{A Dream: Of a Psychological Test Challenged}[30th July 1988]

[Redbook5:239-240][19880730:1118b]{A Dream: Of a Psychological Test Challenged}[30th July 1988]

19880730.1118

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This morning I dreamt that I was sitting a psychometrics test along with other examinees in a typically bleak and grubby examination hall, with a sombre, bearded invigilator-psychologist facing us at the usual tall thin desk. I have already forgotten much of this dream; but some of the symbolism was interesting.

At one point I got up to leave and thoughtlessly turned out the light, plunging the whole room into darkness; then switched it on again, with apologies. I think it was after this that I suddenly shouted (while sitting down at my desk): ‘I shall never take an exam again!’ (or words to that effect). Rather to my surprise, the reaction of my fellow examinees to this interruption was precisely zilch: they just carried on writing.

But shortly after this, something rather strange happened to the invigilator: it was as though another, much wider and more solid desk was descending in front of him, from above him, at which (his face just visible peering over it) sat another bearded fellow, but with a much more cheerful expression: a rather jolly fellow, in fact.*

*[The writer of these journals had a beard for 14 years, from about the early 1980s to about the mid 1990s.]

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