Lost in the Cosmos

(1) The Amnesic Self: Why the Self Wants to Get Rid of Itself

IN ALL SOAP OPERAS and in many films and novels, a leading character will sooner or later develop amnesia. He will not necessarily develop pneumonia or cancer or schizophrenia, but inevitably he will be overtaken by amnesia. He (or she) finds himself in a strange place, having forgotten his old place, his family, friends, business. He begins a new life in a new place with a new girlfriend, new job. After a while in his new life he begins to receive clues about his old life. A stranger stops him in the street and calls him by a strange name. The best exploitation of the pleasures of amnesia occurred in Hitchcock’s Spellbound where Gregory Peck had amnesia and Ingrid Bergman was his psychiatrist. For the moviegoer there occurred first the pleasure of the prospect of a new life and the infinite possibilities of the self as represented by Gregory Peck. The second pleasure is the accidental meeting with Ingrid Bergman, who is sensitive to the clues that Gregory misses, and who is a reliable guide, his Beatrice, who can help him recover his old life — for even amnesia, if prolonged, can become as dreary as one’s old life.

Here is a nice example of Ingrid picking up clues to his past identity, a search which will allow them to have the best of both worlds, a discovery of oneself and one’s past without the encumbrances of the past, and a joining of hands with Ingrid for a new life in the future:

INGRID (psychoanalyzing him in a hotel room): I would like to ask you a medical question.

GREGORY: All right.

INGRID: How would you diagnose a pain in the right upper quadrant?

GREGORY: Gall bladder — pneumonia—

INGRID: It is obvious you are a doctor.

Here is an extra dividend for the moviegoer who is identifying with Peck or Bergman. Ingrid is on the track of who he is (who you are). You are a doctor, an identity which seems to interest women more than, say, a banker or an auto dealer.

Question: Is amnesia a favorite device in fiction and especially soap operas because

(a) The character in the soap opera is sick and tired of himself and his life and wants a change.

(b) The writer is sick and tired of his character and wants a change.

(c) The writer is sick and tired of himself and his life and wants a change.

(d) The reader or moviegoer or TV-viewer is sick and tired of himself and his life and wants a change — and the housewife is the sickest and tiredest of all.

(e) The times are such that everyday life for everybody is more or less intolerable and one is better off wiping out the past and starting anew.

(CHECK ONE)

A variant of the amnesic-plot device is the inadvertent return of the amnesiac to home territory, where he is welcomed by a lovely woman, unknown to him, who is evidently his wife. The crucial scene is his being led off to bed.

A non-amnesic equivalent is a twin or look-alike who is mistaken for someone else — by a beautiful woman. Invariably she finds him not merely oddly different but somehow better, more attractive, than the original. After a love scene, she looks at him wide-eyed and smiling (you were never like this before!).

This version demonstrates that the source of pleasure for the moviegoer is not the amnesia but the certified and risk-free license to leave the old self behind and enter upon a new life, whether by amnesia or mistaken identity.

Thought Experiment: Test your response to vicarious loss of self by imagining amnesia raised to the highest power. Imagine a soap opera in which a character awakens every morning with amnesia, in a strange house with a strange attractive man (or woman), welcomed by the stranger, looking out a strange window with a strange view, having forgotten the past each morning and starting life afresh, seeing the window, the view, himself, herself, in the mirror afresh and for the first time. Does this prospect intrigue you? If it does, what does this say about your non-amnesic self?^*

^*Some TV series do in fact operate at this level of amnesia, the doctor or cop or private eye falling in love every week, the lover totally forgotten the following week. This quasi-amnesic device is clearly a variant of the earlier Lone Ranger or non-amnesic Western, with the difference that in the latter the lone cowboy moves on after his adventure, whereas in the former it is the lover who moves on.