Rusk's counterphobia diagnosis

timeline_event

pivotal · 9 Nov YDAU

When: LATE P.M., 9 Nov YDAU (after hours in Dr. Rusk's office; overheard by Pemulis at the door)
What: Overheard through the door: Dr. Rusk, following up their work on his fear of weights, diagnoses Stice with "counterphobia" — a "delusion of some special agency or control" over objects, an "infantile omnipotence" and "magical thinking" compensating for "some repressed wounded inner trauma having to do with absence of control." Stice, baffled ("Fear of linoleum?"; "So you're saying I'm overestimating objects?"), rejects the Oedipal/GI-Joe apparatus, insists he doesn't want omnipotence, and (his voice cracking) says "something about his bed." He proposes to name his anger "Horace," after the dead Kansas pointer. This is the clinical/psychological account of the same phenomena Lyle framed as objects-not-to-be-underestimated (event 8) and Stice later frames as a guardian ghost (event 16) — the text sets all three side by side and resolves none.