........


132.     A similar exercise was carried out independ-
ently by Dr. David Delvin, who reported the outcome in
World Medicine(17). Again, I quote.-

    "I settled down to the 'personality test'     This
    consisted of 200 questions of the type much
    favoured by women's magazines (Are you considered
    warm-hearted by your friends?     Do you enjoy
    activities of your own choosing? Are you likely
    to be jealous? Do you bite your fingernails?)

    Eventually, a young man took my answers away for
    "processing". When he returned, he was waving an
    impressive-looking piece of graph paper, around
    which were printed figures, symbols, and various
    bits of McLuhanistic jargon. Across the paper was
    drawn a line that looked something like the Boat
    Race course. This, the young man told me, was my
    personality curve.

    The young man airily drew a ring round the area of
    Putney, and said that this represented "other
    people"    A similar ring in the region of Barnes
    Bridge indicated "myself", while another drawn
    round Mortlake Brewery apparently represented
    "life". On the basis of all this, the young man
    gave me a 20 minute personality analysis, which
    mainly consisted of porentous-sound ing pseudo-
    scientific neologisms.    ("You've got quite a bit
    of agity and you're moderately dispersed, but we
    can help you to standard tech.") He seemed a bit


                    - 55 -

vague about what these words actually meant.

At the end, he said to me impressively, "So you
see, it's all very scientific - thanks to the fact
that our founder is a man of science himself"

"Oh yes, very scientific indeed," I said.

I hadn't the heart to tell him that his super-
scientific system had failed to detect the fact
that I had marked the "don't know" column against
all 200 questions in the test."

....
--