Recently I spent time with two men – Mr B & Mr K. Mr B is well read, knowledgeable on a very wide range of topics and a considered and deep thinker. Mr K is an alcoholic who had lost his business and family as a result of actions by his ex-wife.
On the evening prior to meeting Mr K, Mr B had been telling me about his childhood experiences of sexual abuse which he could recall in considerable detail – what happened, how he felt and how it subsequently impacted his life and relationships. Mr B explained that these memories had been suppressed until he had done a personal development program during which these past events had come to light. He had to deal with this experience without being able to confront the person/s involved as they were all now dead. When he raised it with his brother, his brother denied any knowledge or experience of anything similar happening either to himself or to Mr B. Mr B’s view was that his brother was in denial and was suppressing this knowledge as he himself had done for many years.
When I met Mr K he was going through a major crisis – he had recently
found out that his 13 year old son had been sexually abused by his
ex-wife’s boyfriend for 6 years. He was in an extremely distressed state. When we (Mr B & I) looked into the situation, as part of trying to support Mr K, we found that the events he was so distressed about never happened. His son is a bright, happy young teenager and the police were well aware of Mr K as this has happened before.
Now here’s the thing: Mr B & Mr K both KNOW certain things have happened to them or to people close to them. However, in the case of Mr K, it turns out that this knowledge is a delusion of his own creating. Now, I would never suggest that Mr B is in the same category. However, it did get me thinking about how much do we really KNOW and how much is a creation of our own imagination to help us explain our behaviour, attitudes etc so that we can live with who we are and what we’ve done (or believe we have).
So how do we know what we know and is it real? I can’t answer this question. What are your thoughts on this?