(Late but better late than never)
Dumping is a term I hear often. Sometimes when my fiance gets off the phone after talking with her mother she has the saddest look on her face. When I ask her what's wrong, she shrugs "my mom just dumped all of her problems on me." I then give her a big hug, and convince her that it is not her job to worry about her mom's anxieties.
But I am always amazed at how much her effect the conversation can have on her. She can go from happy-go-lucky to depressed from a 10 minute conversation. My fiance is not prone to wild swings of emotion either. Another interesting thing is that, as far as I can tell, her mother seems to end the benefit from the conversation (at least as far as I can tell from what my fiance says).
Brennan seems to doubt whether "the quavering notes of language are sufficient to carry the unconscious from one being to another." (pp: 32-33) But I tend to think that they are. Again to use my fiance as an example (don't tell her please), conversations she has with her mother are not by words alone depressing. But my fiance's mother's affect does seem to bring my fiance down emotionally. Maybe the strength of the mother-child relationship enables the transmission of affect more. Indeed, chapter 2 in Brennan deals extensively with this dynamic, because of the power of this relationship.
But I (as stated earlier) am able to sometime overcome her motherly induced depression by talking to her and hugging her. But I am most likely transmitting my affect onto her as well, which (sometimes) is able to overcome the affect dumping by her mother.
This is something that has puzzled me for a while, and if Brennan is correct then I think I finally understand it.
I am going to stop before I get even more personal than I already have. I do not know if I am reading this correctly, because as several other people have pointed out, this is incredibly tedious to read. But if I am, Brennan makes some very interesting points, and I am inclined to believe her based on my own life experience.
I think we've all experienced instances of dumping before. Do you think the effects of dumping are more pronounced via direct face-to-face communication than via the phone (as in your example)? I think Brennan would probably think so, for she believes that affective transfer occurs namely though olfaction (smell), and you can’t quite smell through the phone (yet).
ReplyDeleteI'd say that dumping is more exaggerated face to face to be sure. So much of communication lies in body language that even disregarding smell, which I will always be fairly dubious of as that big of a factor in transmission, merely talking over the phone is much less efficient. Tears, facial expressions, motions, all of these transmit affects that are simply not there over the phone. The same could be said for the internet, which goes even farther and lacks the element of voice and tone. It's an interesting idea, particularly if you consider it in context of many people who communicate online. These people may be great typists, able to put out no shortage of moving words and present an excellent argument online, but in the real world it is entirely possible that any of those various methods for the transmission of affect could completely sink them - render their argument invalid purely because they are unable to look sincere or simply have some smell on them that makes people resistant to them.
ReplyDeleteI think "dumping" certainly occurs on a regular basis between people. It seems to be emotional counseling for some - it helps some people to talk about their problems. I think because it allows them to almost load their problems onto another persons shoulders, as if to temporarily make them share the burden. However, it's clearly very unhealthy. But as I said, it seems to be natural. I think it is a demonstration of our desires as human beings to be involved with one another, even if that means involving each other in our personal problems. This, to me, is kind of synonymous with Brennan's idea of affect. After all, transmission of affect involves individuals, in one way or another, somehow being involved with each other. More importantly, I wonder if the magnitude of most dumping seems so affective because we are conscious of it in comparison to the more subconscious way of affecting others that Brennan's describes.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Sean G...
ReplyDeleteYeah it is really weird how once you strip away everything but the words (which is what the internet does) people take on a negative tone.
But as a counterexample I present these blogs. Here (on blogger)- there is an actual face and person that we have all seen and absorbed their affects- everyone responds in a cordial, almost saccharine tone. People actually respect the words others have posted, which is a complete opposite of normal net behavior. Part of this is probably due to the subject matter, but I think an online class in this same format could get nasty. I would be interested to see a study done where people first interacted digitally. Then they would meet face to face, and afterwards continue to interact electronically. I wonder if peoples tones would shift after the face to face interaction. I bet they would.