I am keeping a journal as a means of monitoring the effects of my Neural-Electro Therapy (NET). But first, a little background is necessary. My name is Dr. Marci Waters. I carry a Ph. D. in neuroscience and another in human psychology. My journey to a double doctorate has been fraught with resistance and hardship. Academia is a boy's club despite the graduation rate of female students. In order to achieve any kind of serious academic success, you must push and fight your way past a hundred man who want to see you fail simply because you are a woman.
Regardless of how modestly I dressed, I have had professors and advisers ask me out, as well as certain faculty who have solicited sexual favors from me, and even other colleagues who have placed their hands on my body. It certainly doesn't help that my mother has bestowed me ridiculous E-cup breasts, drawing stares from even the most distinguished names in psychology and neuroscience.
I have fought, complained, bitched, and named names, shaming the very men who would interfere with my lofty ambitions. I have had powerful men threaten to derail my doctorate program, and I have fought back, threatening legal action and intervention by the head faculty. No woman has ever achieved any form of success without being belligerent and determined. After eleven long years, I have achieved everything I set out to do in academia.
Now I have put together a team of scientists from the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neuropathy, electrical engineering, physics, and biology to design a course of therapy to alter detrimental human behavior. I'm the only woman among the group to my deepest chagrin, but these men will have to learn to work under a woman who actually has authority over them. If they think they can slack off or procure favor, they are gravely mistaken. Sometimes you have to be a complete bitch to get men to listen to you.
After brainstorming at great lengths with my male colleagues, I have determined that the vast majority of detrimental human behavior is governed by two factors: impulse and inhibition. Crime, mental illness, violence, addiction, sexual harassmentβall self-destructive behavior can be traced back to impulse and inhibition. Every decision we make on a daily basis comes down to three major factors: habit, impulse, and inhibition. On habit we wake in the morning, clean and get dressed, eat breakfast, drive to work, et cetera. But each individual habit is governed by impulse or inhibition. How do we choose what car we drive, what food we eat, even what job we have? I believe that a lifelong series of impulses and inhibitions dictate all facets of our lives.
What creates a drug addict in the family while another sibling lives a normal life? How can someone from a healthy, well-adjusted family become a violent killer? We look for extenuating circumstances to explain why people are violent or destructive, but what if we could nip the problem in the bud? Millions of Americans grow up poor, without fathers, without opportunities, in violent settings, but what causes certain people to turn to crime and drugs while others thrive? Our team believes the answer is as simple as impulse or inhibition.
The level of impulse and inhibition is different in every human being and perfectly explains the variance psychologists and sociologists see in human behavior. Any researcher will tell you there is a correlation between poverty and abuse, and crime and drug addiction. But no researcher can predict whether a person will grow up to be a felon or a doctoral candidate. I think we finally can.
Whether a person steals, joins a gang, assaults someone, picks up the needle, menaces their female coworkerβit all comes down to impulse and inhibition. In some of us, the drive to impulse is very high. We frequently do things without thinking. As I type, I light my fifth cigarette of the eveningβa filthy habit I hope to break with NET and prove its efficacy. All decisions are informed in large part by impulse. The food we buy, the strangers we talk to, the TV shows or movies we watch. There is, how to explain this, a litmus test in our minds. On a subconscious level our brain will decide if a choice is something we want or not. Most people do not operate on a fully conscious level.
Inhibition is the yin to the impulse yang. For some people, they have a subconscious aversion to crime, drugs, and self destructive behavior. They do not entertain thoughts of degeneracy. On a subconscious level, their mind is repulsed by certain activity and phenomena. While these ideas may seem to you like little more than fanciful shots in the dark attempting to illuminate the complex labyrinth of human behavior, I feel I have lit the spark as it were.