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“There is no such thing as a good influence.”
Parents groan when children fail to form wholesome habits such as consuming vegetables instead of sweets, bathing frequently, or getting dressed and breakfasted on time for school. Therapists opine when recalcitrant patients evince no sign of internalizing the valuable insights of their treatments. Teachers agonize over pupils who resist mastering important lessons. I wonder. For, appearances to the contrary, much that children protest or ignore sinks deeply in and, even as they demur, undergoes strange alchemical metamorphoses within their evolving psyches. What was unloved, unattended to, or even violently repulsed reappears in volte-face later on.
Necessarily, psychoanalysts concern themselves with noxious influences that lurk underground and cause havoc. But what about benign influences that have been rejected? What happens to them?
Conjure a capacious upscale department store. I had almost forgotten what a splendorous palace it can seem when you walk though the imposing doors. Theatrically designed, cleverly subdivided, and cannily illuminated, it beckons to its visitors. The feeling as you enter may even resemble that of Sindbad the Porter in The Thousand and One Nights (Mahdi , 2-5), as he gazes awestruck through the portals to the dwelling of that other Sindbad, the prosperous Sailor. How brilliantly the department store exhibits its wares and embraces its customers. Unabashedly it enflames them with longing for merchandise on display. Astounding in abundance, strategically placed, extravagantly assorted, these bright objects, while grouped in rational categories, will—if you ignore their actual