i worked with this crazy psychologist um
he he used to put jokes on his multiple
choice tests
uh he was a really eccentric guy but i
really liked his courses he
and he 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 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 uh
what had happened was i was out in this
gymnasium
it looks like a high school a 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 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 it 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 um
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 psycho
the psychologist
left and god only knows i mean that's
what he was like and
all these guys came 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 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 a 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 uh 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
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
werewolf 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 on 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 that 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 10 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 because i thought i was a good
guy and 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