INSTITUTIONAL DENIAL ABOUT THE DARK SIDE OF LAW SCHOOL

[caribou]

I'm not sure if you really get it...I mean, for God's sake it's pretty clear Freud was a geek who went into pure research, which were at that time mostly on an unpaid basis. Now, what this meant was that he went broke soon and ended up taking took up work at Theodor Meynert's Psychiatric Clinic. What do you think happened that made him famous? Well, during this period he began his studies into a promising new drug, cocaine, which he believed would become a common treatment for depression -- and perhaps even for other ailments, including indigestion. He himself became an enthusiastic user of cocaine, also handing it out to colleagues and relations (including his sisters) and praising its merits in various scholarly papers. Basically he went nuts. And productive in his work, including the research projects that were never successful before. The whole 'Freud fame' is in actuality nothing else but the 'cocaine fame'.

So basically

Freud - Coke = 0
Freud + Coke = 1

[célibataire endurci]

So basically

Freud - Coke = 0
Freud + Coke = 1

Hahaha - solving the system of these linear equations we get

Freud = Coke = ½

LOL!

[hitch]

Here too, there are several posts unrelated to law school and lawyering..

[mapit]

Well, I read this thread very attentively and I just don't get why all the "surprise" by the whole law school experience ... I mean, law school is  not  a mere continuation of one's undergraduate (or even graduate) studies -- I think it more akin to "boot camp" where, in addition to certain substantive subjects and professional skills, one becomes "re-socialized," learns to "think like a lawyer," learns to cope with stress and many other things collateral to learning law, but not collateral to "lawyering." Like boot camp (or virginity's loss!), when you enter law school, your life turns a corner past which it can never again pass. Don't get me wrong, I do not regret the trip ... but it brings a permanent change. So, those of you who still have the chance, enjoy the virginity -- law school will bring a permanent change!

It is always fascinating for the outsider to read of the preparation of innocent young men and women to participate in routinized institutionalized violence, which is -- after all -- the essence of law school training. The system requires, first, the dehumanization of the self; then, by natural extension, the dehumanization of everyone else. This is the key to survival in a world where lives must be disposed of as cheaply and quickly as possible.

Perhaps the proper function of a legal education is to produce persons who "think like lawyers": individuals, that is, who are trained to hold various unambivalent yet rationally unjustified beliefs, necessary for the vigorous deployment of social power, that nevertheless remain highly role specific, and are therefore subject to change at a moment's -- or a client's -- notice. Such beliefs help mold otherwise ordinary people into the sorts of state actors who will not hesitate to kill, cage, and impoverish their fellow citizens on what are deemed institutionally appropriate occasions, in much the same way that successful military training renders otherwise pacific young men capable of committing acts of politically sanctioned homicide.

It was Freud who first described the marriage between sensuality and organized violence -- e.g., the law school thinking way. "Libido" refers not only to the sexual drive, but to all aggressive acts. In his dual instinct theory, Freud stated that libido and aggression come under broader biological principles Eros (love) and Thanatos (death and self-destruction). More recent psychological theorists suggest that war -- including a nation's insatiable hunger for military power and the passion for armaments -- arises from a deep-seated fear of death, a fear that is, naturally, basic to the human condition. This death fear creates the paradoxical situation where institutionalized murder (war, capital punishment, "right to bear arms," mob violence, legitimized military statism) grows out of something known as "radical pain."

According to this theory, there are three types of pain:

- Physical pain (old age, sickness, and dying);
- Emotional pain (being away from a loved one, being forced to be with people one hates); and
- Radical pain (knowledge -- or fear of knowledge -- of the intransigence of life, and one's own inevitable move towards chaos and entropy).

In other words, the lunacy of a Hitler or a Pol Pot (or even America's own militarists) grows out of an unacknowledged and unrecognized terror of the inevitable, the most inevitable fact of life. Namely, death.

We don't want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which supports us. Man can strut and boast all he wants, but he really draws his "courage to be" from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat and the fetish of money, and the size of his bank balance. The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation, but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

Evil arises from a good impulse, the desire to escape the anxiety related to death and finitude. The attempt to escape is inevitable given our capacity for imaginatively entertaining infinity and eternity. The attempt to escape, since it is impossible, involves us in all kinds of neurotic manipulations which falsify reality. It is the fear of death which underlies all evil, the harm that we do to each other, and the destructive, manipulative, suffocating and oppressing institutions we create.  

Why do the cultural solutions to the dilemma of death seem to have led to such blood-shed and viciousness as human sacrifice, torture, executions, and wars? Why didn't this impulse lead instead to harmony and peace? The destructiveness arises, Ernest Becker taught, from the need to experience prestige and power on the one hand, and the need, on the other, for expiation of guilt.  

The need for power and prestige is obvious. The role of expiation for guilt requires some explanation. This is not the ordinary guilt we feel when we betray a friend. This is a more cosmic guilt, the kind arising from what the Greeks called hubris. It is the guilt which comes from trying to stick out above humanity's station, of challenging, by implication, the glory of the gods. It is the guilt arising from trying to exist and live heroically. Such guilt is the corollary of the cultural constructions which are designed to gather to themselves eternal and infinite meaning and power. The two go together like the two sides of a coin. The expiation of this kind of guilt in history seems to have almost always involved the shedding of blood, especially that of the enemy in war.  

Expiation of guilt is one reason why the victim must die in our place. There is another and perhaps more important reason. Victims must die in order to certify that the immortality system is intact and potent, because if our national or religious immortality chariot isn't absolutely intact, then it might not carry us to glory. The heretic who questions the true faith and/or the faithful of a neighboring country with a different system must die to assure us that our way is truth, absolute truth, the real and powerful and saving truth which cradles and shelters us from the Void.

The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he thinks of himself.

Pascal

[fortuneteller]

[...]

Delusions: One the cardinal symptoms of paranoia and other disorders, most notably schizophrenia. [...]

Well, while delusions are a very important characteristic symptoms of Schizophrenia, hallucinations are just as significative for the diagnosis. For instance, you need only one Criterion A symptom if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person's behavior or thoughts, or 2+ voices conversing with each other.

http://www.avatarhosting.net/pics/5117/Criteria.jpg

[Mina]

That study seems to have captured how I felt throughout law school, even before 1L grades. I'm a 2L.

I came in there really happy and care-free, and loving, and when I left, it as if my soul was crushed and I was transformed into a hedonistic machine. My persona was debased, it was if I was stripped of all my color and life, and redressed ina machinistic black and white. Part of a wayward zebra herd--always in angst. 

This year, to combat this diagnosis of what I define as the essence of terribleness and, I came up with a plan!

first, I will only do the minimal amount of work, the rest I will be chilling. 

Second, I am going out every thursday, friday and saturday, and taking time to spend with my family-- this includes my grandma, uncles and everyone else.

Third, if I don't want to go class, I won't. For example, I did not go to my 1st evidence class today cuz I did not feel like it.

Fourth, I plan on starting my own criminal law office where I will carry my own sense of personal autonomy, instead of becoming corporate bug to be squished at the whim of the market. 

Fifth, "I don't care too much for money, cuz money can't buy me love." In other words,

Napoleon once said, "man's only limit is his ability to love each square inch around him."
I just like to remind myself of this. This is true. -MG


p.s. if anyone needs a criminal lawyer, Holla!

[publiek]

Well, while delusions are a very important characteristic symptoms of Schizophrenia, hallucinations are just as significative for the diagnosis. For instance, you need only one Criterion A symptom if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person's behavior or thoughts, or 2+ voices conversing with each other.

http://www.avatarhosting.net/pics/5117/Criteria.jpg

I see what you mean, fortune teller - Auditory hallucinations, particularly of one or more talking voices, are particularly associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, and hold special significance in diagnosing these conditions, although many people not suffering from diagnosable mental illness may sometimes hear voices as well. When someone hears voices conversing, they hear 2+ voices speaking to each other (usually about the person who is hallucinating). In voices commenting, the person hears a voice making comments about his/her behavior or thoughts, typically in the third person (such as, "isn't he silly"). Sometimes the voices consist of hearing a "running commentary" on the person's behavior as it occurs ("she is showering"). Other times, the voices may tell the person to do something (commonly referred to as "command hallucinations").

[ambulando]

It is always fascinating for the outsider to read of the preparation of innocent young men and women to participate in routinized institutionalized violence, which is -- after all -- the essence of law school training. The system requires, first, the dehumanization of the self; then, by natural extension, the dehumanization of everyone else. This is the key to survival in a world where lives must be disposed of as cheaply and quickly as possible.

It was Freud who first described the marriage between sensuality and organized violence -- e.g., the law school thinking way. "Libido" refers not only to the sexual drive, but to all aggressive acts. In his dual instinct theory, Freud stated that libido and aggression come under broader biological principles Eros (love) and Thanatos (death and self-destruction). More recent psychological theorists suggest that war -- including a nation's insatiable hunger for military power and the passion for armaments -- arises from a deep-seated fear of death, a fear that is, naturally, basic to the human condition. This death fear creates the paradoxical situation where institutionalized murder (war, capital punishment, "right to bear arms," mob violence, legitimized military statism) grows out of something known as "radical pain."

According to this theory, there are three types of pain:

- Physical pain (old age, sickness, and dying);
- Emotional pain (being away from a loved one, being forced to be with people one hates); and
- Radical pain (knowledge -- or fear of knowledge -- of the intransigence of life, and one's own inevitable move towards chaos and entropy).

In other words, the lunacy of a Hitler or a Pol Pot (or even America's own militarists) grows out of an unacknowledged and unrecognized terror of the inevitable, the most inevitable fact of life. Namely, death.

We don't want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which supports us. Man can strut and boast all he wants, but he really draws his "courage to be" from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat and the fetish of money, and the size of his bank balance. The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation, but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

Evil arises from a good impulse, the desire to escape the anxiety related to death and finitude. The attempt to escape is inevitable given our capacity for imaginatively entertaining infinity and eternity. The attempt to escape, since it is impossible, involves us in all kinds of neurotic manipulations which falsify reality. It is the fear of death which underlies all evil, the harm that we do to each other, and the destructive, manipulative, suffocating and oppressing institutions we create. 

Why do the cultural solutions to the dilemma of death seem to have led to such blood-shed and viciousness as human sacrifice, torture, executions, and wars? Why didn't this impulse lead instead to harmony and peace? The destructiveness arises, Ernest Becker taught, from the need to experience prestige and power on the one hand, and the need, on the other, for expiation of guilt. 

The need for power and prestige is obvious. The role of expiation for guilt requires some explanation. This is not the ordinary guilt we feel when we betray a friend. This is a more cosmic guilt, the kind arising from what the Greeks called hubris. It is the guilt which comes from trying to stick out above humanity's station, of challenging, by implication, the glory of the gods. It is the guilt arising from trying to exist and live heroically. Such guilt is the corollary of the cultural constructions which are designed to gather to themselves eternal and infinite meaning and power. The two go together like the two sides of a coin. The expiation of this kind of guilt in history seems to have almost always involved the shedding of blood, especially that of the enemy in war. 

Expiation of guilt is one reason why the victim must die in our place. There is another and perhaps more important reason. Victims must die in order to certify that the immortality system is intact and potent, because if our national or religious immortality chariot isn't absolutely intact, then it might not carry us to glory. The heretic who questions the true faith and/or the faithful of a neighboring country with a different system must die to assure us that our way is truth, absolute truth, the real and powerful and saving truth which cradles and shelters us from the Void.

The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he thinks of himself.

Pascal

Monumental lines, indeed, these ones of Pascal, mapit!

[in lieu of]

Well, while delusions are a very important characteristic symptoms of Schizophrenia, hallucinations are just as significative for the diagnosis. For instance, you need only one Criterion A symptom if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person's behavior or thoughts, or 2+ voices conversing with each other.

http://www.avatarhosting.net/pics/5117/Criteria.jpg

I see what you mean, fortune teller - Auditory hallucinations, particularly of one or more talking voices, are particularly associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, and hold special significance in diagnosing these conditions, although many people not suffering from diagnosable mental illness may sometimes hear voices as well. When someone hears voices conversing, they hear 2+ voices speaking to each other (usually about the person who is hallucinating). In voices commenting, the person hears a voice making comments about his/her behavior or thoughts, typically in the third person (such as, "isn't he silly"). Sometimes the voices consist of hearing a "running commentary" on the person's behavior as it occurs ("she is showering"). Other times, the voices may tell the person to do something (commonly referred to as "command hallucinations").

I tend to believe the command hallucinations are just as bad as a commentary voice or the 2+ conversing voices not only in the practical sense but also in terms of diagnosing.

[s t a s h]

Well, while delusions are a very important characteristic symptoms of Schizophrenia, hallucinations are just as significative for the diagnosis. For instance, you need only one Criterion A symptom if delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person's behavior or thoughts, or 2+ voices conversing with each other.

http://www.avatarhosting.net/pics/5117/Criteria.jpg

I see what you mean, fortune teller - Auditory hallucinations, particularly of one or more talking voices, are particularly associated with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, and hold special significance in diagnosing these conditions, although many people not suffering from diagnosable mental illness may sometimes hear voices as well. When someone hears voices conversing, they hear 2+ voices speaking to each other (usually about the person who is hallucinating). In voices commenting, the person hears a voice making comments about his/her behavior or thoughts, typically in the third person (such as, "isn't he silly"). Sometimes the voices consist of hearing a "running commentary" on the person's behavior as it occurs ("she is showering"). Other times, the voices may tell the person to do something (commonly referred to as "command hallucinations").

I tend to believe the command hallucinations are just as bad as a commentary voice or the 2+ conversing voices not only in the practical sense but also in terms of diagnosing.

As far as prognosis is concerned, yes.