Robert noticed that the doctor’s eyes were shining with youth and vigor, although he was no longer a young man. Those were the eyes of a child when dragged away from playing.
“What about Amanda?” the doctor suddenly asked, motioning to Robert that he could close his mouth. “Have you known her long?”
“Amanda? No. I, well, Trevor… I… eh… met her only last night.”
“Trevor…” said the doctor thoughtfully. “I’m sorry, how does this Amanda look? How old is she?”
“I haven’t seen her, but I clearly felt and heard her… But somehow now, I realize that I know how she looks. She looks about 30, maybe less. Dark skin, tall, very attractive. And there are… her eyes…” Robert though for a bit and then looked at the doctor. “She has incredible eyes, green and blue, like from a fairytale. They…”
“Do you realize that it is, possibly, your alter ego?” asked the doctor impatiently, cutting Robert off. “And that it was she who advised you to come see me?”
“Well, not you, exactly. She insisted that I see a good psychiatrist here, in my world, or, at least, a psychologist and tell him everything. She said she would need assistance from this side to try and figure out what was happening to me there. Well, to Trevor…”
“This is all very strange, don’t you think?”
“I agree, which is why I am here now. I’ve had a long-lasting interest in dissociative disorders and I want to understand it all more than anyone else.”
“You read medical journals?” said the doctor, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “You see, dear, many psychiatrists, me included, by the way, view disassociation as a symptomatic response to trauma, critical emotional stress; it is connected to emotion dysregulation. However, it seems to me that nothing like that has happened to you, except maybe in the case of the first relapse and your reaction to it.”
“You are right, doctor, in that many scientists believe that dissociative disorder is contrived in nature.”
“Yes, dear, you are absolutely right. Latrogenic in nature or, as you put it, contrived. I am also convinced of that!”
The room fell silent. Dr. Friedman intently pondered the situation. This was the first time he had seen such symptoms and the course of, what he believed, the disease.
“You, Robert, are talking about dissociative disorders. I believe your condition is something else. You see, in order to diagnose multiple personality disorder, or in other words, dissociative identity disorder, you would need memory loss beyond normal forgetfulness in addition to the presence of at least two personalities that would regularly and in turn control your behavior. In this case, memory loss usually occurs when the channels are switched. You, on the other hand, manifest totally different symptoms. And then again, this Trevor…” The doctor paused to think. “You see, your memory clearly relays everything that is happening to you here and there. There are no manifestations of your other personality – Trevor. Only you control your actions, and I don’t see any interference from your alter ego. That's what puzzles me. I’ve never seen anything like that described in medical texts.”
He squeezed his fingers and touched his chin. The knuckles turned white from visible tension.
“By the way, have you taken notice of the name Trevor?" The doctor looked at Robert curiously, as if he just uncovered a secret and was about to reveal it.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“What do you mean what’s wrong? It is a palindrome, a word that reads the same backward as forward. Look!” The doctor took a sheet of paper and wrote several big letters. “Here, this is how it looks. Trevor is the mirror image of your name, Robert."