"You can call it that if you want."
"All right, I will."
"Do you believe in mental telepathy?"
"No. Do you?"
"Well, I'm keeping an open mind."
"What? You,
a psychiatrist, keeping an
open mind
? Ha!" It went on like this for quite a while.
Then at some point near the end he says, "How much do you value life?"
"Sixty-four."
"Why did you say 'sixty-four'?"
"How are you
supposed
to measure the value of life?"
"No! I mean, why did you say 'sixty-four,' and not 'seventy-three,' for instance?"
"If I had said 'seventy-three,' you would have asked me the same question!"
The psychiatrist finished with three friendly
questions, just as the other psychiatrist had done, handed me my papers, and I went off to the next
booth.
While I'm waiting in the line, I look at the paper which has the summary of all the tests I've taken so far. And just for the hell of it I show my
paper
to the guy next to me, and I ask him in a rather stupid-sounding voice, "Hey! What did you get in 'Psychiatric'? Oh! You got an 'N.' I got an 'N'
in everything else, but I got a 'D' in 'Psychiatric.' What does
that
mean?" I knew what it meant: "N" is normal, "D" is deficient.
The guy pats me on the shoulder and says, "Buddy, it's perfectly all right. It doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it!" Then he walks way
over to the other corner of the room, frightened: It's a lunatic!
I started looking at the papers the psychiatrists had written, and it looked pretty serious! The first guy wrote:
Thinks people talk about him.
Thinks people stare at him.
Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations.
Talks to self.
Talks to deceased wife.
Maternal aunt in mental institution.
Very peculiar stare. (I knew what
that
was--that was when I said, "And
this
is
medicine
?")
The second psychiatrist
was obviously more important, because his scribble was harder to read. His notes said things like "auditory hypnogogic
hallucinations confirmed." ("Hypnogogic" means you get them while you're falling asleep.)
He wrote a lot of other technical-sounding notes, and I looked them over, and they looked pretty bad. I figured I'd have to get all of this
straightened out with the army somehow.
At the end of the whole physical examination there's an army officer who decides whether you're in or you're out. For instance, if there's
something the matter with your hearing,
he
has to decide if it's serious enough to keep you out of the army. And because the army was scraping the
bottom of the barrel for new recruits, this officer wasn't going to take anything from anybody. He was tough as nails. For instance,
the fellow ahead
of me had two bones sticking out from the back of his neck--some kind of displaced vertebra, or something--and this army officer had to get up from
his desk and
feel
them--he had to make sure they were real!
I figure
this
is the place I'll get this whole misunderstanding straightened out. When it's my turn, I hand my papers to the officer, and I'm ready to
explain everything, but the officer doesn't look up. He sees the "D" next to "Psychiatric," immediately reaches for the rejection stamp, doesn't ask me
any questions, doesn't say anything; he just stamps my papers "REJECTED," and hands me my 4-F paper, still looking at his desk.
So I went out and got on the bus for Schenectady, and while I was riding on the bus I thought about the crazy thing that had happened, and I
started to laugh--out loud--and I said to myself, "My God! If they saw me now, they would be
sure!
"
When I finally got back to Schenectady I went in to see Hans Bethe. He was sitting behind his desk, and he said to me in a joking voice, "Well,
Dick, did you pass?"
I made a long face and shook my head slowly. "No."
Then he
suddenly felt terrible, thinking that they had discovered some serious medical problem with me, so he said in a concerned voice, "What's
the matter, Dick?"
I touched my finger to my forehead.
He said, "No!"
"Yes!"
He cried, "No-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!" and he laughed so hard that the roof of the General Electric Company nearly came off.
I told the story to many other people, and everybody laughed, with a few exceptions.
When I got back to New York, my father, mother, and sister called for me at the airport, and on the way home in the car I told them all the story.
At the end of it my mother said, "Well, what should we do, Mel?"
My
father said, "Don't be ridiculous, Lucille. It's absurd!"
So that was that, but my sister told me later that when we got home and they were alone, my father said, "Now, Lucille, you shouldn't have said
anything in front of him. Now what
should
we do?"
By that time my mother had sobered up, and she said, "Don't be ridiculous, Mel!"
One other person was bothered by the story. It was at a Physical
Society meeting dinner, and Professor Slater, my old professor at MIT, said,
"Hey, Feynman! Tell us that story about the draft I heard."
I told the whole story to all these physicists--I didn't know any of them except Slater--and they were all laughing throughout, but at the end one
guy said, "Well, maybe the psychiatrist had something in mind."
I said resolutely, "And what profession are
you
, sir?" Of course, that was a dumb question, because we were all physicists at a professional
meeting. But I was surprised that a physicist would say something like that.
He said, "Well, uh, I'm
really not supposed to be here, but I came as the guest of my brother, who's a physicist. I'm a psychiatrist." I smoked him
right out!
After a while I began to worry. Here's a guy who's been deferred all during the war because he's working on the bomb, and the draft board gets
letters saying he's important, and now he gets a "D" in "Psychiatric"--it turns out he's a nut! Obviously he
isn't
a nut; he's just trying to make us
believe
he's a nut--we'll get him!
The situation didn't look good to me, so I had to find a way out. After a few days, I figured out a solution. I wrote a letter
to the draft board that
went something like this:
Dear Sirs:
I do not think I should be drafted because I am teaching science students, and it is partly in the strength of our future scientists that the national
welfare lies. Nevertheless, you may decide that I should be deferred because of the result of my medical report, namely, that I am psychiatrically unfit.
I feel that no weight whatsoever should be attached to this report because I consider it to be a gross error.
I am calling this error to your attention because I am insane enough not to wish to take advantage of it.
Sincerely,
R. P Feynman
Result:"Deferred. 4F Medical Reasons."
