The Pnictogen Wing

it's somewhat withering to one's confidence and self-esteem to realize, in retrospect, that the unpredictable and sometimes miraculous-seeming bursts of competence that we remember from childhood—finding oneself suddenly able, for example, to write many pages of persuasive writing late at night because of some class deadline—were in fact due to dissociative episodes and unsuspected introjects taking mercy on us, guiding our actions in an emergency. and of course we learned all the wrong lessons from such episodes.