7/30/2019 DTCW 38 Forced Conclusions

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2005 Dorothy Tennov

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IIoesnt matter whether there is a Creator or an Intelligence behind it all. What is abundantly clear ist the evidence for supernatural interference with the laws of nature is unconvincing. Additionalence is accumulating daily by scientist and thinkers all over the globe.

religious beliefs provide some protection from awareness of the horrors of reality.

It has taken several decades for me to arrive at present conclusions, which are all, at least in principle,tentative. Early on, the religions that came my way were too ridiculous to bother with. I adopteddeterminism before graduate school, even before that, during high school when I carried heavy Freud

around at least partly for reasons of social communication missing errors later found, but applauding hisattempts to understand. To me at that time, he was a kind of determinist.

It should always be remembered that in every face-to-face interaction I was handicapped by a disabilityhidden from all, including myself. When finally, at the age of fifty, I was supplied with the piece of thepuzzle I had called horns that led people to reject and misunderstand me. Or, as I now believe, in somecases at least, too great understanding was what repelled them. Change came as I struggled to do what Ithought I wanted to do and as I recognized how I truly was an alien to those to those around me and withwhom I had to deal. As I found pieces of the puzzle, life would change. Some explanations were so simplethat it took a bit of cognitive doing to keep me from seeing them. It has taken me a long life to understand,if, indeed, I have come to final understanding.

What I accomplished was always against a background of pain and fear of pain. My undiagnosed conditionmade me an outcast from the beginning. I always knew I was different but only in retrospect did Iunderstand why. If I had given in and admitted the truth about my abnormality, I could never have done thethings in life that I am now enjoying the fruits of their having been done my children, my degrees,

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employment, publishing and becoming increasingly educated to seeing whole pictures. Until I was on myown, teaching, I was imprisoned (by the type of reading I was doing psychology journals) within a subfieldof a subfield in academia experimental psychology, behaviorism.

Furthermore, there was no one to teach me the social skills that might have enabled me to deal moreeffectively with others, despite my undisclosed handicap. I have many memories of being in importantplaces a palace in London, a social the home of the university president unable to recall a word that wassaid, only the pain of standing.

There was no way that I could admit to myself or anyone else the severity of my physical handicap. When Ifinally did, my world fell completely apart, and I was helpless. I dont know if a solution could have beenreached, but Im inclined to doubt it. Today I do not do things that bring pain. Yet I communicate withmore people, more intimately (meaning saying what I really think) through the Internet that never waspossible before.

There was another problem, or maybe part of the same problem: the antipathy I so easily evoked in others with, of course, a few life-saving exceptions. They competed with me and resented me when I won. Theywouldnt believe it, but self-assertion is not the same as competing. Typically I was unaware of the race. Iwas only doing my thing, forming my own Basic Conceptions, which invariably turned out to beunacceptable because they conflicted with their Basic Conceptions.

Religion lessens the horror of the physical truth. I have not figured out completely why religion holds noattraction for me. As a scientist, there is always doubt. Belief in the supernatural answers some of lifesmysteries.

I did not realize why my ideas were so different from theirs. Repeatedly, I turned out to be right. I findmyself to be astute but not fast. Many years ago, a friend told me that although my opinions developedslowly, they were sound. At this writing [040312] I have still not quite got there, but I have freed myselffrom some of the restrictions that kept me from correctly evaluating of my thinking.

It was many years before I was finally forced to take account of what I later understood as my physicaldisability. Amidst the confusion of the sixties and seventies, I assumed the responsibility of singlemotherhood as well as a full-time academic position and an ambition to do important research. Therejections I endured were unimaginable. I knew of many only after the fact, only after some aspects of mysituation were clarified.