The "Presence Behind the Mirror"

“You Don’t Own Me! …” (Leslie Gore, 1963)

I had a nanosecond psychic startle experience the other day.  Obviously, it was a case of some sort of weird, transient psychic dissociation, but the experience highlighted for me the truth that not everything in the psyche is of one’s own making.

I’d just finished watching the news and drinking my morning cup of coffee.  I got up during the TV ad to go brush my teeth.  The background music to the commercial was a familiar hit from the 1960s, and I began to sing along with Lesley Gore as I made my way to the bathroom.  As I looked in the mirror, the words to the song came out of my mouth, but I had the distinct, albeit fleeting impression that looking back at me from behind the mirror was this other “presence”— an autonomous factor that presented itself as an actual personality — delivering what was clearly a pointed message to my observing ego:  “You don’t own me!  I’m not just one of your many toys!”  It shocked me and definitely made a strong impression on me, so much so that it “weirds me out” even now as I write about the event.

This experience drove home the point that, far from being the master of my own soul, there are psychic elements and factors that are not of or created by the ego.  Far from being of the ego, by the ego, and for the ego, there are factors within the psyche that “have a point of view” and are not to be trifled with by the presumptuous, inconsiderate, disrespectful and overly-confident ego that thinks it is in control of everything.

Wilor B., 10/5/11