On Denial and Dissociation.

I’ve had a post running through my mind all day today about the situation in Gaza, and yet for some reason I feel unable to make it. I don’t know why; maybe it’s just laziness, or maybe it’s a disturbing sense that any public statement which questions – or may be deemed to question – the official line of the current ruling party in Britain might lead to solitary incarceration in an environment redolent of Room 101.

(We’re often presented with features in the media which talk of the fact that Russians who disagree with the war in Ukraine are reluctant to express the opinion in public for fear of being consigned to penal servitude and all that comes with it. I’m truly beginning to feel the sense that we in the sceptered isle, benignly guided by the Mother of Parliaments, are not quite as different or as free to speak plainly as we think we are.)

The post was going to cover several angles on the situation and the personalities involved, and maybe even offer the odd unconventional opinion, but maybe I should consign myself to the intended last line: ‘Two wrongs never did make a right.’

Is this me being feeble? Probably, but my world is full of troubles at the moment and I really don’t want any more.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back to the book (Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman for those who haven’t been keeping up.)

It’s becoming transparently obvious that our heroine, Natalie Waite, has some sort of mental condition which belongs within the orbit of dissociative disorders, but I still like her a lot because many of her strange perceptions are close echoes of my own. She even has fun with them occasionally, and doesn’t seem to me to be persistently unhappy. That being the case, should I consider myself to be also a victim of some variety of dissociative disorder? Personally I don’t think so, but I have been known to be wrong.

What bothers me more is the constant drip of dysfunctionality infecting systems and standards everywhere, and I’m far from alone in being subjected to it. It’s happening to me almost on a daily basis and is beginning to feel like the fabled Chinese water torture. What began as a minor tapping has now been elevated to the sledgehammer effect and my brain is close to becoming as dysfunctional as the causes giving rise to it. In short, my mind is feeling fried to a crisp.

And so now I’m curious to know whether a fried mind is still capable of revelling in the observation of a dissociative disorder, because the practice of observing is mostly what drives me. It’s an interesting thought.