The Faulty Weathermen of the Mind

When Peter K. Chadwick was a boy, his mother accused him of being the Devil. She had her own demons—childhood abuse, cheating husband, family betrayals, poverty, cancer. She told Peter he was a “no good,” a “rotter,” and a “bloody Chadwick.” Don’t trust a soul, she told him, and harangued him whenever he began to develop affection for anyone.

Peter grew callous and paranoid, which didn’t earn him any friends. He was bullied at school. Classmates gossiped, slandered, and ridiculed him. After he walked out on his mother when she was on her deathbed, he was overcome with guilt, and took it as proof that he was everything his mother and classmates accused him of being.

Determined to assert his own identity against the world and his mother, Chadwick became a psychology professor. In the summer of 1979, when he was in his early 30s, it all fell apart. Chadwick lost his job as a professor and was eking out a penniless existence in Hackney, London. He was certain he was a target of a campaign of persecution, and began to suspect he was, in fact, the Devil.

If we have never felt a mild earthquake before, we may briefly mistake it for a dizzy spell.

While sitting on a bench in Hackney, Chadwick heard a little girl ask her mother, “Is that man possessed by the Devil, Mummy?” The mother looked at Chadwick and replied, “Yes, dear.” Chadwick took the coincidental remark as final confirmation. He was now convinced an organization of technological experts, enemies, neighbors, and newspaper personnel were monitoring his thoughts and sending him replies through the radio. Were they trying to manage his fate, Chadwick asked himself, cure him of his evil?

Chadwick took a temporary office job. One day, he was ruminating on how he should end his life when a man came out of a side