Friday, May 06, 2005
Yesterday's psychological interview went... OK, but it's kind of hard to tell with these things. The oriental carpet, soothing furnishings, soft toys and magazines, couch and armchairs came as a bit of a shock, even though common sense dictates that they shouldn't have. After all, I was being dealt with by professional, trained counsellors and making subjects feel at ease is what they do; I guess weeks of formal interviews conditioned me to expect the usual severe, deliberately stress-inducing furniture layout - a long table separating interviewee from interviewer(s), hard edges, sharp corners.
Apparently my psychometric test results indicated that I was depressed.
Not entirely accurate, of course, but then again, hardly surprising. I told the psychologist that I was introverted and that my personality had a definite pessimistic streak, but oh no, I wasn't clinical, if that was what she meant. And I certainly never entertained suicidal notions, if that's what she was trying to lead to. I mean, life's beautiful, I take pleasure in blue skies, good books/music/films and even some human relationships; I'm no morose, despairing poet, and I'm pragmatic to the core, so why on earth would I want to throw it away for the sake of a melodramatic gesture?
More than enough truth to be convincing, if she didn't pull a psychoanalysis stunt to overinterpret hidden layers of meaning and conclude that I was protesting too much. I don't know. Of course I wasn't being entirely candid (who would?) - she was my assessor, not my counsellor and confessor. But whatever she made of my performance... psychology is really NOT my thing. Maybe I should add it to my reading list.
I will just have to (sigh) revert to default and wait for word from A*Star. I wish they'd hurry up so that I can settle all that matriculation paperwork before flying off to Beijing. Long distance paperwork via a reluctant proxy doesn't appeal.
There was... one thing that I - in a fit of self-destructive pique - included in my psychometric survey that was glaringly missing from the entire session. I'm still disturbed by it. It seems unlikely that she simply... overlooked that not-so-little detail. Yet no mention of it was made, no allusions even. Even if it was probably a tactful move, I can't help indulging in the suspicion that the omission was deliberate, to keep me off-balance, and perhaps to test my professed well-adjusted stability.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
At least, I handled this one better than I did the last time I had an encounter with a trained counsellor, which was all the way back in Primary 5.
There was a debacle with my math teacher Miss Kim, which started when the mother of a certain... childhood nemesis of mine questioned her teaching methods. Predictably, she flew into a self-righteous rage. For reasons that evade me, that mother saw fit to casually mention my name, and thus to came to be that my unfortunate connection to said nemesis drew me into the ugly little drama. To assist her in her cause, Miss Kim recruited Mrs Wong, the school counsellor, who accused us of unfairly bad-mouthing our self-sacrificing math teacher; after an extremely traumatic session, the
school counsellor eventually managed to extract 'confessions' and grovelling letters of apology from us.
In all my 11-year-old wisdom, I actually used the word 'interrogated' in the diary entry detailing that incident. That was
before I grew up, exposed myself to all forms of corrupting influences, and learned, in greater detail, what lay behind that word, and just how apt a choice of word it had been.
That counsellor inflicted psychological terror on defenseless, bewildered and innocent 11-year-olds. She was a foregone conclusion searching for confirmatory evidence - in the classic tyrannical interrogator mould. We did nothing wrong - it was a case of bruised ego, of a teacher who believed that she could do no wrong. And yet by the end of that session I was a sobbing wreck choking out profuse apologies for something I wasn't guilty of, pressured into signing a load of self-incriminating rubbish just to soothe a math teacher's offended dignity.
As I've said, it was classic, traumatic and scarred me for life. I could never look at counsellors the same way again. In fact, I
never wanted to come into contact with another mind-specialist again, and I was extraordinarily successful (considering subsequent developments) in putting off the encounter until circumstances made it unavoidable.
Hindsight isn't making me any more dispassionate. Yes, the initial fear, anger and bitterness have faded just like any other memory and now exist mostly on the scented pages of my pink childhood diary. Now, when I recall that incident, it appalls me - a more sophisticated, intellectualised emotion informed by the intervening years, I'm sure. Appalled that such a thing could have happened, appalled at my inability to withstand psychological coercion, wondering darkly if it all points to some fundamental weakness.
Lawyers, interviewers, psychologists... I've never liked them. All part of the same phenomenon - or neurosis - I suspect.
words were spilled on Friday, May 06, 2005
