HALF A MIND
A Short Story in the Slice of Life Series
David Lee Howells
Copyright 2013
Expert Witness
Preface Testimony Regarding Trial of
John W. Keppler, Transcript
“The brain is comprised of two cooperative and complementary halves. Most lay people are aware of being ‘right’ or ‘left brain’ predominant as it applies to creativity, math skills, musical ability, emotionality and logic. Left and right-brain dominance in the older, ‘primitive’ brain, also called the paleocortex, is less distinct. Here are the centers of control for appetite, sleep cycles, rage, and altering physiology to meet demands such as flight or flight syndrome.
“The ‘new’ brain, or neocortex, is the miraculous matter where higher functions are found; cognizance, creativity, appreciation of beauty. Here are laid the pathways that give us kindness, nobility, self sacrifice and love. It is also where the counterparts to those states-of-being coexist.
“There is general agreement that our brain is not so much a unified consciousness as it is a coalition of mental fiefdoms with varying levels of allegiance to the dominant control center. Who has not had the ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ debate in their minds? Self-contained arguments (on the one hand, but on the other hand) are clear evidence that all but the most rigidly trained minds are bone-encapsulated debate clubs.
“This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is that kind of cognitive dissonance that gives rise to inspiration, to action steps, and to creativity. Yet like anything in human existence, there are always the risks of ‘too much’. Too much dissonance causes mental paralysis or insanity. Too much dominance of one side of the brain presents the world with a cold-hearted logician. The other side’s over-expression is fertile ground for an emotional train wreck…or perhaps a musical genius.
“All of this is taught in the fields of psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy. All these fields include these foundations when studying aberrations and anomalies of the mind. It is here, in the realm of mental anomalies, where the stage was set for this most unusual case.
“Multiple personality syndrome is well studied and documented, and the therapy protocols have found frequent inclusion into researched journals, university textbooks, and even Reader’s Digest. This case revolves around a small closet in the mansion of mental health studies.
“The right and left sides of the neocortex are connected by an ‘X’ shaped crossing of communicative tissue called the corpus callosum. Cases exist where this structure is damaged in an adult with curious side effects where, for example, a person might see a picture of a horse with one eye kept shut and not be able to remember the word describing the beast. With the other eye closed instead, the word ‘horse’ is recognized, but the person would not be able to make even a stick figure drawing of same.
“In the unusual case spoken of here, the corpus collosum was documented by MRI to be only rudimentarily present, and it is assumed to have been that way since the subject was developing in utero.”
Infancy
From Patient Historical File
Submitted as Background Information
The child was born without complications. The APGAR score, which is a relative measurement of neonatal function ranging from one to five, was a strong ‘three’, and fifteen minutes later a reassessment rose to a ‘four’. One more quarter of an hour later, John W. Keppler weighed in at a full ‘five’. The birthing was natural, with no episiotomy or nerve blocks allowed. The benefits of a couple having gone through Lamaze and with access to midwifery made the event a personal statement by a loving couple saying they would honor Nature and Creator by living and acting in accordance to natural laws and processes as much as possible.
Baby John seemed blessedly normal, and it wasn’t long until simple stimulus response interactions (kootchy coo – giggle) were seen to evolve as the experiential sponge of his mind assimilated information and experiences at the greatest rate a human will likely ever experience during his or her lifetime.
Family and friends agreed John was a delightful baby with a marvelous capacity to laugh, interact with what must seem monstrously large faces saying nonsensical things, and vocalizing in a happy, sing-song random tune that kept anyone in earshot grinning Yet, John was quietly contemplative during about half of his waking hours as well. Here he would hold a rattle or stuffed toy in one hand close to his face, while the other hand carefully explored contours, textures, flexibility and colors.
The rattle was one of the indicators that would later be recalled as suggestive of what was to come. Merry John seemed to love the sound the rattle would make, singing and laughing along with it. Contemplative John would seem to study the rattle, tap it against the crib wall, and shake it not to interact with the sound but rather to attempt to understand how it made the sound. One evening, John’s mother recalled watching her infant in that studious mood of his do something just a touch odd for someone so young. The rattle was in his left hand, and a Care Bear stuffy was in his right. With a face that seemed passive, Baby John would shake the rattle, then the Bear, and repeat that cycle over and over until there had been a dozen comparisons. This went into John’s baby-journal, and was followed with, “A most peculiar thing. My Johnny then began to alternate striking the bear with the rattle, then the rattle with the bear. Back and forth, with a calm but attentive face that might do Buster Keaton’s memory justice. I told Chet about his son’s actions and all he could ask was who Buster Keaton was. He’d never heard about ‘Old Stone Face’.”
Theory Regarding Neurologic Pathology of Accused
Expert Witness Testimony
“Brain cells are the most differentiated in the body. No other cell is more resistant to radiation injury. No other cell is more dependent on other factors for their survival. Brain cells can only metabolize blood sugar, while other tissues can make use of fats and proteins. No other tissue has a barrier that protects it from exposure to potentially disruptive chemicals and substances.
“In prenates, it is not known if there is an active pre-programmed left side/right side brain activity level. However, most sources suspect that right brain/left brain dominances find expression after birth, and that it’s not nurture that causes right/left specializations, but nature.
“In the case of John Keppler, we suspect that the lack of a functioning corpus collosum was a factor in brain development throughout the pregnancy trimesters as well as post-partum. We suspect that as a result of this loss of brain-half communication, there developed a natural compensating self-sufficiency of both halves of the brain, where both sides had word to image and image to word recognition, both sides had competence with vision, bilateral extremity coordination and sensory input awareness. These are of special interest to neurophysiologists because our output for muscle coordination and sensory input classically has the right brain controlling the left side of the body, and the left brain controlling the right side. In the accused, either side of the brain appears to be able to function independently and manage all bodily systems without assistance to its opposing half-brain.
“We are still discovering new frontiers of brain function and adaptation. John Keppler may launch new branches in several fields, including litigation.”
School Experience Records
From Patient Historical File
Pre-school instructors noticed and documented behaviors that were not disruptive, but bordering on unusual. For example, art experimentation with paints and easels produced a canvas odd enough to encourage one of the teachers to snap an image with her cell phone. One half of the sheet had symmetrical shapes painted with nothing but black paint. The other half was filled with bright colors and free flowing s
trokes. That prompted an increased level of observation of the child to gather more information before presenting concerns to the child’s parents. Young John played well with others and seemed well-adjusted and able to learn new skills at an appropriate rate. Yet, anyone who watched long enough arrived at the same impression; John seemed to have a great capacity to experience the joys of life, and an ability to focus on mechanical skills. In the first, the face and hands were expressive. In the latter, expressiveness was minimal. There was no middle ground.
Halfway through the year, the supervisor for the day-school sat down with the parents and brought out these observations. She emphasized that she felt there was no emergency, but did recommend they seek one of the child psychologists that were on the parents’ HMO for a general overview. After fifteen minutes discussion, the evaluation was declined, but it was agreed that the journal the mother had started at infancy be adapted to include observations of behavior both typical and atypical. The teacher recalled that she emphasized for the parents not to become paranoid. All children are unique, she told them, and that’s healthy. Being moody, inventive, or even having invisible playmates was well within normal parameters.
The mother was faithful in keeping daily log entries, but noted in one of her recordings; “I know that we are following the advice of someone who cares about Johnny, who is a professional and has extensive experience. Yet, she has turned this joyful recording of my son’s blossoming into a diagnostic tool. It is hard not to resent this change, but who do I direct my resentment to? There is no villain here, only unexpected and suspected deviation from someone’s version of what is normal. Yet, that painting Johnny did. I can’t get that out of my mind.”
Kindergarten and grade school years served to relieve the minds of both parents, for there were no more parent-teacher consultations requested. Report cards showed good grades, class participation, and quotes in comment sections like, “John is a wonderful young boy who has a great capacity for appreciation, humor and helping others, while at the same time capable of focused concentration and grasp of scholastic skills.” Another wrote, “I have no doubt but that John will make his mark in the world, and I am pleased to play a role in offering him direction and needed skills.”
In retrospect, John may have adapted his behaviors to minimize unwanted scrutiny during these years. For the most part, if that is the case, he was surprisingly adept. The only documented break down in that cooperative adaptation was in 11th grade biology class. Not all schools have hands-on dissection, but his did. John was one of four students at one dissection table. The other three were female students. One who was interviewed recalled, “John kind of took over, you know? I mean, cutting into frog guts was just gross, so none of us objected when he said he’d do all the dissection stuff. I could barely look, and when he sliced the poor thing and you saw gook come out of the belly, I almost hurled. I mean, eww! John didn’t seem to mind at all, and I thought he was pretty cold about it. He was quick and efficient and was the first one to have the frog dissection requirements completely done. I mean, way ahead of everyone else. Then, the strangest thing happened that showed me how wrong I was about him. John touched the frog’s mouth with his finger and then began to cry and tell the dead thing that he was so sorry. You never really know about a person, huh?”
There was a brief entry of the event by the school nurse. John, having completed the dissection requirements, was asked publicly by the instructor to run an errand for him. To reduce potential embarrassment with John’s peers, the actual destination was told John outside the classroom. He was to report to the nurse. The nurse’s notes recorded his obedience to arrive at her office, the note from the biology instructor, and her impressions of their brief interaction. Her notes indicated that it is not unusual for very sensitive individuals to suppress emotional reactions to something new and potentially upsetting as dissection, and that it was her feeling from interviewing the boy that he had forced himself to put on a brave front in front of the girls, one of whom he confided that he wanted to impress in particular. That suppression lasted till the job was done, but could not be maintained. Her notes indicate further that John had apparently come to realize the majority of this underlying cause to the break down, and spoke about it with minimal prompting by the nurse. We now question whether this story was self-revelation and awareness, or a protective story hiding a different reality.
Multiple Personalities
Expert Witness Testimony
“A multiple or fractured personality wherein there appears more than one autonomous or partially autonomous consciousness sharing a single brain is well documented and extensively studied. The vast majority of these sufferers are victims of trauma or abuse, and their system of mental hierarchies becomes fragmented, with said fragments varying in their ability to express themselves. This can result in spontaneous and momentary expressions that might be anything from a calm shift to an explosive outburst. Other cases can be people who display for extended periods of time what appears to be completely different personalities numbering from two up to over a dozen. The most famous among lay folk is known by the name ‘Sybil’, whose mental and physical trauma was due to horrific treatment at the hands of parents when she was a child. Complicating the dysfunction is that often the predominant personality is not aware of the existence of secondary mental entities, while the secondaries, if there are more than one, know of each other.
“John Keppler had no such ill-treatment. In fact, his upbringing can be seen as an example of loving and exemplary parenting. His trauma, if it can be called that, was not emotional abuse after birth but genetic alteration with roots that went back to conception.
“John has no alpha personality, but two betas. They were and are of approximately equal dominance, and which one having center stage for expression appears to be a function of what is needed at the time and a cooperative agreement between the sides to be fair in sharing their time in control. These personalities appear to have reached an accord in that they did not want recognition of being different, and so they cooperated in presenting a front of normalcy.
“As a court-appointed psychologist, I had the unique opportunity to interview John Keppler on three occasions, as well as interview a number of those who have interacted with him during his childhood years. I’d like to offer some of those interviews at this point. I will, with your permission, assign the personality previously denoted as Merry John as ‘John’, and the less emotional and more logical entity as ‘Jack’. During my interviews, this differentiation was agreed to by both of the young man’s personalities and used by me. In fact, they seemed quite pleased with it.”
Interview With John
Transcript Read Verbatim Into Testimony
Me: Who am I addressing today?
John: Hi Doc! It’s me, John. How you feeling today? You had a touch of the stomach virus last time and had to cancel our chat.
Me: Hello, John. I’m doing much better, thank you. I wanted to get your take on how you and Jack interact. Do you have conversations with each other? Do you conflict with each other on day-to-day decisions?
John: It may sound strange, but we give each other space, for the most part. He does his thing, I do mine. We have to compromise sometimes and both be attentive though the other retains control of our body. We both need the lessons in school, for example, so we divide the hearing and visual so both of us gets what we need. We can talk to each other sometimes, but it’s mainly to compare notes on lessons. He’s not interested in girls, but I am, so we don’t discuss that sort of stuff.
Me: Do you two ever argue?
John: Hardly ever! You might as well argue with Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Like I said, we’re free to pursue our individual dreams. I love rainbows. He thinks they’re interesting from a prism standpoint.
Me: John, you know the reason I’m talking with you today…
John: Whoa! Doc! Now, let’s keep things on
an upswing, ok? I understand you’re just doing your job, and that’s great. Your mother must be proud of you, really. Now, Jack’s my brother, kinda sorta. We respect each other and wouldn’t do anything to cause the other harm. I mean, if I testified against Jack, what would happen to me? Not that he did anything, mind you. But think about it. Are you prepared to offer me the witness protection program? How? Shove a metal plate between the two halves of our brain with a little window so I can visit on every other Thursday?
Me: All right, for now, but John you must realize I have a job to do and need your help. John, what you share with Jack is so different than anything I’ve studied before. What can you tell me about how you cope with this one-of-a-kind relationship?
John: Ah, Doc. Is it all that unique? Twins are often psychically linked. There’s lots of folk with more than one self inside them. Jack and me are mainly different in that we’ve been together this way since before we were born. How do I cope? There’s nothing to cope about. It is what it is, and it is what it always was and will be. Live and let live, sort of.
Interview With Jack
Read Verbatim Into Testimony
Me: Who am I addressing today?
Jack: Jack.
Me: Thank you, Jack, for talking with me today.
Jack: I don’t want to be seen as uncooperative.
Me: I’d like you to tell me what it’s like living with two minds in one brain.
Jack: It’s great. I only have to think part time. If John has a chick flick on, I turn it off, or me off, or something like that.
Me: Jack, do you two talk with each other, are you aware of what each other is doing or thinking when the other is in control?
Jack: When we talk, we talk. Otherwise, I’m no mind reader. Heh…that’s kind of ironic. Anyway, most of the time, we keep to ourselves.