For the Deep Thoughts file

[drscott]

From the WSJ's review of a Dickens biography today:

"The Haunted Man," by contrast, is a creepy ghost story in the mold of "A Christmas Carol." A spirit appears to a man plagued by past betrayals and agrees to remove the bad memories—but curses him to similarly "blank" the memory of any person he encounters. Even with their memories erased, though, these people soon burn with a nameless rage, still haunted by a cruel past they cannot now recall. It turns out that only forgiveness, and not forgetting, is the cure for the hard feelings of the wronged. Like "A Christmas Carol," the tale captures both the joy and the poignant pain of the Christmas season—a time when the past always seems particularly present.

Dickens expressed the lesson of "The Haunted Man" this way: "To have all the best of it, you must have the worst also."

Comments

[omero-hassan.livejournal.com]

"To have all the best of it, you must have the worst also."

I find myself wondering if this is true, really.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

My mind is a bit clouded (for reasons which will be explained in a post today, I hope!) so it has taken me some time to respond.

Dickens' thought experiment is to ask what happens when painful memories are forgotten instead of processed through empathy and forgiveness; his answer is that people would be less able to empathize, more selfish, and less kind. Dissociation and repression of traumatic memories are necessary defenses when a young psyche is unable to cope with reality, but leave the personality without tools for fitting the trauma into a coherent understanding of reality and other people. Much therapy involves getting the adult to re-remember and finally experience and process early suffering. Many people have such strong defense mechanisms for avoiding the possibility of pain that their relationships are dysfunctional.

This is related to the thought that joy is less possible without sorrow; that depression related to exogenous losses is a healthy state which shouldn't be avoided or medicated away, as it helps the sufferer reach a more accurate understanding of their place in the world and gratitude for the good things in it.

Pain is a transient state and passes through the mature mind without leaving scars. Much suffering is avoided by taking the small pains as they happen instead of increasingly self-distorting efforts to avoid them, which generally prolongs and increases suffering.

[omero-hassan.livejournal.com]

Put that way, it makes more sense -- makes me think of other aphorisms to similar effect: hunger is the best sauce, or absence makes the heart grow fonder. We perceive the world partially (entirely?) by contrast.