Kretschmar took a big bite outta my soul today. Why? Just because she could. She felt that I had questioned her authority one too many times in the past week. She needed to take me down a notch. It happened during a BOARD meeting. I was doing a presentation that someone had actually requested.

"If anything, these two definitions illustrate how difficult it is to give non-circular, non-contradictory descriptions of both the conscious and unconscious minds. Indeed, at the end of his definition of consciousness Sutherland proclaims that nothing worth reading has been written on consciousness (we can only assume that he meant to include his own definition in this set, and it would seem that he would be correct in doing so). Sutherland even acknowledges that it is impossible to specify what consciousness is, what it does, or why it evolved.”

This is when Kretschmar pipes up, “What can you tell us, Dr. X, about consciousness from your own personal perspective?”
And I thought, what de fuck is dis about? So I jus carried on wid my presentation.
“In addition to housing the superego, the unconscious holds ‘all the material that a person cannot bring to consciousness because it has been repressed’. Assuming that this definition is indicative of a general psychoanalytic approach to consciousness, then a number of questions might be raised regarding such a description of the mind. How exactly does material come to be repressed?”

Everyone seemed to be enjoyin demselves, even Ellenberger was fascinated, interrupting me to state, “The assumption that a part of psychic life escapes man’s conscious knowledge has been held for many centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it attracted more attention; in the nineteenth, as one of the most highly debated problems, it became finally one of the cornerstones of modern dynamic psychiatry.”
An’den good ol’Kretschy went off again.
“What we want to know, Dr. X, is what consciousness is like from your first person perspective.”
And again, I thought, what de fuck?! Why is’he bringin dis up in a fuckin BOARD meetin? Seems like she’s tryin to humiliate me from her own personal perspective. So, I brought out my Heidegger.

“Essentially, Dasein is a being for whom Being is an issue. This issue becomes lost in the shuffle of its average-everday life. In order to live an authentic life Dasein must own up to its existence. A Dasein that is fully immersed in the They has no idea that anything is wrong. The moment before death (when Dasein alone, is inescapably confronted with the finiteness of its own Being and the groundlessness of its existence) might bring about a sudden revelation of mineness that will expose the veil of inauthenticity. The inauthentic Dasein will come to the realization that all actions and decisions up to that point were made in relation to a They that is really no one at all. This Dasein will experience a few seconds of anguish and then its entire existence will be over. Where the real trouble lies is with the capacitated, full-life-ahead-of-it Dasein that somehow catches a brief glimpse of the veil or becomes fully aware of the veil of the They (perhaps during a mid-life crisis, or through reading Being and Time). This Dasein is then cursed with the difficult task of establishing an authentic existence in the face of the They. Once the veil is revealed Dasein is faced with the conscious choice of living behind it. The real sin lies not in losing the Self (for that is inevitable) but in the choosing of an inauthentic life over an authentic one.”

A slight murmur came up from the audience. And den Kretschmar was shakin her head at me. She attacked again.
“We know all about what you’ve written on the subject of Heidegger’s Being and Time, Dr. X. But what can you tell us about how you feel?”

And I wanted to burn holes into her eyes. I wanted to stab her heart, rip it open. I remember saying, “Well, I can tell you dat I ain’t no fuckin tool,” right before I was shut down.