I worked as a paralegal at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld from 1988 to 1991. Previously, I worked at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson (from 1985 to 1988) where I became friends with a co-worker named Craig W. Dye. Throughout my tenure at Akin Gump I kept up social contacts with former co-workers from Hogan & Hartson. My social contacts with former Hogan coworkers throughout the years 1988 to 1991 belie Akin Gump's sworn declaration that I had difficulty communicating with my peers at Akin Gump. Incidentally, Craig W. Dye is an intellectually gifted individual who scored 99th percentile on the Law School Admission Test. He was accepted to all the top law schools, but decided to pursue a career path other than law. His former employer, Hogan & Hartson, had offered to pay his law school tuition.
My appointment calendar for the year 1990 (while I worked at Akin Gump) indicates that I had lunch Craig W. Dye on the following dates:
January 25, 1990
March 7, 1990
May 2, 1990
August 7, 1990
September 18, 1990
November 29, 1990
After I left Akin Gump I intentionally isolated myself. Yes, I am a very dangerous person.
ReplyDeleteThe psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson wrote the following about Martin Luther:
"In the case of great young men (and in the cases of many vital young ones of whom we should not demand that they reveal at all costs the stigmata of greatness in order to justify confusion and conflict), rods which measure consistency, inner balance, or proficiency simply do not fit the relevant dimensions. On the contrary, a case could be made for the necessity for extraordinary conflicts, at times both felt and judged to be desperate. For if some youths did not feel estranged from the compromise patterns into which their societies have settled down, if some did not force themselves almost against their own wills to insist, at the price of isolation, on finding an original way of meeting our existential problems, societies would lose an essential avenue of rejuvenation and to that rebellious expansion of human consciousness which alone can keep pace with the technological and social change. To retrace, as we are doing here, such a step of expansion involves taking account of the near downfall of the man who took it, partially in order to understand better the origin of greatness, and partially in order to acknowledge the fact that the trauma of near defeat follows a great man through life. I have already quoted Kierkegaard's statement that Martin Luther lived and acted always as if lightening were about to strike behind him. Furthermore, a great man carries the trauma of his near downfall and his mortal grudge against the near assassins of his identity into the years of his creativity and beyond, into his decline; he builds his hates and his grudges into his system as bulwarks--bulwarks which eventually make the system first rigid and finally, brittle." Erikson, E.H. Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History at 149-150 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1958).