Incarcerated as it were, imprisoned in images from long ago, I have been trying to think my way out of it. As children we were not allowed to develop any skills seriously — we should perform well for others, yes, but only as long as we remained amateurs. As adults, can we not go further?
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1. Because we were children, we were defective. Not valid and incapable of becoming valid are the key points.
2. School and teachers believed it was completely possible to do things well. They did not worry unduly about what was wrong or might be wrong, and they let things become good.
3. In Reeducation one was to discover and confess one’s defects, according to a certain rubric, over and over again.
4. Meanwhile at work we were constantly exhorted about eschewing the perfectionism of which we had been accused — not because there was any evidence that we were engaging in the sin of perfectionism but because we must be guilty, given our ages and stations.
5. You must not simply walk along — you must be tripped up and then handle it, be tripped up and then handle it — each time with injuries a little more permanent, in the hope you would never grow strong enough to leave home. “You are defective, but we will tolerate it.” “You are defective, and only we will tolerate it.”
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If our beings could not confirm and supplement theirs more perfectly, they did not want to see us again.
The depth of their pain was a terrible thing to see, knowing that our separateness from them was the cause and being powerless to merge so they could feel some relief; being organisms that were separating further and being unable to change this even for them.
I see who it is they wanted me to be, who it was they essentially tried to blitzkrieg me into being. Reeducation thought one should make the gestures of such a person, but I do not agree.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
“…then they never wanted to see us again.”
It just occurs to me: isn’t this sort of temper tantrum-y. I always thought we really had done terrible things we could not see, but is it possible this was just sort of a toddler style temper tantrum?
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/issues-of-patriarchal-power-structures.html
That is a great post and germane in lots of ways.
It’s: being under the power of someone who needs your flesh to survive. Fighting them over yourself. Regretting not having an extra self to give. Thinking, mistakenly, that that, or anything, would be enough, that the list of needs has an end, that if you can reduce your own caloric (so to speak) requirements far enough then you may be able to give them enough to satisfy. Honestly, I almost let them win although earlier in life I had not succumbed to the (irrational) logic.
I had more the feeling that I could multiply goals and serve two masters. But they were in contradiction with one another. Ouch.
I always tried to put myself in situations where my goals coincided with the master’s. That liquidated any conflict. But when you cannot get such a situation, then you have to individuate for real.
My whole anxiety disorder, PTSD or whatever it is, is about having been in a couple of locations where irrationality really did have material power. This is where the double bind comes in: you must do as they say because they have the deciding power, but what they want done is crazy and dangerous. So there is nowhere to step (safely).
The current mantra is: that is not really true, that is not the current situation, one does not have to engage with that. This seems elementary, of course. And yet.