Fiction and Theory of Mind

Theory of Mind (ToM) is a cognitive psychology term for the capacity to 'read' and 'interact' unstated cues. I'm reading a book contextualizes ToM into literary studies and attempts to answer "What is the value of reading fiction?"  That is a question I have been asking myself personally for many years now. What is it about a novel or short story that can captivate and continue to inspire long after the author is gone? It's like a textual form of time travel. The realm of story is like an invisible web linking our collective imaginations.

The book is simply called Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel by Professor of English Lisa Zunshine of the University of Kentucky, Lexington. I came across the book while undertaking a literature search for an academic project that inquires into the power of telling stories and focusses on two works by Jeanette Winterson. My question hinges on the value of fiction as a means of sublimation and empowerment; and how these artful retellings give a frame and make meaning out of a sometimes unfair and unjust world.

Simply put, words can capture experience and give it form.

Around the 1980s there was a lot of focus on the healing journey in terms of how survivors of childhood (and other) abuse needed to break the silence, connect with their true voices and find language to express the locked away terrors in order to heal the schism.

This question of true voice naturally is predicated upon the idea that small children who experience trauma have not yet developed the cognitive capacity to verbally formulate and reflect upon their experiences. Trauma can remain unnamed and suppressed by the psyche. It is dissociative reaction where the disturbing experience is walled off--essentially a kind of splintering of one's experiential narrative.

Zunshine's book is not focussed on these questions of trauma, but more on why we read fiction and do we benefit from it. It points to the capacity to suspend disbelief and try on another character's point of view--i.e. an act of imagination.

I think of all of the stories that remain untold and all of the uncountable millions of souls who have been silenced throughout history by one kind of oppressive force or another. I agree with Winterson when she states, "life plus art is a boisterous communion/communication with the dead."

Fiction is a place where the 'dead' (and the non-existent) can be given their due. We can imagine what it is like to be crawling through the trenches of WWI with the relentless din of machineguns and the stench of smoke and fear. We can imagine the dilemma of four ship wreck survivors in a lifeboat off the Florida Keys. We can imagine the alien world of Dune, or the burden of being the living allegory of Dream and Death happens to be your older sister.

Fiction allows us to step into multiple lives.

A timely reminder

Just when your are all fired up with a great idea, procrastination can show up and make everything simply stop. Here are 12 tips Marya Jan has distilled from the get-things-done guru Steven Pressfield who has written The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do the Work. I'm going to put them into effect immediately!

#1 Show up every day

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”

The first thing you need to do is start showing up. If you are a writer, aim to sit in your chair first.
All things start with a first step. Your job as a writer is to sit down.

 

#2 Stay on the job

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

Once you are already there, what are you going to do now?

Are you going to check your email for the umpteenth time, or hang out on the social media? Or are you going to do some research?

Get rid of the distractions and stay put. Keep going.

#3 Commit to the long haul

“A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius nor the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and over-think and hesitate.”

Nobody said this is going to be easy. Nobody promised you riches the next day.

If you have a calling, you have to acknowledge that and stay in the game. It is probably going to be a long, hard one.

#4 Be patient

“Our role on tough-nut days is to maintain our composure and keep chipping away. We’re pros. We’re not amateurs. We have patience. We can handle adversity. Tomorrow the defense will give us more, and tomorrow we’ll take it.”

Committed for the long haul? Now you need patience. Bucket loads of.

#5 Seek order

“The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones. We can trade in the habits of the amateur and the addict for the practice of the professional and the committed artist or entrepreneur.”

Do you have a schedule that you follow? Do you have a routine in place?

The best way to defeat habits of procrastination and the inability to start anything is to streamline everything.

Take the guesswork out. Know what it is that needs to be done and dive into it.

Don’t think.

#6 Act in the face of fear

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

Fear is good. Remember the lessons you teach your own children – brave is someone who is not without fear but who moves ahead in spite of it. Now follow the advice yourself.

Yes, you are afraid. So am I, but we still have to work, okay?

#7 Accept no excuses

“In his heart, the amateur knows he’s hiding. He knows he was meant for better things. If the amateur had empathy for himself, he could look in the mirror and not hate what he sees. Achieving this compassion is the first powerful step towards moving from being an amateur to being a pro.”

So we have dealt with fear. What other excuses could derail us? There are plenty:
You are not good enough, you don’t have the time to do this, there is too much competition, nobody cares what you do, it is not perfect … blah blah blah. This is your resistance talking. Don’t pay any attention.

#8 Be prepared

“Practise before you need it so that when you do, you will have it.”

Know that you can only work for 40 minutes before you have to take a break. Realize that you can only work a certain number of hours. Understand that you need your materials and information before you can begin.

Be prepared. Begin with the right mindset. Be in control.

#9 Don’t over-identify with the job

The pro loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly but she does not forget that the work is not her – her artistic self contains many works. Already the next one is percolating inside her. The next will be better. And the one after, better still.”

You are a professional, but that’s not only who you are. You are other things, you have other roles to play.
As far as work is concerned, the nature of it will vary. Try and take a step back. Leave some wiggle room to improve, discard or alter your offering.

#10 Ask for help

“A pro doesn’t feel like he knows everything, or can figure out everything on his own. He seeks out a knowledgeable teacher and listens with both ears.”

This one is easy, if you let it be.

Surround yourself with people who support you. Get rid of all naysayers. And when things get hard, ask for help.

#11 Don’t take failure or success personally

“The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, as they like.”

As a professional, you show up every day and you do your thing. You will encounter successes and failures, but they are probably not under your control. Not all the time, anyway.

Sometimes it’s an incredible stroke of luck, sometimes it doesn’t look like an even playing field. Don’t get hung up on it. Continue.

#12 Do self-validate

“The amateur craves third-party validation. The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him. He is impressed by what he believes he ought to think, how he ought to look, what he ought to do, and who he ought to be.”

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Come on!

You are human. You are not perfect, but you don’t have to be what others think you should be. You don’t need everybody’s approval.

But you do need your own.

That’s it. That’s what I walked away with, from Steven Pressfield’s books. Inspired? Get your own copies. Write your own manifesto. And look resistance in the eye and march on anyway.
What are your thoughts about resistance?

About the author:
Marya Jan is a blogging coach and an online copywriter. She can be found at Writing Happiness. Check it out and grab the free ebook 9 New Rules of Blogging.

Invention

Imagination is a source of ideas. Imagining things that do not exist in any tangible way allows us to invent art, invent medium, or improve on existing medium.  

We developed language to communicate, told stories of our hunts, imagined an afterlife and drew pictures of it, figured out how to make marks that meant words, developed all manner of tools - including the one I'm writing on right now.

Somehow we have the capacity to look at a problem in our minds, envision a way to resolve it, and then craft it with our hands...

Neverwhen... some ponderings

Fiction is not only a 'nowhen', but also a 'neverwhen'. There can be aspects of realisitically rendered fiction that describes actual places and actual periods of history, but in reality these are also fictional constructions filtered through one person's imagination.

The same is true of fictional characters themselves, even if they are based upon historical figures, they too are merely fictional constructions. Some authors--Paul Auster to name one--even create characters bearing their own name and physical characteristics--and yet these are still (meta) fictional constructions.

What this all points to is why do we persist in all this make believe? What is the instrinsic value and fascination with fictional worlds? What is the ultimate value of literature? What is it about a masterfully written book that can entice us into this parallel world that is evoked merely by some black squibbles on a page?

We are an animal that seems to need stories, just as we need air and nutrients and water. Even in the real world, we construct fictions. Just think about about where you grew up and your memories of it. Another person's rendering of the same town during the same period of time will be different than yours because they see it through their own eyes and filters of experience. In that sense, even the objective, external world is a 'neverwhen' since the perceiver and what is being perceived varies from person to person.

The person you were yesterday is not exactly the same person you are today. Our minds change just as our moods rise and fall. The same event can be perceived in different ways by the same person depending on their state of mind at the time. Perhaps that is the key to understanding the importance of storytelling.

Story as healer

I am always fascinated by our need to tell stories, whether it's " real" (what happened at the bank, or what we did at work, or what's on the news), or something we "make up" (filmmaking, fiction writing, music making, art).

As a teacher, like many others, I give instruction using a technical method that works to enhance the understanding and use of the voice until it can be fully actualized.  The thing that sets me apart from those others (and them from me) is my "story".  It resonates with the shy, budding singer, and affects the manner in which I teach, because my "how" involves sharing my history and experience. I tell my students my stories, they tell me theirs, and we connect and progress together.

In fact, it was when I began to teach and hear the stories of my students I realized I was not alone in how I felt or perceived the world, and that made a world of difference to me as a human being.  I was able to better appreciate the experience of other human beings and focus less on myself in the presence of others, which lead me to feel less shy.  I evolved. ~

Nowhen...

The magical no-place of fiction makes possible such journeys in space and time.

The quote above from Sonya Andermahr's book entitled Jeanette Winterson, which is a literary analysis of Winterson's work. Her words suggest that the mind is quantum while the body remains rooted in the progression of time.  Perhaps that is the the undying fascination writers have with writing and fans of fiction have with reading. There exists a parallel world made up of collective creative thought that continues to inspire and manifest across history and across genre. As Winterson herself writes in her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?:

Creative work bridges time because the energy of art is not time-bound. If it were we should have no interest in the art of the past, except as history or documentary. But our interest in art is our interest in ourselves both now and always....Life + art is a boisterous communion / communication with the dead. It is a boxing match with time.

It is also potentially a means of understanding the arc of our lives in a larger frame. Much like the gods of old, our stories can be writ large. The seemingly random progression of events can be imbued with a new kind of order and meaning. That is why great works endure and certain story arcs, no matter how ancient, are recognizable to us regardless of technological innovations and social democratic developments. Unlike art objects, stories--narratives--live within us.

Below is an image of one of the nine muses from Greek mythology, likely Calliope, with barbiton. The original is housed in the Louvre and is attributed to the vase painter Asteas and is therefore believed to date from the late classical period between (360-340 BC). The concept of inspiration coming from the muses is naturally still with us today.