My African memoir

The whole point is that when I wrote the book, the link between the adult self and the child self was broken. That is really the point of the book.  My writing of the book involved the repression of my adult self in order to recover the real and concrete nature of experience.

I first discovered the power of self-hypnosis writing my autobiography. I used it to take myself back to earlier life stages, and to try to attend to what exactly I might have been thinking, feeling, hearing and understanding.

I learned to do this back in time movement so well, after a time, that now or then I found that the childhood emotions I'd been accessing were "sticking" with me in my adult, conscious mind.  (Whilst taking casual courses at university, I crossed a field on campus feeling like a child again, and thinking: "Gosh -- I hope no adult sees me on this field, a place in which I shouldn't be.  Rhodesian society was very authoritarian).  So it was that I caught myself reflecting back through the adolescent trope, and amazed myself. Back was the child underneath all that had passed between now and then, the developed layers of adult thinking.

The autobiographical sections are highly realistic portrayals of how I and others of my age were, back then.   So successful was my entrance back into a childlike state to portray it, that many of the group members who read my prose began to treat me as if I was really at the level of maturity which I had been representing.

The kinds of responses I get always tell me a great deal about those who make their critiques.  Conservatives (male and female) tend to read "emotion" into my writing.   Others read their own dilemmas, giving me a clear and often poignant understanding of their own psychological structures.

But, let's get back to the issue of self-hypnosis, which can be a useful writing technique, but also fun.  When I went skydiving, I again employed my powers to suggest to myself that the air below me, whether thin or empty, was in fact a lake of water, into which I'd make an easy dive! After about fifteen minutes or so of self-talk, I'd convinced myself that the air was in fact water.

My exit from the plane was a breeze.

STAY SANE AND SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism