(1:31 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Unknown Knowns

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there are known knowns, things we know that we know. There are known unknowns, things we know that we don't know. Then there are unknown unknowns, things we don't know that we don't know -- those are the real problems.

It's an elegant scheme, especially if it is completed with the element that Secretary Rumsfeld excludes: unknown knowns, things we don't know that we know. After reading Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life, I realized just how many things I don't know I know. His examples throughout the book are strikingly non-sexual, which makes them all the more convincing for those who are skeptical about his supposed pan-sexualism. A man "forgets" his checkbook because he's not satisfied with the doctor's service and doesn't want to pay him. A woman can't think of someone's name because it will bring up a disturbing and unpleasant train of thought she doesn't need to deal with right now. A doctor can't remember a clever turn of phrase because he knows someone in the room will be upset about it and he doesn't want to cause an argument. All of these examples take place in largely healthy people, and they show what a marvel the mind can be, in doing work for us, behind the scenes.

My everyday life became psychopathological yesterday, when I went up to Chicago Theological Seminary, where I will be attending graduate school this fall. I often have difficulty finding the seminary, even though I've been there enough times to know the way. Especially on the eve of starting classes and planning to commute from Kankakee, the thought of moving to Chicago is in the forefront of my mind, and by getting lost on the way to a very common destination, I help to confirm that Chicago is much too complicated a place for me and that I am better off in the more familiar Kankakee area. The frustration of getting lost helps me to avoid the trauma of moving. Yesterday in particular, though, I had a lot of trouble getting back home, just leaving the neighborhood. I would keep running around in circles and see the same things over and over again, getting no closer to my goal. Uncharacteristically, however, I did not become agitated or upset as I drove around repeatedly. Once I was finally on the expressway, the answer occurred to me: I had been talking to the financial aid person about the possibility of eventually moving to Chicago, and he gave me a wide array of possibilities for doing that (there are ample apartments; part-time jobs of every description abound; the federal government generously loans money to students). Especially after two boring weekends in a row in Kankakee, where apparently every person in a fifty mile radius is sexually irrelevant to me, I was ready to move to Chicago, and so unconsciously I tried to stay in the neighborhood.

The same kind of mechanism is at work in my extreme emotional distress over playing an accompaniment for a wedding, after many years of not performing in public. When I simply play the parts in question, I am able to play them at least as well as any other new music I casually attempt to learn. Yet because I am playing on someone else's behalf, I hold myself up to a standard of perfection that I cannot possibly attain in a reasonable amount of time. This stems back to my childhood, in particular an incident in which my mother claimed that I had enjoyed everything she had ever forced me to do. This argument was ridiculous on its face, given all the many camps that I had deeply hated and that I had only attended at her insistence, but there was one clear-cut example: playing piano. Not wanting to admit that it was "my mom's thing," I all but refused to play anything but the most advanced classical music I could handle at the time, and I made no effort whatsoever to become a competent church pianist or accompanist. In fact, at one point in high school, when I already had a reputation as a brilliant pianist, I was called upon to play in church for congregational singing and performed so poorly that we actually had to stop altogether. In trying to show that playing piano was my own thing, I overcompensated by unconsciously (or sometimes consciously) refusing to put in any effort in any piano situation that was meant to assist anyone else. For this reason, my most flawless performances were for my senior recital, in which I was the only one playing and had chosen all the pieces myself (with the exception of a token hymn arrangement), and the commencement concert at Olivet in which the orchestra was actually playing backup for me.

I thought I was through rebelling against my parents, but every time I mess up while practicing those accompaniments, I show I'm not. Certainly all these explanations might seem a bit far-fetched and could be explained by other, "normal" means, but I like Freud's explanations because there is actually some kind of reason involved, beyond a simple, random "mistake" or failure to pay attention. It also allows me to have something to write about for my weblog, so I think everyone wins.

| permalink | Main Page