(urth) S&S vs. SF in BotNS

[Lee Berman]

>Jeff Wilson: Severian perceives that he is being zapped by the twin hemispheres of 
>Decuman's brain in a way that illuminates him but also imposes a particular depressive 
>emotion that saps his will to continue in the contest. This is apparently direct brain 
>to brain coersion.

But IIRC, Decuman is humming and chanting the whole time. I think this might be the 
"hypnotism" Wolfe mentions in Jerry's quote. The "twin hemispheres" brain might be
just Severian's self-experiential description of the event, much like the initially 
real-seeming hallucinations he gets later from eating mushrooms. (makes sense for
a torturer to picture another's mind in anatomically correct brain fashion; I'll guess
Little Severian didn't picture it the same way, though they share the emotion of fear)