I worked with this crazy psychologist– He he used to put jokes on his multiple-choice tests; He was a really eccentric guy. But I really liked his courses– he taught a course on creativity and he was also a prison psychologist
And he was an eccentric guy and he, for some reason, liked me and maybe because I was eccentric, too and he invited me to go out to the Edmonton Maximum security prison with him a couple of times, which I did.
And that was a very interesting experience because I was trying to figure out what role each individual’s behavior bore to the Pathology of the group. It was something like that, and I went out there and I met a little guy smaller than me. I was a little bigger by then and he was a pretty innocuous guy and
What had happened was I was out in this gymnasium It looks like a high school the prison which is really quite telling in my estimation But and there were all these like monsters in there weightlifting and like they were monsters
I remember one guy it was tattooed everywhere And he had like a huge scar running down the middle of his chest it looked like someone had to hit him with an axe
And you know and and I was in there, and I had this weird cape that I used to wear that I bought in portugal and some boots that went along with it and Yeah, I was like an 1890s Sherlock holmes cape
And it was really like it was from the 1890s because this little village was up on a hill It was a walled city on a hill and they sold these things and I don’t think they’d changed the style since 1890 and so I thought they were really cool, and so I was wearing that which wasn’t perhaps the most conservative Garb To dawn if you’re going to wear if you’re going to go to a maximum-security prison
so anyways I was in the gymnasium and the psych are the psychologists left and God only knows I mean That’s what he was like and all these guys came or all these guys came around me you know
and they were offering to trade their prison clothes for my cape and it was It was like I was being made an offer I couldn’t refuse you know and so I didn’t I didn’t really know what to do and then this little guy said something like that the psychologist sent me to come and take you away or Something like that
and so I thought well better this Little guy than all these monsters, so we went outside the gym Through some doors like school doors. We went outside the gym into the Exercise yard, I guess and we were wandering along and he was talking to me
And he seemed like it kind of an innocuous guy And then the psychologist showed up at the door and motioned us back And so which was kind of a relief
and so I went into his office and he said you know that guy that you walked out in the yard with and I said yeah, he said he He took two cops one night, and he had them kneel down and while they were begging for their lives He shot them both in the back of the head and I thought Hmm.
That’s See the thing that was so interesting was that he was so innocuous right because what you’d hope is that someone like that would be very much unlike you let’s say and Certainly wouldn’t be like someone innocuous that you’d met what you’d want Is that the guy would be like you know half were wolf and half vampire so you could just tell right away that he was A cold-blooded killer but no he was this sort of ineffectual little guy who?
Was certainly not ineffectual if you gave him a revolver in the upper hand and so So that made me think that made me think a lot about the relationship between being innocuous and and being dangerous and then another thing happened,
I met another guy out there and Then a week or two later. I heard that he and a friend of his had held another guy down and pulverized his left leg with a lead pipe like just pulverized it and the reason for that was that they thought that he was a snitch, and maybe he was
and At that time I did something different instead of being shocked and horrified by that although. I certainly was I thought How in the world could you do that because I didn’t think I could do that I didn’t think that I thought that there was a qualitative distinction between me and Those people
and so I spent about two weeks trying to see if I could figure out:
Under what conditions I could do that. Like what kind of psychological transformation I would have to undergo to be able to do that
And so that was a meditative exercise
Let’s say and it only took about ten days for me to realize that
Not only could I do that that it would be a hell of a lot easier than I thought it would be and that’s sort Of where that wall between me and what jung described as the shadow started to fall apart
and That also was very useful because I started to wreck I started to Treat myself as somewhat different entity because I hadn’t been aware up to that point you know cuz I thought I was a good guy
And there’s no reason for me to think that Because you’re not a good guy unless you’ve really made a bloody effort to be a good guy you’re just not it’s not easy, and so you’re probably a Moderately bad guy,
and that’s a long ways from being an absolutely horrible guy But it’s also a long ways from being a good guy and so
But I had a little more respect for myself after that because I also understood that:
There was a monstrous element to the human psyche that That you needed to respect, and that was part of you that you should regard yourself in some sense as a loaded weapon
It’s very useful around children to regard yourself as a loaded weapon because around children. You are a loaded weapon and the terrible Experiences that many children have with their parents are testament to that.
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