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 I begin the process of reorientation; that is to say, I feed them data based on their actual past life. With the help of family and friends I can quickly and effectively recreate the sense of continuity based on a factual awareness of previous existence. But without the stress and tensions dramatized by Freud in his concept of Id and Ego and Super-Ego. I give them back their past without fear and guilt, without the screams."

"You couldn't give me back mine."

"No, for I didn't induce the condition, merely corrected the concussion. But it doesn't matter, really, does it? Not as long as you're satisfied with the present."

I agreed with him then, and let the matter drop. And whenever I had problems—daily tension, nightly dreams—I went back to Wagram and talked it out. When Roxie started taking lessons and private coaching, when she began getting a few-walk-on or one-line bits in TV shows, when I started branching out at the transcription agency, I kept Wagram informed. Somehow our relationship was never on a social plane, but Wagram remained an important part of my existence. He was, in a way, my only link with the mysterious past; and I suppose I kept going there, from time to time, with the hope that sooner or later he could guide me back and help me to fully establish my identity. Always, of course, when I brought the matter up directly, he repeated his dictum. "The past doesn't matter as long as you're satisfied with the present."

And always I'd been able to reconcile myself to this statement. Always, until now.

Until now, when I was writhing and screaming in the womb, remembering last night. After a time I was able to talk rationally about it and he made me go over it again and again and asked many pertinent questions.

"It's beginning to sound a bit like last week's episode," he told me, when at last I emerged from the red chamber and donned my clothes once again. "Remember, you came to me with the story of your dream? Something about firing a rifle on a target-range covered with snow? I told you then what must be happening. Your buried memories, the suppressed content, attempt to break through to the conscious level in symbolic form. All that is necessary is to realize this. Of course, if one THE SCREAMING PEOPLE