What is the connection between reading and social anxiety, if any? Does reading about richly developed characters allow you insight into human nature and thereby helping you interact with the outside world? Or is reading such a solitary habit that it tends to keep you introverted and preoccupied on something that will never help solve your problem?
I figure the answer contains some of both, or perhaps something else altogether. What are your thoughts?
Last edited by Frostball; 01-26-2014 at 04:33 PM.
Reading is supposed to make you more emotionally intelligent, but I doubt it helps with social anxiety. I am not really sure it helps with emotional intelligence either.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
I think it would distort your emotions if you based them on literature.Originally Posted by kev67
I think that literature helps a socially anxious reader in the sense that literature is generally about loners and outsiders, so the lives of the characters mirror the reader's own life. The reassurance that they are 'not alone' might encourage them to talk to people. However I do think that reading is a very introspective and introverted experience. Were it not for forums like this and book clubs, the reader would feel very lonely, as they've had an experience that no one else 'understands'.
Great questions, Frostball!
An important paper in the top journal "Science" took the point that understanding others mental states is a crucial skill enabling one to navigate complex social relationships. It then showed, through details of actual experiments, that reading literary fiction leads to better understanding of these mental states in both emotional and cognitive contexts, when compared with reading non-fiction, popular fiction or nothing at all:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/377.abstract
So, according to this paper, reading about richly developed characters *does* allow you insight into human nature. The questions, "does this help you interact with the outside world?", "can this relieve social anxiety?", I would hazard to answer in the positive.
Surely if you have a better idea what other people are thinking and feeling you will interact better and have less social anxiety? Anyway, it's a great area for more research!
Canadian literature makes me feel lonely, and Chinese literature makes me depressed. Russian literature makes me nihilistic in outlook. I don't particularly like American literature, nor do I like modern or post-modern British literature (except verse), as I find the humor not funny.
The 'explosion' in the diagnosis of social anxiety disorder is probably the creation of american psychiatrists/pharma companies trying to create glamorous conditions to sell the SSRIs. Social anxiety is just plain shyness most of the time. Occasionally, if the shyness is excessive and pathological, then a psychologist or a psychiatrist could help.
It will take a very resourceful person and lots of luck to expect someone reading books of literature to achieve vicarious learning through the colourful characters found in the books and presto.. self cure. You might as well read virginia woolf to find help for suicide, or dostoevsky for treatment of epilepsy.
You seem to have a very low opinion of serious literature. Are the characters in serious literature just "colourful", or are they portrayals of human nature that might help you understand yourself and others better and thereby deal with life more successfully, with less anxiety? No one is suggesting "presto... self cure", any help provided has to be more subtle than that.
I take the point that Canadian literature might make you feel lonely, but doesn't the best of it provide resources that might help you deal with that loneliness?
Are such groups of literature that homogenous? I realize you were obviously making generalizations and must surely acknowledge the existence of exceptions, but are groups really even similar enough to say that a whole country's general output of literature makes you feel "single adjective"?
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the "explosion of diagnoses" being the result of capitalistic pharmaceutical companies; it seems altogether too cynical. I agree that such a thing exists and is definitely a factor, but I wouldn't underestimate the rise of awareness of mental disorders of all kinds, and the rise in ways to effectively treat them.
As late as a hundred years ago mental disorders were treated with a kind of "why can't you just act normal" sort of attitude, and people with them were often ostracized and thought of as weirdos and people to stay away from. If somebody's liver, heart, or lungs have a problem it is obvious to everybody that you need a doctor to treat these organs, and it's not perceived as the person's fault for having the medical issue. The brain is a tremendously complicated organ, far more so than even the previously mentioned, quite complicated organs, yet people's attitude toward mental problems is often very different. People act like the person should just get over it as if they can control what their brain does more than they can control what their liver does--which they can't.
This causes people to hide their problem, cope with alcohol and other drugs, or become reclusive and avoid contact with others who can't, or just don't want to try and understand them. These problems have always existed in humans throughout history, and I would argue that it's primarily because of modern science and understanding that we've begun to understand it as a medical problem just like a bad liver, and to develop ways to help people with these problems.
The problem with knowledge and insight is that they don't automatically translate into skill in using them. For one example, Laszlo Polgar is a master chess teacher with a very deep understanding of the game's depths and strategies, and his three daughters are three of the best female chess players living (and his youngest, Judit, may be one of the best ever). Yet he's only a mediocre chess player himself. It's those other intangibles that can trip you up.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Not homogenous in content, but there is a sort of social function and zeitgeist running through much of the works. So if you read classical Chinese literature you will notice the vast bulk of the famous poems are poets complaining about social ills, lack of political or career advancement, etc. That's generally the vibe amongst the major Chinese poets.
Russian novelists of the 19th century are very isolating and do force people to question things and relationships. Generally that is a major trend of movement, with the cold sort of criticism coming from them further forcing one to think of negative things. As for Canadian literature, it is very isolating, since the major theme we get coming from it is loneliness and "survival" alone. Hardly something to make one happy.
Thematic criticism like this has its limitations,but I am generally responding to a post that generalizes on the impact of reading on a public. I would wager different traditions ultimately have different effects. So that medieval literature, be it French or Chinese or Japanese, seems to drag one into a sort of court culture sphere that does not isolate, but invites. Margaret Atwood does the opposite and makes one feel lonely.
Don't you spend a lot of time reading Chinese literature? Why do you do that?
I study it at the advanced level, but it is undoubtedly depressing. People always misunderstand Chinese verse as being about aesthetics, but for the most part, it is a sort of clever form of complaining. Since politics were the main focus of Chinese literary culture, it is not surprising that the most noteworthy poets seem to all be political failures, or seem to be writing in a time of political or cultural hardship. In fact, the Qing historians that pretty much framed the tradition of Chinese literature from past to present made a point of searching for these things - so that a philosophical poet Ruan Ji becomes a big whiner against political injustices.
The only poet who really seems to not whine is Su Shi, until you realize he is using his positive tone as a sort of political criticism to show he is not "beaten" by the unfairness allotted to him in political factional disputes. in a sense, his optimism is a sort of metaphorical whining.
This is the frame we get from the classics, where the vast majority of poems are about failures, or complaints. Complaining is the Chinese literary world's backbone, as poetry functioned socially as well as politically, and almost all major poets except for Monks and Daoist Priests were politically involved, and as anybody who reads politics knows, everyone is always unhappy when a decision or compromise is made. If one compromises, one complains of the compromise, if one loses, one complains of the loss, if one wins, one complains it takes too long. And we have from the Song onward about 3000 poems per poet, mostly written for political or social occasions. Quite depressing.
I suppose xi men was indirectly complaining about too much sexual taboos in chinese society, and of course, we will all go depressed and pop a few prozacs after reading chin ping mei. But wait, wasnt there the legend that the book was written as a revenge...the manuscript was laced with poison, and the reader was so tittilated that he couldnt put it down until the end, when, of course, the poison had seeped through and he dropped dead... you are right.. the chinese works are depressing
As a bookworm with social anxiety (not anymore, I grew out of it), I have to agree with Lushun. Reading does not help. And I do not think it has anything to do with understanding other people, as some folks have been suggesting. In fact people with social anxiety usually have a better understanding of the way people think and behave, since they also tend to be the observant, introspective, 'watching life from the sidelines' types. So I feel the best thing is to try and interact with people more. Burying oneself in a book may be more pleasant, but it's completely delusional to think that it is the remedy for social anxiety.
I agree, and I don't think emotional intelligence has anything to do with social anxiety either. Now my dad for instance - even now at the age of 83 has no emotional intelligence whatsoever, but never had the least bit of social anxiety.
Last edited by mona amon; 01-28-2014 at 12:36 AM.
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