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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK124 Jack Fritscherhuman condition lie often in the individual, but more often within the institution which subsumes him.%u201dLock stood up next to the spinet. %u201cThat%u2019s not really true,%u201d Lock said, uncaged in the free atmosphere Dryden generated. %u201cPeople fight themselves and call it the institution...%u201d%u201cThe seminary,%u201d a voice interjected.%u201cAll right, the seminary,%u201d Lock continued, %u201cor the world or whatever frame it is they%u2019re involved in.%u201d%u201cYou%u2019re on to something there.%u201d Dryden retrieved his upstage position. %u201cSeveral years ago at Catholic University we heard some rather shocking gossip about Misericordia. You remember, that fellow who took the freshmen to the shower room to learn the size of the average penis.%u201d%u201cPorky Puhl,%u201d Hank the Tank said, %u201cwas in our class, but he was definitely not in our class.%u201dEveryone laughed, ha ha. %u201cBut he did %u2018measure up,%u2019%u201d Dryden said.The courtiers roared.Dryden poured something into a small glass. %u201cIt%u2019s good to ventilate some topics.%u201dI grew wary hearing their lurid details about a shipped boy%u2019s impurity.%u201cWhat%u2019s he drinking?%u201d I asked Mike in a whisper.%u201cPernod,%u201d he said. %u201cThere%u2019s Coke for us iced in the bathtub.%u201dDryden sniffed his glass. %u201cMy theory on that poor fellow is that the seminary merely provided, by its very nature as an institution, the hothouse environment in which the individual%u2019s neurotic tendencies could bloom.%u201d%u201cThen there is something wrong with such an institution,%u201d Lock said.%u201cMaybe,%u201d Dryden sipped at his glass. %u201cIf one subscribes to the theory that people are good and institutions are evil.%u201d%u201cDo you believe that?%u201d Lock said.%u201cThis is 1960. A new decade. I believe that when people are evil or misguided or mentally ill, it is the institution to which they belong, be it country, corporation, or church, that is responsible for their dis-integration.%u201d%u201cThen you don%u2019t hold Porky Puhl responsible,%u201d Lock countered.%u201cFor his curiosity, no. Was his question intellectual?%u201d%u201cIt was cock-eyed.%u201d Hank paraded his pun.Ha ha ha.%u201cHis guilt, I contend, is mitigated, and is inversely proportional to the guilt of the institution which fostered and fed the growth of his neurosis.%u201d