From matrimony to hook ups, from casual acquaintances to friendships with true bonds, there is a melding intention that exists, like anything, on a continuum. And, if the outcome is any indication, it can be argued that the compulsion to join together with another is ultimately an attempt to define oneself as an individual or, in double entendre, writing terms, to build character.
Much of Freudian psychology is the tale of ego mapping, the topography of established physical borders between child and parent that, once recognized and acted upon, begins one’s journey. Alone. Having been set on this solitary course, much of our ensuing lifetime energy is then directed toward recapturing that sense of connectedness and oneness we once knew with our parents.
Well, what if the very effort to merge with another instead served to encapsulate us further as individuals? And what if that result made for good fiction?
The rippling irony is that the endeavor to become one with the other reconfirms our edges—however, and here’s where we score a break, only as they brush across the other. So, regardless of how deeply one wishes to take the bond, the melding intention works to establish the individual but, fascinatingly, not necessarily standing alone. Rather, vis-à-vis the other.
To see how this plays out in fiction, one need look no further than the “shorthand” sketch of the evolution of a character’s internal development that Portland writer, Cynthia Whitcomb, has constructed. In it she outlines the idea that, as characters expand their focus from themselves ever outward, the characters themselves expand and become more interesting. In her shorthand, there are five basic levels of a character’s focus, ranging from his or her thinking only about matters of self to then caring for another, usually a romantic partner, to ever increasing spheres of attention and concern such as family and community to, finally, all of humanity. The fun, she says, is taking the reader or movie viewer along for the ride of these shifts. Moving characters up these levels of focus provides some of the engrossing, pleasurable arcs that keep us reading or watching.
So, to state it another way, there is an ironic, inverse relationship that renders a character more interesting as an individual in direct proportion to his or her decreased focus on self. We empirically know this to be true. And, returning to Freud, we can easily see that the shift of a character’s focus from him or herself to an expanding other would be meaningless if there were no weaning process, no ego shaping, no separation to begin with. The attempt then to remedy the situation by trying to join once again with the other—or, in story terms, a character’s having ever more meaningful contact with others—renders one an ever more sharply defined individual.
Good to know for all of us: the real ones as well as the ones in our head.
(And if you read a certain earlier blog about Schrödinger’s box, it also stands to reason using the logic of that piece that the more people one has included in one’s sphere of influence, the more witnesses one acquires. The more eyes on a person, the more he or she at least appears to be larger-than-life and interesting as an individual, hence celebrity.)
Dana Speer 