How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #22
He remembered very distinctly – or was under the impression he remembered very distinctly – his feeling that he had met Yossarian somewhere before the first time he had met Yossarian lying in bed in the hospital. He remembered experiencing the same disquieting sensation almost two weeks later when Yossarian appeared at his tent to ask to be taken off combat duty. By that time, of course, the chaplain had met Yossarian somewhere before, in that odd, unorthodox ward in which every patient seemed delinquent but the unfortunate patient covered from head to toe in white bandages and plaster who was found dead one day with a thermometer in his mouth. But the chaplain's impression of a prior meeting was of some occasion far more momentous and occult than that, of a significant encounter with Yossarian in some remote, submerged, and perhaps even entirely spiritual epoch in which he had made the identical, foredooming admission that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to help him. (25.4)
The chaplain has an episode of déjà vu when he meets Yossarian in the hospital ward for the first time. He doesn't know it, but he has seen Yossarian naked before in a tree at Snowden's funeral. So the chaplain's feeling of surrealism is based on fact. Also, towards the end of the passage, the chaplain's identity starts to merge with that of Major Major, who refused Yossarian help in being taken off duty.
Quote #23
There was no mistaking the awesome implications of the chaplain's revelation: it was either an insight of divine origin or a hallucination; he was either blessed or losing his mind. Both prospects fill him with equal fear and depression. (25.6)
The chaplain interprets his "vision" of a naked man in a tree during Snowden's funeral as either heavenly and supernatural, or the product of a delusional mind. He narrows the possibilities down to just those two, which creates only two possible worlds – the divine and the mad.
Quote #24
[Major Sanderson:] "You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."
"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."
"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."
"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."
"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"…
"Then you admit you're crazy, do you?" (27.144-152)
The psychiatrist's logic is flawed. He names things commonly accepted as negative in society like death, bullies, misery, violence, and corruption, and sees Yossarian as mad for not accepting them.