The most curious and hazardous feature of the way we're built lies in the difficulty we have registering what we actually feel.
Our vast and strange minds get filled with thoughts that go unsifted and with feelings we don't have the courage to look at.
We might be angry or sad while lacking any active awareness that we are so.
Or guilty or envious without any grasp of what is at play behind a thin psychological curtain.
And so we remain unconscious — always — because we are resistant to ideas that threaten our sense of calm, our self-image and our gratifying illusions about who we are.
We surely can't be angry because we're kind people who couldn't feel negatively about a beloved elderly relative.
Or we can't be sad at not being invited to the party because we don't care about trivial, social matters.
And it isn't possible that we are envious because we aren't people to covet others' advantages.
While the greatest share of our mental apparatus privileges forgetting over understanding, we do — nevertheless — have a conscience.
There's a part of us that wants the truth, however bitter it might be; a minor part, but a notoriously insistent and ingenious part that won't leave us in peace until its case has been heard.
