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ABSTRACT
This article examines the experience of being seen and analyzes its central role in the formation of a coherent sense of self. Tove Jansson’s short story from 1962, ‘The Invisible Child’, serves as the red thread of the article, and the story is analyzed in the light of Donald Winnicott’s work on social mirroring. The analysis is enriched by the psychoanalytic insights of Veikko Tähkä and Heinz Kohut, and complemented by Axel Honneth’s philosophical elaborations as well as by recent developmental findings as presented by Vasudevi Reddy. The article is divided into an introduction and three sections. After summarizing Jansson’s story in the introduction, the first section elaborates and examines different senses of social invisibility. The second section assesses developmental factors that promote social invisibility and highlights the importance of being seen. The third and final section interprets Jansson’s story as an analogy to an intensive therapeutic process, while pinpointing those elements that facilitate the restructuring of a disturbed sense of self. As a whole, the article thus discusses an issue that is often simply taken for granted in discussions of empathy and interpersonal experience: social visibility.
Acknowledgments
While writing the article, I have learned a lot from discussions with various colleagues. In particular, I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to Rudolf Bernet, Henrik Enckell, Jussi Kotkavirta, Gunnar Karlsson, Jukka Laajarinne, Pirjo Lantz, Johannes Lehtonen, Petra Nyman-Salonen, Gry Ardal Pritzlau, Helena Päivinen, Vasudevi Reddy, and Dan Zahavi. I have had the chance to present and discuss earlier versions of the article at the Research Consortium of the Finnish Psychoanalytic Society, the phenomenological research seminar at the University of Helsinki, and at Aretai Ltd. As for the lastly mentioned, I am especially obliged to Kai Alhanen, with whom I had the privilege to discuss Ninny’s story on daily bases. Lastly, I should extend my thanks to my daughters Pihla and Veera who, during the process of writing this article, have become extremely familiar with the story: they are the reason why I ended up carefully reading the story in the first place.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. As an exemplification, Too-ticky notes that if the girl would, for instance, accidentally slip and stumble down on a basketful of fresh mushrooms, the aunt would react with emotional coldness, bitterly retorting something like the following: ‘I understand that’s your idea of a graceful dance, but I’d thank you not doing it in people’s food’.
2. As warm and sympathetic as Too-ticky is, she says that she herself has something else to do. In the story, Too-ticky’s motives in this respect are not elaborated; it remains an open question whether she is just unwilling or also unable to provide Ninny with good-enough care.
3. The word hemsk also translates the Freudian term Unheimlich. On the Freudian concept, see Svenaeus (Citation1999).
4. As the subsequent scene tells us, in this phase, Ninny is merely doing things out of politeness and one could therefore think that she is also thanking others because she feels that this is something one is supposed to do in such circumstances. What Winnicott writes of a patient in his text on ‘Early disillusion’ fits here nicely: ‘She can at least say “thank you”. She can at least believe she is grateful, but she cannot feel certain that I (her analyst) can accept her gratitude fully’ (Winnicott, Citation1989, 22).
5. It may be noted here that, when it comes to physiological or material outlook, the other’s body remains more or less ‘transparent’ to us also in normal cases. Recognizing a smile, for instance, is not the same as paying attention to the distorted material surface of the other’s face; just as recognizing an intention in someone’s words is not the same as focusing at the audible properties of the audible utterance. When social interaction goes more or less smoothly, our focus lies in what is expressed, and not in the material vehicle of expression (see Taipale, Citation2015b, Citation2014, 87ff., 87ff.). Clearly, in Ninny’s case, something else is at stake.
6. Jansson’s words are: ‘har Du ingen sprätt i dig?’. Sprätt means ‘cockscomb’, ‘dandy’, ‘fop’, ‘vibe’, etc., and thus ‘life’ in the sense of ‘oomph’, ‘potency’, ‘pep’, or ‘energy’.
7. Cf. Laajarinne (Citation2009, 165–171); Taipale (Citation2016a).
8. See Taipale (Citation2016a).
9. It is worth noting here that, even if the setting is not symmetrical, the claim naturally holds both ways: for the waiter, customers are empathetically present as (relatively anonymous) customers.
10. Although ‘castration’ fits here as a structural description, Ninny’s trauma is most likely owing, not to the developmental phase usually associated with this notion, but to an earlier ‘soul murder’ (on this notion, see Shengold, Citation1989).
11. Social invisibility is linked with both coldness and mirroring also in another Moomin character, the Groke (Mårran), who occasionally turns up, and every time gives rise to feelings of horror and anxiety in the others. The Groke is considered to be a terrifying creature even if she never hurts anyone; she seeks warmth, but everything she touches freezes – for example, in the Moominland Midwinter, she sits on the bonfire but the fire only goes out. The Groke’s ghostly condition is suspected to be owing to developmental issues in the Moominpappa and the Sea: ‘Mamma’, whispered Moomintroll. ‘What happened to her to make her like that?’ – ‘Who?’ – ‘The Groke. Did somebody do something to her to make her so awful?’ – ‘No one knows’, said Moominmamma, drawing her tail out of the water. ‘It was probably because nobody did anything at all. Nobody bothered about her, I mean. I don’t suppose she remembers anyway (…). Moomintroll lay on his back looking at the hurricane lamp, but he was thinking about the Groke. If she was someone you mustn’t talk to or about, then she would gradually vanish and not even dare to believe in her own existence. He wondered whether a mirror might help. With lots and lots of mirrors one could be any number of people, seen from the front and from the back, and perhaps these people might even talk to each other’. In another scene of the same book, the ice-cold Groke is overtly delighted and no longer ice cold, when she is shown friendliness by Moomintroll.
12. See Taipale, CitationForthcoming.
13. Unlike in the English translation, in the Swedish original Ninny’s aunt is told to be, not ‘icely ironical kind’, but ‘ice-cold and ironical’.
14. Kohut’s description of one of his patients comes remarkably close to the case of Ninny: ‘Patient B., for example, remembered from his childhood the following destructive reaction of his mother. And he would tell her about some achievement or experience she seemed not only to be cold and inattentive but instead of responding to him at the event that he was describing would suddenly remind critically about the details of his appearance of current behavior (“Don’t move your hands while you are talking!” etc.). This reaction must have been experienced by him not only as a rejection of the particular display for which needed a confirming response but also as an active destruction of the cohesiveness of his self experience (by shifting attention to a part of his body) just at the most vulnerable moment when he was offering his total self for approval’ (Kohut, Citation1971, 121).
15. ‘Everyone who when before himself is not more ashamed than he is before all others will, if he is placed in a difficult position and is sorely tried in life, end up becoming a slave of people in one way or another. What is it to be more ashamed before others than before oneself but to be more ashamed of seeming than of being?’ (Kierkegaard, Citation1847/1993, 53; see also Zahavi, Citation2014, 235ff.).
16. Von Buchholtz quotes a study of the evolutionary role of shyness, according to which the latter is not a social deficiency but a survival tool (see Von Buchholtz, Citation2011).
17. To be sure, one might ask whether the organizing principle in Ninny is such positive narcissism any longer, or whether one ought to speak here of ‘negative narcissism’ or ‘black narcissism’. On these concepts, see, for example, Lantz (Citation1996).
18. The topics of social invisibility and the primary mirror are highlighted also in another Moomin story by Jansson, The Magic Hat. In the story, while playing hide-and-seek, Moomintroll enters a magic hat which turns him into a strange-looking creature. He himself does not notice this at once, since it is only his external appearance that has changed; coming out from the hat no one sees him as he really is, and he soon becomes anxious because of this. Things change as his mother enters the scene: ‘“Doesn’t anyone believe me?” cried Moomintroll. “Mother, look at me carefully. You must know your own Moomin child”. Mamma looked very carefully and for a long time to the scared big eyes, and then she said quietly: “Yes, you are Moomintroll”. And immediately after that Moomintroll started to change: eyes, ears and tail shrunk, and nose and belly grew. And there was Moomintroll, in front of everyone, in all his glory. “Come to my arms”, said Mamma. “I will always know my little Moomin child”’. In short, the Moominmamma served as the primary mirror, which enabled that Moomintroll became visible to other others.
19. Recently, Lareya and colleagues have argued that peer bullying in childhood may in certain respects be even more harmful than being maltreated by adults (see Lereya, Copeland, Costello, and Wolke Citation2015).
20. Another factor slowing things down in this respect could perhaps be thematized by reading what Klein writes about ‘envy’ that interferes the child’s relation to a good object (see Klein, Citation1997, 176–235).
21. After saying to Ninny, ‘Here’s your new family’, Too-ticky in fact continues: ‘They’re a bit silly at times, but rather decent, largely speaking’ – as if she was telling Ninny that what she should expect from the Moomins is ‘good-enough’ care.
22. Jansson smuggles in her close ones through other Moomin figures as well. For instance, the characters ‘Tofslan’ and ‘Vifslan’, two small creatures with a ‘valuable secret’ inside a locked bag, introduced in the book The Magic Hat, are said to represent ‘Tove’ and ‘Vivica’: in the 1940s, Jansson had a relationship with Vivica Bandler and the ‘hidden valuable secret’ is naturally their secret love.
23. Lantz interestingly reads the story as an exemplification of different therapeutic styles (see Lantz, Citation2012).
24. This insight, unfortunately, remains invisible in the English translation.
25. The importance of feeling at home is a prevalent topic also in the Moominpappa and the sea. Being a long way from home, Moominmamma feels homesick and disappears into a painting of a garden created by herself. In my view, this represents psychotic withdrawal into a subjective world. Being temporarily lost, undiscoverable by others, Moomintroll speculates: ‘Mamma’s vanished. (…) She was so lonely, she just disappeared’. Later on, in the story, when things start to get better and the surrounding environment appears less alien and threatening, Moominmamma realizes that she can no longer access the garden in the painting since she is no longer ‘homesick’.
26. Besides Winnicott, the link between psychological health and playing has been emphasized by a fairly recent study by Stuart Brown who highlights the correlation between the absence of play in early childhood with criminality in later life (see Brown Citation2009, 43, 117).
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Joona Taipale
Joona Taipale, PhD, is Adjunct Professor in philosophy and a Kone Foundation Experienced Researcher. He is the author of Phenomenology and Embodiment (Northwestern University Press, 2014), and he has published several articles in philosophy, psychoanalysis and developmental psychology, on topics ranging from empathy, social cognition, and interpersonal understanding, to psychopathology, intersubjectivity and selfhood. His most recent publications include ‘Beyond Cartesianism. Body-perception and the immediacy of empathy’ (Continental Philosophy Review, 2015) and ‘Self-regulation and beyond. Affect regulation and the infant-caregiver dyad’ (Frontiers in Psychology, 2016).