Dr Krokowski wandered here from Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Soul Dissection means looking beneath the surface of everyday situations and taking apart what we think, what we feel, and how we explain our own behaviour to ourselves. Occasionally, the dissection reveals that something looks quite different from what its owner insisted it was.

Perhaps the worst thing is to spend your whole life looking only at the tip of the iceberg, never finding time to discover what lies beneath the surface. One day, you might collide with that submerged part of yourself and the world, only to discover, much to your surprise, that your convictions do not keep you afloat. This study is meant to be somewhere to pause for a moment and look deeper. A little like the Berghof sanatorium in The Magic Mountain, away from the bustle of everyday life, where there is time for conversations and contemplation, although the dead are taken down the mountain on sledges. Personally, however, I hope you will leave this online sanatorium on your own two feet.

Any resemblance of names, surnames, characters, events, or conversations to reality is, of course, purely coincidental. Or perhaps not? If you find your own reflection here, I will leave the interpretation to you. Dr Krokowski cannot possibly be held responsible for everything that happens in his study.

Even if my analytical brain picked up on one of the mechanisms described here during an ordinary conversation, that does not mean the entire piece is about you. When we take a closer look at ourselves, we usually discover that we have more in common than we would like to admit. Our most personal dramas can follow surprisingly familiar scripts. Apparently, we are not quite the unique snowflakes we imagine ourselves to be. Unfortunately, that includes me.