Social anxiety in literature/film

[kingped]

"But, indeed, to be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on every occasion; and whatever impression he endeavors to create, he is sure to convey its opposite. When he makes a joke, it is looked upon as a pretended relation of fact and his want of veracity much condemned. His sarcasm is accepted as his literal opinion and gains for him the reputation of being an ass, while if, on the other hand, wishing to ingratiate himself, he ventures upon a little bit of flattery, it is taken for satire and he is hated ever afterward."

I came across this excellent depiction of social anxiety written by the writer, Jerome K Jerome. He calls it "On Being Shy". I don't agree with absolutely everything he says (some of his language is clearly for comic effect - and he could afford to laugh about it because he overcame the worst of his shyness).

Nonetheless, it really is worth a read if you haven't before. The exceprt is taken from the fourth or fifth paragraph of a fairly long essay.


Any other depictions of extreme shyness/SA in literature or film?

[Mina]

The character of Rimmer in Red Dwarf? I know that's a comedy programme so the characters are exaggerated, but he seems to me to have issues with SA and relating to other people because of his seriousness. Also the way he deals with revising for his engineering exams, by procrastinating and then panicking at the last minute, those are fairly common anxiety symptoms.

And his endless humiliation and embarrassment over the Gazpacho soup incident is definitely SA! For anyone who hasn't seen Red Dwarf, Rimmer is one day invited to dinner at the Captain's Table where all the most important members of Red Dwarf's crew are, and he wants to make a good impression. When the Gazpacho soup is served he whispers to the chef that it's cold, as he doesn't realise that it's supposed to be served that way. All the important people at the table laugh because he has made a faux pas. 3 million years later when all those people are long dead, and Rimmer himself has died and been resurrected as a hologram he is STILL so humiliated about being laughed at that he can only talk about the Gazpacho soup incident when he believes his hologram is going to be turned off forever.

[Olly.]

Jim Carrey's character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind can probably be considered as sort of SA.

[Belinda]

There are two excellent novels by Patrick Hamilton- 'Hangover Square' and 'Slaves of Solitude' where the main characters suffer from really tortuous social anxiety. Hamilton suffered really badly from depression and social anxiety himself- he seems to understand s.a. like no other writer.

[piesJoy]

Christian Slater's character in 'Pump up the Volume'.

[Kestrelsgomoo]

Welcome To The NHK is an anime, manga and light novel about the hikikomori (individuals who isolate themselves from society) and NEET phenomenons. The main character is a hikikomori who shows several signs of Social Anxiety (in fact, SA is talked about by name at one point in the anime). Well worth a look even if you're not an anime fan (I've yet to read the manga or light novel, but the anime is probably the easiest to get a hold of anyway).

[Mina]

Funny that you have a Camus quote there Hux, I was just thinking about how Camus and Satre were both probably SA. In fact many of the events from Camus' Outsider novel are about his not knowing how to conduct himself in times of emotion, in initiating relationships with women and when he is physically uncomfortable.

A lot of the characters in Marian Keye's books suffer from anxiety, depression or alcohol problems too - and often refer to being "born without life's rulebook" when it comes to their social interactions.

[STRING3R]

Originally Posted by Mina

The character of Rimmer in Red Dwarf? I know that's a comedy programme so the characters are exaggerated, but he seems to me to have issues with SA and relating to other people because of his seriousness. Also the way he deals with revising for his engineering exams, by procrastinating and then panicking at the last minute, those are fairly common anxiety symptoms.

And his endless humiliation and embarrassment over the Gazpacho soup incident is definitely SA! For anyone who hasn't seen Red Dwarf, Rimmer is one day invited to dinner at the Captain's Table where all the most important members of Red Dwarf's crew are, and he wants to make a good impression. When the Gazpacho soup is served he whispers to the chef that it's cold, as he doesn't realise that it's supposed to be served that way. All the important people at the table laugh because he has made a faux pas. 3 million years later when all those people are long dead, and Rimmer himself has died and been resurrected as a hologram he is STILL so humiliated about being laughed at that he can only talk about the Gazpacho soup incident when he believes his hologram is going to be turned off forever.

SOUPer

[Mina]

Originally Posted by STRING3R

SOUPer

Yes! Rimmer cringed when Lister said SOUPer to him! It was 3 million years ago and he still can't take a joke about it, that's got to be SA

[thisplanet]

Heh, thanks for sharing kingped, really enjoyed that. It is humorous in places, but also quite tragic. It is also a mine for fabulous SA-related quotes! Am liking this thread, it's interesting to see how SA is portrayed to the wider world though popular medium, so will definitely check some of these suggestions out.

Wish I had been born female:

"There is no such thing as a shy woman, or, at all events, I have never come across one, and until I do I shall not believe in them."

As it happens, we guys just need to give it time:

"A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down."

'Hobbledehoy' is now my new favourite word!

[JulesH]

Originally Posted by hux

ftw

Love this guy!

[Pandapop]

Lars and The Real Girl

Ryan Gosling character I think could be seen as having social anxiety.

[endo_endo]

^ is that the film with the sex doll that the town end up loving?

[Cleo]

Woody Allen's films - especially one I can't remember the name of where the main character is totally inept, especially with the opposite sex.

[kingped]

Originally Posted by thisplanet

Heh, thanks for sharing kingped, really enjoyed that. It is humorous in places, but also quite tragic. It is also a mine for fabulous SA-related quotes! Am liking this thread, it's interesting to see how SA is portrayed to the wider world though popular medium, so will definitely check some of these suggestions out.

Wish I had been born female:

"There is no such thing as a shy woman, or, at all events, I have never come across one, and until I do I shall not believe in them."

As it happens, we guys just need to give it time:

"A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down."

'Hobbledehoy' is now my new favourite word!

I think I'm destined to be a hobbledehoy till the end... At least when I'm old, it can be taken for infirmity. Now are the problematic years - behaving like a timid child when you're in the mid-years of your life is difficult to explain away.

I think therapists should read Jerome K Jerome's article to get a glimpse of the pain of social anxiety. For example, when I've told a therapist that my nervous presence makes other people nervous, she effectively scoffed at this, saying that I'm mindreading again. "You don't know what other people are thinking! You're just jumping to conclusions!"

But it's true, as Jerome says (with a comedic flourish):

"The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become in his presence depressed and nervous."

I've been reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions and it would seem he had problems with shyness. However, it wasn't so bad that he couldn't form relationships with people. I think that's the killer. If your anxiety stops you from forming bonds then it is likely that you'll go on a downwards spiral. If you can form bonds, those relationships may well drag you out of the mire.

[lancess]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_%28film%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threesome_%28film%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_40-Year-Old_Virgin

[Captain Nemo]

Originally Posted by Belinda

There are two excellent novels by Patrick Hamilton- 'Hangover Square' and 'Slaves of Solitude' where the main characters suffer from really tortuous social anxiety. Hamilton suffered really badly from depression and social anxiety himself- he seems to understand s.a. like no other writer.

Good example, Hamilton is the master of characters that exist on the fringes of society. Interestingly I didn't necessarily think of George Harvey Bone as suffering SA as such but certainly some sort of psychological disorder(s).

As for other examples hmmm... 'Steppenwolf' by Herman Hesse is about a complete outsider who rejects bourgeious society and creates his own reality (or that was my understanding of it anyway).

Yukio Mishima's 'Temple of the Golden Pavilion' centres around a monk who stutters as a child who steadily loses his sanity.

Not sure if these are SA examples as such but these were the ones that immediately cropped up in my mind.

[Belinda]

Originally Posted by Captain Nemo

Good example, Hamilton is the master of characters that exist on the fringes of society. Interestingly I didn't necessarily think of George Harvey Bone as suffering SA as such but certainly some sort of psychological disorder(s).

As for other examples hmmm... 'Steppenwolf' by Herman Hesse is about a complete outsider who rejects bourgeious society and creates his own reality (or that was my understanding of it anyway).

Yukio Mishima's 'Temple of the Golden Pavilion' centres around a monk who stutters as a child who steadily loses his sanity.

Not sure if these are SA examples as such but these were the ones that immediately cropped up in my mind.

Glad you like them too. Yes, I suppose you're right that he doesn't suffer from sa as such but so many of his thought processes seem typical of sa that I thought I'd include him.

[thisplanet]

Originally Posted by kingped

I think therapists should read Jerome K Jerome's article to get a glimpse of the pain of social anxiety. For example, when I've told a therapist that my nervous presence makes other people nervous, she effectively scoffed at this, saying that I'm mindreading again. "You don't know what other people are thinking! You're just jumping to conclusions!".

But it's true, as Jerome says (with a comedic flourish):

The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become in his presence depressed and nervous."

I've been reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions and it would seem he had problems with shyness. However, it wasn't so bad that he couldn't form relationships with people. I think that's the killer. If your anxiety stops you from forming bonds then it is likely that you'll go on a downwards spiral. If you can form bonds, those relationships may well drag you out of the mire

Thought this too as I read it! My Therapist would say the same thing. Whilst there are some things I think that are a product of Anxiety and need to be unthought, others are not; we are still socially aware after all.

I'm sure it's happened to everyone here. When you think you're doing better than usual in a situation, and making an unusually strong effort to speak, and someone asks you, crushingly, "what's wrong?", you know you're still not quite communicating yourself anxiety-free. Heck, you need only go to a group therapy session of other people with SA to see exactly how capable we are of acting 'unnaturally'. We can really kill the mood at times, until either we avoid, or are avoided.

I suppose that in Jerome's time, it was much harder for someone with social anxiety to stay at home in a single room and hook himself up to an omni-tool like the internet. Masses of exposure would have been forced upon him, so I can see how it may well have been true that with time, the crippling anxiety is rubbed away. Really though, nowadays, even if I had no-one to rely on, like my parents, I could plug myself into the internet and survive pretty well without having to exit my house. In that way, the world doesn't really have a chance to affect me in any positive way. Have to be optimistic though; the potency of SA can definitely be lessened. I have definitely seen some improvement for myself in recent years.

Jerome may be right in saying the greatest writers are shy. Franz Kafka has all the hallmarks of being an individual with social anxiety. Although he doesn't really seem to approach the topic directly (from what I recall), there are some echoes of it (alienation etc). Perhaps his short story The Metamorphosis, about a man transforming suddenly into a cockroach, could be seen as an allusion to social anxiety and how Kafka himself sometimes felt.

And about forming personal relationships: even when I am lucky enough to meet someone that I am actually able to befriend (which has only happened a few precious times), I tend to sabotage the relationship by ignoring them. Really need to stop doing that...

[Belinda]

^ Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' is a really good example. His short story 'Investigations of a dog' is also really interesting from an sa point of view. Also a story about a creature in a burrow (which, as far as I can remember is called 'The Burrow') is really good. I think Kafka used to stay up all night writing because he couldn't bear the sounds of his family going about their business outside his room during the day. I know he was able to put up a good facade of being gregarious at times but it was an incredible effort.

[Belinda]

Originally Posted by no-moving-lines

Haven't heard of this chap.



Interesting stuff.

Anyway, a little obvious perhaps but David Foster Wallace. Wallace struggled with terrible depression all his life, and to my mind wrote about it with more insight since, I dunno, Sylvia Plath?? There's 20 pages early on in Infinte Jest about depression that are powerful, a very witty section in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, and probably other places too I don't know of.

The Pale King has some great bits on shyness and social anxiety. There's a part about an adolescent guy developing SA about blushing, describes the cruel cycles of worrying about blushing, then worrying about worrying very lucidly.

I'll have to check him out- sounds interesting.