Chapter 18: You’re Not Telling Me Everything

The year Cassie flew abroad to be with her, she and Fredrick fell in love with each other. Although they were separated by distance, their feelings toward each other never changed.

Cassie was her best friend. Even if she loved Fredrick, she could never tell him. At the same time, she didn't want to ruin their friendship with her feelings. As much as she did love him, she kept a distance from him once he and Cassie started dating. And that was the reason she came home after she graduated.

Fredrick furrowed his eyebrows tightly after hearing her words, "You're not telling me everything."

"You're my mentor, how dare I cheat on you?" Irish smiled. "It's okay, I can handle it and don't forget I'm not also an excellent psychologist myself. I'm only really interested in Ken's case that I've been working on."

"The world is really small, isn't it? You're finally working for my father's company."

Fredrick recognized that she was desperately trying to change the topic, so he just went with it and showed a wry smile, "If I had known that you'd be working for Linkus, I wouldn't have been so anxious to go back. You can bet on that."

Irish shrugged, she hadn't realized that Professor Tim was Fredrick's father.

"I've seen your assessment of Ken, and I agree with you. Ken indeed suffers from secondary delusional disorder." Fredrick said seriously, "I went over the files you gave to me on the plane, and your judgment is spot on. He suffered anxiety and a lack of security early in life, so now he's dealing with this disorder."

The delusional disorder can be divided into primary and secondary. The former occurs without any premise of incentive, while the latter happens for more complex reasons. However, the similarity between them is that delusion is generated because of existing barriers. Take Ken, for example, the reason why he's thought to have this disorder is that he had undiagnosed anxiety for years.

"It's not difficult to analyze Ken's disease situation." Irish adjusted her sitting position and said seriously, "I have started a board experiment with him. As we all know, people without this disorder will choose to put the board in front of them or to the side, but Ken chose to put it behind him. This proves that he is lacking in trust. I also got him talking a little bit. I asked him if he could ever kill Joseph, but he looked terrified and avoided answering my question since it seemed that he thought Joseph was too powerful. He shrank down into self-protection. In other words, he'd been thinking of himself as a victim from the beginning."

"Victims tend to be anxious and nervous." Fredrick agreed with what she said, "From the information you've given, it's apparent that Ken's wife had a strong personality. Thanks to her introduction, Ken was able to work for Runestone Group and thought he was a lesser man for doing so. Hard as he worked, he couldn't rid himself of the thought that his success relied on his wife. I guess the employees there must have spread some rumors about this behind his back, which would naturally make him feel uncomfortable."

"His wife must have been closer to Joseph than him, and that made him guarded." Irish began to speak, "I've been watching the video over and over, and I see now that Ken must have been holding the knife from the beginning. I believe that his wife knew something about how he had been feeling mentally and tried to ease his doubt, so she sent bento to his work all the time. However, Ken had already been suspicious, so he took the knife that night and did what he did."

Fredrick sighed lightly, "A man's surroundings can have a great impact on his mentality. Irish, you have an accurate analysis of Ken's dream."

"You were the one who taught me how to analyze dreams." Irish looked at him, feeling indescribably attached to him, but she forced herself to give this thought up. She cleared her throat and returned to being serious.

"From Ken's dream, it's easy for us to see that he is yearning for but afraid of the parent body. He dreamed of a passage and a horrible black house full of thorns. The content of this dream is dark but contradictory. After searching, I found that before he was born, his mother was thinking of abortion. Most adults don't know that it is possible for a fetus to have the memory of this, albeit subconscious. It's too subtle to explain or prove with science. But in fact, this memory does exist.

Naturally, Ken doesn't know that it exists because it's subconscious, and it can be reflected in a dream when a patient is in certain psychological situations. The black house indicated fear from the memory of the fetal period, where he was afraid of being deserted by his mother. So we can say his insecurities originated from the parent's body." Said Irish.

"We identify mother with security inherently, but in his case, he's lost that due to his subconscious memories. So it's normal that his dreams are contradictory." Fredrick agreed with her analysis.

"And Ken's anxiety has been generated in his childhood." Irish went on, with a slight heaviness, "In his dream, he saw his brother fly away in a coffin with wings, this is actually a very typical dream for people who have lost a loved one. More or less, we all have dreamed of the death of family or friends, which usually has two kinds of connotations. The first is hypothetical, and the second is an expectation of seeing the death of friends or family. It's easy for us to identify that Ken belongs to the latter."

"Though this theory may be argued by most, it's actually the most plausible. The reason Ken would have a dream like this is that he's had a childhood in which he's wished this more than once."

Fredrick nodded, standing up to pour a glass of water for Irish. Sitting back down beside her, he analyzed, "You've mentioned in the material that Ken has a sibling, but his brother is alive, so we can naturally analyze the condition of his childhood. As a matter of fact, everybody at one point has felt hostile towards our siblings. This kind of alienation is something that's ongoing. Though the relationship between siblings depends on their ages, the hostility in childhood still exists. Children are selfish, so they feel their needs more urgently and want to satisfy them. Once 'competition' appears, they can become hostile."