Occlumency, Snape, and the Real World

To me, the most interesting character in J.K. Rawling’s Harry Potter series is Severus Snape, the sinister teacher at Hogwarts Academy who is always picking on Harry and his friends. Snape seems either unwilling or unable to conceal his disdain for others, especially for those with a connection, even if only indirectly, with his troubled and sad youth. Is Snape on the side of the good or the bad? You can never be sure, and this ambivalence in his personality is what makes him the most believable (and human) of all the Harry Potter characters, all of the adorning magic in the series notwithstanding. He is quite the hypersensitive type, never letting a personal slight escape him unnoticed. Yet in the fifth book, The Order of the Phoenix, Headmaster Dumbledore has Snape teach Harry the obscure and difficult art of “occlumency”. Occlumency is the magical art of being able to block others from telepathically transmitting information to oneself (Harry is experiencing a problem in this area). And Snape is supposedly a master in occlumency. But in ordinary social interactions, he wears his heart out on his sleeve and takes in everything!

In real life, if you choose to believe in mental telepathy, than I suppose you can go a step further and believe in something like occlumency as well. I don’t. But there does seem to be a lesson in all of this anyway.

As children, we haven’t yet developed the ability to discriminate between the relevant and irrelevant regarding our interactions with others. We take it all in, both the good and bad, and have to store all of our experiences somewhere in our minds. So taunts and threats from elders and peers can scar one’s attitude toward others and life in general. Later, as with Snape’s occlumency, we (if we are maturing, that is) learn skills to filter out the harmful and irrelevant transmissions from others while taking in what is constructive and positive.

I am fifty-one years old and am still in the process of learning this filtering skill. I know of kids from my childhood who, in spite of being the victims of harassment from their peers, were able to filter out the bad and function effectively. I wasn’t. But I also know of people older than me who never learned how to block out unreasonably-negative social input and are so lacking in self-confidence that they have difficulty deciding on simple courses of action in their daily living.

As for me, Rawling’s occlumency has provided a model for me to call up in situations where I am still learning to fend off attacks on my confidence and purpose, even at this stage in my life. Of course, occlumency is in itself make-believe, but so are all of the other psychological devices we invent to help ourselves cope! How using this self-help device works, as I see it, is to habitually insert the interjection “occlumency” into my thoughts at the appropriate cue, (feelings of pressure or harassment from others), to interrupt and change the direction of my feelings from those of becoming demoralized and dejected to those of become proactive and positive.

Oh well, it’s just a tool. Or, as I wrote a few days ago, a “good lie”!

This topic reminds me of a "Christian" minister I heard preaching on Jesus's teachings a few years ago. This man, "slightly" adapting Jesus's words to suit his own worldview (as so many do), said that if someone strikes you on one cheek (i.e. commits an offense against you), then turn the other to him. If he strikes that one, then slug him! I think my "occlumency" strategy beats slugging someone and getting thrown in jail (or suffering a much worse fate).