Jonathan Harnisch: An Alibiography

What if you had such severe schizophrenia that your life was just one hallucination after another? And what if people kept trying to drag you back out of those hallucinations, to prove that you weren't living in reality, and that reality was nothing more than a psych hospital? Would you go? Would you make that leap back into reality, leave such a vivid life, for ceramic walls and metal gurneys? Ben Schreiber has Tourette's syndrome, which causes him to display uncontrollable tics and hops, and to stutter and swear inappropriately. Bullied through his school years, he can never form strong friendships, especially with women. In his late twenties, he plunges into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, which culminates in an attempted bank robbery. After he is arrested, his psychiatrist, Dr C, quickly recognizes Ben's affliction as much more than Tourette's. Inside Ben's head lives Georgie Gust, Ben's alter ego. Georgie is obsessed with his manipulative but extremely sexual next-door neighbor, Claudia Nesbitt. Ben is desperately searching for the unconditional love he never received as a boy. He finds it easier to retreat into his mind to share Georgie's sick obsession with cruel and abusive Claudia than to deal with his real issues. It is up to Dr C to help Ben face the buried terrors of his childhood so that he can finally let go of Georgie and reduce him to the literary character that the writer Ben wants him to be.