[HPforGrownups] SB's sanity

[Monika Huebner]

No: HPFGUIDX 13639


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Amy Z [mailto:aiz24 at hotmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 2:19 PM

> Can you really survive for 12 years without any happy thoughts at all?

Well, I don't know, but I have to believe it. Dementors seem to suck any
happy thought you could have out of you. I don't deny that Sirius is
an exceptionally strong personality (one of the reasons why I like him so
much), but I don't believe that this is what saved him from the Dementors.
It just helped him to survive.

> I am not saying this to downplay depression in any way--I know it is
> sheer torture and can kill Muggles as surely as Dementors can kill
> wizards--but I do think what the Dementors do is beyond what we
> generally call depression.

I agree here, but that's my point: I think that Sirius' depression wasn't
Dementor-induced in the first place but a result of the trauma he had
suffered (the deaths of his best friends for which he felt responsible).

> So, can "not having any happy memories" be a protection?  The
> Dementors do two things:  they suck out all the happy thoughts and
> they also force you to relive terrible memories.  JKR has a scarily
> sharp imagination; this latter is one of the worst tortures I can
> imagine.

Yes, but she hasn't exactly invented this: PTSD does the same thing
in flashbacks and nightmares. I think that Sirius didn't need the presence
of Dementors to relive his worst memories, and that's why the Dementors
couldn't affect him like they would affect anyone else. His non-magical
depression protected him against the magical depression the Dementors
would normally cause. Maybe this doesn't make sense to you, but I
believe that this is what has made him somewhat immune. He had lost
this immunity when the Dementors encircled him near the lake at
Hogwarts at the end of PoA, remember that he was affected in the
same way as Harry was, he lost consciousness. This isn't surprising,
because for the first time in 13 years he had new hope. He thought
that his name would probably be cleared soon and that he could start
a normal life with Harry.

> In that sense, an innocent man will have comforts that the guilty
> don't.

Of course you have a point here. And I think that this is why he
didn't try to commit suicide (even though the chances of committing
suicide in Azkaban are pretty low, the only possibility I see is to
stop eating). The knowledge that he was innocent kept him sane
and helped him to survive, but it was not the cause of his immunity
to the Dementors (IMHO).

> The worst thing for Sirius himself seems to be his guilt.  It is
> positively suicidal for him to say to Harry (when H first accuses
> him), "I don't deny it," but he does it because he is so tortured by
> guilt about their deaths.  This is one thing the Dementors seemed to
> be able to inflict on him that he found impossible to shake.

I have to disagree another time. I don't believe that the Dementors
inflicted the guilt on him. Feelings of guilt are a classic PTSD symptom,
too, often there is unresolved grief involved like in Sirius' case, too. I don't
want to say that Dementors cannot cause all this, I just think that
they aren't the cause of his depression and guilt. Of course you
don't have to subscribe to this theory, but Sirius' mental disorder
isn't a magical one IMHO. I think you cannot recover from
Dementor-induced, magical insanity, at least that's how I understood
it. And Sirius is recovering rather well, so I tend to believe in the
PTSD theory which explains his symptoms and behavior without
any problems. *And* it is reversible.

Monika

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