s delusions, and other times they tap-danced around them. Over time, each Christ cultivated new delusions to retain his claim to godliness. Clyde squared his reality with the others’ by concluding that the other men were actually dead⁠—in his mind they were absurd corpse puppets whose limbs and faces were controlled by machines hidden inside of them. Leon explained away the others’ assertions as lies from attention-seeking imposters, or the result of technical-sounding nonsense terms such as “duping”, “interferences”, or “electronic imposition”. As for Joseph, he sagely observed that the other Christ claimants were, in fact, patients in a mental hospital, which proved that they were quite insane.

As weeks turned into months, pedestrian subjects such as favorite foods and personal anecdotes began to dominate the sessions. Even outside of meetings the three men frequently sat together quietly despite being free to roam and mingle with others. They shared tobacco and stuck up for one another against interlopers. Each continued to believe that he was the embodiment of the Holy Trinity, with the power to perform miracles, but all three had learned that discussing religion was not conducive to peaceful co-existence.

Quite late one evening the patients of Ypsilanti’s ward D-23 were having trouble sleeping due to some slumberer’s coarse snoring disrupting the otherwise silent night. Frustrated, one of the patients finally shouted, “Jesus Christ! Quit that snoring!”

Clyde sat up in bed and replied, “That wasn’t me who was snoring. It was him!”

Six months into the study Dr. Rokeach decided to disband the all-female control group. He cited “boredom and fatigue” as the reason to sacrifice the scientific counterweight, as well as budgetary concerns. The daily sessions with the male subjects continued unabated. In fact, Dr. Rokeach decided to accelerate his campaign to scrutinize the captive Christs and test the depths of their delusions.

During one session Dr. Rokeach produced a newspaper clipping he had brought with him and handed it around. Old Man Clyde and Almost-As-Old-Man Joseph had trouble reading the small text, so Leon volunteered to read it aloud for the others. It was a local reporter’s summary of a lecture recently given by one “Dr. Rokeach.” Evidently this lecturer was conducting an odd psychological experiment at Ypsilanti State Hospital with three men who all believed they were Jesus Christ.

As Leon read aloud, Clyde withdrew into a unresponsive “stupor.” Leon himself grew increasingly visibly upset. He was wholly aware of the article’s substance. After he finished reading he protested the incomplete picture offered by the report. “When psychology is used to agitate, it’s not sound psychology any more,” he told Dr. Rokeach. “You’re not helping the person. You’re agitating. When you agitate you belittle your intelligence.” With that, Leon left. Joseph failed to grasp that the article was discussing Clyde, Leon, and himself. He simply remarked that it is “pure insanity” to believe one is God when one is not. As for Clyde, he had nothing more to say for the day.

In October Joseph began to receive letters from Dr. Yoder, the hospital superintendent. Or rather, he believed he was corresponding with Dr. Yoder⁠—the letters were actually written by Dr. Rokeach himself, with Dr. Yoder’s permission. Rokeach wanted to find out whether pressure from a respected outside authority figure could effect change in a patient’s beliefs and behaviors. Given urgings from the superintendent himself, what would Joseph do? Rokeach acknowledged the “serious ethical issues” involved, and his research assistants voiced concerns regarding the methodology, but Dr. Rokeach emphasized his intent to employ caution, adding, “we hoped there might be, therapeutically, little to lose and, hopefully, a good deal to gain.”

The first of these letters commended Joseph on his clinical progress, and urged him to renounce his claims of English heritage. Joseph wrote enthusiastic letters in response, but he was reluctant to disclaim his beloved England. The impostor Yoder goaded him to attend church, which was not something that had ever interested Joseph, but after much pestering he relented. Rokeach then began to enclose small amounts of cash to be spent at the hospital store, indicating in the letters that Dr. Yoder loved Joseph “like a son.” Joseph responded to this by addressing his subsequent replies to “My dear Dad.” The fake Yoder even arranged for Joseph to try a promising new drug called potent-valuemiocene ⁠—actually a placebo⁠—and then Rokeach abruptly cut off the supply despite Joseph’s positive response. Finally, frustrated, Joseph appealed to a higher authority by writing directly to President Kennedy pleading for release from the hospital.

Dr. Rokeach also engaged in deceptive correspondence with Leon. Rokeach decided to test the strength of Leon’s oft-expressed delusion that he had a wife outside of the hospital. The first letter was handed to Leon by an aide shortly before a daily group session. Leon saw that it was signed with his imaginary wife’s name, and the note informed him that she intended to come visit him at an appointed day and time in the near future. Leon told the aide the letter must be a forgery. His demeanor during the subsequent session was unusually depressed, but he would not say why. When the appointed day and time arrived, the researchers observed as Leon went to the meeting place. He did not return until much later. Researchers noted that Leon had grown much more depressed in general, and that he was being uncharacteristically rude to female hospital volunteers.

Rokeach wrote still more such letters to Leon, these integrating some of Leon’s home-grown psychological jargon. Gradually Leon seemed to consider the possibility that the letters were genuine. His non-existent wife made a new appointment to come visit him, and Leon showered and shaved to greet her. She did not appear. Yet another letter led to yet another missed appointment. The research assistant monitoring him noted that the repeated fraudulent rendezvous made Leon “visibly upset and angry.”

Despite all this, Dr. Rokeach was still not convinced that Leon truly believed the letters were from his wife. Perhaps Leon was merely keeping the appointments in hopes of identifying the impostor. Rokeach’s next idea was for Mrs. Leon to send some money, then wait and see if Leon would accept it and spend it. In all his institutionalized days Leon had adamantly repudiated the use of money for any purpose, and as a result his untouched hospital bank account was quite substantial. Dr. Rokeach later wrote about what happened when Leon opened the letter:

Leon was now gazing at the dollar bill that had been enclosed in his letter with an intensity of expression which puzzled me. ⁠—What are you looking at?⁠— Suddenly I realized that he was really doing something I had not expected to witness. He was struggling to hold back his tears. With this much effort he would surely succeed. But he did not. Two tiny droplets formed in the corner of his eyes, and ever so slowly they grew slightly larger. There they remained for a moment or two until they squeezed themselves out as if of their own accord, despite Leon’s struggle. I watched their slow descent down his face. The mood this aroused soon gave way to another. As the two tiny droplets approached the halfway mark down his cheeks, Leon neatly scooped them up with his index finger, first one, then the other, and sucked them into his mouth. ⁠—What are you doing?⁠— “Tears are the best antiseptic there is,” said Leon. “There’s no use wasting tears.” He began to examine the dollar bill, turning it over from one side to the other. “I haven’t seen one of these for years. I mean, to handle.” He read the name of the Treasurer of the United States and the serial number. ⁠—Does the letter make you happy or sad?⁠— “I feel somewhat glad.” ⁠—Is there something the matter with your eyes?⁠— “Oh, they’re smarting, sir, so I’m enjoying some disinfectant, sir,⁠—the best in the world: tears.” ⁠—Are you crying?⁠— “No, my eyes are smarting because of some condition.”

The counterfeit letters from Leon’s wife continued for weeks, often along with money and specific instructions on how to spend it. Sometimes the notes asked him to make small changes in his daily rituals, such as what brand of tobacco to smoke for the day. He complied for a few weeks, but gradually Leon came to the conclusion that the letter-writer was not his wife, but some female patient in the hospital who was cruelly stringing him along by impersonating his bride. Leon sat down and wrote a letter to Dr. Broadhurst, the female resident psychiatrist of the ward. “I know you know who she is,” Leon accused. “Tell her I do not want any more donations, or letters.” He refused all subsequent correspondence addressed from his wife.

Dr. Rokeach next employed a more overt approach in his clinical crusade. Hospital aides delivered a final forged letter to Leon, this one signed with the name of his trusted uncle, George Bernard Brown. Therein Leon learned that a change in Ypsilanti personnel would soon come to pass. His false uncle prophesied that a new psychologist was about to join the hospital staff, and that this change of personnel would align with Leon’s interests.

Leon did not have to wait long. At the group session several days later Dr. Rokeach introduced Miss Anderson, his shiny new research assistant. She was, by all accounts, a splendid and glowing sight to behold. Leon was clearly attracted to his foreordained ally, and the curiosity seemed mutual. She listened to him attentively, she laughed at his jokes, and she seemed to share his interests. Miss Anderson’s forward and flirtatious behavior seemed to stir deep conflict within young Leon. Although he frequently and openly discussed the topics of sex and genitalia, he considered intercourse itself to be forbidden. After all, he was a married man.

A few weeks after Miss Anderson’s introduction, Leon approached her at the outset of the regular group session. He handed her a thick envelope which he explained contained “the most important document I have written in my life.” When Dr. Rokeach later examined it he found it contained nothing new to him⁠—it was Leon’s disjointed attempt to summarize his worldview for Miss Anderson. It was only the first of several such crush-driven manifestos. Soon Leon convinced Miss Anderson to start engaging in one-on-one discussions immediately following the daily sessions. He always came prepared with conversation topics jotted onto index cards. Dr. Rokeach noted that Leon made frequent eye contact with Miss Anderson during these discussions, which was not his ordinary inclination.

Although Rokeach’s writings never explicitly admit to it, his other research assistants believed that the psychologist specifically selected Miss Anderson for the fact that she was pleasant to the eyes. They also suspected that he had specifically directed her to flirt with Leon. Perhaps Rokeach thought that a patient forced to choose between delusions and love might abandon his divine claims and be saved.

Over the months that followed, either the dissonance became unmanageable or Miss Anderson’s acting skills were inadequate. A seed of doubt began to germinate within Leon, and he became brooding and withdrawn. He accused the researchers of tempting him into adultery. He assembled a semi-opaque blindfold which he began to wear whenever other people were around, and he later added earplugs to further insulate himself from reality. As Rokeach had hypothesized, Leon’s delusions indeed changed under the pressure of temptation, but not in predictable or positive ways. Leon claimed to have become a hermaphrodite. Soon thereafter he announced that he was pregnant with twins, sobbing as he anticipated their future of having to “suffer from impositions” as he did. He also claimed to have become invisible.

The following June, Miss Anderson departed for a week’s vacation. Upon her return she found the forsaken Leon in a state of extreme anxiety and exasperation. He took the opportunity to announce that he would not be tempted into adultery. He cancelled all future post-session one-on-one meetings. He was done with Miss Anderson. “The truth is my friend,” he told the researchers. “I have no other friends.”

Dr. Rokeach finally brought the Three Christs experiment to an end on 15 August 1961, just over two years since the first meeting of Clyde, Joseph, and Leon. None of the patients had measurably improved, although by the time Rokeach departed Leon had indeed renounced his claim to being Jesus Christ. Instead he insisted upon being referred to as “Dr. Righteous Idealized Dung.” He had also come to believe that he was one of the Yeti people.

Milton Rokeach went on to write an unapologetic book about the experiment entitled The Three Christs of Ypsilanti . Therein Rokeach drew some dubious Freudian conclusions regarding confusion about sexual identity as a basis for identity delusions. However he did find some insight by comparing schizophrenic delusions with his own experiences with LSD. He wrote:

At one point during the time I was under the influence of this drug, the phonograph was on. A woman soloist was singing a hauntingly beautiful melody. I saw the voice lift itself out of the record player; it looked ghostlike and ribbony. I saw it travel across the room toward me; then I felt it pushing its way into my right ear (not my left). And then I heard her singing the rest of the song inside my head. While this was happening, I knew it was a hallucination. But, still, I experienced it! Even though I knew that the reality of this experience would not be supported by social consensus, there was nothing anyone could say or do which would convince me that it was not happening to me. It does not matter whether my experience was produced by an external physical stimulus, nor does it matter whether there are others who agree with me or not. What matters is that I had the experience. I am therefore now inclined to believe that the hallucinations or delusions of psychosis are more than simply matters of pretense or of hyperimagination which a little persuasive logic will prove cannot be so.

Ultimately even Rokeach himself had to acknowledge that his experimental psychology hadn’t helped Clyde, Joseph, or Leon. Nor did the research bear any usable data. As experiments go The Three Christs of Ypsilanti was far from rigorous. The experimenters abandoned their control group when it became inconvenient, they meddled endlessly, and they had a laughably small sample size of Jesuses. But even a perfectly-designed psychotherapy experiment would have been in vain. Later advances in neuroscience revealed that schizophrenia is disorder of thought processes rather than of thought content, associated with subtle differences in brain structures and in brain chemistry, consequently no amount of psychotherapy can “cure” schizophrenic delusions. However, thanks to modern medicine schizophrenia and similar disorders are quite controllable with the use of antipsychotic medications.

In the 1970s the institutionalization of mental health patients rapidly fell from favor in the United States. Further, these sorts of psychological experiments became essentially extinct when Congress passed the National Research Act of 1974, which imposed the requirement for an Institutional review board to oversee behavioral research and to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects. And there was much rejoicing.

In the 1981 edition of his book Dr. Milton Rokeach appended an afterword entitled, “Some Second Thoughts About the Three Christs: Twenty Years Later.” In this retrospective he described a lecture he delivered several months after his experiment ended, where at one point he misspoke by stating that there had been four gods under scrutiny in his study rather than three. He later ascribed this “Freudian slip” to a subconscious awareness that he himself had been under a delusion of omnipotence at Ypsilanti. He explained that in the intervening years he had grown “uncomfortable about the ethics” of his research, and he attempted to redeem himself by beating around the apology bush:

…while I had failed to cure the three Christs of their delusions, they had succeeded in curing me of mine⁠—of my God-like delusion that I could change them by omnipotently and omnisciently arranging and rearranging their daily lives within the framework of a “total institution.” […] I came to realize⁠—dimly at the time but increasingly more clearly as the years passed⁠—that I really had no right, even in the name of science, to play God and interfere around-the-clock with their daily lives.

Amen to that.

Since you enjoyed our work enough to print it out, and read it clear to the end, would you consider donating a few dollars at https://www.damninteresting.com/donate ?

38 Comments

• Writing: Alan Bellows
• Narration: Simon Whistler
• Sound Design: Alan Bellows
• Additional: Alternate title: We Three Kings of Kings

Alan Bellows is the founder/designer/head writer/managing editor of Damn Interesting.

Copyright © 22 November 2013 All Rights Reserved. Last updated 01 July 2024. If you wish to repurpose this copyrighted work, you must obtain permission .

And I might add damn interesting

Craig said: “1st!!!”

No, I am 1st, the one true 1st. You must be second.

” Soon he found several suitable subjects: three patients, all in state care, each of whom believed himself to be Jesus Christ. And he saw that it was good.” – Hilarious!

The three christs of Y

I was a mental patient at Rockingham Memorial Hospital and Western State Hospital with something similar to a Jesus delusion. I believed I would usher in the age of Kobiashi in the universe of love or something or another. I was obsessed with Star Trek in particular the Kobiashi Maru and an anime show called Full Metal Alchemist. My brother later told me that he talked to my psychiatrist, to provide me with a book, A Full Metal Alchemist book that would force me to confront my delusions as well as a book called “Star Trek mirror Universe”. “Mental Torture” does not even begin to describe it. The aversion I felt, looking at the item my delusions were based off of, I wanted to cry, I did cry. I wanted to vomit, ANYTHING to stop reading. The weird thing was, when I put it down, I felt like I needed to pick it back up again.

I remember I had made up my own definition of Yahtzee “Which described a degree of improbability that exceeded the impossible”. I originally developed this Yahtzee delusion, which was based off of a SMOSH video on youtube. In the video they had come up with an absurd complicated version of Yahtzee I found hilarious. So they gave me the game Yahtzee, which I never played and I will never forget reading those instructions. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I remember thinking to myself. “The universe is trying to humble me. This is what Yahtzee really is.”

I have tried to write about my experience and the strange thing is no one can seem to follow it. It feels like it makes sense in my head. So frustrating

Confronting a delusion is the most intense thing I have ever experienced. I wonder if there is any benefit whatever in doing it. Perhaps its better just to distract the patient from their delusions by given them things to do, keep them occupied, over time the delusions will become irrelevant.

“Alan is the founder/designer/head writer/managing editor of Damn Interesting. ” The Head dude? Numero Uno? The god of Damn Interesting?

Andy said: “The three christs of Y I was a mental patient at Rockingham Memorial Hospital and Western State Hospital with something similar to a Jesus delusion. I believed I would usher in the age of Kobiashi in the universe of love or something or another. I was obsessed with Star Trek in particular the Kobiashi Maru and an anime show called Full Metal Alchemist. My brother later told me that he talked to my psychiatrist, to provide me with a book, A Full Metal Alchemist book that would force me to confront my delusions as well as a book called “Star Trek mirror Universe”. “Mental Torture” does not even begin to describe it. The aversion I felt, looking at the item my delusions were based off of, I wanted to cry, I did cry. I wanted to vomit, ANYTHING to stop reading. The weird thing was, when I put it down, I felt like I needed to pick it back up again. I remember I had made up my own definition of Yahtzee “Which described a degree of improbability that exceeded the impossible”. I originally developed this Yahtzee delusion, which was based off of a SMOSH video on youtube. In the video they had come up with an absurd complicated version of Yahtzee I found hilarious. So they gave me the game Yahtzee, which I never played and I will never forget reading those instructions. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I remember thinking to myself. “The universe is trying to humble me. This is what Yahtzee really is.” I have tried to write about my experience and the strange thing is no one can seem to follow it. It feels like it makes sense in my head. So frustrating Confronting a delusion is the most intense thing I have ever experienced. I wonder if there is any benefit whatever in doing it. Perhaps its better just to distract the patient from their delusions by given them things to do, keep them occupied, over time the delusions will become irrelevant.”

Thanks for your story Andy, I feel privileged to read about your experiences, more people should try to understand what it’s like to suffer in this way, I think you should keep writing :)

No, I am 1st. But then again, if you are first, then I must be 2nd.

1st said: “Craig said: “1st!!!” No, I am 1st, the one true 1st. You must be second.”

haha, pretty funny delusion, both of you. I suffer no such delusions for I am last and as we know in Matthew 20:16 ” The last will be first and the first shall be last. “

Leah said: Thanks for your story Andy, I feel privileged to read about your experiences, more people should try to understand what it’s like to suffer in this way, I think you should keep writing :)”

Agreed. Thanks a lot, Andy.

I want people to understand how powerful delusions can be. A person with a Jesus delusion can be made to say “I am not Jesus Christ, I am a mental patient.” but still have the rationalization in their head something like “If I were Jesus I would sacrifice my identity and become a mental patient.” The patient still believes they are Jesus, just does not admit it for the sake of other people believing the same delusion. There is a real limitation of the in some respects of the imagination, the person’s imagination is focused around some theme. There were several times I tried to get through to myself that I was crazy. If I did understand it, I didn’t not appreciate it, it never sunk in.

To get an understanding of how hard it is to give up a delusion, Imagine, you meet a police officer and introduce yourself by your own name, he then asks you if you are taking any medications. He brings you to a hospital, where they try to put you to sleep. You wake up in another part of the hospital where you are asked what your name is. You reply. Leah Smith or whatever your name once was. Then they bring you papers that show the name “Jon Jackson” in your handwriting. How long would you be in the hospital for until you accepted your name is Jon?

What saved me wasn’t any bit of advice anyone gave me. It was that I had developed an interest in a book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” just about 6 months prior and I remembered to develop an interest in other people. I began to ask each nurse their name and two things they enjoy doing. Lindsey would say I enjoy reading and pets, and then I would ask Deborah what she liked and she said “oh I enjoy cooking and reading”. and I would say something like “Hey Lindsey enjoys reading too, you maybe you two can get together and have a book club or something”.

Andy said: “The three christs of Y I was a mental patient at Rockingham Memorial Hospital and……….”

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Fascinating article Alan. I’m guessing there used to be a lot of “experiments” with mental patients that crossed into an ethical gray area.

Andy, Thanks for your story. Even though I can’t fully understand what you were going through, it’s important for those of us who haven’t experienced it to learn what we can.

From his behaviour, it was really Dr Rokeach who thought he was God.

Insanity and delusions of grandeur often causes one to be institutionalized, such as in the facilities at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington D.C.

Gerard said: “From his behaviour, it was really Dr Rokeach who thought he was God.”

oh the irony

Andy said: “What saved me wasn’t any bit of advice anyone gave me. It was that I had developed an interest in a book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” just about 6 months prior and I remembered to develop an interest in other people. I began to ask each nurse their name and two things they enjoy doing. Lindsey would say I enjoy reading and pets, and then I would ask Deborah what she liked and she said “oh I enjoy cooking and reading”. and I would say something like “Hey Lindsey enjoys reading too, you maybe you two can get together and have a book club or something”.”

Way to go, man.

There is a good free autobiography written by Clifford Whittingham Beers who was admitted into an asylum in the US in 1900. It’s also pretty damn interesting. Look up A Mind That Found itself, definitely worth reading.

Seems to me the three “Jesus”s could have all been correct. They just needed to decide which was the Father, which the Son, and which the Holy Ghost. If a major religion accepts that one can be three, and three can be one, (despite the mathematical nonsense) then it should be a simple matter for the insane to grasp the idea. Of course then there was the problem that there were really four of them.

I worked in a mental Hospital , When I first started there they were all crazy Buy the time I left I had many friends in there. When I took the time to know them I realized some were extreamly smart also. But the mental Hospitals BAck then were very crule places and the Doctors were the real nuts . They were mostly control freaks with God syndroms.

It’s interesting that the deluded women quickly compromised but the men never did.

Damn Interesting :) Thank you to commenter Andy for sharing your experiences too.

Ron Smith said: “If a major religion accepts that one can be three, and three can be one, (despite the mathematical nonsense)…”

There is no mathematical nonsense, you have just described vector.

There was a psychiatrist, Milton Erickson, who actually had this work for him once. I read about it quite a few years ago. So it’s not impossible that this would work occasionally. However the way they went about it here was somewhat more boneheaded. If an idea isn’t working, don’t abuse the patients, try something else.

Especially where I worked as a Research Assistant in Psychiatry and then quit.

Never ‘Volunteer’!!!!

kissaki said: “Fascinating article Alan. I’m guessing there used to be a lot of “experiments” with mental patients that crossed into an ethical gray area. Andy, Thanks for your story. Even though I can’t fully understand what you were going through, it’s important for those of us who haven’t experienced it to learn what we can.”

I might add that these deluded Psychiatrists ruin the lives of Assistants and staff too, not just the patients…

Thanks for sharing your story, Andy.

Pretty interesting i would say!!!!!!

David said: “It’s interesting that the deluded women quickly compromised but the men never did.”

Nonsense. Only one women changed her delusion. The explanation is rather likely that she had a less rooted delusion or less progressed disorder. That’s also why she managed to recuperate.

Any way, on its own the control was an ‘experiment’ of N=2, which means nothing. Even if you knew the backgrounds and diagnoses of the 2 patients, which you don’t. It certainly doesn’t justify drawing conclusions on gender based resistance to mental disorders.

“When psychology is used to agitate, it’s not sound psychology any more,” he told Dr. Rokeach. “You’re not helping the person. You’re agitating. When you agitate you belittle your intelligence.”

Leon, you may not be Christ but you had more potential for psychology than dr. Rokeach ever did.

” …and they had a laughably small sample size of Jesuses” almost made sandwich come out my nose!

Thanks Alan for another D.I. article, and thanks Andy for sharing your story.

Andy, thank you for sharing your experience with us. I have a brother who has schizophrenia. His was the visual/thought type were he would see and think things were there when they weren’t. He hasn’t seen anything since he was around 9 or 10 years old and he is now 27 so I know that people can recover from schizophrenia.

Milton erickson was not a psychiatrist he was a hypnotist, famous for his indirect approach and for utilizing whatever the patient threw at him instead of antagonizing and trying to convince the subject. In a case like that he would cleverly play along and among other things reach a kind of agreement with the subjects. I remember reading one such instance where a lady was seeing little men following her and causing embarrassment with their behaviour, he told her he also had some little women in his cupboard and if she wanted to see them, she said yes and he proceeded that way until one day he proposed she could leave the little men in his office with the little women and come back anytime to check on them, she agreed and kept coming back regularly at first and less and less until she eventually stopped coming and resumed functional life .

Milton Erickson was a truly inspirational and his books are the tao of psychology in my opinion, NLP and modern so called indirect hypnosis developed greatly after Ericksons proven method and principles.

I Daniel lived in MN by rice blocc in a shit life No one in my family belives what i tell them what i hear or see things and it’s my friend’s that belive what i see and hear becuz when my friends that are normal normal people start to look smaller like they are far away and sometimes i know that’s not true becuz it’s maybe the schizophrenia or it’s becuz i smoked a shit ton of weed riding in the car with them and when I start to see something it’s like they can read my mind and point what they see when they are not like me all i wish is not to be God becuz i deal with pain and i pray to the gods people belive in and say you god don’t need me to be God becuz you are more schizophrenic then me and also my hospital is riverside but i saw what you people put down with words and I ask why would any of you want to be God you do know with my schizophrenia i killed my self three times becuz i pray why god why me to be god when i don’t want any part of hearing voices like I’m hearing someone’s prayer that’s why I have reasons i killed myself three times in my life to wish not be any part being god what do ever hearing voices like I’m taking someone’s prayer to me i don’t understand what their saying it’s point less to be god and kill yourself three times to ask please god i don’t want to do anything about being god and hearing voices i don’t understand maybe people playing around fucking with me i don’t know for sure

So their for be you’re want it all to be god when being god is painful and i know this because I’m the one that don’t want any need to be god and my family and friends say they care about me because I’m in a grouphome at by the car sale that has lots of slug bug cars in a row of colors and this Christmas season my friend is a new dog name Popeye becuz his eyes stick out and i also have my mom give me some help at hilltop street in white bear ave everyday im happy and my mom got me a 1989 gold proof coin in my year in 7-10-2018 and I also have ad coins and bc coins all the way to the year 2019 soon becuz coinstores don’t have them til people sell them in the year 2020 and I was born in 7-10-1989 and 7-10 backwords is like 2017 that i have in a 2oz good coin from amazon.com and soon my mom wants me home to the new home with my new dog pop eye born 2018 his birthday 2019 and move to Stillwater in the year 2020 and stay with my mom’s mom my grandma til 2027 becuz she is dying soon and live up with my step dad with my real mom at newyork with by my old cuz Kev mo the world’s best chess game player who plays chess with out looking and have me move the pieces to the letters and numbers to kill someone’s king

And also not 2oz good coin i was trying to spell 2oz gold coin from amazon that is the year 2017

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Three christs.

Directed by Jon Avnet

Dr. Alan Stone breaks new ground for treatment of the mentally ill through an experiment on three paranoid schizophrenic patients who believe they are Jesus Christ.

Richard Gere Peter Dinklage Walton Goggins Bradley Whitford Charlotte Hope Julianna Margulies Kevin Pollak James Monroe Iglehart Stephen Root Jane Alexander Julian Acosta Danny Deferrari Chris Bannow Kathryn Leigh Scott Christina Scherer Nancy Robinette Ripley Sobo Stina Kalman George Aloi Ava Gallucci Shade Rupe Frankie Verroca

Director Director

Producers producers.

Jon Avnet Robert Shapiro Glen Trotiner Molly Hassell Kip Pastor Stephanie Pon Max Tromba Daniel Levin Aaron Stern

Writers Writers

Jon Avnet Eric Nazarian

Original Writer Original Writer

Milton Rokeach

Casting Casting

Richard Pagano

Editor Editor

Patrick J. Don Vito

Cinematography Cinematography

Denis Lenoir

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Steven Haft Marsha Oglesby Bill Haber Arianne Fraser Delphine Perrier Adam Epstein

Production Design Production Design

Stephanie Carroll

Art Direction Art Direction

Irfan Akdag

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Composer composer, costume design costume design.

Tere Duncan

Makeup Makeup

Alberto Machuca Julie Teel

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Aaron F. Quarles Enrique Vega Ruth Carsch Jennifer Jefferson

Brooklyn Films Highland Film Group Narrative Capital

Releases by Date

12 sep 2017, 23 sep 2017, 10 jan 2020, 02 nov 2020, 09 nov 2020, 30 dec 2020, releases by country.

• Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
• Theatrical 16 FSK-Freigabedatum

117 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jake ★ 2

2020 Films, Ranked / All Films Watched in 2020, Ranked

Three Christs 020220 on Amazon Prime Video:

Man, they’re really sure they’ve got something going here, and they absolutely do not.

overly boring and bland, with self-indulgent performances of a poor script. The direction and editing are distracting and incoherent. Yet, each scene feels like it was made in a clean room with gloves and masks on - sterile. Julianna Margulies’ part is mishandled, which is a shame.

Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★½

“Away you heathens who electrocute me! Who do you think you are?”

I really wanted to like this, but the inspired dream cast is sadly let down by a script that struggles to find its footing and leaves them languishing.

On a side note, the way Richard Gere reads lines has always felt to me as extremely condescending, and here it feels like he’s amped up the level of patronizing to eleven.

Alan you are entirely predictable but always surprising. How is that?

Cinematic Time Capsule - 2017 Ranked

Review by V H A N 👀 ★★★½

watched this for my personality course.

I expected this to me more like a psychologist's analysis on personality , it really wasnt , instead its a heartfelt story about identity and empathy , with some great performances. Alan Stone was one of the first to critique andd help give a better solution to the problems of psychiatric hospitalizations so , really more people should know his name. his real one.

Review by Lisa ★★

1959 Psychiatrist Doctor Alan Stone (Richard Gere), his wife Ruth (Julianna Margulies), and two young daughters move to Michigan, where Doctor Stone takes up a new position at Ypsilanti State Hospital. He soon discovers three paranoid schizophrenics in the unit who claim to be Jesus. Doctor Stone proposes an innovative if somewhat unusual treatment plan. He will treat them all in the same room simultaneously, recording the details of the sessions. No other forms of therapy such as electroshock treatment or sedation will be offered.

State of Mind (aka The Three Christs) is based on Milton Rokeachs true psychological study as told in his book "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti". As much as this was incredibly well-acted (particularly by our…

Review by Nicholas Faron ★★½

Wished I got something coming out of this film. But it falls short, despite committed performances and an interesting story.

Review by Scott Renshaw ★½ 2

How do you tell a dramatized story about schizophrenic people in a way that doesn’t feel like the rough equivalent of mental-illness blackface? That’s a challenge that this fact-based drama from co-writer/director Jon Avnet never quite navigates. In 1959 Michigan, psychiatrist Dr. Alan Stone (Richard Gere) begins a study at a state mental hospital, working with three patients diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia—Joseph (Peter Dinklage), Clyde (Bradley Whitford) and Leon (Walton Goggins)—all of whom refer to themselves as Jesus Christ. There’s a great deal of hand-wringing over “crossing the boundary” in terms of getting too personally caught up in the lives of patients, and the story might have been compelling if it were genuinely interested in looking at being clinical vs.…

Review by Molly Laich ★★

Based on one of my favorite psychological texts of all time, but here’s the thing about the experiment - it essentially failed to show anything other than that patients do well when they’re being paid attention to, it has nothing profound to say about identity, and the shit the movie makes up to make a failed, plotless experiment a movie is just... unforgivable drivel. Goggins is good.

Review by Evan D

You know you're in for something great when a movie starring several good actors finds nobody to release it for over two years.

Review by sykobanana ★★★★

From the time when I was working in Mental Health and met someone who believed they were Christ, Iv'e always wondered what would happen if they met someone else with the same belief. (I also worked with another man believed that anyone who said they were Christ couldnt be, as Christ had gone to heaven, so he had to be the Holy Spirit - but that's another story).

Turns out an actual Doctor in the 1950s and 60s had the same idea too!

Now some context - Schizophrenia was treated like leprosy back then - you avoided people with it and wouldnt touch them (unless you needed to forcefully restrain them). There were minimal treatment options and the treatments that…

Review by Sara Clements ★★½

According to Healthline, a delusion of grandeur is “a person’s belief that they are someone other than who they are, such as a supernatural figure or a celebrity. A delusion of grandeur may also be a belief that they have special abilities, possessions, or powers.” There are different types of delusions, including religious, where one can believe that they are a religious figure. From the director of Fried Green Tomatoes comes a story that discusses such a false belief.

Delusions of grandeur have been explored in films before. The most recent film that comes to mind is Glass , where Sarah Paulson’s psychiatrist specializes in such delusions and tries to convince her patients that they only believe they are superhuman and…

Review by Blas Ornelas ★

Tan solo se hubieran definido como Padre, hijo y espíritu Santo.

Review by Luke Thorne ★★

Jon Avnet’s drama follows three schizophrenic patients who think they are Christ, starring Peter Dinklage, Julianna Marguiles and Richard Gere.

Adapted from Milton Rokeach’s non-fiction book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, which was published in 1964, the story concerns a boundary-pushing psychiatrist considers a trio of schizophrenic patients who think they are Jesus Christ.

Richard Gere gives an okay performance as Dr. Alan Stone, the psychiatrist who treats the three patients with the same amount of respect, while Julianna Marguiles is alright as Ruth, Alan’s wife.

Elsewhere, Bradley Whitford as Clyde, Peter Dinklage as Joseph and Walton Goggins as Leon are all reasonable as the trio of priests who all believe they are Jesus Christ.

The direction from Avnet is…

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Theater Review

Most People Think They’re Special, but These Think They’re Divine

By Alexis Soloski

• Sept. 9, 2014

Peter, Paul and John look down from the stained-glass windows onto “3 Christs,” a play staged in the sanctuary of Judson Memorial Church. And boy, have these saints got some preaching to do.

Peculiar Works , a company that stages site-specific productions throughout Greenwich Village, based this piece on an infamous case study in social psychology. In a state hospital in Ypsilanti, Mich., in 1959, Dr. Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics, each claiming to be Jesus Christ.

Rokeach (Christopher Hurt) hoped that mutual confrontation might lessen their obsessions. Certainly it would provide useful data about psychotic habits of mind and the limits of identity.

“My main purpose is scientific,” he insists in the play’s opening scene.

A nurse (Catherine Porter) asks, “An experiment?”

He replies, “An investigation.”

Don’t be too sure. The script, adapted by S. M. Dale and Barry Rowell from Rokeach’s published study , condenses this two-year trial into 100 minutes. Though Rokeach is intent on aiding the men, he sometimes seems more interested in what information a new factor (a placebo, a spot of transvestitism) will yield. Nothing improves the men’s condition.

That the men persist in their delusions is a problem dramatically. Much of the play exists in a kind of stasis, as the Christs (Donald Warfield, Arthur Aulisi and Daryl Lathon) shuffle and twitch and fabulate. This invites a nasty kind of voyeurism, even the occasional snicker.

Maybe this is deliberate, meant to scold us for our callousness toward the mentally ill. But where’s the line between implicating the audience and exploiting insanity for entertainment? The play acknowledges this predicament when one of the Christs remarks, “Why pay to see a comedy, when we have a comedy right here?”

But “3 Christs” is more tragedy than comedy, and the tragedy is Rokeach’s. Mr. Hurt does a fine job of making him both well-meaning and hubristic. For most of the play, he veers from one ethically dubious stance to another. Under Kelly O’Donnell’s direction, he introduces each adjustment in protocol with the flourish of a magician.

Finally, he has to acknowledge his own delusions, like his belief that he could treat these men so cavalierly in the name of scientific inquiry. They believed they were God. So, it seems, did their doctor.

“3 Christs” continues through Sept. 28 at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, at Thompson Street, Greenwich Village; 866-811-4111, peculiarworks.org.

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Bill Perkins

The jesus experiment.

I’ve been a Christian all my life and have always heard that we need to be like Jesus, we need to give him our hearts, we need to surrender to his will, we need to walk with him, etc. But how does one actually do these things ? Bill Perkins hits the nail on the head with this incredibly practical, engaging book. Read it, implement it, and your life will be changed.” – T. Lopez

At this seminar participants (men only, men and women, or the entire church) participants will live the Jesus experiment and discover the reliability of his promise when they follow in his steps. This seminar is life changing because it transforms how participants feel, think, speak and act.

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Events may take place Friday night and Saturday morning to leave time for other weekend activities. Or, they can take place on a weekend retreat. Men will be encouraged to join an eight-week follow-up group.

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