Education and escape
Protective rationalization and catch-22s
“Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts—and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?” -Joseph Heller, speaking in 1999 about his 1961 novel, Catch-22
The summer I turn 16, Cindy moves out to go to graduate school in another state. I briefly note in my journal that I will miss her, nothing more. Without her income, Billie can’t afford the mortgage payments. She rents the house, and we move to St. Louis to live with her unmarried brother, Dean. Suddenly, in my journal, Billie comes into view, and my uncle as well, as if I’m now observing people and am interested in writing about them. Just to see people as they are—their faults—is dangerous, but a change in circumstances—relative safety—enables an opening up.
I write: “the things that I hate about Mother.” Throughout these last two years with her, I keep hating her. My hate is painful and disturbing, so I keep writing about her, trying to understand. Though I’m not aware of it at the time this writing was a way to take control, to increase my own sense of self, and to separate from her and others.
The hate itself is enormous progress. To feel what one feels is always progress. However, it was only Billie who was the object of my newly unrepressed emotions.
🔻🔸🔺
It’s a challenging time, those months in St. Louis. I attend a college-prep Catholic school, so, abruptly, I’m challenged academically. Serious expectations, serious homework. I’m lonely. Billie and I sleep on cots in the partially finished basement.
We go home for Christmas. When we get back to St. Louis, I write an entry that expresses how nearly unendurable living with Billie is. I write about my loneliness, my unmet need for simple affection. I write that I feel she is “killing me.” Again, I am now aware of emotions that had always been there. Life is actually vastly better for me in St. Louis.
Dean and I have occasional conversations about ideas—these may be a first for me. There’s a park near the house with a massive beech tree to climb and even a small science museum. Dean has a bike I can ride, and I find interesting movies to watch on his tv, as well as the original Star Trek, the one television show I am consistently drawn to. Mr. Spock is my beacon. Of course! A model of self-control and self-sufficiency, and as capable, rational, and honest as a person can be.
The teachers at this high school have inquiring minds—what a great gift! My journal becomes full of the thought processes I’m developing at this excellent school. I’m no good at Spanish or Chemistry, but I dig into History and English. I question religion. I write a research paper on Abraham Lincoln, a paper on Capitalism, a paper on Gandhi.
I copy down what makes the deepest impression on me:
November, 1975
Gandhi wrote: "Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal? In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals."
Gandhi was an ardent believer. His words, though, propel me in a different direction. I begin to reject religion altogether. Among other failings, religion can’t explain how evil can exist in the presence of an all-powerful and all-loving God. This question was then, and continued to be, of the utmost importance to me.
We’re assigned the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller in English class. The protagonist, Yossarian, is a bombardier during WW2. Yossarian/Heller grasps the insanity of war and how it shows us the insanity of the human mind—potent, potent stuff for a sixteen year old.
I’m fascinated by his concepts of “protective rationalization” and “catch-22.” Religion fails to tell me where evil comes from, but Joseph Heller gets it.
I write a paper on the novel. I’ve lost all my work from school, but I summarize one of its ideas in my journal:
February, 1976
It seems as though people forget, or shove aside, their sense of morals and achieve whatever they wish even though it may require that some people are trampled down in the process. To save their own conscience, they 'rationalize' their doings by a long string of logic.
Or, in Joseph Heller’s vivid words:
The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.
So there it is, an explanation for how people who seem (and maybe are) normal can repeatedly do evil. They pretend they are not trampling on others, or that their dominance—even brutality and sadism—is justified and somehow right. This is exactly how it is. Perfectly simple, perfectly obvious. It was important to me. Though I didn’t remember the evil that had been done to me or any evil I had done, I needed to understand. And needed to know that others cared and thought about these issues, something one could go a whole lifetime without realizing if it were not for books.
However, this understanding of rationalization was a problem for me as well as illuminating, since I was (and am) always second guessing myself, unable to keep a sense of my own goodness for any length of time. If I believe I am good or wise or compassionate, is that because I am, or is it because I’m rationalizing? If I’m rationalizing, I have “no character” which means I’m the opposite of good or wise or compassionate.
A veritable catch-22!
A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. . . . One connotation of the term is that the creators of the "catch-22" situation have created arbitrary rules in order to justify and conceal their own abuse of power.
A catch-22 is a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situation. A catch-22 is a conundrum, a bind, a trap. It names a central tragedy of humanity: if we do something that is right in one way, this ‘good’ action may be ‘bad’ in another way. In particular, it is usually impossible to be good to ourselves and good to all others at the same moment. At least, not in so far as we are involved in war or live in an unjust society. Within an abusive family—especially in a family with sexual abuse—there are dozens of catch-22s. In clinical psychology they are sometimes called binds or double binds. In a double bind:
Individuals are confronted with messages that contradict each other, creating a paradoxical situation where responding to one message negates the other.
Call them double binds or catch-22s. Conflicting, impossible to satisfy demands are the day-to-day reality of life in a family with sexual abuse, just as they are in war.
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I long to spend my senior year at the school in St. Louis, Rosati-Kain, but Billie moves us back to our home town. We live in the basement apartment of a woman she knows from her prayer groups. The public school isn’t inspiring, but now I’m thinking of college. Determined to earn money to finance my getaway, I take only morning classes and get a part-time job.
I focus on getting into a good college. In December I pour over Barron’s Guide to Colleges and choose several to apply to. The one I long for most— seeming the most academically rigorous while still being within my reach—is Reed College in Portland, Oregon. I like that it doesn’t have intercollegiate sports or fraternities/sororities. It seems special, pure in its pursuit of knowledge.
I have troubles at the public high school with the AP/Independent Studies teacher, Mrs. Pletcher, who doesn’t give me feedback on my papers and then tells me I’m not improving. She tells me that “my papers were only on a high school level when they should be college.” She tells me she “has no time for me.”
Bewildered, I complain to counselors. They tell me Mrs. Pletcher is known for ignoring—even disliking—the students like me who aren’t paying for Advanced Placement. This should have been a relief—it’s not me! It’s her. I’ve actually been told it’s her. At that moment I had the chance to learn one of life’s most important lessons: that how people treat you often has more to do with their issues than with yours. That malice of one kind or another can pop up anywhere, even in a teacher, appearing in the oddest forms.
If I hadn’t had amnesia, I would have already known this, as I had already been exposed to a thousand acts of malice from my family. Even in this less fraught situation which I didn’t forget, the lesson didn’t quite sink in. It would take decades of living for it to sink in. To learn it requires shifting the blame to a more powerful person instead of accepting my inadequacy. I knew at the deepest levels of my psyche, imprinted from the earliest age: this is dangerous. So I continued to at least partially trust Mrs. Pletcher’s judgment. That my work was not college-level. That I was not worthy of her attention.
And this makes me desperate. If I’m not smart—if I’m not special—I have nothing:
January, 1977
There are too many things running through my mind to know where to begin or how to feel. I am very angry and depressed.
. . . All in all it rather smarts. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't think I was so smart, if I had something to sustain me besides my pride. But I do think I'm smart, very smart, and I have no God, no friends, and no close family, no absorbing activities. All I seem to have is my hope for Reed and that got quite a slash. If Pletcher thinks I'm dumb, what will a college like Reed think? I wonder if all the nice things they said about me at Rosati were just hypocrisy to boost up my ego. I must have looked lonely and they were good Christians. Ugh! What is crueler that a kind lie? Am I just too suspicious?
. . . I must save for Reed. Reed! Right now it seems a fool's hope, but I've never wanted anything so much in my life!
This understanding of the precariousness of my life appears only briefly here in my journal and, I think, in my consciousness. I suppose it was far too daunting to keep at the forefront of my mind. How could I remain aware that I didn’t have a supportive family or the ability or compelling desire to create a new family or to make and keep close friends? I have only my own intelligence to depend on and it had better be up to the task. (No wonder I aspire to be like the incredibly self-sufficient Mr. Spock!)
In February I work through the long application process. My family doesn’t encourage or help me. Instead, they ask why I want to go away to college. From Billie there is a constant drumbeat of opposition: “You are not going to that college.” And the strange declaration: “You are not an intellect. Not brilliant.”
But she doesn’t stop me. She could have hidden my mail or otherwise sabotaged the process. She didn’t. As usual with Billie, I am reminded she could have been much worse.
When I’m accepted, I can’t immediately absorb it.
March, 1977
I was thinking most of the way home, as usual, of how it would feel if there was a letter from Reed. Then I came down the stairs and drew open the red curtain. There it was - a big envelope with the Reed seal. I turned on the light, set my books down and tore off the top. It only took a few long seconds to find the line of acceptance. I felt a little thrill and laughed a lot but that was about all.
This writing is not interesting me so I will stop.
It’s a strange reaction, probably due to fear. By going to Reed, I’m disobeying Billie, disobeying everyone. And I’m being arrogant, acting like I’m better than them. I’ve learned that I will be hurt for that. Thus that inappropriate laughter again, and: “This writing is not interesting me so I will stop.”
But no one has expressed opposition except Billie. Perhaps that’s why, three weeks later, receiving a promise of the necessary financial aid, I’m able to believe and to celebrate.
April, 1977
. . . By the way, I haven't written about the most important thing that has ever happened to me. (Maybe not that important but it seems like it could be.) I am definitely going to Reed!!!
Saturday I got 4 letters or so. At first I thought that I was only getting $200 or so and felt very bad. Then in slowly dawned on me that I was getting $3400!! I was very, very happy. I jumped and laughed and ran around. Somehow I hadn't anticipated it as much as the acceptance.
In late April, Billie decides to move back to St. Louis, pulling me away from a new waitress job and the last weeks of school. At the end of the summer, I take the bus to Oregon.
She takes me to the bus station, starting me off on the 48 hour trip, and as I leave her, she cries. This surprises me. What did it mean? Did she cry because she loved me? Because she knew she had failed me? Because she knew she would be alone now?
Endless catch-22s, now following me into my adult life. To love my family or to love myself? Impossible to do both. And impossible to love my cold, unloving self if I don’t love my family.
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See my Resources page for links to information about dissociative amnesia.