Dr. Harold T. Brown, psychiatrist and director, first saw Billy Milligan on March 6, 1970. Brown, a slight man with gray muttonchops and a receding chin, gazed at the boy through black-rimmed glasses. He saw a neat-looking, slender fifteen-year-old in apparent good health, sitting passively, neither tense nor anxious, but avoiding looking him in the eyes.

“His voice is soft,” Dr. Brown wrote in his notes, “with little modulation, almost trancelike.”

Billy stared at him.

“What are your feelings?” Brown asked him.

“Like a dream that comes and goes. My dad hates me. I hear him screaming. I have a red light in my room. I see a garden and a road—flowers, water, trees and nobody there to yell at me. I see lots of things that aren’t real. There’s a door with all the locks on it, and someone is pounding to get out. I see a woman falling down, and suddenly she’s turning into a pile of metal and I can’t reach her. Hey, I’m the only kid who can take a trip without LSD.”

“How do you feel about your parents?” asked Brown.

“I’m afraid he’s going to kill her. It’s because of me. They fight over me because he hates me so much. I get these nightmares that I can’t describe. Sometimes my body feels funny, like I’m real light and airy. There are times I think I can fly.”

Brown’s first report noted: “Despite the reported experiences, he seems to know reality, and no clearly psychotic ideation elicited. He is reasonably able to focus and sustain attention. He is oriented. Memory is good. Judgment is severely impaired by the above ideation and his seeming need to be dramatic. Insight is insufficient to modify behavior. Diagnostic Impression: Severe hysterical neurosis with conversion reactions—APA Code 300.18. ”

According to the Teacher, who later recalled the session, Dr. Brown had not been interviewing Billy. It was Allen describing David’s thoughts and visions.

Five days later Milligan came to the clinic without an appointment, but Dr. Brown, noticing that he was in a trance, agreed to see him. He observed that the boy seemed to know where he was and that he responded to directions.

“We’ll have to call your mother,” Brown said, “and tell her you’re at the clinic.”

“Okay,” David said, and got up and walked out.

It was Allen who came back a few minutes later and waited to be called in for an interview. Brown watched as he sat quietly and stared across the room.

“What happened today?” Brown asked.

"I was in school,” Allen said. “It was about eleven-thirty, and I started dreaming. When I woke up, I was on top of the Hickle Building looking down, like I was getting ready to jump. I went down and went to the police station and told them to call the school so they wouldn’t worry about me. Then I came here.”

Brown studied him for a long time, stroking his gray mut-tonchops. “Billy, do you take any drugs?”