#i looove psychoanalyzing fictional characters mm mmm yummy

[theravenkin]

been thinking a lot about low-empathy adam parrish (via @parrishwife here and @crimeronan here ) and i'd like to add that i also think ronan is low-empathy, but in a different way, and that this difference is what causes most of the conflict between them (in this essay i will-)

so basically, in very simple psychological terms there are two main sides to empathy. on one side, you've got cognitive empathy- the ability to see things from another person's perspective in an objective manner and understand why they might be feeling a certain way even if you don't feel "for" them; however, you might think that they are overreacting. then there's emotional empathy, which is when you see someone having strong emotions or going through something tough and you feel "for" them, sometimes literally; you might feel nausea or pains in your chest from experiencing someone else in emotional pain, or you might feel elated when someone else is happy or excited. that doesn't necessarily mean, though, that you can see things from that person's perspective; even if you feel for someone, you might not think that they're coming from a place that matters because you can't put yourself in their position. when both of these main types of empathy are present, then you can also have compassionate empathy, which is like both working together- you feel for someone and can see things from their perspective. people with low empathy may struggle with both of the main types of empathy, but some may only struggle with one while maybe being hyper-empathetic in the other type; i'm pretty sure the latter is common among autistic people. i, for one, have very strong emotionally empathetic reactions to things, but i have a really hard time seeing things from others perspectives; so while i may feel really bad for someone, it can be hard for me to understand why they feel bad in the first place.

okay. now. blorbo thoughts.

i think that while adam has an easier time with cognitive empathy (though still struggles with it a bit), he has not developed a very strong sense of emotional empathy at all. whereas, on the other hand, i think ronan is hyperempathic when it comes to pure emotions, but has a very very hard time with cognitive empathy; the way he thinks tends to be more egocentric, meaning it's hard for him to remember that other people don't always think, feel, or process the same way he does (this is what i struggle with, personally, but i think ronan struggles a whole lot more with it).

i could go pulling a bunch of textual evidence, and god do i want to, but lord i ain't got the time. so im just gonna point out a couple things ronan does: he often hugs and comforts people when he feels that they're upset (and he often notices when people are upset before others do, when they're trying to hide it etc) but he doesn't care if these people want to be hugged- he just does it. the only person he doesn't do this with is adam, i think because adam is one person ronan works really hard to understand. ronan also tends to say things without thinking or caring about how they might make people feel, but he still feels so strongly himself (re: bronan "i'm not proud of it" "i'll be proud for you", ronan, read the room). he feels for every dreamer, even those he hasn't met yet, and that empathy drives him so crazy he goes and does a bunch of questionable things in order to try to make things better for people. but he cannot imagine any justification for why adam didn't text him back within a couple hours other than that adam now hated him suddenly (essentially, can't understand how adam doesn't know what ronan is thinking without communicating it).

ronan's inner monologue is very frequently about himself and how he's feeling; when he talks about others, he describes what they say and do and look like, but can't seem to explain how they think or why. adam, in comparison, is constantly psychoanalyzing the people around him, trying to understand why they do what they do and how they tick. part of this is his analytic nature and part of it is the remnants of a survival tactic- the need to understand his abuser, get inside their head, in order to avoid or prevent the next blow. but i think, too, all this analyzing has divorced him from feeling strongly for others, once again, as a survival tactic/coping mechanism- because he believes that as soon as he feels for someone, he becomes them and loses his autonomy. this is only beneficial when dealing with abusers, though. so when he's dealing with his loved ones, adam has to parse through their actions, codify their behaviors and what they mean, and establish heuristics of how they think in order for him to not cross a line and hurt them without meaning to. i feel like i can say more on this but it's late and im tired and i am no psychologist, just autistic and insane about characters

so i think that this difference is a lot of what makes pynch work (the impulse/impulse control dynamic or the right brain/left brain dynamic, but much much deeper and more complex obvs). but i also think that this is where most of their conflict comes from. ronan feels so deeply for and about adam, so much so that he doesn't know how to process it and it eats him alive. but even still, he can't quite understand why adam works the way he does, why his motivations are what they are, why he holds the values he does; usually, ronan just accepts that adam is adam and life goes on, but sometimes ronan gets so frustrated that he can't just accept that adam does things that- to ronan- make 0 sense. (think of the garage fight scene, just before the hand lotion, where ronan tells adam he should just quit school- a pretty tone deaf thing to say, knowing adam, but ronan was getting frustrated and couldn't understand why adam needed to keep working himself to death.) then there's adam, who typically understands where ronan is coming from, but doesn't understand why ronan feels so strongly about things, especially other people- especially him. he struggles to understand why ronan keeps helping him despite being told not to- which is why ronan does things without asking (ie, the rent), because he knows adam won't understand. adam may understand where ronan is coming from, but sometimes he just may not care. he doesn't want ronan to feel badly, but it's hard to motivate yourself to do something about it when you can't understand what the fuss is all about. think about the fight over the green mantle envelope: to adam, it's practical and logical, and he doesn't understand why the whole thing is upsetting to ronan or why he should care- if it gets the job done, doesn't matter how unpleasant the process is. ronan, however, doesn't care as much about practical; he can't understand why adam thinks this is okay, because he has such a hard time understanding that others have different values and priorities than he does.

anyway. this took so long to write. someone please read it and understand what i'm saying.

#i looove psychoanalyzing fictional characters mm mmm yummy #my fingers hurt from typing this #please know i know jack shit about psychology #but i read crimeronan's low empathy adam post before work and thought about this the entire shift #so now here we are #adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynch #character study #the raven cycle #adam parrish meta #ronan lynch meta #the raven cycle meta #the dreamer trilogy #trc #tdt