A good sys­tem for re­veal­ing as yet un­known facets in man con­sists of plac­ing the sub­ject in a to­tal­ly new sit­u­a­tion and ob­serv­ing his re­ac­tions. For ex­am­ple: if I make a phone call and I hear a voice on the other end of the wire say “Hello,” the ex­per­i­ment will lack any sci­en­tif­ic or in­for­ma­tive value since the sub­ject has done noth­ing more than to react in a rou­tine man­ner in re­sponse to an equal­ly rou­tine sit­u­a­tion. There­fore, it does not pro­vide me with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ves­ti­gate any hid­den as­pects of his per­son­al­i­ty.

How can I learn, for ex­am­ple, if a par­tic­u­lar store­keep­er—all ami­a­bil­i­ty and smiles as I make my pur­chase—might not be ca­pa­ble of stran­gling me over a mat­ter of a few small coins? The best thing, then, would be to stim­u­late the man’s un­fore­see­able re­ac­tions; these can be quite in­struc­tive.

I shall pro­pose sev­er­al ex­am­ples.

1. I pay for the mea­ger amount of a half kilo­gram of bread with a bill of the largest de­nom­i­na­tion in cir­cu­la­tion and I flat­ly refuse to ac­cept the change. I at­ten­tive­ly ob­serve the baker’s cov­etous­ness, will­ing as he is to take ad­van­tage of my pre­sumed in­san­i­ty. I leave. Five min­utes later I enter the store once more, this time ac­com­pa­nied by a po­lice of­fi­cer, and I ac­cuse the baker of hav­ing re­fused to hand over my change. I study his anger at my bad faith, his dis­ap­point­ment at the foiled rip-off. Fear­ful, per­plexed, he stam­mers in­com­pre­hen­si­ble ex­cus­es under the sus­pi­cious stare of the po­lice­man, who does not be­lieve that some­one would refuse to ac­cept that kind of change. He humbly hands me the nec­es­sary amount and I mag­nan­i­mous­ly de­clare that I pre­fer to con­sid­er the un­pleas­ant episode closed. The of­fi­cer, some­what dis­ap­point­ed, says “What­ev­er you say.” I ob­serve with sat­is­fac­tion the im­mense re­lief on the baker’s face.*

2. I in­vite a friend of mine to have din­ner at my home. When he ar­rives, I pre­vent him from en­ter­ing with the ac­cu­sa­tion that he had—twelve or four­teen years ear­li­er—stolen my girl with whom, of course, I was madly in love. I ob­serve his as­ton­ish­ment (we’ve known each other for only a few months), his hes­i­ta­tion (could I pos­si­bly be the one who...), his sor­row, his rage...

3. I get on the bus and say “To such and such a place.” When the dri­ver—who is busy keep­ing his eyes on the traf­fic—opens his hand to col­lect the fare, I drop a chess rook and a sprig of pars­ley into it. The ques­tion is: how will the bus­driv­er—a per­son of ha­bit­u­al­ly un­sta­ble nerves—in­ter­pret this enig­mat­ic of­fer­ing?

4. I take a trip to the re­sort city of Mar del Plata and check into one of the most lux­u­ri­ous ho­tels. Just as soon as the maid leaves, I put the bed out in the hall­way and take a re­fresh­ing nap, par­tic­u­lar­ly well de­served after such a tir­ing trip, right there.

5. By means of a skele­ton key, I let my­self into any house when the own­ers hap­pen to be ab­sent. I await them placid­ly seat­ed, smok­ing, drink­ing whisky, watch­ing tele­vi­sion. The sub­jects ar­rive. Then I harsh­ly re­buke them, I shake my fist at them, I say “How the devil do you have the nerve to walk into my house?,” pay­ing no at­ten­tion to their ex­pla­na­tions, or pay­ing at­ten­tion (it makes no dif­fer­ence), I de­mand that they show me their deed to the house, I do not allow them to open the draw­er in which they ridicu­lous­ly claim the deed is since that draw­er is an in­alien­able part of a piece of fur­ni­ture which, in turn, is an in­alien­able part of my house and, con­se­quent­ly, in no way could pos­si­bly con­tain the deed to a house be­long­ing to peo­ple who are strangers, sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters and per­haps crim­i­nals and well-known mem­bers of the un­der­world, etc.

6. I be­come ac­quaint­ed with a prim, rather silly and let’s say quite pret­ty girl. I ask her for a date, I tell her I love her, I be­come her fiancé and thus the date of our en­gage­ment ar­rives; the cel­e­bra­tion takes place at her house. Some­one makes a toast. Then there’s an­oth­er toast. There’s a third toast. Fi­nal­ly, the long-await­ed mo­ment ar­rives in which the fiancé—a well-man­nered boy, if such an en­ti­ty can be said to exist—of­fers his be­trothed the beau­ti­ful sur­prise that has been talked about so much. Smil­ing with love and hap­pi­ness, I hand over a pack­age of con­sid­er­able di­men­sions. The bride-to-be tests its weight; it seems great to her. The keen­est cu­rios­i­ty is etched on the guests’ faces. Every­one forms a cir­cle and the women squeeze around the ec­sta­t­ic bride-to-be. The fancy gift wrap­ping goes fly­ing and so does the bow with which it’s adorned. Now a rich case lined in black chamois comes into view. “An ex­pen­sive jewel!” my sweet­heart thinks and that gleam of cov­etous­ness that I see in her eyes jus­ti­fies me in ad­vance. Her fin­gers rush to un­snap the au­to­mat­ic lock. The lid rises with a plush click and a beau­ti­ful, mul­ti-col­ored, cheery ex­treme­ly ven­omous coral snake sin­u­ous­ly slides, in search of free­dom, along my sweet­heart’s ivory arms.

7. I wait until the man­ag­er of the firm for which I work is in his im­pres­sive, car­pet­ed of­fice, con­vers­ing with his most im­por­tant client who is about to close the deal on a pur­chase worth an as­tro­nom­i­cal sum. I rap timid­ly on the door; I hear “Come in;” I enter with dis­crete and mod­est steps; I say with a cir­cum­spect hint of a smile, “Par­don me, sir;” I walk to the im­pos­ing wood­en cab­i­net, open it and uri­nate tor­ren­tial­ly upon port­fo­lios, books, equip­ment, con­tracts, doc­u­ments and pa­pers which may or may not be im­por­tant.

Of course, there are a few sim­pler vari­ants which I be­queath to those who may still lack the nec­es­sary prac­tice and who may want to take up this psy­cho­log­i­cal cru­sade. Here are a few:

Mak­ing pas­sion­ate and even erot­ic re­marks to mem­bers of the Sal­va­tion Army with­out re­gard to sex or age. Stand­ing on the drug­store scale and stay­ing there all day with­out al­low­ing any­one to weigh him­self. Buy­ing two hun­dred grams of sala­mi, sliced very thin, open­ing the pack­age and, using the beau­ti­ful red slices, out­lin­ing a heart and writ­ing I LOVE YOU on the del­i­catessen counter. Trav­el­ing on the bus, seat­ed next to the aisle; wait­ing for the time your neigh­bor, man or woman, has to get off and says “Ex­cuse me;” and you an­swer cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, “No,” and you ab­solute­ly refuse to allow him or her to pass.

The psy­cho­log­i­cal cru­sade can cause a cer­tain amount of anx­i­ety (as does any cru­sade), im­plies one is in­volved in se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties (as does any cru­sade). But, what do these in­con­ve­niences mean com­pared with the de­light of ob­serv­ing the re­ac­tions to which the psy­cho­log­i­cal cru­sade gives rise?

This is, at any rate, what I imag­ine, for—I con­fess—I’m noth­ing more than a mere the­o­reti­cian and it’s prob­a­ble that I’ll never put my ideas into prac­tice. But you can—and should—do it.