This is now Jane Charlton’s experience of her day-to-day life. People can be trapped outside themselves, unable to inhabit their own experiences, feelings and thoughts – like Mach, if he were unable to reconnect to himself after spying the shabby pedagogue in the mirror. But in some unlucky cases, the protective mechanism gets ‘stuck’. Luckily, with care and patience, the airbag can usually be wrapped up after the traumatic event, and we find ourselves back in our bodies and our lives. These states of mind seem to function as an experiential airbag, allowing us to deal with life-threatening dangers which would otherwise be overwhelming. If you’ve been through trauma, or narrowly escaped a nasty accident, you might recall how a sense of unreality can wash over you, how you suddenly disconnect from yourself, or feel as if you’re floating in the air and watching from above. Psychologists estimate that around three-quarters of us will experience similar symptoms of self-detachment at some point in our lives. In the next instant, Mach realises the shabby pedagogue is none other than himself, staring out from a mirror positioned at the back of the bus.įor a few moments, Mach had become a stranger to himself. As he stares down the aisle, he sees a person at the other end, a character he dismisses as a ‘shabby pedagogue’. One day in the late 19th century, the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach gets on a bus.
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