The final performance in tonight’s Improbable Dramatic Readings session, at Arisia, was a two-minute-long reading from this research paper:
“Psychotic Visitors to the White House,” Joseph A. Sebastiani and James L. Foy, American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 122, no. 6, December 1965, pp. 679-86.
The study authors, at the University of Cincinnati and Georgetown University, report: “This study describes an unusual group of hospitalized patients who, with few exceptions, insisted on seeking a personal interview with the President of the United States at his official residence, the White House. Secret Service agents and White House guards met with each visitor initially and weighed the possibility of serious mental illness because of the visitor’s unwillingness to leave or his reasons for trying to see the President.”