Religious psychosis of Gene Wilder

[Fake Messiah]

Actor Gene Wilder presents a very interesting look at his own unexplained need to pray and talk to god he didn't believe in (much).

He grew up in a Jewish family where religion was pretty much nonexistent, but as he grew into early adulthood he was suddenly faced with an uncontrollable need to pray. As you can see, he describes it as a mental disease that grips him and takes control of him that he sometimes loses hours in prayers. One of the reasons he was doing it was because he would suddenly feel guilt for being alive and for not being miserable as some people living in poverty were.

And it wasn't always in a form of praying, like he would make himself deliberately "ugly" and go to class because he wanted to feel humble for the sake of feeling gulty.

Here is how he describes it in his autobiography available on archive.org

---

I suppose that everyone has had to wrestle with a demon at some time in their life. My Demon came out of hiding on the first day of spring, during my freshman year. It came out without warning, like a sudden eclipse of the sun—not in the disguise of alcohol abuse or drugs or gambling or sexual perversion—nothing like that. My Demon came out in the form of a horrible compulsion to pray. I say “horrible” because I didn’t want to pray—I had to pray, wherever I was, even though I didn’t know what I was supposed to be praying for.

When the compulsion came upon me, I would pray in front of whichever building I was about to enter for my next class. I would speak to God, out loud, but I tried to move my lips as little as possible when people passed by because I was afraid they’d think I was another one of those poor souls who hadn’t bathed or changed clothes for a week, who usually smelled of urine as they mumbled up and down busy streets, talking to God, or the Devil, oblivious of everyone around them. I was excruciatingly aware of everyone around me, but I thought that if I were truly humble, then the presence of all these passersby shouldn’t bother me. I kept on mumbling softly, trying to find out—as I prayed—what terrible thing I could possibly have done for which I needed God’s forgiveness.

The craziness reached a point where, one morning, I plastered down my curly hair with Vaseline, just to prove how truly humble I was. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a freak. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know how I could leave the house and go to class . . . but I did.

And then one day—just like that, as if a motor or an electric switch had been turned off—the compulsion stopped. The Demon was gone. I felt as if I had just finished running in a long race, exhausted but exhilarated, and could now be a normal person again.

But three or four days later the Demon returned. The pattern repeated itself so often that I felt as Dr. Jekyll must have felt when he could no longer control the comings and goings of Mr. Hyde. I never knew how long each episode would last. Three days? A week? Two weeks? I never knew what set off the compulsion. The only small clue I had was wondering, every once in awhile, why I should have the right to possess money—if I should ever acquire any—when there were people all over the world who were dying of starvation.

Being on stage was the thing that saved me from myself. When I was in a play, I was safe. I was lying in my “upstairs bedroom”—onstage—waiting for the cue for my first entrance. I didn’t want to pray. “Not tonight, dear God, please!” Maybe the Demon forced his way in because it was this particular play. As I waited for my cue, I kept thinking that I could shut him out in plenty of time . . . but I couldn’t; the fear of not praying overpowered me, even though it was a matter of seconds before my entrance. I saw both the play and my brain falling apart. Then, somehow, the obligation to the audience and Arthur Miller and my memory of Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock became more important to me than God. I heard my cue, said my first line . . . and I was safe for the remainder of the play. Years after that, I still carried the inexplicable conviction that once I stepped onto the stage, they couldn’t get me (whoever the hell “they” were) and that I was safe . . . so long as the curtain was up.

***

A little later, at about seven o’clock, I said I was going to take a short walk around the neighborhood. It was still light outside, and I wanted to get some fresh air. After walking several blocks—with the Demon pounding at my consciousness, trying to get in—I found myself at an open field on the outskirts of town—a field I used to play in only a few years before. The Demon knew where he was leading me. I knelt down on the hard earth and started praying.

My only hope, as I prayed in that field, was to get rid of him once and for all. I covered all topics—everything and everyone whom I could possibly have wronged, including God, of course—and I asked for forgiveness. But in another part of my brain, I was screaming, “FORGIVENESS FOR WHAT?” I had no idea, but the strength of that absurdity couldn’t pierce the armor of my compulsion. When I finished praying, I got up and walked home.

My mother, my father, and my pregnant sister, Corinne, were all waiting in the living room, dressed in their robes. From the expression on their faces, I thought that someone had died. My mother started crying. My father spoke first:

“We called the police—they just left here. Do you know what time it is? It’s three o’clock in the morning! Where were you? What in God’s name were you doing?”

I couldn’t bring myself to say, “I was praying, Daddy—I was lying in a field, praying to God to forgive me.” And if he had said, “Forgive you for WHAT?” I would have said, “I don’t know!” and he would have say, “For eight hours? Are you nuts?” . . . and he would have been right. So I mumbled something about having fallen asleep in a field because I was so tired. Then I apologized to all of them and went to my bedroom.

***

As long as I was with the other students in class, I felt safe. They all loved it when I took on the principal and argued with him, for hours, even after the school day was over. But when I was alone, I was vulnerable. The Demon would arrive and prod me until I bled from guilt—as if I had killed someone and left him to die alone. I no longer thought of my praying as holy . . . I hated it.

***

The compulsion came and went, but not so often anymore, and not in the same way. Now it would take something special to set it off, and it was always something I’d read or a picture I’d seen—someone who was doing something noble and unselfish to help others, and usually the noble person was making a sacrifice. Compulsion is doing; obsession is thinking. Instead of compulsive praying, the Demon—when he did come—took the form of obsessive thinking.

---