A Sea of Faces
Applying a Structure to the Short Story
I recently commented on a Facebook post by Sarah A. Hoyt that I would apply her short story structure to one that I had read recently.
She then went on to assign me homework…
“A Sea of Faces.” Robert Silverberg. Published in Universe 4; ed. Terry Carr. Random House, New York, 1974. Pages 50-65.*
In this short story, Robert Silverberg presents a cautionary tale of speculated advances in psychiatric treatment.
The story is a psychiatric treatment setting in 1987. Dr. Richard Bjornstrand is using a new and seemingly controversial “Consciousness-penetration treatment” to help a young woman (April Lowry) diagnosed as a “schizoid.”** Dr. Bjornstrand is supported in this by his wife/girlfriend Irene. Erik, another psychiatrist, is opposed to the treatment. A small cast of friends discuss the impending procedure to assist Richard with making a decision.
The structure used here may be found in detail at:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2023/07/28/how-to-write-short-stories/
This story doesn’t precisely follow the structure Sarah presented, but nearly all the characteristics are there.
Character in trouble. There are two points to this. The patient is in trouble due to the diagnosis and the effect on her life. The hero, finds himself in trouble chronologically later as his consciousness becomes lost within that of the patient. The story starts later with several flashbacks prior to the start of treatment.
The “oh shit” moment. This is not explicit, however, the hero finds himself in increasing difficulty navigating the patients subconscious. This is represented by increasingly hostile terrain and the ocean. We see the hero in different stages of personality disintegration as he is increasingly subsumed by the host mind.
Refusal of the call. This is never refused, though others give the hero the opportunity to do so. Erik, from context, an older psychiatrist, possibly mentor to the hero is opposed to the proposed treatment plan and wants the patient brought to him for evaluation. Others, the small cast of friends, offer differing viewpoints and objections.
The Plan. Using the “consciousness-penetration technique,” the hero will enter the April’s schizoid mind and bring her out.
First plan goes wrong. There is no “plan and fail” sequence in this story. The plan does not go well, but the hero keeps fighting through the psychological defenses represented as geologic or terrain features: jungle, storms, ocean. There is even a reference to Chardbis. The hero eventually allows himself to be pulled along by the currents of the patient’s subconscious, where he finds April in an undersea cave.
Reward. Upon locating April, she does not want to be rescued. The hero, agrees just to sit with her for a while. Eventually, April initiates her own escape and the hero goes with her, but finds himself weakening. He sees her swim across the ocean to the island. He falls behind, drawn away by the initial current which took him to her. He ends up in the same undersea cave, trapped within his own subconscious. Comments made by the hero, suggest that he has taken on the patient’s disorder. So, he does succeed in helping the patient, but does so in a Pyrrhic fashion. The story ends with Dr. Bjornstrand fully and detachedly accepting his entrapment, exactly as a schizoid personality would.
I chose this story for a couple reasons. Recently, I found this anthology in a local antique store and I just can’t pass them up. Also, it was published almost 50 years ago, and though science fiction has changed (not to mention the mental health professions), I wanted to see the structure applied to something much older.
If you get a chance you should read this. Robert Silverberg does an excellent job of painting the patient’s unconscious mind. As I said, this is an older story and at the time of writing the psychoanalytical models held sway over much of the mental health field. Most of the imagery presented is Freudian, with a nod to Jung’s collective unconscious.
Besides the imagery, Silverberg wrote this story with he expectation that his readers were literate with something of a liberal arts education. Or at least some knowledge of English literature and the classics. I don’t recall seeing that recently.
* “A Sea of Faces” at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58631
**The assumption is that this is Schizoid Personality Disorder per the DSM-II published in 1968. Details of the patient tend to support that assumption. (Yes, unnecessary for this, but I was once in the field and sometimes can’t help myself.)