This is a male academic just turned 40:
The day my father shot himself I thought I'd have trouble sleeping, but that night I slept well and had a dream:
It's sundown, the day after my father's 70th birthday. The two of us are on a high cliff looking west. He points to the horizon. There's a band of orange with greenish sky and, above that, indigo—but no stars. Below us are seven little hills. They form a ridge, seven hills stretching off to the west.
It's completely silent but I know what he's saying. The road runs along this side, but there's a way through to the other side. There's a pass between the fourth hill and the fifth hill. Another road runs behind the hills. Keeping his hand flat he makes a chopping gesture to indicate the pass between the fourth and fifth hills, and he points with some urgency. Don't do it: Although he took this road, he wants me to go through the pass and follow that road on the other side. Now I can see that the four hills closest to us are a little separate from the last three. This is the pass, after the fourth hill. A soon as he is sure I understand, the dream ends. SE 1961/1925; 19: 239 "This view of negation fits in very well with the fact that in analysis we never discover a 'no' in the unconscious and that recognition of the unconscious on the part of the ego is expressed in a negative formula." That is, the ucs only is attracted -- not repelled -- and it is, rather, for the ego to defensively translate 'yes' into 'no.' Which again goes to show that genius is original, catalytic--and often wrong: Both approach and avoidance are hard wired into the deepest level of the organism, from humans all the way down to the prokaryotes.
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