Hello everyone and as you know it is 'Forlorn Friday' and today I am not going to be ranting of what I hate, what I loath, what I love or what I adore. No today I just want to talk about a medical condition that I am sure has an actual name but the name I have coined myself. I think.
Character Empathy
Character Empathy is the name I have given to a certain quirk some -or even all- people suffer from.
It is simply the condition in which people act like a character from a film, book, anime, cartoon, story, tale or their imagination. Not in the usual sense of impersonating someone for another's amusement. More in the sense of just becoming that character for no actual reasoning.
A person becomes so engrossed in a character's personality that they adopt traits of that character themselves permanently or otherwise. Certain quirks of this character become their own and affect the way they act around others.
For example:
A person has read a book for the evening and their mind has focused on a certain character. Say this character is very sarcastic, they naturally retort to some statements with a comment that could be considered rude to most. The brain focuses in on this trait and adopts it. The next day this person awakens and throughout the day people notice a change in the person. He is a lot more sarcastic and often demeaning to people. This is character empathy.
I myself hold this 'condition'. I have notice many a time that after reading a book or watching some sort of programme. I will adopt a trait of the main character. Be it all of their personality or just a segment of it. I have no wish to be these people and I do not notice I am doing it until it has been done and it is too late. Sometimes it gets me in trouble and most times it goes unnoticed. Unless people are just weary of commenting on it with me.
This can be caused by a few things in my opinion.
First off is a dissociation with the world around you. You feel that you do not belong and thus take on traits of characters that you perceive as more appropriate for the world around you. This may not be from characters but the people around you too.
A counter argument to this point would be that environment shapes the personality and even appearance of the human. Now this is true to a certain age. But after the age of 16 I feel the personality is if not fully developed at least fully possessed by the human and therefore can only be shaped by the human themselves and not those around them. Unless significant trauma causes a massive change in lifestyle then an outside force may change the personality.
Next would be not a dissociation with the world around you but dissatisfaction. You feel the world is dull or uneventful. You begin to idolise the lives of characters in books and movies and thus adopt their personalities in a futile attempt to capture their lifestyle. The mind feels that if they become this character the world around them will morph into a more interesting place.
Now the question is. Is this a concious choice or sub-concious. I am not entirely sure. If I was asked I would say it is a mix of both. The concious choice being the person saying:
"I wish my life was interesting, like that guy's"
And the sub-concious choice is acting on that statement to satisfy the mind's need for activity which it does not feel it receives from reality.
The final cause of this could just be that the mind finds the character interesting, and merely wants to imitate the character as a show of flattery.
A prime example of this would be married couples. Two people that almost become on personality. Their consciousnesses do not meld but they both adopt traits from the other. The wife is a bit of a clean freak so the husband tends to take slightly better care of themselves. The husband is a business man so the wife tends to think more logically. These are not obvious occurrences but if you observe closely enough you will notice them too.
The question that is posed by all this is whether character empathy is a mental illness or simply a quirk that is held by some or maybe even all individuals. Or perhaps it is what all personalities are based on. That no one person is truly themselves, they are adapted from what their minds finds interesting and valuable. If that were true that would depreciate the value of all life and minds because no one would be truly unique. We would all be altered copies of a few individuals.
The decision is yours. Is character empathy truly a part of all of us? An illness that some have that must be treated? Is it a blessing that only some have been lucky enough to be given? You decide.
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Something I think is just as interesting as this is over empathisation with characters. I read recently in The New Scientist about a woman who could not watch horror movies because she would physically feel the pain portrayed on the screen. She's missing out. :)
ReplyDeleteI thought I empathised with charaters too much.