[HPforGrownups] Re: ...About Snape - Edgar Bones was killed, with his wife and children...

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 171365

vmonte again:
>All killers are able to shut down their "good feelings" when they
>are murdering people. Just because there is a disconnect from
>emotion does not make what they have done/seen any less horrible or
>wrong.

Bart:
I suspect that this is part of what JKR is referring to when she says that killing tears the soul; the disconnection is what causes the tear. Easy enough for Morty, who isn't connected to begin with (as I have pointed out before, the only way he doesn't match the textbook definition of a psychopath is that he is capable of long-range planning, and keeping up with it). This would logically mean that the creation of a horcrux makes this disconnect permanent; logically extended it would turn a relatively normal person into a sociopath, unable to make emotional connections with others. No friends, no loved ones, just one's self. 

Specialists in addiction show that the psychological component of addiction, once belittled, has a physical basis. There is a part of your brain that feels pleasure. If you overstimulate that part, it feels great. But if you keep doing it, it adjusts to the overstimulation, to the point where it feels normal. This, in turn, means that what are normal levels of stimulation simply don't work any more. Since pain/pleasure is a primary motivator, your internal motivations become adjusted to ONLY the overstimulation, hence the addiction. 

Most people get pleasure from other people. There's a reason why charities bring out the suffering children; people get pleasure from bringing pleasure to others, or reducing their suffering. Harry has an addiction to being the hero; this showed up the most in OOP, where he is in withdrawal. And it's not enough for him to be the hero; he has to be recognized as the hero as well. Morty uses this to lure him and his friends to the MoM. DD was probably right; if Harry is this addicted as it is, think of how addicted he would have been if he had been brought up in a household where he was thought of as The Boy Who Lived. He may well have ended up like Gildylocks, faking heroism, even stealing it from others, to keep the public adulation. 

But what does Morty have that gives him pleasure? With his disconnection, not a hell of a lot. What he needs is to prove himself to be superior to everybody else. Which was kind of hard with DD around. Morty needs someone like Snape to tell him that Harry is a mediocrity who only wins through dumb luck and a lot of skilled help. Dumbledore's very existence was a continual pain to him. With Dumbledore dead, Morty knows of no wizard as powerful as he is (based on the "half prophecy" and Snape's stories, he probably thinks that if Harry beats him, it would be through sheer luck). 

Bart