"I thought he could overcome his feelings..."

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 129138

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "suehpfan" <stanleys at s...> 
wrote:
> SSSusan:
> The other oft-cited scene where Snape lets loose with his emotions 
is 
> the scene in PoA after he learns Sirius has escaped and he 
suspects 
> Harry of being involved.  He's right angry there, and there's no 
> containing his emotions.  In fact, Fudge seems truly appalled by 
the 
> venom of Snape's outburst (says "the fellow seems quite 
> unbalanced").  I'm curious whether you see this as also a place 
where 
> Snape was play-acting?  
> 

> 
> Sue(hpfan) now:
> 
> I think Snape is able to control his emotions when he has to. 
Losing 
> control is a choice (as I continue to remind my 8 year old :p).  
Some 
> times it takes nerves of steal to keep it together but as SSS 
says, 
> he must have them or he would be dead.  IMHO, Snape would do just 
> about anything to keep Harry from finding out how truly important 
he 
> is to the WW.  As a matter of fact he takes every opportunity to 
tell 
> him "you are niether special nor important..." Ootp pg 591 US.  
Which 
> is completely ridiculous as Harry and Snape both know.  If he 
weren't 
> special or important he wouldn't be taking Occulmency lessons.
> 

I may be in the minority on this one, but I really don't find 
SNAPE'S behavior (as opposed to DD's lapses) to be all that 
puzzling.  It is true that it at first blush seems to be odd -- he 
is evidently able to control his feelings in the presence of 
Voldemort and not in the presence of a fifteen year old student.  
Also, after a career as a Death Eater, his worst memory, we are led 
to believe, is about a school yard humiliation.  However, strange as 
it initially seems, after some thought I find nothing hard to 
believe about any of that.

We (I very much included) tend to forget that when we are dealing 
with people's minds and emotions we are in a world where the 
subjective, not the objective, is the important factor.  To put it 
another way, what we have to ask isn't what is important in 
the "objective" world, but what is important TO A PARTICULAR 
PERSON.  We don't need to ask what should be difficult according to 
the laws of reason and the dictates of common experience, but what 
is difficult FOR A PARTICULAR PERSON.  

Often, what is important to a given individual isn't what the 
consensus of his or her peers might hold to be important.  And what 
is difficult for a particular person isn't always what 
an "impartial" observer would intuitively or reasonably think would 
be difficult.  I once knew someone who made a living as a cardiac 
surgeon.  I would often ask him how his day went and he would 
reply "Oh, I didn't do much today.  Just two triple bypasses," or he 
would say "No interesting cases today -- oh wait, we did have an 
emergency open heart procedure, but it wasn't anything terribly 
exciting."  Yet if he had to give an introductory lecture on the 
heart to a group of first year medical students he would vomit five 
times in the course of the morning and be so terrified that he would 
have to hold onto the lectern to keep from trembling.

In the case of Snape, it doesn't matter what we might intuit his 
worst memory would be.  What matters is what is the worst memory FOR 
SNAPE.  And if the scene with James is worse IN SNAPE'S MIND than 
anything he saw as a Death Eater -- well, then it IS worse than 
anything he saw as a Death Eater.  And if facing Harry is harder FOR 
SNAPE than facing Voldemort -- well, then that's just the way it 
is.  The fact that Voldemort is, OBJECTIVELY speaking, the worst and 
most dangerous wizard alive while Harry is, at absolute worst, a 
rather disrespectful fifteen year old student, remains totally 
irrelevant to understanding the situation.  In SNAPE'S mind, Harry 
is the worse of the two, and therefore he IS the worse of the two. 

It might seem odd to us, but in the annals of troubled emotions 
things like this are more the rule than the exception.  And I'm not 
necessarily talking about mental illness, per se.  I mean, really, 
how many of us know a woman who could face having a broken leg more 
readily than sitting next to her ex-husband at their daughter's 
wedding? How many of us know a man who would literally rather leave 
town for the weekend than have to shake hands with his former boss?  
And that isn't even dealing with outright psychopathology.  In most 
psychiatric or psychological textbooks Snape wouldn't even be worth 
a footnote.

Now, one would expect that if DD is really as observant as he is 
supposed to be, he would have figured this out about Snape sometime 
over the last five years.  As I said before, has he been paying any 
attention at all to how Snape acts on the subject of Harry?  But 
Snape's behavior itself?  Although I once found it strange, after a 
lot of thought I don't find it that hard to explain, or believe, at 
all.


Lupinlore