Reflections on Splitting

-- By CourtneyDoak - 24 Apr 2012

Fissures

The first seeds of cognitive dissonance that resulted in my split were planted, I think, on the day of my college graduation. My memories of the sights and feelings of that day are vague, painted in broad brushstrokes. The sounds I remember more clearly, particularly the words of our commencement speaker, Elie Wiesel. I recall the goosebumps I felt as I listened, captivated by his message, humbled by the privilege of hearing him speak.

“You will learn you can do something,” Wiesel told us, “even for one person. There must be on this planet at least one person who needs you. One person you can help. Don’t turn away; help."

For those minutes I sat, inspired by Wiesel, who has seen the worst of humanity, who suffered through and survived the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust, who subsequently devoted his life to humanitarian efforts, to replacing intolerance with understanding, replacing indifference with compassion.

I wrote my law school personal statement about how I was riveted by the powerful simplicity of Wiesel’s message, how I understood the capacity that each of us has to help someone in a way that changes that person’s life entirely. I wrote about how the lawyer who advocated for my sisters and me freed us from abuse and instilled in me a fierce desire to do the same for other children similarly victimized.

All of this is true – Wiesel’s words that day succinctly capture why I was drawn to law school two years later. However, this class made me acutely aware that my personal statement failed to explore why I did what I did every day during those two years. I seek now to reflect on those choices, to better understand myself and hopefully to illuminate the path to a legal career about which I’m passionate.

Split

I sat on graduation day thinking: yes, this is what I will do with my life; I will help children who need advocates. Yet I had, months prior, accepted a position as a financial analyst at a global investment bank, to work on behalf of the “high net worth” and the “ultra high net worth”.

I graduated with a clear conception of the work to which I wanted to devote my life, but instead I spent my days analyzing financial statements, plugging numbers into Excel. I felt discomfort from the dissonance of these realities.

Initially, I attempted to reframe my perception of my behaviors. I rationalized that working on the seventh iteration of a Powerpoint slide was ultimately helping our clients, somehow, to meet their financial goals. But even if I am helping them, in some (extremely) attenuated way, I’d inevitably think seconds later, they certainly aren’t the ones I’m passionate about helping.

At some point, those thoughts – mental uneasiness, rationalizations to mollify my subconscious, my mind’s rejection of these rationalizations – ceased. I just began going to work, ambivalent but not consciously dissatisfied.

Reading “Something Split” in Lawyerland, wherein Wylie (quoting a psychiatrist) describes the process of splitting, was enlightening in helping me understand my experience. Lawyers must “do things, be part of things, [they] don’t want to be a part of. [They] have to pretend to be what [they're] not” (Joseph 41), and consequently, cognitive dissonance takes root. This dissonance is sometimes eliminated through repression of the dissonance-causing thoughts, followed by dissociation – a psychic split.

When my first psychic defense mechanism (reframing my perceptions) failed, I think, perhaps, that I split. I cannot identify when, precisely, this occurred, likely because these splits are subconscious. What I know is that a time came when I no longer regularly felt the crushing heaviness of my dissonance. Mental peace made things easier. In hindsight I worry that I was unconsciously traveling down the road to the easiest way of life, the narrator’s route in “Bartleby, The Scrivener”, a life where others would characterize me as “eminently safe” (Melville 1).

Wholeness - And Fissures, Revisited

Periodically, however, my subconscious desires cracked the façade of my complacency. Perhaps this indicates that I hadn’t fully split, hadn’t fully repressed my dissonance. Alternatively, perhaps the nagging was in fact my ghost, a manifestation of everything I wanted to be. Either way, I feel fortunate that, unlike the narrator in Bartleby, the strength of my desires pulled me back together and brought me here.

Since beginning law school, I have grown increasingly anxious in trying to stay true to my convictions, to pursue work in children’s rights upon graduation. As the reality of financial burden set in, I made hypothetical compromises: what if I postpone my true ambitions, work at a firm a couple years, pay off my loans, then do what I came here to do?

I recognized the irrationality of these compromises, especially upon realization that I've already been down this road: dissonance, rationalizations, splitting, coming back together. I was disconcerted by the possibility of beginning this cycle anew, splitting once more, unconsciously living an eminently safe life, haunted by a ghost I cannot see.

The Way Forward

Reflecting on my career path to date has made me more self-aware of the limits of my rationality, and has imparted greater understanding of how I will take control of my life within the parameters of those limits. Ultimately I think the answer lies in Elie Wiesel’s message, which so inspired me at graduation.

For me the rationalizations fall away and it becomes easier to stay conscious and whole, on the right side of justice, when I realize there is at least one person - one future client - who I can help.

Essentially, that client is me. She is a child, or many children, in whom I see the reflection of my scared, helpless ten-year-old self. And so I will pursue a career on the right side so I may help those children, give them a voice where they might otherwise be rendered silent, just as somebody once did for me.

(999)

-- CourtneyDoak - 27 Apr 2012

(I would like to continue editing over the summer. Thank you!)

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This is a beautifully written and compelling story. It's concise and relatable, yet has hidden beauty/emotion poking through in certain words and sentences (e.g. "Essentially the client is me"). As a reader what I was left wondering was how you realized you had split, or rather, what made you quit your job and want to come back to law school? If you were ambivalent about your work, was there something that shocked you awake or made you realize that you were cognitively dissonant, and thus encouraged you to apply to law school? If there was maybe this really was an instance of seeing your ghost?? I really enjoyed reading this and appreciate you sharing -- SkylarPolansky - 25 Apr 2012

Skylar, thank you so much for your comments, I really appreciate them. As I clarified in my paper above, there was not, as far as I can recall, a specific moment where I was shocked awake, or where I had an epiphany that drew me back to law school. I think it's more accurate to say that I periodically felt the nagging of my subconscious desires, which intermittently cracked through my ambivalence and reminded me that this was not the work I was meant to do or to which I wanted to devote my life. What I am not sure of is whether this nagging means I had not entirely repressed my subconscious desires and my cognitive dissonance, and thus had not completely split, or whether this nagging was in fact my ghost, haunting me intermittently and gradually waking me up to the fact that I was not making the kind of difference I wanted to make. Either way, I feel fortunate that the strength of my desires pulled me back together and compelled me to apply to law school. Again, thank you so much for your comments, and for inspiring me to think more deeply about what drew me here.

-- CourtneyDoak - 27 Apr 2012

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