I really am almost finished transforming back. I think. To continue to transform back I would like to say that what Reeducation did was take a distorting picture of one’s moment of trauma and say: This is the real you. Admit that it is the real you. And you had to start living as that person. I succeeded in this exercise, to my detriment. Something is broken now, and it has no remedy, I said.
This exercise was the same exercise perpetrated upon a friend who trained as an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army. It was done to show the trainees how to break down under interrogation. From this we can see the error of Reeducation. What it did is exactly the opposite of what I understand is done for victims of torture. They are told that person, or the person they became, is NOT all they are.
Something is broken now, and it has no remedy, I admitted under duress. I mean: I was forced to say that because of things which may have been wrong with some ancestors, I HAD to have an irreparable birth defect. I was forced to say that my not having seen it was proof of its existence. Reeducation took from me my only source of self esteem which was academics. It said that my success was a symptom of personal failure. It said my research interests were further evidence of personal defects. But I do not believe the world to be so rigid as all this convoluted, yet iron-hard “reasoning.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
brokenness and wholeness are focal points of the imagination. That is why many people give up on life when they register that they are now “old”. However, there are many people older than I who are capable of doing much more. That is a feature of the mind.
Is it possible to truly fully transform back? Or is the process of reeducation so violent that you will always have something broken that never quite became whole again? Or maybe the freeling of having something irreparably broken is simply grief for that time and person that you lost in reeducation? It’s sort of a PTSD isn’t it?
Yes it’s a PTSD. I have to transform back, there is no other option because I cannot afford not to – I would have to be rich and go on vacation, or else descend into some sort of gray area.
I don’t believe in this stuff about something broken that can never be whole. My Reeducator said that because my father is an alcoholic I can never be healthy, and it was a lie that I was healthy and a professor. There SHOULD be something broken that could never heal.
I just don’t believe in that kind of SHOULD.
I like that, not believing in that kind of “should”. Someone once told me to beware of “shoulds.”
And I’m curious – did you say it was a PTSD because you figured it out, or did you actually see the post some time ago in which I decided it was?
I’m sure it is, but you reminded me on the right day – this is the only explanation which makes sense.
Reeducation: it wasn’t really what was said, I’m sure the Reed man was teaching principles he didn’t understand and I am sure I also misunderstood on my end. It was the countertransference that did it.
What won’t come back is the time that was lost. That is why I have extended my official life span by about 15 years, to 113 (projections are for 98 but I am claiming more).
It is possible to say my real traumas were family and academic ones but I still think the main one – besides whatever the original really long ago wound was – was Reeducation.
On academia though: the reason I think it would have been smart to leave when I did was that Reeducation really did wreck academia, gave me the heebie-jeebies for it, gave me PTSD about it, believed that getting over things was “denial” and being “unfeeling.”
So I am sticking to my PTSD explanation because it’s the only one that works. It explains why I am allergic to academia despite liking it, and lets me off the hook from thinking things such as that I am lazy, unfocused, etc. Instead it lets me think about something more useful, namely, getting over PTSD.
Ho detto.
I recognized it.
O good – vindication!!! 🙂
And more confirmation – I had this post about it, which is useful because it links to a video called “Rewind,” where they teach you to de-traumatize yourself:
https://profacero.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/coda-on-reeducation/