The psychoanalyist Robert Lindner provided another admonitory example, this time factual rather than fictional, of how imaginary worlds can delude while delighting, effacing the borders set by the ironic imagination. One of his patients, a brilliant scientist, had created a detailed futuristic universe inspired by the patient's extensive reading of science fiction. He not only documented this universe in great detail but also believed it to be real; without any irony, he spent many waking hours "visiting" it in his imagination to the detriment of his work and personal life. Lindner's therapeutic strategy was to enter into his patient's fantasy in order to wean him from it. He steeped himself in the world's details, initially from an ironic perspective. But he unexpectedly found himself nearly as captivated by the imaginary world as its creator: "My condition throughout was...that of enchantment developing toward obsession." The wish fulfillments provided by this imaginary realm proved too entrancing for Lindner, its wonderfully vast scope permitting him to be "geologist, explorer, astronomer, historian, physicist, adventurer" instead of the sedentary, middle-aged analyst he had become. This beguiling form of enchantment overtook him at a vulnerable period in his life, when he was most susceptible to its blandishments. Soon he was involved in an "intense pursuit of error and inconsistency in the 'records'...with the obsessive aim of 'setting them straight,' of 'getting the facts.'" Lindner awoke from his fixation through the intervention of his patient, who had grown uneasy about Lindner's peculiar interest in his world and drew his attention to it: the physician had to heal himself. Lindner's account of "The Jet-Propelled Couch" is a classic example of how the ironic imagination can lose its prophylactic distance from the immersion it makes possible.
Michael Saler, As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (2012)
