The Tree of Three

Equestrian Maximum Security Mental Asylum Patient Evaluation

Patient Name: Cedar Sloyd

Gender: Male

Pony Type: Earth Pony

Age: 31

Reason for Admission: Brought to this facility after being arrested for multiple charges of assault, rape, and murder.

Diagnosis: Split Personality

Symptoms:

Patient fluctuates between three separate personas, named based on behaviors matching the three parts of pony psychologist Signal Frame’s psyche structure. Id persona is violent and consistently tries to attack ponies it comes near; patient is kept shackled to a wall to prevent harm to anypony. Patient’s teeth have been removed due to multiple attempts to bite doctors and guards in an attempt to remove large portions of flesh. Superego persona is overly logical and shows no traces of emotion, instead looking at everything with from a standpoint of logic and not letting emotions get in the way, has no intention of harming anypony. Ego persona is theorized to be the patient’s original persona, as it has the longest memory span and is the most reasonable persona to converse with.

“Well…” A light grey unicorn mare began, clicking her tongue before continuing, “This ‘Cedar Sloyd’ pony certainly seems to be quite a hoof-full.” She looked over the evaluation form another time, paying special attention to Cedar Sloyd’s Id persona. “Might I ask why you want me to deal with something like this?”

The pony sitting across from her, a light blue earth pony stallion with a white doctor’s coat with very short coat-tails, looked at the mare and rested his right foreleg on the desk they were sitting at. “Because you are one of the best psychologists in the world, Doctor Caring Rose. You have a better understanding of these kinds of psychological events better than anypony in Equestria.”

Caring Rose looked at the stallion with a slight smirk. “Thanks for the compliment, Doctor Deep Thought. Oh, and by the way, calling somepony with a doctorate by their full name is quite rude.” She then gave a slight glare to Doctor Thought. “Even so, I only have as much expertise on this kind of patient because of the years I spent in foreign countries where this sort of thing is much more common. However, ponies with split personalities aren’t something I want to work with, ponies with that kind of ailment are nigh impossible to treat.”

Doctor Thought took a moment to formulate a response to her. “Are you saying a pony with a split personality is different than something like a Griffin or Minotaur?”

“Yes, by a wide margin.” Doctor Rose just stared at her fellow psychologist before pulling a manila folder out of her bag. “This is a list of all the cases I’ve worked with over the years.” She levitated the folder over to Doctor Thought, who opened the folder and looked over the psyche evaluations of her previous patients.

“Oh Celestia!” Doctor Thought stared at the documents in the folder, all of them were Griffins, Minotaurs, and Zebras, except one. “I didn’t expect this.”

Only one patient was a pony, and it was easy to see why Doctor Rose said ponies with split personalities were difficult to treat. The pony in question only had two personas, but neither one was ever in any kind of control of the body for an extended period of time, and when one was in control, it was usually the half that they were admitted to an institution for. The patients of other species had personalities that could at least be treated to cooperate with each other, or have the personas either merge back into one or have the branch personas erased from the mind, and even then, when one persona was dangerous, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what the one pony was.

“You see now?” Doctor Rose continued, “We may be the most peaceful of the races on this planet, but we are far from the least primal. Almost all ponies are locked in the ego stage of the mind. A small fraction throughout Equestria’s history have reached the Superego stage, but these ponies quickly began to behave in manners that nopony could understand, and eventually came to a conclusion that led them to become emotionless spree killers. Almost nopony in history has ever regressed into the Id, only three known cases are known to have happened, only one of whom was not institutionalized.”

“They weren’t?”

“No, they ended up becoming spree killers as well, but they were much more…animalistic, so to speak. Ponies they killed normally had their skulls beaten in, parts of their flesh bitten off, their heads scalped, rib cages shattered, and other such excessive damages to their bodies. The patient you see on that page was the second case recorded, I was called in to deal with him, and it was not an easy experience.”

“What happened?”

“He was split between the Ego and the Id. However, because the Ego wasn’t in the strongest mental state after potentially years of his Id forcing him to commit such terrible atrocities, had started to lean towards with his Id was telling him to do. I gave up on him after he was killed.”

Doctor Thought’s eyes widened and he took a second to process the information and respond to her statement. “He was killed, by whom?”

“The guards, obviously.” She said with no sense of emotion behind her voice. “I walked in and had my typical session with him, however, he was incredibly uncooperative, and even managed to break his shackles, nor was he phased by the shock collar the put on him. If they hadn’t killed him, I probably wouldn’t be having this conversation with you.”

Doctor Thought stared at Doctor Rose for a moment, thinking of something to say that would make her change her mind and try to see what was going on with Cedar Sloyd, but nothing came.

“However…”

Doctor Thought raised his head to see Doctor Rose smirking at him. “I think there might be something I can learn from somepony with all three of these states active at once. All I ask is that you keep him heavily restrained at all times, understood?”

Doctor Thought nodded before getting up to lead Doctor Rose to the patient ward.