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(#17.5) Goedel’s Psychiatric Cheat Sheets

This description appears on pages
85-87 of the guide to the G.R.”Joe”

Museum of the Imaginary and the Impossible*
The physical location of the collection is just south of Savannah
on Tybee Island, Georgia.

Catalogue #17.5 (maths)  Received by Museum:  2 January 1960 

Kurt Godel’s Psychiatric Cheat-Sheet;  The Logician’s
Notes on Surviving the 50-Minute Hour

Kurt Goedel, this
century’s greatest logician (inventor/discoverer of the uncertainty principle
and destroyer of what was thought to be the nearly-completed castle of Mathematical Finality) fled/escaped National Socialist Germany
in 1940 and settled in Princeton’s ’s Institute for Advanced Studies
(IAS).  Goedel’s remarkable logical
ability was followed closely by his collection of singularities—in a world of
uneven people at the IAS, Goedel’s Unusual Prominences were highly unusual, and
for many “odd” people Kurt Goedel was the definition of their three-letter
defining disclaimer.

On exhibit is a
collection of the intellectual paraphernalia that Goedel evidently assembled to
bring with him to a September 1949 therapy session with his Trenton
psychiatrist, Dr. R. Blister Kent. 
Goedel put together a number of thoughts on various scraps of material
that he must have used as “thought prompters”—their existence and purpose
was  revealed in a series of letters to
the Postmaster of Princeton describing these iconic objects “as Tibetan prayer
rags…they were supposed to assure me of a certain level of attention and
suffice to bring my mind to the business of the therapy session….without my
scribbled clues I would have found myself bored beyond the supplication of
mortal words.”

We see here the
contents of an aged manila envelope labeled “

Trenton 
Dr. Can Not Sep49” including the following, (with Goedel’s notations in quotation):

(Two)  Pressed flowers  with “ask about the laundry”; (three)
Ticonderoga pencils with penciled notes “at what time did I happen”;  matchbook cover (“Happy’s Coffee Happy
Restaurant”) with “I thought to stay and I stayed to go…”; a U.S. penny with a
penned “x” through Lincoln’s head and the tiny words “not to be The Eat”; a 2’
long and 1” wide rolled piece of paper with musings on the relationship between
memory, truth and imagination; a menu for a 1954 formal dinner introducing the
JOHNIAC computer at the IAS in which Goedel has drawn a self portrait next to
all  listed honorees names except his
own; and several other small, inscrutable items.

 In
Goedel’s collected correspondence from his uninvited letters to the Dead Letter
Office at the Trenton Post Office period it is can be seen that he was
intending to construct a puzzle of these objects and writings which were
believed to contain the key for his germinal theory on the mathematics of
boredom.

“There
is a small leap from genius to boredom; if that can be breached and the two
great concepts brought together I believe that I can accomplish truly wonderful
thinking” Goedel wrote.  “I believe in
boredom.  It is the Kind Devil that
allows thought to grow; it is the great emancipator of time.  Boredom always wins; if I can ally that great
heaviness with the energy of genius in pure form [i.e. mathematical formalism—editor] there will be no end to my
creation.” 

Curator’s Notes:  Goedel had (many would say “suffered”) a
life-long obsession with his health and the things that he thought impacted
negatively upon it.   He believed that
medicines that were given him by doctors were toxic, that water from the faucet
was toxic, that the sun was toxic, that most foods he received were poisoned or
toxic.  By 1970, when he was convinced
(and forced) to seek medical help, his weight was recorded as 86 pounds even
though he was 5’ 6’’ tall.  Goedel  had perhaps the world’s most singular
interest in numbers; he was also extremely interested in the minutiae of daily
life.