| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: Through an elaborate and exhaustive investigation of the lies
told by five patients over a period of years, he came to the
conclusion that the form of falsifying in these cases deserves a
new and separate name. It was not ordinary lying, or delusion,
or false memory, these words express only part of the conception;
hence he coined the new term, pseudologia phantastica, to cover
the species of lying with which he was concerned. Later German
writers have also adopted his terminology.
To emphasize the method by which he arrived at this conclusion
and to gain at the same time some knowledge of the problems he
dealt with, we may review in bare outline his case-studies.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: "So I asked to speak to the old man. He always seemed
very sick when he came to see me--as if he could not look
me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship.
She was too deep to have run long under bare poles.
And it was I that managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came.
When I had him in my cabin--he stood by the door looking
at me as if I had the halter round my neck already--
I asked him right away to leave my cabin door unlocked
at night while the ship was going through Sunda Straits.
There would be the Java coast within two or three miles,
off Angier Point. I wanted nothing more. I've had a prize
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had
been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth
which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone
cordiality--of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of
the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me
of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments,
while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity,
half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,
in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with
difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the
wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet
The Fall of the House of Usher |
