By: Kelly Chia, Humour Editor
Everywhere I go . . . I see his face. Sigmund (hopefully not motherfucking) Freud. It was innocuous at first: he would come up, obviously, in my PSYC 101 class. I get it, we all have to learn about the “father of psychoanalysis” even though it’s fundamentally a bit creepy to define people based on sex. But I swear he’s following me. I think he’s following everybody. This is my story, sordid as it may be . . .
I saw him next in my English syllabus, following a lesson on Jekyll and Hyde. The mustached man stared at me, again. Black powerpoint slide, and garishly red Times New Roman text combined to produce my actual worst nightmare . . . a man, who despite my best efforts to avoid him and his tired theories (enrolling in different electives “for funsies”) would appear again, and again, and again. I was seeing him in my dreams, a figure just as terrifying as my syllabi including a presentation, self-evaluation, final, and final essay component.
I suppose it’s not my professors’ fault, like, they have to include him, I thought naïvely. And in the arts department, it’s fairly common to talk through our texts using psychology. But then! I encountered the man in, of all places, my computing classes! And again in my astronomy classes! He was a line of code sent to destroy my peace. He began towering over my electives like . . . like my subconscious. Next thing you know, I’m going to be forced to start developing arguments about the man, the thought horrifies me just as much as people making “daddy” jokes. RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS POWERPOINT SLIDE?!?
And so, here we are, readers. My most coveted game theory that I have been developing over the past ??? years I have been at this school can finally be presented in this esteemed student publication: I think SFU has made a deal with Sigmund Freud himself, who is kind of like an academic Santa Claus — we don’t really need to believe in him because he is probably problematic, but we’re kinda forced to learn about him. Also, he haunts me.
Ohhhh, sure, SFU is much too clever to leave a paper trail. But I can feel it in my bones every time I see the same black and white photograph lecturers use for him. What, include him in the syllabus so we can have a nuanced understanding of him and his place in Psychology? Please. You don’t need nuance if you simply appear across seven different classes claiming to do modern curriculums incorporating the same seven, old, white male authors. I see your trickery, and I will not be mocked in this way!!
. . . But I need to graduate, so . . .
