The Second Corollary

The Second Corollary

  by

  Martin Thompson

  Copyright © 2002, Martin Thompson

  https://www.alphatucana.co.uk

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  The Second Corollary

  by

  Martin Thompson

  Blaise and Isadora were psychology post-graduate students at London University, and had, after much casting about, decided upon a research project. In the course of their undergraduate years, they had read much of the behaviourists and even the logical positivists (on the side). Although these schools were considered old hat by most these days, at least they were good for those trying to pretend that psychology could be a science like physics, with hard observable facts to figure with, even if as far as both Blaise and Isadora were concerned, in the case of psychology the only really good facts were subjective rather than objective. Of course, when so-called 'objective' facts are observed by subjective creatures like humans, what does 'objective' mean really? Consensus reality, perhaps? Well, that was as close as they could get to it, anyway.

  Much more interesting than the behaviourists, though, had been Freud, and lately, Lacan, despite the latter's almost impenetrable complexity. In particular, they had been drawn to the great psychologists' work on the mysterious phenomenon of 'negative hallucination'.

  Freud hypnotised subjects and told them (for example) that the room contained no furniture. Then he would ask them to (say) fetch something from across the room. The subjects would walk across the room, but not in a straight line. Instead, they would follow a course that allowed them to avoid the (supposedly non-existent) furniture which was in their way.

  When asked why they hadn't walked straight across to fetch the object, the subjects would lie. They would say things like, "I wanted to look at that picture on the wall," or "I thought I saw someone through the window." Indeed, they would come up with any and every excuse possible other than the one of avoiding the furniture. Clearly, on some level, they knew that the furniture was there, but they were obviously unconscious of it, and appeared to be making up excuses to hide the fact of the furniture's presence from themselves.

  Other observers had noted this behaviour, but Freud's big contribution was to draw the corollary that lying, to one's self and to others, was a basic characteristic of the ego, not just under hypnosis, but at all times. Furthermore, this could happen without the person being aware that what they were saying wasn't true.

  Lacan extended this analysis even further, by suggesting that what it meant was that the ego's function is to maintain a sense of coherence and completeness in a person's world, whether that sense was true or not. The defensive nature of the ego, well-known in everyday life to even the most casual observer, is actually far, far more pervasive than any sane person might have dreamed, and it can clearly make people believe just about anything, if it, the ego, 'thinks' it is good for them (or it).

  Now Lacan went on to consider the implications of this for the fragmented self-image of those suffering from paranoia, but Blaise and Isadora had noticed another interesting angle. Never mind the insane, what about the sane? What might the ego be hiding from you and I? What aspects of reality are we not allowed to see? This was to be their research project.

  They had already done some preliminary experiments, taking it in turns to hypnotise each other to see what results they could get. They would instruct the subject to narrate what they were seeing and doing to the hypnotist, so that the experimenter had some idea of just what the subject thought was going on. This basic procedure worked nicely. In the classic 'empty room' experiment and similar tests, both Blaise and Isadora lied like troopers to each other, as expected.

  Today, it was Isadora's turn to hypnotise Blaise. She had decided that it was time to move the experiments on a bit. The basic procedures had now been worked out, and they had shown that Freud's results could be replicated easily enough. Now, she felt, it was time to practise with something a bit more interesting. She wanted to know how much of everyday life was a 'negative hallucination' and how much was 'real'.

  As usual, they were conducting the experiment in their 'lab', which was simply a study-room in their college. It was part of the psychology department's allocation of rooms, and students could book the use of them as and when required. As hardly any students did any work, there wasn't usually much problem getting at least one of the rooms when needed, especially in the morning, which it was now.

  This particular room was upstairs, on the first floor of one of the old college buildings. It was furnished with a couple of tables, including a much-used coffee table and some academic-looking leather armchairs. Blaise sat himself down in one, and Isadora sat across from him in another. After a bit of settling in and some chit-chat, they got down to the experiment proper.

  Blaise sat there while Isadora hypnotised him. As usual, he felt nothing unusual as the process occurred, and once hypnotised would have denied that he was in a trance, had anyone asked. This time, however, was different.

  "All right, Blaise," said Isadora, once she was sure he was 'under'. "Today, as I'm sure you are aware, I want to investigate the phenomenon of the negative hallucination. But this time, I want to know how much of what you see around you is a fiction maintained by your ego, and how much is real. As usual, I want you to describe to me what is going on, whether you are aware of my being here or not. Now, I am instructing you, that when I snap my fingers, you will see only that which actually comes to your awareness from your senses, without any intervention from your ego to re-describe it in safer terms. If you are concerned about any possible danger to your personal integrity from this, just say 'enough' and that will end your trance immediately. Do you understand?"

  Blaise shrugged, "Yes." He smiled. He always felt a bit silly at this stage, before the fact of the trance became obvious. He also knew that if this experiment worked, it would be very interesting indeed.

  Isadora snapped her fingers.

  Blaise gasped and stood up: he was no longer in the college room! He swore. He was in a desert, in the blazing sunshine. He looked around quickly. Flat sand everywhere. Deep reddish sand rather than the paler, yellowish kind: Jurassic or Devonian sand, he thought, trying to place it. As a child, geology and palaeontology had both been hobbies of his, along with archaeology, so he had some rough basis for making the judgement. Could it be New Mexico? he thought. Jurassic, then. Well, probably. Wherever it is, it's a long way from London. And it's hot in this sunlight. This is not the English Sun. Indeed, the Sun seemed larger and whiter than he was used to. Maybe that's what it was like in equatorial regions, he thought, trying to remember his time in Ibiza – but that was mostly a drunken haze of skirts and vomit.

  He looked around him some more. There were no obvious landmarks anywhere, other than a few scrubby bushes here and there. This desert was just flat. He walked over to one of the little bushes and knelt down to look at it more closely. It was of no species he recognised, but then, botany wasn't one of his strong points.

  He decided he had better
explore a bit. But which way to go? The whole place seemed featureless. He looked around again for some landmarks. Nothing, except the Sun itself. Hmm... the Sun, he thought. He remembered his Jungian symbolism: the Sun symbolises the ego, he thought. Or it can symbolise it, anyway. Right. Seems relevant to this experiment. Better go that way, then, if that's what intuition dictates.

  He began walking in the direction of the Sun. It was about halfway up towards the zenith, suggesting to Blaise that either it was mid-morning or mid-afternoon, or he was a long way from the equator. Southern Australia? He doubted it, somehow. Anyway, it should be night in Aus right now, given that it was morning in London. Come to that, it should be night in New Mexico too, in that case. Well, where was he, then? The Sahara? It seemed like the wrong type of sand, though. But then, he didn't know that much about sand, after all. Maybe he could figure it out later.

  After a few minutes of walking, the heat was starting to get to him. He knew he'd be needing a drink before long – or he could cry "enough" of course. Well, he supposed he could, anyway. This change of scene was rather drastic. Could his entire world be just an ego creation? Or was this world the fake, made by his subconscious to satisfy Isadora's