Aristotle and Catharsis
Aristotle was aware that stories achieve an effect in an audience that is somehow pleasing; what we call entertainment. He intuitively felt this was good for us as human beings (and in this I concur). But for Aristotle, the definition of what is good for us needed to be framed in terms of a moral contribution to the community. As a result, he came up with the idea of catharsis; a process by which (through immersion in a story and identification with the characters) audience members experience and are purged of unwanted emotions (such a pity and sympathy).
Greece was a fierce and violent society in which such emotions were considered unmanly and dangerous to the welfare of society as a whole. His viewpoint comes close to our contemporary understanding of the psychological function of story-telling (see below) but, in my view, doesn’t quite get there.
Aristotle also suggested that stories are broadening because they give us access to other perspectives on the world that we (like children imitating the world of adults) can incorporate into our emotional and intellectual repertoire. However, he, wisely, gave primacy of place to the emotional release of fiction.
Biochemistry
In our own day and age we are less concerned with the educational and moral value of fiction than this emotional release. David Farland has constructed a fairly compelling description of how and why this emotional release is significant to human beings, both as an explanation of its importance and as a blueprint for what an audience is looking for.
Farland studied medicine at one point and noted the similarity between the body’s biofeedback loop for dealing with stress and the construction of a typical plot. In stories we identify with one or more protagonists and vicariously experience their stress as they repeatedly try and fail to achieve their goals, the tension rising to a climax at which point, the stress is resolved and some form of satisfying emotional release occurs (in which the protagonist, in some way, “wins”), followed by a quick return to a “new” normality and equilibrium.
The human brain has many parts, but of particular interest is the unconscious and conscious mind. The conscious mind concerns itself with things such as which television program to watch, how nice the steak we are eating tastes, and how much food to fork into our mouths at once. It is the part of the brain concerned with consciously controlling things.
The unconscious mind concerns itself with all the automatic systems in our mind and body. It keeps our heart pumping without us consciously controlling every beat. It keeps us breathing. It serves up emotions. And it deals with stress. The unconscious mind, reacts to threats in a fairly universal manner. When it detects a threat, it raises our heart rate, releases adrenaline into our system, directs blood to our feet and hands, and otherwise prepares us for action to avoid life threatening stimuli. When the threat has been resolved, the tension in the body is released in a flood of well-being hormones and brain chemicals. The unconscious mind does this automatically, without our needing to consciously turn these systems on or off. But because it is an automatic process, it is triggered as easily by a fictional threat as it is by a real one.
According to Farland, our inbuilt (and unconscious) response to stories provides us with a way to exercise and strengthen our coping mechanisms via the bodies own bio-feedback loop; we experience the stress, resolution, release, and relief that occurs in real life, but without having to experience it all first hand.
I am old enough to remember when librarians were quick to warn kids of the danger of escapist literature and would keep such books in an “adult” section of the library. As a result, I am aware that Farland’s view is only one contribution to a several-thousand-year-old debate about whether fiction is good for us. Regardless, I think he has succeeded in demonstrating why some stories appeal to us (at the biochemical level) and others do not; why some story patterns succeed and others fail; why audiences respond positively to some stories and not others.
Some stories provide “emotional exercise” for the reader and a good writer delivers this as a service to the reader – one that the reader expects and does not appreciate being short-changed over. Stories must create “a pleasing amount of stress” that reaches a dramatic climax and is resolved. Different readers have different requirements with regard to the trappings of story. Some readers respond to horror, some do not. Some readers respond to romance, some do not. Regardless all stories must create stress in the reader, but this stress must be safe; it must be presented in a way that transports the reader into another time, place or persona and offers hope that the stress will be resolved. As well as this, the story must provide resolution by ensuring all the major conflicts are resolved as powerfully as possible, releasing the characters, where possible into a state of rest.
Copyright Philip Craig Robotham © 2022
