Sirius: Sensory Deprivation and Slashing the Fat Lady

[Judy]

No: HPFGUIDX 47623

Well, one things is certain about Sirius: people find him a very
interesting character to discuss!

1) Slashing the Fat Lady: are the paintings sentient?

Audra said:
<<<<we do not have proof that 
[people in the paintings] experience
emotions and thoughts in the same way we do....>>>>

To which I replied:
> What could possibly constitute proof of emotion? ...
> there is no way to prove
> that *anyone* else has them, even other humans.

And Audra responded:
>>>>I wasn't referring to philosophical proof, which
as you correctly implied, we can never have. 
I meant canon proof, as in 
JKR stating in the books that 
the painting people are really alive or 
human, and that hasn't been stated.<<<<

OK, I see what you mean now.  Yes, it's true that JKR *could* have
had, say, a class in which a teacher explains that the painting people
have feelings, or could have shown us the personal thoughts of the Fat
Lady, yet she didn't. However, I don't see this as evidence against
the paintings being alive, though. JKR doesn't generally provide much
of that type of proof of sentience for anyone, except Harry.  (JKR
does talk about sentience in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,
although the main point seems to be that wizards have a hard time
telling Beings from Creatures.) 

Both Audra and Monika said the paintings resembled computer
simulations, which show complex behavior but aren't sentient.
I don't see the paintings as like computer simulations.  They seem far
less predictable, and seem to do a lot of things under their own
initiative. I could trade a character from a computer game with a
friend, but I'd be pretty freaked out if characters just decided for
themselves to go wandering off to another machine.  Also, I can't see
why the Hogwarts staff would negotiate with the Fat Lady to come back,
if she were just a simulation. 

Monika said that the Fat Lady: 
> wasn't born, and she can't die. She doesn't have to eat or drink to
> stay "alive", and she can't reproduce herself. So, while Sirius'
> violent act might shock a lot of people, it's not murder or even
> attempt at murder.

I'd say ghosts fit these properties, too.  So far, we have not seen
any way to destroy a ghost, but let's suppose that there were some way
to do that.  I'd say it would be wrong to destroy Nearless Headless
Nick.  

Audra said:
>>>>The portraits, I assume, are created by wizard artists, and
wizards
are powerful, but not gods. I don't think they would have the ability 
to create a life like that.<<<<

Oh, I definitely agree that JKR's wizards aren't gods and can't create
life.  I hadn't meant that wizards could create people to inhabit the
paintings.  Many cultures believe that once a human-like
representation has been created, a spirit may decide to inhabit that
representation.  That's the sort of thing I had in mind.  If it worked
this way in the Potterverse, it would be possible for some pictures to
be sentient and not others.

Some cultures also believe that taking a photograph "steals" a little
bit of the person's soul.  This would explain how the photos move,
although I really don't think JKR intended for things to work this way
in the Potterverse.  Still, if each did steal a bit of the person's
soul, that would explain why Lockhart is so vapid, wouldn't it?  ;-)


I have the view that the painting are real beings with thoughts and
feelings, inhabiting a complex world of which the paintings are the
connection with the world inhabited by Harry and other humans. (It
would be very interesting if Harry got to go to the painting
universe!)  Other people have a different theory, that the paintings
are just wizard-made simulations.  I think at the moment, the books
don't rule out either interpretation.  We'll just have to wait and see
if later books clear this up.



2) Now, back to the ever-popular question of whether Sirius has PTSD.


a) Did Sirius have enough time to recover between PoA and GoF?

Monika said Sirius had four months to recover between PoA and GoF. I
replied:
> I believe the summer break at Hogwarts is only two months (July and
August), not four.

Monika responded:
>>> Buckbeak's "execution" took place on June 6, and apparently Sirius
stayed in England a little
bit longer, but safely hidden (following his own words in his letter
to Harry). And even though term begins on September 1, he only came
back near the end of October (if I remember well), so your argument
doesn't hold up here. And I repeat that I don't believe he entirely
recovered during this time, just that he was functional again when he
came back. That's a huge difference.<<<

I was counting just the months that we don't hear from Sirius.  By the
time Harry writes to him in August, Sirius seems quite different than
in PoA, so that was the time period I was counting.  OK, I see now
where you got the four month period.

As for whether I think this is enough time to explain the change in
Sirius' behavior, I think Natasha said it best, in post 47400: "It's
pretty obvious that he doesn't have PTSD. I completely agree that if
he did have it in PoA he made the recovery of the century by GoF. I
can't imagine anyone getting over PTSD that quickly."

Monika said:
"you can't just say he recovered too quickly because you believe him
to be a bad tempered guy."

Have you read what I wrote already on this thread?  If I have an ax to
grind, it's not that I want to believe Sirius is a certain way; it's
that seeing Sirius as recovering quickly implies that traumatized
people should be able to "just get over it", even though that it
doesn't work that way in the real world. 


b) Does Sirius have the symptoms of PTSD?

Monika said:
>>>A person who has PTSD is afraid the original trauma will happen
again, and in Sirius' case, that is the destruction of the Potters. Of
course he is afraid the same thing might happen to Harry, now that
he's aware that Pettigrew isn't dead after all. He might himself call
it an "obsession" that made him break out of Azkaban, but if this
isn't a deep anxiety/fear, I don't know what would be....  I'd say his
symptoms developed *after* his original trauma (the murder of the
potters and his "involvement" in it)<<<

These things have already been discussed in the past few days.  You
didn't respond to my earlier posts, where I discussed these specific
issues.

Monika said:
>>>Then there's the incident when [Sirius] slashes Ron's bed hangings,
and when he chokes Harry in the Shrieking Shack.
*All* these situations mimic a part of his original trauma, not being
able to finish off Pettigrew, which provokes this kind of
overreaction. Judy might still disagree here, but those *are*
classical PTSD symptoms.<<<

Yeah, I definitely disagree.  The classic symptoms of PTSD are anxiety
and an inability to stop thinking about the trauma, not choking people
and slashing things. Most people with PTSD are not violent.  
 
Monika added:
>>>BTW men suffering from PTSD were usually stigmatised as
"hot-tempered", violent and impulsive for a long time, before the
disorder was officially recognized as such and included in the DSM in
1980.<<<

Most people who have been traumatized do not attack others.  If
someone responds to a trauma by becoming violent, I'd say that's
strong evidence that the person had a tendency to violence all along.
 In the US at least, PTSD does not qualify for the insanity defense;
it doesn't excuse violent people from punishment. 

Whether past trauma *should* excuse violence is a philosophical
question, so there's really no way to resolve it factually.  However,
judging by the books, JKR agrees with me that trauma is no excuse for
violence. Just look at how she portrays the hero of her books, Harry.
 He's been mistreated by the Dursleys most of his life, is in constant
danger from Voldemort and his followers, and suffers greatly during
PoA from the flashbacks of his parents' murder.  Yet, he doesn't go
around choking people and slashing things.  He can't bring himself to
kill Sirius, even when he thinks Sirius is a mass murderer trying to
kill him, and he later spares Peter's life.  Doesn't this indicate
that Harry has much less of a propensity for violence than does
Sirius?

Monika also said that perhaps Sirius' behavior was due to an acute
stress response.  I think this fits better than Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, although there is still the problem that JKR doesn't portray
Sirius as having signs of anxiety, only rational concern for Harry,
and that most people having an acute stress reaction aren't violent. 


c) Plot Constraints

I said:
>> I can't see the argument that Sirius "really" has PTSD but JKR just
>> didn't write him to fit the disorder because of plot constraints.

And Monika said:
> Here I can't follow. 

My point is, we can look at fictional characters in one of two ways. 
We can look at them as fictional constructs, in which case we might
say "Sirius was written a certain way to fit the plot constraints." 
*Or*, we can treat them as if they were real people and ask "If Sirius
were a real person, would he fit the criteria for PTSD, given the
behaviors he exhibits?"  But, it doesn't make sense to do both at the
same time.  If we start guessing what JKR *would* have done, had the
plot constraints been different, we could say just about anything
about just about any character.  I mean, someone *could* say that the
Dursleys would have been nice people, if only JKR hadn't needed a
foster family that gave Harry a hard time, but what would be the point
of that?  We're analyzing the characters as they are written, not as
they might have been in a different plot.  Maybe in a different story,
there would have been a Sirius-like character that would fit the
definition of PTSD really well, but the actual character in this
actual story doesn't. 



3) Summary

Let me finish by quoting Natasha again:
"You know, some people just aren't consistent people... maybe he's one
of them. Sirius seems to me to be a very complex person. But until the
5th book arrives we can only speculate as to what he's really like."

I hadn't previous thought about the possibility that perhaps Sirius is
*supposed* to be inconsistent, but now that Natasha has brought it up,
it makes a lot of sense to me.  (And gets JKR off the hook for writing
him inconsistently!)  


-- Judy Serenity