Jenny and I were roommates mostly out of necessity. She was working her way through school and I was just switching careers and in the rebuilding process. She was a friend of a friend and not someone who I was overly attracted to. She was cute in her own way but a little too wide in the hips for me. She turned out to be fairly easy to live with and we both seemed to know when to stay out of each other's way and when to be social.
One night after work I was finishing up cleaning the kitchen after she had cooked dinner and looked up to see her pulling out some school books. "So what are you studying tonight?" I asked as I rinsed out a frying pan.
"Just more psychology...compulsion, that sort of thing." Jenny was trying to become a psychologist while bartending to pay her way.
"Compulsion? Like making people do things against their will?" I asked.
"Well it is not really that simple John," she said without looking up.
"Hmm," I mused," I thought it was pretty black and white. Either you want to do something or you don't," I surmised.
Jenny looked up at me with her black rimmed glasses," it is and it isn't. There are really two parts to every person. You have the Ego that drives and controls most of our everyday lives and then you have the Id which is all the things that have been suppressed by the Ego over the years. Sometimes the Id comes out," she paused," kind of like you sometimes do things and do not know why you did it but really regret it," she explained.
"So that was not me that was someone else?"
"No, that was your Id. Your dark side as Jung put it."
"So my dark side or Id might do it when my Ego would?" I reasoned.
"Precisely. An addict does things they would not normally do just to feed their addiction. They realize what they are doing but cannot stop themselves from committing the act," she continued," different government agencies have experimented with things like this using substance or even hypnosis to brainwash someone to act the way the would have them act."
"So they would hypnotize someone to do something and the person would actually do it?"
"In a manner of speaking. They might try to find a way compel the person through addictions in order to bring out the Id which may not have the same moral code their Ego might have. Less resistance to do bad things," she pushed her blonde wavy hair back behind one ear with the hand that held her pen.
"I think I understand," I said trying to piece together what Jenny was talking about.
"Do you want to help me with my project?" she asked with a smirk.
Red flags went up in my mind when I heard the tone of how she asked," I have to say I am a bit leery. Help how?"
