Understanding Snape

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> 
> After OotP, I think I understand him at last.  Snape, I believe, is 
> a classic social phobic.

Catlady digs up a brittle yellow newspaper clipping from her middle
desk drawer. It's an ad that says:

"NERVOUS AROUND PEOPLE?
---------------------------------------
1. Are you afraid of social situations?
2. Are you fearful of being looked at?
3. Are you afraid of making a mistake, looking foolish, or feeling
embarrassed in front of others?
4. Are you overly concerned about what other people think of you?
5. Do you feel shy or anxious around people?
---------------------------------------
You may have a treatable condition called Social Phobia. (snip)
Contact Dr. D-- P-- at (xxx) xxx-xxxx"

I didn't respond to the ad, thinking it a scam, but I'm five for five
on the questions.

The way encountering people feels to me, is it feels like I have an
unwanted psychic ability to read their thoughts about me, so I 'hear'
all their scorn of me. 'Hearing' their unspoken thoughts is much like
hearing if they spoke the same thoughts. One of my many defects and
bad behaviors is that I feel terrible pain from words. "Sticks and
stones" have yet to do more than bruise me (lucky me), but words often
enough leave me crying all night long, and plunged into rage and shame
all over again if I happen to recall them years later. I perceive the
pain of being insulted really as very very similar to the pain of
burning myself on hot stove ring or boiling water.

And I am a *terrible* coward about feeling pain.

So I am totally reluctant to go to any new place without a trusted
friend accompanying me for protection and comfort. Like I wouldn't go
to a locksmith shop to ask a locksmith what kind of lock to put on my
apartment, because I know from nothing about locks and he would scorn
my ignorance. And I hate to go to shopping malls because all the slim,
trendy, popular, young mall rats would scorn my fat ugly slobbiness on
sight...

That's me. That's NOT Snape. 

Even in the smallest way. He took a job teaching, and even tho' he
hates dealing with the dunderheads who don't appreciate 'the subtle
science and exact art of potion-making', he has no objection to
standing in front of the class, being looked at by so many eyes. He
has no problem making swooping entrances and dramatic statements. He
like being the center of attention.

He likes being the center of attention when he gives reports to the
Order. Yeah, he deliberately uses actor shtick to draw attention. I
feel sure that a truly shy person, despite reading how-to books about
it, would never actually try to use actor shtick to draw attention,
for fear of doing it wrong and being laughed at. Snape, on the
contrary, seems perfectly confident that he will be respected (or at
least feared) by anyone who attends to him.

Snape is full of curdled rage and shame, but it has some other source
than social phobia.   

> Snape's misanthropy seems more general that that, but if you look
> at his behavior through the lens of severe shyness it starts making 
> sense. He's been denied the pursuit of happiness, and it colors 
> everything.  Dumbledore was probably one of the few people ever to 
> treat him with anything like real acceptance as opposed to the
> Death Eaters' phony acceptance.

I've never doubted that Snape came from abusive parents, thus starting
junior school with a big hunger for approval and no understanding of
how to win approval from people who prefer small talk and smiles and
conformity to fashion and small kindnesses and athletic ability
instead of intellectual arrogance, sarcasm, curses, looking weird ...
Still, at least when he got to Hogwarts, he could find a few people
who liked enough of his tastes to overlook the rest. Specifially, I
believe that his little clique of Slythies (not yet Death Eaters)
mostly were really his friends. They would have admired the sarcasm
and curses; they would have hated the same people he did. (Digression:
because they were his friends, not just people he was using to fight
loneliness, it must have hurt him that much more to turn against them
and betray them to the Ministry, thus causing them to be killed or
sent to Azkaban.)

I suppose that one of the things he had in common with his Slythie
friends was a streak of enjoying cruelty. I like to think he would be
unlikely to find someone who shared that taste on the Light Side, but
Harry did feel 'satisfaction' when he saw the Hedwig-bite-marks on Ron
and Hermione. Despite not sharing that taste, McGonagall and the other
permanent teachers seem to accept him perfectly well; McGonagall's
remark on Gryffie team being badly beaten by the Slythie team: "I
couldn't look Severus Snape in the face for weeks" comes from someone
who ordinarily *can* look Severus Snape in the face.

I see no reason to change my old belief that what has denied Snape the
pursuit of happiness is self-directed homophobia.