Just For A Laugh

[annemehr]

I added this category to a post the other day -- it's #22917.  It
consists of a newspaper article that Magda Grantwitch found about some
wacked-out psychological study of HP ("psycho" being the operative term).

Here you go, for your reading pleasure:

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This is in today's [July 24, 2001] National Post (Canada) newspaper.
Comments
anyone?

HARRY POTTER ARTICLE

Harry Potter appeals to the masses because it satisfies our
subconscious Oedipal fantasies, says a British study. The popular
children's books represent the fulfillment of readers' suppressed
Freudian desires to kill their father to be closer to their mother,
according to the study published in the summer issue of the journal
Psychoanalytic Studies.

"The Harry Potter character almost certainly would have had murderous
fantasies but he is in the unfortunate position of them having come
true. As a reader, there is the satisfaction of the fantasy without
the awfulness of the reality," said Kelly Noel-Smith, author of the
study.

In the books, which have been made into a movie to be released this
fall, Harry Potter is an orphaned wizard whose father is killed
trying to save the boy and his mother.

"Harry knows that his father died to preserve the exclusive
relationship of Harry and his mother," the paper argues.

The fact his mother is also killed by Lord Voldemort, an evil wizard,
leaving Harry unable to live out any subconscious sexual desire for
her, does not negate murderous fantasies the character would have
harboured before his parents died, said Ms. Noel-Smith.

It might even hint at what Sigmund Freud theorized was a common
childhood struggle with bisexual feelings, leaving Harry with
ambivalent feelings toward both parents, she said.

Ms. Noel-Smith, who was interested in researching the universal
appeal of the books that have sold 100 million copies and been
translated into 42 languages, said J.K. Rowling, the author, likely
shares the same subconscious fantasies as her readers.

"She has more ability to express them in a creative way than the rest
of us. People who are successful with literature are more able to
access the energy from suppressed Oedipal fantasies. If you believe
Freud, as I do, everyone has Oedipal issues," said Ms. Noel-Smith, an
attorney and Masters student in psychoanalysis at the internationally
recognized Tavistock Clinic and the University of East London.

Harry Potter, the bespectacled hero, represents the readers' ego,
which explains why millions of people identify with the character's
loss of his parents, argues the study. The research cites a number of
Oedipal references in the books, including Harry's facial scar,
inflicted when the evil wizard's curse rebounded off him during the
attack on his family, which the study says "brings to mind other
special marks, for example, the scars Oedipus had on his feet, where
his parents pierced them before they left him to die, the mark of
Cain, who murdered his brother, and the stigmata of Christ, who,
being the Son of Man, was murdered by his collective parents."

Lord Voldemort is "the repository of evil" that allows Harry to
idealize his parents in a way that would not have been possible when
they were alive, according to the study.

Ms. Noel-Smith said she has sent Ms. Rowling's publisher a copy of
her research but has not heard back from the author. Ms. Rowling and
her agent were not available to comment yesterday.

Allan MacDougall, president of Raincoast Books, the Canadian
publisher of Harry Potter books, said Ms. Rowling would likely find
it amusing and admits her books come from her subconscious.

However, he dismissed the study's arguments as largely spurious. "The
author may be an excellent student of Freud but that is not how
people buy books. They buy them because of recommendations and
reviews, not because they have Oedipus references."

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~Anne
assuring Ginger that she has not been touching teacher codes; just
trying to get through Harry's is enough to be going on with...