REHupa

I had some inquiries regarding the L. Sprague de Camp letter to REHupa that included a psychoanalysis of de Camp non-admirers. Here it is, Sept 8, 1991:

“We have had visitors, one of whom, Dr. Lynne Hazard, is a first-cousin-once-removed-in-law.  A consulting psychologist, she looks as lady scientists do in stories but rarely in real life: tall, blond, and gorgeous.

I asked her about a psychological curiosum I have often met in my biographical work on Lovecraft and Howard. Why should a grown man form so intense an emotional tie to another, whom he never knew personally and who in fact died before he was born, that if anyone says anything about his idol that does not present his hero in a wholly saintly and heroic light, the admirer is furiously resentful, takes the statement as a personal affront that he is duty bound to avenge, and spends years trying to ‘get even’ with the author of the statement? Since the resentful one never knew his idol, his infatuation is not with the real man but only with his mental image he has built up from what he has heard or read.

Dr. Hazard said yes, she had met such obsessions. She said the worshipful follower was usually conscious of a ‘void’ within himself. This might be a lack of some quality he desired, or an egregious failure in business, trade, profession, or personal relationships. So the follower identifies himself with his adoree and cannot admit that his hero has any flaws, like those of other human beings, whatever, since that means confessing his own short-comings.

I won’t apply this diagnose to any present or former fellow REHUPANs, but others may if they wish.”

If you didn’t know any better, you would think someone had written a caricature of de Camp like the semi-famous “Blond Negroes and Noble Cabbages” passed around at a science fiction convention in the late 1970s.