How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
One does not realize that for a six-year-old the path of memory stretches back for just as long a lifetime as it does for anyone, and is as full of detail and incident. Gerry had had trouble enough, loss enough, illness enough, to make a man of anyone. (1.12.2)
We had to read this one a few times to make sense of it. The quote suggests that no matter what age someone is, that person can interpret the details of his or her memory for as long a time as anyone older. That's why Gerry is an old soul: though only six years old, he has reflected on all his troubles as much as an old person might have, which we imagine is a lot.
Quote #2
But someone had called to him this way—someone who "sent" like a child, but who was not a child. And though what he felt now was faint, it was in substance unbearably similar. It was sweet and needful, yes; but it was also the restimulation of a stinging lash and a terror of crushing kicks and obscene shouting, and the greatest loss he had ever known [...] He rose, shaken, and began to walk to the call in a world turned dreamlike. The longer he walked, the more irresistible the call became and the deeper his enchantment [...] To permit himself any more consciousness would have been to kindle such an inferno of conflict that he could not have gone on. (1.24.11-13)
You know how ice cream is irresistible? So are powerful, emotional memories such as this one. Lone's experience of Alicia's heart-rending, telepathic call reminds him of his life-changing experience with Evelyn and the resulting battle with her father. That's one of those memories we'd probably try to block out.
Quote #3
Eight. Eight, plate, state, hate. I ate from the plate of the state and I hate. I didn't like any of that and I snapped my eyes open. The ceiling was still gray. It was all right. Stern was somewhere behind me with his pipe, and he was all right. I took two deep breaths, three, and then let my eyes close. Eight. Eight years old. Eight, hate. Years, fears. Old, cold. Damn it! I twisted and twitched on the couch, trying to find a way to keep the cold out. I ate from the plate of the—
I grunted and with my mind I took all the eights and all the rhymes and everything they stood for, and made it all black. But it wouldn't stay black. I had to put something there, so I made a great big luminous figure eight and just let it hang there. But it turned on its side and inside the loops it began to shimmer. It was like one of those movie shots through binoculars. I was going to have to look through whether I liked it or not.
Suddenly I quit fighting it and let it wash over me. The binoculars came closer, closer, and then I was there. (2.2.42-44)
Eight, hate, state, wait—what is going on here? This passage, a mix of stream-of-consciousness and internal monologue, takes place when Gerry is on the couch early in his session with Stern. It shows just how much of a battle it is to fight with your memory so that you can relive an experience in detail, as Gerry subsequently does.
Quote #4
"It [experiencing memories] was like it was happening for real all over again."
"Feel anything?"
"Everything." I shuddered. "Every damn thing. What was it?"
"Anyone doing it feels better afterward. You can go over it all again now any time you want to, and every time you do, the hurt in it will be less. You'll see."
It was the first thing to amaze me in years. I chewed on it and then asked, "If I did it by myself, how come it never happened before?"
"It needs someone to listen." (2.3.6-11)
Time for some Psychology 101. This back-and-forth between Gerry and Stern comes shortly after Gerry talks aloud in detail about his memories of meeting Lone and the kids. The conversation suggests that talking through your painful memories lessens the pain but requires a listener with whom you feel safe, and might be easier said than done.
Quote #5
I said angrily, "I didn't like or not like. It didn't mean nothing. It was just—just talk."
"So what was the difference between this last session and what happened before?"
"My gosh, plenty! The first one, I felt everything. It was all really happening to me. But this time—nothing."
"Why do you suppose that was?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
"Suppose," he said thoughtfully, "that there was some episode so unpleasant to you that you wouldn't dare relive it [...] Sometimes the very thing you're looking for—the thing that'll clear up your trouble—is so revolting to you that you won't go near it. Or you try to hide it. [...] It might be something very desirable to you. It's just that you don't want to get straightened out." (2.5.7-14)
Another psychology lesson from More Than Human. Here, Gerry compares the time he relived his memories of meeting Lone and the kids to another time when he simply summarized what life was like in the cave. The first recalling was an emotionally powerful process; the second he felt as just "nothing," just talking. Stern suggests his patient fears to dive into his memories because the curative episode hidden there might be too revolting or desirable for him to bear reliving. The whole novel presents processing your memories as a challenge that must be met in order to evolve personally or as a species.
Quote #6
"Everywhere we go, everything we do, we're surrounded by symbols, by things so familiar we don't ever look at them or don't see them if we do look. If anyone ever could report to you exactly what we saw and thought while walking ten feet down the street, you'd get the most twisted, clouded, partial picture you ever ran across. And nobody ever looks at what's around him with any kind of attention until he gets into a place like this. The fact that he's looking at past events doesn't matter; what counts is that he's seeing clearer than he ever could before, just because, for once, he's trying." (2.5.55)
Stern describes what makes psychotherapy work. Everyday life is an experience of confusing symbols that people just power through, but when in therapy (or reading! or writing!), people attend to their experience in such detail that they are able to grow or evolve. So that's how it works.
Quote #7
I felt sick. I felt tired. And I suddenly realized that being sick and being tired was a way of trying to get out of it. (2.5.57)
During therapy with Stern, Gerry describes how he feels as he's pushing himself to embark on a journey into his painful memories. His feelings of exhaustion and sickness are defense mechanisms his mind is using in an effort to escape the painful memories. Kind of like when you pretend you're too sick to go to class…except these feelings are ones Gerry's actually experiencing.
Quote #8
"When you wouldn't get into the recollection, I tried to nudge you into it by using your own voice as you recounted it before. It works wonders sometimes [...] You were on the trembling verge of going into the thing you don't want to remember, and you let yourself go unconscious rather than do it" (2.10.5-7)
Stern explains why he used the tape recorder to play back Gerry saying "Baby is three." Come on, in 1953, tape decks were cool. Anyway, the point is that defense mechanisms against remembering can be so strong that a person simply cannot access the memories. Gadgets like tape recorders can defuse the defenses and make it all come rushing back, whether you want it to or not.
Quote #9
"You talk about occlusions! I couldn't get past the 'Baby is three' thing because in it lay the clues to what I really am. I couldn't find that out beause I was afraid to remember that I was two things—Miss Kew's little boy, and something a hell of a lot bigger." (2.14.12)
Okay, the confusing "Baby is three" phrase: let's tackle it. Simply put, Gerry didn't want to remove the block—also known as an occlusion—because it would mean recalling his nature as a gestalt life form and the fact that he basically just murdered his mother-figure.