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Unravelling the Obscurus

Why do some magical children become Obscurials and others don’t?

Why are Harry Potter and Tom Riddle not Obscurials?

Why does Credence survive when most children die from the condition?

The brief explanation Newt gives to Jacob in the first Fantastics Beasts film is that when magical children are persecuted and try to hide their powers, their magic develops into a powerful, negative parasitic entity that eventually kills them.

However if we apply the litmus test of persecution to other characters in Harry Potter, including Harry himself, we are left wondering why there aren’t more Obscurials.  Evidently becoming and Obscurial requires more than just being abused by muggles because of your magic. 

I believe becoming an obscurial requires a triad of genetic predisposition, environmental triggers, and learned psychological responses. Obscurials are rare within the wizarding world because it takes a rare trio of conditions coalescing to create one.

These prerequisite conditions also explain why not all magical children who are abused by muggles for their magical outbursts (Harry Potter and Tom Riddle) turn into obscurials.

This essays explains:

1.      Why Harry Potter and Tom Riddle did not become Obscurials.

2.      Why Credence did become an Obscurial

3.      Why Credence survived, and how he can get rid of the Obscurus

Nature vs Nurture

  From my perspective as doctor, obscurials are clearly children who developed a psychological disorder that also manifests physically in response to trauma. If we treat the obscurus for what it is: a symptoms of an underlying severe psychological disorder, we can finally explain the phenomenon. 

We know from Newt’s brief explanation that Obscurials develop in children and very few survive beyond the age of ten. Newt’s reason for why obscurials occurs is purely environmental, and we know from extensive scientific studies that very few psychiatric disorders especially those that manifest in childhood are purely environmental.

In reality psychological/psychiatric disorders in children often have a significant genetic component, but it takes a specific environmental trigger to bring out the pathos. The contribution of genes to the development of psychiatric disorders can be extremely high, as evidence with studies in identical twins raised apart. Disorders that first appear in early childhood are more likely to have a stronger genetic contribution simply because disorders that have a higher environmental contribution require prolonged exposure to a specific environment.

Therefore, in terms of the obscurial as a psychological disorder, it is likely heavily influenced by the genetic make up of the child. This has nothing to do with race, sex etc, but rather a specific set of genes that together produce the potential to become an obscurial given the right stimulus. The is known as genetic predisposition and occurs in many different disorders both psychiatric and physical. Without these genes the likelihood of developing into an obscurial is very, very low even if all the prerequisite environmental triggers occur.  

This would explain why obscurials are relatively rare despite there being a common thread of abuse toward magical children growing up in non-magical environments.

Having discussed genetic predisposition, I would like to state that genes are not the be all and end all when it comes to causing psychiatric disorders. We must also take in the complexities of the human mind, and how humans psychological cope with severely detrimental environments. The obscurus is not a passive by-product of abuse like a scar but an active response to it. Therefore, the child’s psychological method of coping with abuse is a very important prerequisite to becoming an obscurial.

  Thinkers vs Feelers

  Many people have speculated that its takes severe extreme abuse to create an obscurial. I don’t dispute this, but I do not believe there is a specific type or length of abuse that creates an obscurial. Child abuse is severely damaging in all its different forms. I would not say that what Harry suffered is somehow less horrific than what Credence went through. I find the comparison of various abuse types useless when it comes to explaining why an obscurial develops.

The environmental trigger for an obscurial is childhood abuse leading to trauma likely by people close to them who should have been their protectors/caretakers. However what people fail to realize is that children, and by extension adults, have different methods of coping with abuse, and the different coping strategies dictate which psychiatric disorders they may go onto develop in later life.

The method by which a child deals with abuse and by extension severe negative emotions it brings determines whether they become an obscurial.

All humans learn coping strategies to deal with negative and positive emotions generated by our environment. We all learn to some extent how to control our emotions to our best advantage. This is not a conscious learning curve, but rather something we instinctive develop from the moment we are born.

There are two board methods young infants use to deal with their negative emotions and attract the presence of soothing caregivers. These board methods are refined with time, but the strategy an infant develops has a long-lasting effect on the person’s emotional and psychologic state well into adulthood. I have discussed this psychological theory in more detail in other metas: Loki and Thor a psychoanalysis, The Holmes Brothers, a psychoanalysis.

The broad categories are: Thinkers and Feelers.

Thinkers contain and analyse their emotions. They only express emotions that they feel are best suited to the situation to get attention. Thinkers tend to develop due to caregivers who are consistent in their approach to giving attention.

Feelers express all their emotions, often in exaggerate or amplified ways to get attention. Feelers develop in response to caregivers who are inconsistent in their attentions. Therefore, repeated amplification of emotions is the best way to get the caregivers to arrive promptly when needed.

What I have not previously discussed in other metas is what happens to the psychological coping strategies of infants who never get attention no matter what they do or who get attention only for it to lead to abuse. This is where deep psychopathologies develop.

Human children are mostly helpless for a substantial proportion of their most formative years. Therefore, most of our emotional coping strategies revolve around gaining attention from caregivers. This need for attention and comfort stretches far into adulthood. It may be the foundation for our strong social bonds.

We know from unfortunate data generated in the orphanages of Eastern Europe that when infants never receive the attention they need, their entire emotional development stalls and certain parts of their brains required for processing emotion never fully develop. In effect infants whose coping strategies failed to get any attention at all simply switch off the emotional processing part of their brain. They never learned to control their emotions, but they also stopped generating appropriate emotions. One orphan described his life as black and white, whilst everyone else lived in colour. It gives us a small glimpse into the poor emotional lives these children led. Additionally when nutrition is taken into account, these children are still more physically underdeveloped than they should be, showing that psychological problems often have severe physical manifestations.

However, the nature of the obscurus is a dangerous, active and uncontrolled. The psychological pathos related to it is also active and violent. This does not fit with what happened to Eastern European orphans. Obscurials do not have underdeveloped emotional centres, they are not children who are to some extent numb to the world. Credence does not have a problem generating emotion, he has a problem with control. He is not numb to the world but rather has an insatiable hunger for love and belonging.

Therefore, infants who become obscurials did not suffer from predominantly severe neglect, which is what happened to Harry Potter and Tom Riddle. Harry escaped the most severe consequences of his emotional neglect because he had 15 months of love from his parents to hold onto. This was crucial to his emotional development. Tom Riddle was not so lucky and his pathos is a clear reflection of the orphans of Eastern Europe.

Obscurial children do get attention, just not the right kind of attention.

  A Spiral into Hell

  For infants their entire survival depends on gaining the caregivers attention, but when the ultimate emotional reward - attention, turns into the ultimate generator of negative emotions – abuse, the infant is unable to cope with the spiral of negative emotions. The caregiver is supposed to take away the negative emotions but instead exacerbates the problem.

I believe that Obscurials including Credence developed primarily as Feelers. As infants they learned to amplify all their emotions, all the time, to get attention. As magical outbursts are closely linked to strong emotions, infants who are Feelers would have correspondingly more magical outburst likely at an earlier age compared to Thinkers. When the abuse then starts – likely during early childhood with increasing magical outbursts, the child is unable to understand why its coping strategy is producing cycles of more pain rather comfort.

Having developed the Feelers strategy already, the child is not able to modulate their emotions like Thinkers can. They are not able to contain, analyse and then express appropriate emotions for the situation. Therefore, they cannot suppress their own magic into a dormant state and act like a muggle as Neville Longbottom managed to do as a child. This leads to a cycle of escalating abuse, and then need for attention to heal the negative emotions it generates.

However eventually these Feelers who become Obscurials do manage to suppress their emotions and their magic but not in the psychologically healthy manner of a Thinker. Instead the negative emotions and by extension the magic associated with it is displaced, rather than suppressed or contained. They alienate their own feelings in an attempt to not experience them and therefore not express them. The resulting obscurus is the consequence of this displacement and alienation, a dark extension of the child that ultimately destroys them.

 Adapting to Survive

  How is Credence able to survive beyond childhood?

In the films it is suggested that he may be an extremely powerful wizard. I don’t dispute this, but control of magic is not just about power, it is intrinsically linked one’s control of emotions. Children generally experience far more extreme emotions and changes of emotions compared to adults. As we psychologically mature our emotions do not become less strong, but we have better control of how we experience that emotion and how it affects us. If the obscurus is a physical manifestation of a dysfunctional emotions, then it is likely something that becomes easier to control as one emotionally matures. However, it often causes death before puberty which means that children never get to emotionally develop to a point where it is controllable.

I believe that Credence unlikely that other Obscurial children, successfully learned a new emotional coping strategy early in life that enable him to control his emotions to a certain extent. I am not saying he went to therapy and read some self-help books. Changing one’s emotional coping strategy is very difficult and not entirely conscious act. I believe at various critical points in his life Credence was helped by other people who provided him the much-needed emotional support. They helped to drive his desire to live, give him hope and purpose. More uniquely to Credence I believe he learned from them new emotional coping strategies and subconsciously put this into practice.

Most well-adjusted adults have a mixture of different coping strategies when it comes to emotions. Very few people are purely Feelers or Thinkers beyond childhood. We all exist on a spectrum between these extremes and use of blend of different strategies that we tailor to the environment. However, our original coping strategy is often remains dominant and underscores all other later strategies. Credence was a very dysfunctional Feeler as a young child, but he learned through positive interactions with Thinkers around him how to become a Thinker instead.

Credence has done something very rare for children which is completely switch his emotional coping strategy from one extreme to another. Being a Feeler caused him to become an Obscurial but becoming a Thinker allowed him a measure of control over his emotions and thus his obscurus. The more he pursued the Thinker route, the more control he eventually gained over his obscurus. I believe that Credence developed this strategy early on in childhood, which is a remarkable feat, and therefore the obscurus never came close to being lethal.

When we meet him, Credence is the typical dysfunctional Thinker: a person who controls all emotional expression only displays the correct emotions for the situation. This is his survival strategy and though it is not psychologically healthy, it keeps him alive.

I would not be able to hazard a guess as to who or what prompted him to become a thinker. It might have been his younger siblings and their emotional support for him. It might have been a specific adult who helped him through a very difficult time.

There is no doubt that acts of kindness and love, sustained Credence through his horrific childhood. He does not shy away from love, he actively seeks it even in people who are looking to exploit him. This is not a person who has given up on the world, but someone who desperately wants to live and be loved. People like Tina and Newt are going to be the key to his salvation and may finally help him psychological heal. Once he does, I wonder if the Obscurus will simply cease to exist.

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Loki vs Thor - Born to be Kings

Loki seems obsessed with becoming King, to the point that he is willing to let Frost Giants into Asgard, fight Thor and conquer Earth.

On the surface Loki fits well into a classic literary troupe: the conniving, scheming younger brother who wants his older sibling’s birth right and will do all manner of evil things to get it. Shakespeare deployed this troupe well in many of his plays, most famously in Hamlet.

However, just become Loki has a “lean and hungry” look doesn’t mean that we can just assume Asgard is like a Medieval monarchy. In fact many times throughout the films, we see and hear about Asgard practising a completely different kind of inheritance structure.

“Only one of you can ascend to the throne but both of you were born to be kings” – Odin in Thor 1

I postulate that under Asgardian tradition both Thor and Loki are equally eligible for the throne regardless of age, and Loki competing with Thor is completely legitimate.

I explain:

How Asgardian power structures work

Why Loki believes he should be the rightful King of Asgard

Why Loki’s competition with Thor for the crown is legitimate

How this competition shapes their characters and relationship

One more reason why Loki is devastated when he found out he was Frost Giant. 

   The Myth of Primogeniture

An assumption that appears to be prevalent in fandom is that as Thor is the older brother and proclaimed “first-born” he is the rightful heir to Asgard and that is why people support him. However there is no evidence that primogeniture (passing all the inheritance to the oldest child) is part of Asgardian law or society.

On the contrary there is plenty of evidence at all descendants of the current Allfather have the same right to inherit his position.

Firstly Odin says in Thor 1: “Only one of you can ascend to the throne but both of you were born to be kings” 

There is truth to this as Loki was born to be King of Jotunheim, but Odin would not say this if Asgard clearly practiced primogeniture because it would sound extremely odd to anyone who was not privy to Loki’s true parentage, including Thor. Therefore this statement is true on two levels: Loki and Thor are equally eligible for the Asgardian Throne as Princes of Asgard, but Loki is also born to be King of Jotunheim. 

Loki says in TDW: “I was merely giving truth to the lie that I was born to be a King.” If Asgard practiced primogeniture then Loki would never have been told he was born to be a King. As the spare and not the heir Loki would have been raised to believe that Thor was destined to be King, and he was destined to remain a prince. He is bitterly clear that Odin made Loki believe that he had just as much right to be King as Thor, but Thor is made King because he is more “worthy” than Loki on a personal level.

Thor says in Ragnarok “As my sister you do technically have a claim to the throne”. If Asgard practiced primogeniture Hela wouldn’t have a claim to the throne, she would have the only claim to the throne. Thor would be legitimately unseated as the rightful heir and there would be no need for her to kill either of her brothers because they would automatically be discounted from the throne by her return.

Clearly inheritance of Asgard’s throne is open to all Odin’s children, and they are all equally eligible.

This system of inheritance is not uncommon on Earth either. The Ottomans, Mongols and Chinese Imperial families all practiced this method of inheritance, whereby all sons of the ruler are equal contenders the throne. It was believed that through competition for the throne the best and brightest descendent would eventually become the next ruler. Competition in all its forms was encourage, be it in the political arena or on the battlefield. Subterfuge was a necessary part of the competition and not considered dishonourable because it helped to develop the eventual winner’s skills which would then be put to good use for the country. A Prince’s entire life’s work and his raison d’etre is to hone his skills in competition to become the next King.

The arbiters and judges of the competition are the major political players of court and the ruler himself. The winner is often only decided on the death of the ruler. The Chinese Emperors designated their successors, but the Mongols and the Ottomans did not. Instead they left their sons to physically fight for the throne after they died.

Therefore if we view Asgardian society through this lens of an ongoing state sanctioned competition between Thor and Loki, a lot of things fall into place. 

Loki is not being a greedy conniving second son attempting to unfairly rob his older brother of Thor’s rightful inheritance. 

This is not Shakespeare’s Hamlet. 

Loki is doing his part for the betterment of Asgard by competing with Thor for the throne. This is his function as a prince to do his best in proving that he is the better candidate for the throne by any means necessary.

Thor on the other hand is also competing for the throne in his own way by playing to his strengths as a fighter. His belittlement of Loki’s magical talents is not only borne from a narrow understanding but also stems from the ongoing competition between them. Magic is Loki’s strength in this competition and that is why Thor feels the need to undermine it. Thor is not a malicious or spiteful person but he is definitely competitive. Thor’s friends are invested in seeing him succeed to the throne and truly believe he would be the better king, which is why they join in in disparaging Loki’s talents.

Both princes are playing to their strengths and the manner of the competition means they specialize in their chosen area to the detriment of other skills. Loki, however, has a good grasp of combat techniques and is able to hold his own against Thor. Thor on the other hand has not made much effort to learn the type of Magic that Loki is known for.

 King vs Allfather

 I believe that being King of Asgard is different and separate from being the Allfather. The title of “Allfather” is life long, as Odin remains the Allfather even when he’s in Odinsleep. He is the undisputed ruler of Asgard and when he awakens both Thor and Loki (who were both Kings at one stage) go back to being Princes. Therefore the title of King is a temporary and transferable one, that does not have the same connations as it does on Earth. Allfather translates better to our understanding of a King as it is the title that confers life-long undisputed power. The King of Asgard is likely a ceremonial title rather than one that holds full power. When Odin is asleep, or away on another planet, he either gives this title to his sons or one of his advisers. When Odin is on Asgard and awake he retains the ceremonial title of King, but he is always the Allfather until he dies.

Therefore Thor and Loki are fighting to eventually inherit the title of Allfather and the real power that comes with being the ruler of Asgard.

When Odin crowned Thor King before his Odinsleep, it did not mean he was making Thor the Allfather. Instead he was conferring an important but limited role on his son as a mark of trust and favour. It did not mean that the competition between the princes had finished and Thor was the conclusive winner, far from it. However, Thor becoming King is an important set back for Loki and this is why he works so hard to undermine his brother’s tenure as King and level the playing field. The same thing happens when Loki becomes King. Thor is banished to Earth but his friends act as his proxies in the competition. They seek to undermine Loki and disobey him not because he’s an illegitimate king but because with Odin still alive, the competition for the title of Allfather is also very much alive.

 Doomed to Fail

  The ongoing open competition to be the next Allfather is also one reason why Loki reacts so strongly and deeply when he finds out he is a frost giant. It is important to note the second most emotionally charged sentence from Loki in that particular scene is: “no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never have a frost giant sitting on the throne of Asgard”. Part of the reason why Loki hates his frost giant heritage is because he believes it automatically disqualifies him for the throne. He has been competing to become the Allfather nearly all his life, it is in effect his life’s work. When he discovers that all of his effort was doomed to fail from the start, he feels utterly betrayed.

However, the need to compete for the Throne is so engrained in Loki, that once Odin falls asleep, Loki goes straight back to competition mode but this time with far more ferocity than before. He is now at a severe and permanent disadvantage against Thor and this causes him to take things to extremes. In his unbalance and turbulent mind this justifies sending the destroyer to Earth and bringing the frost giants to his father’s bed. Loki never intended to kill Thor, but he did intend to make sure his brother could not return. By saving the Odin’s life and killing Laufey Loki hoped to prove once and for all that he was the best prince to become the Allfather.

  Thor vs Loki

 A lot of people think that the competition for the throne is mostly one sided, with Thor sitting comfortably, confident he will inherit the throne and Loki desperately seeking to undermine him. I believe before the events of the first Thor movie, both princes were on an equal footing to become the next Allfather. Loki being the more politically adept, may have had the upper hand. We must remember that just because Thor appears to have more friends than Loki doesn’t mean he is universally loved by everyone or that he is seen as the shining example of what an Asgardian should be.

Thor is political inept and dangerously foolhardy at the beginning of Thor 1. Asgard may be an absolute monarchy but even Allfathers must have political supports and advisers. I doubt the major political players in Odin’s court failed to see what a loose canon Thor was and how Loki could be a better alternative. However Loki does have his own character flaws. He may be more politically orientated but he can also be unreliable, mischievous and general trouble maker. Political support for the brothers may be split among the court and be a highly polarising subject.

It is interesting to note that we do not meet any of Loki’s friends. It is not necessarily because he doesn’t have any, but it might be that his friends are also his political supporters. Unlike Thor who chooses childishly to surround himself with only people his own age that are just like him, Loki may have used his time to establish friendships with important (likely much older) political players in the court. However these politicians are not likely to want to feast, drink and go on adventures with the young prince in his leisure time. Therefore Loki spends much of his spare time with his family and by extension Thor’s friends.

At the beginning of Thor 1, Odin decided to make Thor King during his Odinsleep, and this suddenly put Loki at a public disadvantage. We known from the deleted scene in the first Thor movie that Thor was nervous before the ceremony and we can postulate that Thor had never been made King before. Judging by the deleted scene of Loki receiving Odin’s spear, he also had never been made King before either. It is likely that Odin previously gave the mantle of King to an adviser during his Odinsleep but finally decided it was time for his sons to step up to the task. The fact that Thor was chosen before Loki sends a very public message to the court and Loki’s supporters that Thor is in favour with Odin. We do not know who ultimately choses the next Allfather but given how both sons are playing up to their father, I believe Odin designated his successor as Allfather. If Loki knew he was currently ahead in the competition, he may have reasonably expected to be crowned King and was therefore shocked that Thor got the honour instead.

He felt betrayed when Odin finally acknowledged that he was frost giant. Loki then assumed that there never was a “fair” competition between him and Thor. He was never going to be worthy Allfather in the eyes of Odin no matter how hard he tried.

  To Save Asgard (From Thor)

 Loki makes it clear to Thor that he didn’t actually want the throne during their fight in the Bifrost in Thor 1.

“I never wanted to be King, I only wanted to be your equal”

This suggests to me that Loki felt the competition for the position of Allfather was very important but he understand the huge weight of responsibility that success would bring. He had the maturity to release that bring the Allfather or even the King was not a jaunt but a very serious undertaking. He probably genuinely didn’t want to be the Allfather, but he clearly felt that Thor was not fit to be the Allfather either.

Loki’s driving motivation towards the beginning of Thor 1 may not have been taking the throne for himself, but rather saving the Asgard from Thor’s rash and warmongering rule.

He clearly says to the Frost Giants: “To ruin my brother’s big day, and to protect the realm from his idiotic rule for a while longer.”

Loki, from this perspective, is not wrong. Thor managed to start a war before Odin even officially “retired” from being King of Asgard, all because Thor felt he had been slighted by his father. Loki may be Machiavellian to a degree few villains in the MCU are, but that does not make him a bad person. We must remember that both Loki and Thor were both raised with the prospect that one day they would be the absolute ruler of the nine realms. This is a huge responsibility and it appears that only Loki took this responsibility seriously, whilst Thor seemed to think being King meant he was allowed to do whatever his bloodlust fancied.

The truth is that at the beginning of Thor 1, Loki’s temperament made him the better (but not perfect) choice for King. Thor only realises this during the end of Thor the Dark World, despite having matured significantly in the intervening years.

I think Loki is a very perceptive person, and he clearly realised early on that Odin favoured Thor. Given the nature of the brother’s competition, their father is the highest judge of their “worth”. Despite Loki’s many abilities, he must have found it frustrating and confusing that Thor was deemed more worthy in Odin’s eyes. In the end his participation in the competition became less about becoming the Allfather and more about getting Odin to acknowledge that he, Loki, was just as good as Thor. For Loki the Allfather’s political approval, may also have been his own measure of his father’s love for him.

We do not get much screen time to explore Loki and Odin’s relationship but from what little we do see, Odin loves Loki, he’s just incredibly inept at relating to his son emotionally. Odin does not provide the emotional feedback and support Loki requires, so Loki substitutes his father’s political approval for direct displays of love. Unfortunately, Odin can’t give Loki political approval either, because he clearly never intended for Loki to inherit the throne. However, his policy of keeping Loki’s parentage a secret means he locks Loki into the competition for the throne, whilst at the same time he locks himself into a perpetual cycle of trying to undermine Loki’s success at the same endeavour.

Odin has ironically tied himself in knots with his own lies.

 In conclusion

  Having explained why Thor and Loki were legitimately locked in competition for the throne, I would like to conclude by pointing out that these brothers love each other very deeply. They have their fair share of problems but despite a political system that pits them against each other, they have remained loyal and loving to each other. When Thor becomes the King of the exiled Asgardians Loki is there standing right beside him ready support him on the journey ahead.

[wellingtongoose]

Loki vs Thor - A Psychoanalysis

This essays exists because of a one wonderful, insightful and very determined person who has been asking me to psychoanalyse the Odinsons for many years. 

In the course of researching this I binged watched all the films with Thor and Loki in, read as many commentaries, interviews with writers and directors as I could get my hands on, and browsed tumblr.

So here is a psychological analysis of Loki and Thor (the marvel movie versions). 

It explains: 

why they have such different personalities,

why they are not able to relate emotional to each other

how they feed into each other’s emotional dysfunction, which creates the conflicts that drive the films

 Thinkers vs Feelers

 Thor and Loki have very different personalities, and often have difficulty relating to each other emotionally. Whilst some of the difference is genetic in origin, the vast majority of their personality differences and relationship dysfunction can be explained by their upbringing.

The development maturation model explains not only why Thor and Loki are different but also provides an excellent lens through which to examine their motivations, and emotions through the films.

The model predicts that during the first years of life, infants learn coping strategies to handle strong emotions. This is a vital part of human development which everyone undergoes but the path an infant “chooses” determines their future personality, their susceptibility to psychiatric conditions and response to psychiatric therapy.

All infants start off with the basic instinctive need to gain attention; it is an essential survival strategy but there are two broadly different methods that infants learn to use to gain attention. 

“Feelers” are infants who learn the best way to cope with emotions is to amplify them because this brings attention/comfort from the primary care giver. “Thinkers” on the other hand learn that internalising their emotions in favour of pleasing the primary care giver leads to attention/comfort.

I think the best analogy for Thinkers and Feelers is: 

If emotions were fine wine, the Feelers would all be drunk and the Thinkers utterly sober.

The functional Feelers would be amusingly tipsy, bringing joy and laughter to the party, whilst the functional Thinkers would be savouring all the subtle aromas of the bouquet and discussing the quality of the vintage. 

The dysfunctional feelers would be smashing up the wine cellar in a drunken rage, whilst the dysfunctional Thinkers would be stoically standing the in the middle of the carnage refusing to acknowledge that wine can stain their suits. 

Most well-adjusted adults exist somewhere on the spectrum between two extremes. They are able to retain the good parts from their original “path” and learn the beneficial strategies of the opposite “path”.

Thor the Feeler

From this model we can see that Thor is very much a feeler. He clearly expresses and amplifies his emotions throughout the films. At first, we see him doing this regardless of how it affects other people around him but as Thor develops, we see that he learns to control how and when he expresses his emotions. He is learning the “Thinkers” strategy of coping with emotions and applying it to balance out the negative impact of his “Feelers” strategy.

Thor’s “Feeler” instincts to express and amplify whatever he is feeling is part of the reason why he is seen as an honest and open person because he never tries to disguise his emotional state. We are hardwired to respond to other people’s emotions and thus superficially at least Thor is often easier to relate to than Loki.

When Feelers must deal with stressful emotional states, their instinctive strategy is to simply amplify their emotions. We see this clearly in Thor 1, when Thor has a screaming match with his father, and then flips a table over in anger. We see this again when Thor fails to pick up Mjolnir on Earth and cries rather dramatically in the rain. Even without an audience, Feelers instinctively over express their emotions as a coping mechanism. Some psychiatrists believe this is actually a helpful stress release mechanism, and Feelers are less likely to develop stress related psychiatric conditions.  

Loki the Thinker

Loki on the other hand is definitely a Thinker and, like all Thinkers, he experiences emotion, but that experience is superseded by his conscious thought process. A Thinker’s relationship with their feelings is far more complex than a Feeler’s. Instead of simply feeling the emotion and then expressing it, thinks see emotions as tools to be utilized in social interactions. Functional thinkers tend to only express emotions that are acceptable and appropriate to help lubricate social interactions. Other emotions that are not deemed to be social acceptable are suppressed and ignored.

Thinkers when confronted with stressful emotional states, first tend to over-analyse and then inappropriately contain their negative emotions. This containment allows the Thinker to feel in control, and projects the illusion of emotional control to others. However, Thinkers pay a high psychological and physiological price for this containment. Their strategy for emotional management creates more stress for themselves. Thinkers are more likely to develop depression, particularly treatment resistant types, anxiety and other stress related psychiatric disorders.

The best example of Loki containing his emotions is after he returns from Jotunheim and works out that he is a Frost Giant. Thor, the Feeler, would have screamed the place down and demanded answers immediately, but you can see that Loki keeps his negative emotions contained and does not express anything.

The scene in the weapons vault between Loki and Odin is an excellent example of a Thinker having what is essentially a nervous breakdown.

Loki starts off in control of his emotions and the conversation but swiftly we see the containment of his negative emotions crumble and collapse. The ensuing emotional outburst from Loki is like a dam breaking. It is not just the emotions that he has been holding back for the last few hours that breaks through but all of the negative emotion he has likely contained within himself for years. The emotions wash over him, and completely overwhelm his ability to analyse or contain them. What we then see is the Thinker finally Feeling emotion.

Moments like this, if handled well, can be very cathartic for Thinkers because for the first time they truly loose control and just experience their emotions. With that loss of control comes the chance to express emotion in its raw state. It can be a very liberating feeling, and during this process the Thinker is learning how to be more of a Feeler and balance out the negative impact of their chosen coping strategy.  With acknowledgement, and positive reception, dysfunctional Thinkers like Loki can incorporate Feelers strategies when managing their negative emotions.

Unfortunately for Loki, Odin falls asleep in the middle of his emotional catharsis, and Loki never gets the chance to truly express his emotions and be acknowledged for doing so. Therefore, he never learns the benefits of expressing his emotions. Instead we see that after Odin falls asleep Loki immediately feels guilty and reverts to the Thinker strategy of containing his emotions once again. His voice drops, he crouches down to touch Odin. Once again, he has forced himself to put his own emotions aside for the sake of someone else and from a psychological point of view this is both tragic and damaging for Loki.

 Brotherly Love and Dysfunction

Why is Thor and Loki’s relationship so dramatic and dysfunctional?

The root cause of their relationship problems is not Loki’s jealousy or Thor’s disregard for Loki’s feelings, those are merely symptoms.

Just like the Holmes Brothers, Thor and Loki have opposite coping strategies for emotions and therefore they have very different emotional needs. Both of them are firmly entrenched and dysfunction Thinkers/Feelers. Whilst Thor does develop a more comprehensive and balanced approach to his emotions, this only happens when he gets thrown into a completely new environment and meets new people. Loki never get this chance.

Their dysfunctional Thinker/Feeler coping mechanisms significantly affect their relationship with each other. Unlike the Holmes Brothers, even as adults Thor and Loki spend most of their time together, they have the same social circle and that exacerbates their inability to grow and change.

Thor is locked in a perpetual cycle of expressing and amplifying his emotions without any kind of filter. This is because no one has managed to convince him that his emotions are not the most important things in the world. I can imagine that Thor, as Odin and Frigga’s longed for son got a lot of unconditional love and attention as an infant. He only had to cry to get the attention he wanted. As he grew older, crying turned to screaming and shouting. Essentially Thor’s emotional outbursts have always been rewarded with what he wants, eventually. Therefore, Thor has never had to learn the Thinker’s strategy of modifying his emotional expression to relate to other people.

It is not that Thor doesn’t understand or care about other people’s emotions: he clearly has the capacity to do both when he falls to Earth. He just doesn’t do it on Asgard because he doesn’t need to. In nearly all situations his emotions have been treated as being of paramount importance. The world almost revolves around Thor’s feelings. It is only when his outbursts are directed at Odin that they fail to get the effect he wants. Therefore Thor, instinctively shouts louder which escalates the situation and ends up getting him banished to Earth.

Apart from Odin, no one ever holds Thor to account for his emotional outbursts. When he flips over a table after his argument with Odin, no one even comments except for some light protesting about wasted food. Instead, Loki actually comes closer to acknowledge Thor’s feelings and provide him with comfort and advice.

Here we see that Loki is perpetually stuck in the cycle of enabling Thor’s dysfunctional Feeler strategy.

Loki has become a Thinker probably by necessity. He only got attention, comfort and acknowledgement when he displayed the right emotions. This is most likely because his parents had already got into a bad cycle of providing unconditional attention to Thor, and did not have enough capacity, when Loki arrived, to give him the same undivided unconditional attention. Therefore Loki learned to display emotions to please the people around him in exchange for attention. As he became older, Loki necessarily became the diplomat, the person who smoothed things over in disagreements. He puts his own emotions into containment so that he can display what other people want to and need to see. This is completely instinctive by the time we meet him in Thor 1.

Unfortunately, a dysfunctional Thinker like Loki simply feeds into Thor’s perpetual cycle of amplifying his emotions. He always has a captive audience in his brother, he always gets the acknowledgement he wants from Loki. He never has to acknowledge Loki’s feelings because his brother never appears to be inconvenienced by any negative feelings. 

This is probably why Thor loves Loki so much and just assumes Loki must love him back. This is also why Thor is so surprised when he finds out Loki actually resents him at the end of Thor 1. Loki is very good at containing his feelings, and a Feeler like Thor is completely ill equipped to read between the lines and see what emotions Loki isn’t expressing.

Thor does care about Loki, but he doesn’t know how to relate to someone who isn’t a Feeler. Loki had to be screaming, crying and attempting to murder Thor before Thor finally realizes there was something wrong with their relationship. Even then Thor doesn’t realize that his behaviour is the root cause, nor does he realize that his family and his society are ultimately responsible for making him the way he is.

Thor is at heart a good person filled with love. This shines through when he encounters people who don’t accept his outbursts and corrects his behaviour. Jane, Darcy and Erik Selvig make Thor a worthy person by teaching him the skills he needs to become a better adjusted in how he handles his emotions.

Despite Thor’s emotional progress with other people, the way that he emotionally relates to Loki remains dysfunctional. We see this most clearly in Thor the Dark World:

When Loki gets news of Frigga’s death, we see that his negative emotions manifest as violence. He smashes the furniture in his room, tears at his hair, and generally destroys anything he can in the vicinity. However, despite experiencing an outpouring of emotion, Loki has no one to acknowledge his emotions. He essentially suffers alone and again misses the opportunity to develop a better relationship with his own emotions because there is no one there to provide the emotional support he needs. We see Loki swiftly reverts to his default Thinker strategy as soon as he gains an audience. His first instinct when Thor comes to visit is to hide his emotional state behind an illusion. Despite everything that happens in the first three movies, Loki is still firmly entrenched in Thinker mode.

What is important to note is that Loki does dispel the illusion and allows Thor to see him in his emotionally vulnerable state. This, I believe, may be the closest Loki comes to acknowledging his own unfiltered emotions. For an entrenched Thinker like Loki to display such a candid emotional scene is essentially a cry for help. What I find heart-breaking is that Thor does not acknowledge that Loki is hurting, in fact he specifically says he is not here to discuss their shared grief. Instead he demands help from Loki to help further his own plans. I personally find it tragic that once again Loki puts away his own emotions and emotional needs for Thor’s benefit.

In Ragnarok, again we see that when the brothers are alone together they revert to their old habits of relating to each other. 

When Odin disintegrates into “star dust”, Thor is not mindful of his brother’s grief. It is telling that as Loki watches Odin disappear, he looks visibly distraught but still trying to contain his emotions. Thor does not acknowledge this, instead he appears only to care about expressing his own anger towards Loki.  Loki must put his grieving on hold to appease Thor. It is only the timely arrival of Hela from another dimension that prevents Thor from having his emotional outburst.

Having pointed out all the dysfunctional aspects of their relationship, I want to conclude by saying that it is this very dysfunction which makes Thor and Loki’s relationship so fascinating, dramatic and timeless. None of us have perfectly functional relationships, particularly with our family members and all of us can see something of our own sibling relationships reflected in these brothers. Thor and Loki have a solid foundation of love to build upon and no matter what the galaxy throws at them, their bond will remain strong. 

[wellingtongoose]

We know Molly's been a specialist registrar since the first time we saw her. So is it possible if she's now a consultant?? And how much do you think she earns annually? Thank you. And I'm glad you decided to be active again 😊

Hi, thanks for the question,

I am not sure if Molly would be a consultant now. The timeline of Sherlock is difficult to assess. However I think Molly is either coming to the end or has finished a PhD. In season 3 she still has access to the lab at Barts to do Sherlock’s urine test. However in Season 4 we see less of Molly in the lab or in her work environment. Therefore it is possible that Molly gone back to her clinical work as either a pathologist or a surgeon and is due to finish her specialist training and will soon move on from being a registrar to being a consultant. 

How much Molly earns is pretty standardized, as all doctors (before they become consultants) have to work for the NHS. Under the new contract introduced in 2016/2017, a specialist registrar (regardless of which specialty) gets the basic pay of £46,000/year. However some specialties do night shifts, weekend on call shifts and long day shifts. Depending on how many on calls you do, you get a supplement on top of this figure. An active surgical reg working full time with on calls and night shifts can earn around £60,000-£63,000/year. Additionally working in London gives you a London supplement worth about £2000/year if you work in zones 1-2, and about £1800/year if you work in Zone 3-6.

This is definitely a comfortable salary for a single person. However due to property prices in London, Molly is probably only able to buy a small-ish 1-2 bed flat on her own. 

[wellingtongoose]

Hi! Is the marriage of John Watson to Rosamund Mary legally binding in the UK? I love complex characters like Mary, and John's alleged affair was heartbreaking. But if Mary lied about her identity on the wedding day, doesn't it make the marriage null and void? If that's the case, John's promise to stay with Mary is more like "charity", not an unbreakable wedding vow. Hope to hear from you soon!

Hi, thank you for the question,

In UK law there is no such thing as the legally correct name for an individual. Your paperwork i.e. birth certificate, drivers license etc can be different to your actual name. In a court of law, your “name” is considered to be the name which the most number of individuals know you by. Therefore if most individuals in Mary’s life know her as “Mary”, the witnesses at the wedding know her as “Mary”, and John her husband knows her as “Mary” then Mary is legally married to John. 

[wellingtongoose]

Hello! I totally loved this essay, but I have a question: even though the timeline of the show is, confusión at best, is it possible that Molly continues to be a specialist register for the end of series 4? Shouldn't she have been promoted to consultant already?

Hi, thank you for the question.

The Sherlock timeline is difficult to concretely pin down. However if Molly is a doctor in a specialist training program, she has between 5-7 years of training before she can become a consultant. Additionally I believe her work at Barts is pure research rather than clinical practice, therefore her time there doesn’t fully count towards her 5-7 years of training. Thus I think Sherlock met Molly at the very beginning of doing a 4 year PhD and she is about to finish her PhD soon as of season 4. She probably still has several years left of her specialist training program to complete after finishing her PhD

[wellingtongoose]

You've previously claimed Molly Hooper may very well be a surgeon training for a higher degree, if that's so do you think she would have finished her research at Barts by now? What is her official title do you think? Specialist registrar only at Barts, but how would she introduce herself?

Hi, thanks for the question, 

In Meet Molly Hooper, I suggested Molly was either a pathologist and post-mortems were her day job or she was a surgeon doing post-mortem research on patients. Both these jobs require Molly to have a medical degree and be a legitimate doctor. 

Barts is well known teaching hospital that leads the world in many research fields. Most doctors like Molly would first gain a specialist training place and then embark on research. A specialist training place is basically program where by you commit yourself to one specialty (like general surgery, orthopedics or pathology) and automatically climb the career ladder of that specialty via the training program. When you finish a certain number of years you get to become a consultant (highest level of doctor). 

Specialist training places are hard to get. However once you are in the training program, you can take years out to pursue your research interest. If Molly is a surgeon but doing pure research at Barts, she would still be a specialist registrar but her job title may also specify she is “research only” but in my experience the NHS just isn’t that nuanced. 

Most doctors do a PhD or an MD. In the UK PhD last between 3-4 years, and MDs last between 2-3 years. The Sherlock timeline is difficult to figure out but I think Sherlock met Molly at the very beginning of her research and she is now likely coming to the end of her PhD. 

Molly would introduce herself as Miss Molly Hooper because surgeons traditionally (on passing all their post-medical school specialist surgical exams) drop the doctor from their name. It sounds counter-intuitive but its a point of pride for surgeons to not be called Doctor. This traditional comes from the 18th century when surgeons were traditionally barbers and therefore never went to medical school, thus could not be called Doctor. Surgeons have since taken this and turned it into something they are proud of. 

[wellingtongoose]

Unravelling the Dumbledores

Albus Dumbledore’s backstory in the Deathly Hallows was both convoluted and illogical, exactly what you would expect of a story where everyone tries to avoid mentioning the metaphorical elephant in the room.

The elephant is of course: Arianna Dumbledore.

Although we hear a great deal about her from Alberforth, his explanations for what happened to her are vague and confused. Not to mention the fact that he never tackled the true question of just what was wrong with Arianna.

Palaeontology

 Trying to piece together Ariana’s story is like putting together a new species of dinosaur from only a few scraps of fossilised bone that you are not even sure belong together.

The only person to give us an account of what happened to Ariana as a child is Aberforth.

“When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, by three Muggle boys. They’d seen her doing magic, spying through the back garden hedge: She was a kid, she couldn’t control it, no witch or wizard can at that age. What they saw, scared them, I expect. They forced their way through the hedge, and when she couldn’t show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it.”

This account is both vague and contradictory. If the muggle children had been frightened of Ariana, why would they force their way into the yard instead of running away? Children do not tend to attack things they are frightened of, if they have the option of running. The hedges were so tall the children had to look through them, suggesting that it would have been quite an effort on their part to get into the yard.  

Why, if muggle children can walk so close to the property, did Percival Dumbledore not made his house and yard invisible and impenetrable to muggles? The Dumbledores were a magical family with three young children. If they were normal sensible people, they would have made it impossible for muggles to see or enter their premises.

The account raises more questions than it answers, but it does give us a clue about Ariana. She wasn’t a magical prodigy on the order of Tom Riddle or Lily Evans, who could intentionally control their magic from an early age. Nor was she like Harry or Neville, who when threatened could produce spontaneous bursts of unintentional but specifically targeted magic to save themselves.

What Ariana was doing in the yard was out of her control and it was so spectacular that it was visible from over the tall hedges to the passing muggle children. I do not buy Aberforth’s account that the muggle children were scared by the spectacle. If anything it attracted them. It was probably something on the order of a bright colour light display. The children must have been intrigued enough to spend sufficient time peeping through the hedge in order for them to realise the source of the spectacle was Ariana.

So why did the children then attack Ariana? The most likely explanation is that the nature of Ariana’s outburst must have changed. Most likely because Ariana had become aware of the boys’ intrusion. The boys probably didn’t have time to climb back through the hedge, with the choice of flight gone they probably attacked her to save themselves, which only made the situation worse.

The episode must have happened very quickly because when Percival came onto the scene the boys were mutilated corpses.

A Curse from the Gods

 The most interesting and telling thing about the Dumbledores is their reaction in the aftermath of this tragedy.

It appears on the surface that Percival willingly took the blame and went to Azakaban, rather than tell the Ministry the truth. Even the Ministry at its most arbitrary, would not send a 6 year old to Azakaban for producing  accidental magic and defending herself against a violent assault. Therefore, there is no logical reason for Percival to hide the truth, unless there was a very good reason why he didn’t want the Ministry anywhere near his daughter.

Whatever was wrong with Ariana didn’t start with the assault from the muggle boys, it must have already been there. It was secret that Percival was willing to sacrifice his life to protect. According to Aunt Muriel and Rita Skeeter, Kendra Dumbledore then made every possible effort to isolate her daughter from the outside world.

This suggests Ariana’s condition must have had serious implications for not just her but the wider society as whole and we know it did not get better with time or age. Most of the problem hinges on Ariana’s lack of control of her magic. As children grow older and understand cause/effect, intent and logic, their control of magic tends to also improves. Ariana’s problem therefore must be partially cognitive in nature.

Many possible problems have been postulated. Red Hen suggests that Ariana had autism, and cognitive delay with mood swings as a result. However Ariana’s outburst seemed to be discrete and episodic. In between she must have been able to live with her mother with some semblance of peace. 

I think it is more likely that Ariana was epileptic.

I can only interpret symptoms from a mundane view of a muggle physician. Arianna could have suffered from a purely magical disorder unheard of in the muggle world, but then there would be no point in speculating at all. Secondly we have been fed a convoluted tale of Arianna from extremely biased secondary and tertiary sources; there are actually very few object facts to work with.

What we do know:

1.      Arianna has unpredictable magical outbursts

2.      During these episodes she loses control of her magic and she does not appear to be aware of what she is doing

3.      The last episode contributed or possibly caused her death

What we are left to speculate about:

1.      When the episodes started – there is no conclusive clause in the canon text that states she only started to have these problems after she was attacked.

2.      What triggered them – the last fatal outburst appeared to have been triggered by an argument between her brothers and Grindelwald

3.      Her cognitive ability

4.      How the magical outburst killed her but left everyone else apparently unscathed

Arianna’s symptoms do have much in common with what muggle epileptics suffer from: episodes that occur without a set pattern, triggered by stress leading to loss of bodily control and loss of awareness. I speculate that as the use of magic is direct by the brain, abhorrent electrical activity that can cause you to lose control of your body can just as easily cause you lose control of your magic. In the same way as standing too close to someone having a violent tonic clonic seizure can lead to physical injury, being within the radius of the concurrent magical outburst would be dangerous for people and objects.

Muggle epileptics also suffer from something called the post ictal state after the seizures during which they are dazed, confused, general sluggishness of movement. This may last about 15-20 minutes but in people who have frequent uncontrolled seizures they may spend most of their day in a post ictal state. In the modern era we have effective drugs to counteract epilepsy, frequent seizures should not occur but seen as Arianna was never treated by St. Mungo’s or a mundane physician she probably had frequent seizures.

Therefore Arianna’s condition meant that she was a danger not just to herself, but also to wizarding society as whole because her lack of control and unpredictability meant that she could cause a catastrophe at any point. It is likely that the Ministry proactively isolates magical children with violent epilepsy if they find them. Kendra and Percival clearly decided that this was a fate worse than Azakaban.

 The Fly in the Ointment

 There are several problems with the theory that Arianna was having a violent magical seizure in the yard when the boys barged in. Firstly, if the outburst was violent it would hardly have attracted that boys. Secondly, how could they get close enough to her to assault her in the first place?

I propose that Arianna had epilepsy but her form of epilepsy initially was mild and non-violent. However we know that Ariana’s condition got worse not better. Her outbreaks increased in violence. I believe that although Ariana had epilepsy before the attack by the muggle children, the episode clearly worsened her fits.

There are several different kinds of seizures, though we have discussed tonic clonic (the violent jerking kind), there are partial seizures where the patient is conscious throughout and experience instead visual or auditory hallucinations. Another type of seizure is the absence seizures where the patient simply zones out and no other signs are visible.

I believe that Ariana initially had a non-violent type of seizure, most likely a partial seizure which means that despite having the seizure she was aware of the boys breaking into her yard, which gave her a fright, and aware when they started attacking her. It may be that the type of partial seizure that Ariana had was also magically non-violent. Perhaps its effects on her magic were merely to project the hallucinations that she saw.

However clearly after the boy’s attack, Ariana’s epilepsy produced more violent and damaging magical outbursts enough to kill herself. It is likely that Ariana sustained traumatic head injury, and the ensuing scarring of the brain matter meant that she developed a new kind of epilepsy. Instead of just affecting one part of her brain in a partial seizure, the new scarring must have caused violent tonic clonic fits. One of which eventually killed her.

 Runs in the Family

 “If Arianna had a medical problem, why didn’t Kendra take her daughter to the doctors?” appears to the question everyone is hung up about. Most people agree it was because she found it shameful or was afraid her child would be locked away forever. Both those reactions are sane and rational for a woman living in the 19th century.

 However I propose something different. Epilepsy has a strong hereditary component, this does not mean that it is directly inherited as a gene or set of genes but the predisposition to epilepsy (including childhood epilepsy) is multifactorial. >50% of patients have a strong family history of epilepsy: 1 or more 1st/2nd degree relatives suffer from the disease. It is not farfetched that Kendra would have a relative with epilepsy or maybe suffered it herself as a child.

 Kendra did manage to attend Hogwarts and control her magic because like many children she grew out of having seizures. I speculate that Kendra has mild absence seizures as a child. Others would probably think she wasn’t really paying attention but it would be very clear to Kendra that something was definitely wrong with her mind. However she likely kept this information to herself, and passed off any magical outbursts as a child as normal for her age. If she was muggleborn, her parents probably would have been none the wiser.

 As Kendra learned more about the magical world, she must have realised that she was very lucky to have grown out of her seizures by the time she entered the wizarding world. Kendra didn’t take her daughter to St. Mungo’s because she knew there was no treatment for epilepsy. In the 19th century all seizures were uncontrolled and I somewhat doubt the wizarding world to date has developed drugs to control epilepsy such as carbamazepine given that in a magical population of 3000 epilepsy is not a great public health concern. Perhaps Kendra simply hoped her daughter would grow out of her fits in the same way that Kendra managed to do.

 I find it incredibly tragic that Kendra might have pinned false hope on the fact that Arianna would one day get better and she was correct, if Arianna had not been assault by the muggle boys. Permanent brain scarring from a traumatic injury meant that Arianna could never grow out of her epilepsy.

Post Mortem

 We know that Arianna never attended Hogwarts and never lived independently. It is likely that with her frequent violent tonic clonic seizures she may have sustained hypoxic brain damage – leading to cognitive problems in her adolescence. Alternatively, the traumatic head injuries sustained from the boys’ assault lead to her cognitive problems.

We will never know exactly what happened in the room between Albus, Gellert and Arianna. One theory is that Arianna’s violent seizure reached a point whereby it ended up killing her. People do die from epileptic fits, especially if they enter Status Epilepticus – which is continuous non-stop seizure activity. This is a medical emergency and can often be fatal. However we cannot discount the presence in the same room of two very powerful, well trained young wizards, who were already duelling at the time of the seizure.

Is it possible that in response to Ariana’s violent seizure Gellert tried to defend himself by killing her? Or perhaps even more tragically, it was one of her brother’s spells that ended up killing her in the midst of all the chaos?

I think that in the end even Albus Dumbledore never discovered who’s spell killed his sister, but he clearly chose to believe that it was his fault.

[wellingtongoose]

You asked for Sherlock meta ideas. one thing I was confused by in TLD was how John apparently kept working after Mary's death - no bereavement leave implied that I saw, and no real oversight keeping a man with obvious (and justified!) anger issues, not to mention substance abuse and sleep deprivation, have access to patients. I'd be interested to read whether this aspect is plausible, what kind of safety net there are for NHS workers in this kind of mental distress, that kind of thing.

Hi Marta-Bee,

Firstly I haven’t watched Sherlock Season 4 so I don’t know the exact circumstances of why John was continuing to work after Mary’s death. Unfortunately its no longer on BBC iplayer so I won’t be able to watch it anytime soon. 

However I can say that John is a GP - therefore he is self-employed, not employed by the NHS. Thus he gets to dictate when and how much he works, as well as whether he takes any holidays/sabbaticals/compassionate leave. 

Although the General Medical Council has released specific guidelines for good medical practice which applies to all doctors, they are just guidelines and not legally binding. 

Proving whether a doctor is dangerous to patients is a very difficult thing to do. This is why very few doctors ever get sacked for being negligent, incompetent, even dangerous. 

There is very little oversight when it comes to doctors practicing, especially in isolated GP surgeries. They are subject to inspections and have to fulfill targets but on a day to day basis there is no one watching the doctors except each other. In some places people are incredibly supportive and concientious. If one doctor is suffering personally everyone comes round to support them and if they shouldn’t work they are sent home on compassionate leave. In other places no one cares and people actively prevent you from taking compassionate leave because everyone else will have to work harder. 

Taking compassionate leave even among doctors employed by the NHS is often an informal process and is decided on a case by case basis. It is more often that compassionate leave is denied due to staff shortages than forced upon doctors who refuse to leave work even though they are not emotionally coping.

As a GP John’ situation is also more complex. When an NHS employed doctor takes compassionate leave for bereavement, it is up to the employer to find a replacement usually by shifting the existing doctors around. GPs like John have to cover their own leave, sometimes out of their own pocket, because they are self-employed. Even if they don’t the GP surgery has to find a replacement for him, which will eat into the profits of the surgery and thus all the partners end up with less money at the end of the year. Therefore John may not feel that he can take compassionate leave due to the financial problems. 

[wellingtongoose]

The Slug Club - Social Mobility in a Medieval World

The Slug Club has been controversial amongst fans due to its inherent elitist nature. Whist many people have decried that such a society shouldn’t exist in the school because it’s “not fair”. 

Other essay writers like Redhen proposed that there has always been some kind of “Slug Club” and Slughorn is just the last in a long line of connection brokers in a world that is reliant on connections and patronage

I have a different theory regarding the Slug Club. I explain:

Why Slughorn is a brave innovator who introduced a brand new concept to the wizarding world: social mobility for muggle-borns 

How the Slug Club works to better wizarding society

Why Slughorn set up the Club in the first place - most likely in response to the Dark Lord that preceded Voldemort. 

Why, despite Slughorn’s best intentions, his actions contributed directly to the rise of Lord Voldemort - in more ways than one. 

 An Ancient Society Built on Patronage 

  The Harry Potter’s world may look familiar because the books are primarily set in a school, but the wizarding world is not modern Britain with magic, it is a completely different society that has developed on its own independent trajectory for nearly 400 years. The organisation of the wizarding world bears very little resemblance to a modern developed country. In fact it more closely resembles a pre-industrial Britain of the 17th century both in demographics and in prevailing societal attitudes. (See – An Endangered Species Essay)

The Slug Club is inherently not fair, because the Wizarding World is not fair. In fact the wizarding world does not have the concept of “fairness” as understood by anyone living in a modern developed country. Discrimination is openly accepted on all levels and is considered a natural part of life. Never have the words “equal opportunities” or “social mobility” ever been utter by any wizards/witches because these concepts simply do not exist on a cultural/societal level. On an individual level students at Hogwarts are taught about interpersonal virtues of respect, honour and fairness but there is no concerted effort to make the entire society fair for everyone.

In modern Britain politicians promote the virtues of a meritocracy above all else and discrimination is seen as something that should be stamped out. In the job market, employers bend over backwards to look like they give the same opportunities for all. Judges, politicians, and other figures of authority have to publically announce their conflicts of interests (basically anything that affects their neutrality in decision making). Of course nepotism, corruption and prejudice are still endemic to modern British society and growing in strength under the current government but the prevailing social attitude is that these things are definitely wrong.  Never do we see such modern British values being spoken of in the wider Wizarding World. In the Wizarding World one’s connections account for far more than one’s abilities and this is widely accepted as perfectly decent and normal. 

The idea that some family lineages are superior to others is another relic of our collective medieval past that the Wizarding World still endorses to this day. Up until the 20th century, muggle society believed that aristocrats were inherently superior by virtue of better breeding to the working classes. In modern Britain, outwardly at least, we all believe that everyone regardless of their birth has the same potential and deserves the same opportunities to succeed. However this equal opportunities concept to be absent in the Wizarding World as whole.

The Merits of Meritocracy 

What the Slug Club aims to do is to allow talented, clever outsiders to infiltrate the closed hierarchical society that they have inadvertently stepped into. Most of the outsiders Slughorn promoted were muggle-born but others like Ginny Weasley come from families that aren’t powerful and wealthy. Although Hermione never admits this, it is abundantly clear that a muggle born with no connections inside of the Wizarding World is at a great disadvantage compared to children like Draco Malfoy.

What Horace Slughorn does is help talented outsiders build a set of invaluable connections during their school days so that when they enter the adult world, they have a better chance of fulfilling their full potential and are not held back by virtue of their birth.

He is levelling the playing field for children like Hermione and Ginny.

Of course, Slughorn benefits from his arrangements – he is still a Slytherin, but when you see what he gets in return for the priceless services he renders, Slughorn does not come across as a greedy man. He boasts mostly of getting hampers of sweets, free tickets to Quidditch matches and nice letters from his former pupils. If he really was as grasping and exploitative as fans like to portray, he would basically be ruling the Wizarding World. He certainly has the right connections for it.

Outsiders, are not the only people that Slughorn serves. The Slug Club serves the wizarding society as whole. A social order based on nepotism is always vulnerable purely because it fails to utilize its human resources correctly. By promoting the careers of talented outsiders, Slughorn ensues that there is healthy competition for important positions of power. The people who are most able to do the jobs are not held back in junior positions by their lack of connections, but are instead able to advance sufficiently to compete for these positions of power.

The most common accusation leveled at Slughorn is that he also invited children to the Slug Club based solely on their family name, thus he is as guilty of nepotism. There is a good reason why Slughorn invites children of famous families to his dinner parties – they are the people who actually make the Slug Club work. He is in fact asking them to share their networks, connections and privileges with his talented outsiders – so that they can all profit. The outsiders are indebted to both Slughorn and their influential friends and when they do reach positions of power are then usually obliged to further the common goals that they have. By inviting the children of old and influential houses, Slughorn also aims to educate them about the merits of meritocracy and how they can use it to their advantages.

  Cause and Effect

 So why did Slughorn bother setting up his social mobility movement?

Although Slughorn sometimes comes across as a name-dropping buffoon, underneath the silk waistcoats and comfy slippers, he is still a cunning Slytherin. We have seen many example of Slytherins, and whilst they all have a reputation for being ambitious and cunning, they are not by all means selfish in their pursuits of power. Severus Snape for example suffered and sacrificed himself to rid the world of Lord Voldemort.

Might Slughorn have a more altruistic reason to improve the life chances of talented outsiders and the wizarding world as whole.

If we go back to the 19th century, there was a muggle population boom during the late Victorian era. This meant that consequently more muggleborns were produced and started to enter Hogwarts. Previous generations of muggleborns had been few in number probably been easily absorbed into the wizarding population. They probably never made it to the top positions but served well in junior positions at the ministry or as artisans.

However during the 19th and 20th century the number of muggleborns in the wizarding world went from single digits to double digits to triple digits. JK Rowling tells us that muggleborn make up 25% of the wizarding population during Harry Potter’s time. If, as Rowling has said in her previous interviews, there are around 3000 wizards in Britain, this translates as 750 muggleborns at any one time.

This is a very large number of people who essentially live in the wizarding world but who under the old system of familial patronage are excluded from the top echelons of society. It probably didn’t sit well with some of them, and some of them were very powerful and very clever people. Even a small fraction of 750 people, given sufficient motivation, is capable of overthrowing the ministry as Voldemort has clearly demonstrated.

I believe that around the time both Albus Dumbledore and Horace Slughorn started teaching at Hogwarts, the issues of “what to do with all these muggle-borns” turned from an annoying side problem to a massive social issue. Whilst we have no evidence that muggle-borns became violent in their struggle to end the discrimination against them, it is interesting to note that Voldemort was merely the “most feared Dark Lord in a century”.

This means in the 19th century there was another Dark Lord even more terrifying than Voldemort (and this is not Gellert Grindleward, who was defeated in 1945. He is definitely a 20th century Dark Lord even if he predates Voldemort). Just because the only two “Dark Lords” we know both espouse pureblood supremecy notions, doesn’t mean this was always been the case. A “Dark Lord” is merely a terrorist leader using Dark Magic (or non-ministry approved magic) in an attempt to exert power over the wizarding world. There is no set criteria for their actual agenda. There could well have been Dark Lords champion the plight of muggle-borns in a society that held them all under a thick glass ceiling. A violent “uprising” might have forced both the ministry and the teaching staff at Hogwarts to act. It is possible that the resulting retaliation from the pureblood elites was to hold muggle-borns down even harder.

Whether or not such a violent “uprising” of muggle-borns occurred, Slughorn may have taken it upon himself to set up the Slug Club because he saw the endless wasted potential of the muggle-born students that he taught and realised the dangers of their pent up frustrations at the old system.  

His plan was both ingenious and far reaching. He would start from the very beginning to re-educate children of the pureblood elites, and provide the muggle-born outsiders with the connections they would need to succeed in a rigged system.

  The Dark Side of Social Engineering

  However for every action there is a reaction, and for every talented muggle born outside Slughorn helped into a position of power, somebody else must have lost out. Here we can see the dark side of Slughorn’s ambitious social engineering project.  

The people who lose out the most in all this are the children from minor pureblood families who consider themselves the elite of society but have no power or wealth. In essence purebloods, who only have their family connections and their pedigree to survive off. Families more like the Gaunts than the Blacks. Their less talented children used to be able to get on fairly well merely by being lifted up by their more influential relatives. After Slughorn came into the picture, these purebloods were edge out as their more influential relatives chose to promote more talented outsiders instead.

These disenfranchised purebloods, who once benefited most from the old system of family patronage, became gradually more disillusioned. They might not have been pureblood supremacists to begin with but after decades of the Slug Club’s effects, it is understandable that they started hating the muggle-born competition. It is no coincidence that towards the end of Slughorn’s tenure at Hogwarts, Lord Voldemort’s pureblood supremacy rhetoric found so many adherents and supporters. The disenfranchised purebloods thought they had found a leader who was willing to put things back to the way they were.

The core of the Voldemort’s movement are the families like the Lestranges who he met in the Slug Club during his school days that never embraced Slughorn’s idea of meritocracy. However it is likely that the numerical majority of followers hail from minor pureblood families that have lost out since Slughorn came onto the scene about 100 years ago. The families like the Crabbes, Goyles, Notts etc. The purebloods with real wealth and influence like the Blacks, turned their noses up at Voldemort. Sirius’s father spent most of his time and money during Voldemort’s first rise protecting his house, rather than out fighting alongside the death eaters. Regulus joined Voldemort as a school boy, drunk on his own sense of adolescent rebellion and then realised just why his family hadn’t thrown their support behind the Dark Lord.

As to why the Malfoys joined Voldemort, I have written another essay altogether. To be succinct, I do not believe that the Malfoys have always been as rich or as influential as Lucius likes to pretend. The Malfoys may feel that talented muggleborns are being given positions that they are entitled to.

Voldemort’s anti-muggleborn rhetoric is a direct reaction to Slughorn’s active promotion of outsiders at a cost to the pureblood elites. Even though Voldemort himself benefited from the Slug Club, he has no compulsions about exploiting the deep well of resentment against talented outsiders.

Thus in attempting to make a more meritocratic society, Slughorn inadvertently help Voldemort’s rise to power.

[wellingtongoose]

This Blog will Rise Again

Thank you to everyone who left questions in my ask box. As the months have gone on, the questions have morphed into genuine concern for my wellbeing.

I am still alive. I have just been working what feels like a never ending shift for the last 9 months. I haven’t written anything because I haven’t had the time, not because I have given up on this blog. As long as I exist so will this blog. It won’t be updated on a regular basis, but it will always be here.

I was shocked to discover this blog is 4 years old. That’s a very long time in internet years. When I look back at some of my earliest works, I now realise my perception and views of the world have changed and matured in that time. Much of my essays in the beginning deal in absolutes, giving no quarter to other interpretations. The ideas, though valid, could have been communicated better.

Looking to the future, I hope that with time my writing style will become less pedantic and more inclusive.

In the meantime I aim to answer some questions that have sat in my inbox for literally years!

Why Wellingtongoose?

My got my first nickname from a pair of Wellington Boots with blue and red dots that I wore even on that most inappropriate occasions. Hence my first account in 2002 with fanfiction.net was under the name wellingtonboots. I also existed under bluegoosie on deviantart. When I eventually move to tumblr about 4 years ago wellingtonboots was not available so I decided to combine my two pseudonyms into one: wellingtongoose.

I have never been to Wellington NZ but hopefully one day I will – and I will be sure to take a photo with a goose, if one can be found there.

Why Firestorm?

When I set up this account, I hadn’t written any metas. I was primarily a fanfiction writer and this was supposed to host my fanfiction Firestorm over London. That never happened. This blog got hijacked by my campaign to tell fandom that doctors in the British Army do not engage in active combat, so Dr Watson wasn’t fighting in Afghanistan.

Why a picture of Hogwarts Burning?

Because I like it, and there hasn’t been a better picture to sum up the world Firestorm. I am also a long term Harry Potter fan, I was the right age to grow up reading the books.

What are you currently working on?

I have been a lifelong fan of Star Wars, and have recently realised there is plenty of material for metas. I am working on some Star Wars essays. I have put the links up a long time ago in the menu and eventually one by one they will come alive.

Will you be writing more about Sherlock?

Yes of course, there is plenty of things to explore in the Sherlock Universe and there will be new metas once I get more inspiration.

[wellingtongoose]

Re: "Anatomy of a Killing." How long after Mary shoots Sherlock do you believe it is before he wakes up and says her name? I've watched HLV a bunch of times and it seems to be the morning after he's been shot. But that would mean Sherlock is off the vent by then, though, and would that be possible so soon? You mentioned in your meta that Sherlock was shot in the liver. If he was taken off the vent so soon, would that mean Mary missed the diaphragm? Thanks!

It’s possible that he does wake up the next morning. 

He’s been ventilated during the operation - which is very common particularly when the operation involves any organs close to the diaphragm. The anaesthetist paralyses the diaphragm and artificially ventilates the patient to prevent the internal organs underneath moving whilst the operation is going on. Then after the anaesthesia wears off, the patient doesn’t need any more mechanical ventilation. Likely Sherlock was concious the next day after his operation. 

[wellingtongoose]

Hogwarts: The Chamber of Secrets

There is no evidence that the founders actually built Hogwarts Castle, and the castle was not purpose built to house a school (Hogwarts: the Castle). However we do know from the sorting hat that one founder did build something that would become incorporated into the modern day castle: the Chamber of Secrets.

The myths surrounding the Chamber of Secrets are contradictory and nonsensical, just like the information we have about Slytherin himself. Although legends say Slytherin left a monster to purge the school of muggleborns, the basilisk itself is an indiscriminent weapon and harmful to the entire school. When it was unleashed Hogwarts was nearly closed down twice. Even if we believe all that is said about Slytherin, there is no doubt that he loved the school he had helped create. Therefore it is more likely that the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk within was placed there for an entirely different reason.

The Master Architect

In Hogwarts: a founding, I explained that the four founders were not professional educators but rather master tradesmen, and they taught their students tradecraft through vocational training. They did set up a school, but rather four different apprenticeship schemes. The sorting criteria for each “house” was directly related to the type of trade each founder was engaged in. They chose to set up their enterprises in an already flourishing magical town, which happened to be called Hogwarts.

I have explored in Hogwarts: an Evolution that we have no reliable information about Slytherin at all. Slytherin left Hogwarts before the sorting hat was made, and what we think of as the core ethos of Slytherin house is heavily (or entirely) influenced by the views of his successors.  Therefore it is very hard to speculate about what trade Slytherin was actually engaged in, or if he really enjoyed the Dark Arts and hated muggleborns.

However the one thing we do know is that Slytherin built the chamber of secrets and left a basilisk inside (which he presumably hatched himself).

I would postulate that Slytherin was probably a master architect, given the complexities of the chamber he built. Part of his job was to strengthen and fortify defences of Hogwarts town before the castle itself was built. He probably also had mundane tasks like erecting barns/houses and building magical bridges across gorges.  If Slytherin was an architect, it seems rather strange that he would have gained a reputation for dabbling in the Dark Arts which are mostly offensive magic.  Gryffindor, who was the resident adventurer/dragon slayer, would have had more use for the Dark Arts.

However I have explained in Hogwarts: a Founding, that the hill on which Hogwarts is built is most likely a source of ancient magic, which is what attracted magical peoples to settle in that area millennia ago. The ancient magic must have provided the early settlers with defence and maybe even offense when harness correctly. The magical protections on Hogwarts Castle, which Dumbledore alludes to, probably have roots in this ancient magical source.

It is likely that by the time of the founders in the late Dark Ages, man-made fortifications had taken the place of the ancient magical source in protecting Hogwarts Town and people had forgotten how to harness the ancient energies. Slytherin may have encountered this ancient magic when he was digging down to build foundations or repairing ancient defensive structures.

I believe Slytherin made it his life’s work to rediscover the use of this ancient magic.

The Final Resting Place

Like many traditional legends about ancient magic – this source was buried deep underground, very much like the Veil in the Department of Mysteries. The Chamber of Secrets was built by Slytherin to be his laboratory/work station/excavation site. However Slytherin probably also intended the Chamber to eventually serve as his final resting place. The descriptions in book give off the impression that the underground chamber was similar in essence to a tomb. The fact that Slytherin chose to adorned the chamber with his own face, suggest that he wanted future visitors to have no doubt who rested here.

If Slytherin had intended for the Chamber to also be his final resting place, the existence of the basilisks makes much more sense. The basilisk, indiscriminant with its deadly gaze, is much more effective at defending a large area than attacking specific targets. Slytherin left it there to protect his tomb and all the knowledge he had accumulated during his life time. He did not want the powerful knowledge of the ancient magic he had discovered to be accessible to everyone but other parselmouths, inevitably members of his own family, would be able to enter and learn the secrets within.

It is likely that after Slytherin’s departure, people did attempt to enter the Chamber and fell foul of his basilisk. This is where the legends focusing on Slytherin’s monster come from.

The Great Strife

I believe what Slytherin discovered deep underground was very powerful and potentially very destructive source of ancient magic. We do not know exactly what his contemporaries thought of his discoveries, but people tend to fear what they don’t understand and it is not farfetched to believe that more ignorant people branded it was Dark Magic. Even if people did not fear the ancient power source, even the other founders would have been uncomfortable with the idea that Slytherin was in sole control of this resource. 

We know that there was a time of a great strife leading up to Slytherin’s abrupt departure from the sorting hat song in HBP.

“So Hogwarts worked in harmony for several happy years, but then discord crept among us feeding on our faults and fears.

The Houses that, like pillars four had once held up our school now turned upon each other and divided, sought to rule.”

This discord most likely relates to a disagreement between the founders over what should be done with the ancient source of magic under Hogwarts. I believe one or more founders wanted to harness this ancient magic not just to protect Hogwarts but also in a more aggressive manner, perhaps as a weapon of mass destruction against invading hordes. As I have discussed in Hogwarts: a Founding, the founders lived at a time of great violence and chaos. Hogwarts was under threat from Viking raids and infighting between Scottish tribes.

Gryffindor, the brave, was most likely Hogwart’s resident chief protector/monster slayer and also the most likely candidate for wanting to use the ancient source of magic aggressively. In contrast we can see from the sheer amount of effort Slytherin put into building the Chamber and hatching a basilisk that Slytherin specifically wanted to protect the source and severely limit access to this ancient course of magic. Slytherin may have been cunning and ambitious but he was not foolhardy and aggressive (those of the typical pitfalls of a Gryffindor). He probably had a very good grasp of just how terribly destructive this power could be, and thus did not want to use it in the way Gryffindor intended.

The hat’s song clearly states the strife involved all the founders fighting for supremacy and not a case of three against one. Clearly both Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff also had their own plans for Slytherin’s discovery and they most likely added fuel to the fire of Slytherin and Gryffindor’s original disagreement. However it was Slytherin who made the ultimate sacrifice of leaving the school.

“And at last there came a morning when old Slytherin departed and though the fighting then died out he left us quite downhearted. And never since the founders four were whittled down to three have the Houses been united as they once were meant to be”

Many readers have chosen to interpret the above two verses as suggesting Slytherin was the cause of the strife in the first place, and only his absence could have healed the divide.

However it is just as likely that Slytherin consciously chose to leave his life’s work to stop his three friends destroying what they had built together. By physically leaving Hogwarts, Slytherin removed the other founders only method of directly accessing the ancient power, as none of them could get into his chamber and past the basilisk. Thus it put an end to the endless fighting over what the ancient power should be used for.

The loss of Slytherin must have also bought the other three founders together as they had to take over Slytherin’s duties and care for the students he left behind. As I discussed in Hogwarts: an Evolution, Slytherin’s department was a catalyst in unifying the four apprenticeship schemes into what would become one school.

Slytherin’s departure essentially enabled Hogwarts, the school, to be born.

[wellingtongoose]

Hogwarts: History of the Castle

Hogwarts castle was not built by the founders, nor was it originally built to house a school. Castle building technology did not arrive in Britain until after the Norman Conquest in 1066. The founders most likely set up their “school” in a large town called Hogwarts, which had already existed in one form or another for millennia.

Hogwarts castle must have been built long after the founding for the defence of the town called Hogwarts and continued to be used for military and political purposes for many centuries afterward before it came to house the modern Hogwarts School.

I explain:

When Hogwarts was built

How it lead to the founding of Hogsmeade

What purpose the castle was used for before it became a school

Why it contains something as powerful as the Room of Requirement

The Original Keep

We know that after the Norman Conquest (and the initial massacres) Britain settled down to an uneasy peace. The Viking raids became much less of a concern, everyday life was probably more settled than it had been in the 10th century.

The Normans bought with them castle building technologies, and throughout the 11-14th centuries they build hundreds of castles throughout England, which in turn influenced Scottish Kings and barons to build their own fortifications.

The foundations of Hogwarts Castle probably dates from this period. The important thing to remember is that Hogwarts Castle was never built to be a school because boarding schools, as we would understand them, did not exist at the point when it was built.

It was likely that the original hill fort settlement of Hogwarts was already in an ideal defensive location and the local baron (probably also a magical person) started building a castle to protect the economically important town. The first phase of building would have resulted in nothing more than a square stone tower (called a keep) and strengthening of existing walls. However we know from history that castles, if they were strategically important, were constantly expanded and updated. Thus Hogwarts castle probably grew in size over the next few centuries adding a great hall, towers, ramparts etc. The round towers described in the book would not have been added until the 14th century, when it was discovered that round towers were better at deflecting bombardment.

The sheer size of the modern day castle suggests that Hogwarts remained a very important centre for the whole region. I have discussed before the Hogwarts would have been a predominately magical town, which is what attracted the founders there in the first place. The hill itself is a source of ancient magic, which is what drew magical people to settle there in the beginning. Dumbledore eludes to this mysterious power when he suggests why Voldemort wanted to return to the school to explore its secrets.

The later fortifications would have given magical peoples a safe haven from persecution and protected their way of life.

What is interesting about Hogwarts castle is that it grew so large in size it swallowed the whole original settlement at Hogwarts and another settlement the neighbouring Hogsmeade appeared or perhaps simply grew larger to accommodate the displaced populace. “Meade” in Old English means meadow. Thus Hogsmeade is the meadow beneath the hill/mountain called Hogwarts.

The size of the castle suggests that even after it stopped being a primary military fortification, the castle did not immediately become a school. From the Harry Potter books, we can see that the size of the castle is disproportionate to the student population (even though the student body would have continuously expanded over the last millennia). Therefore it is likely that the later additions and extensions to the castle were not to house classrooms but for something more important.

Seat of the Wizengamot

The Ministry of Magic is most likely a post-seclusion invention and the hidden nature of its buildings supports this. Therefore before seclusion the Wizengamot must have met somewhere other than subterranean Ministry of Magic building in London. Hogwarts was an important centre for magical people and it would have been the natural place for the first Wizengamot to convene. It is likely that Hogwarts was the traditional meeting place for the Wizengamot ever since its conception in the Dark Ages, and these meetings would have bought prestige and business opportunities for the people living in the town. Thus it would have only been another attraction for the founders to set up their “school” in Hogwarts town.

After seclusion it was only natural that the business of magical government would have been run from Hogwarts Castle, which is why the castle had to be expanded to the point that it swallowed up the original town of Hogwarts.

Hogwarts being the original home of the Ministry of Magic also explains many curiosities of the castle such as the existence of the Room of Requirement. Such a powerful magical room is a very dangerous thing to allow teenagers access to and its existence makes no sense if Hogwarts was a purpose built school. However I can imagine that the Department of Mysteries would have a great many uses for the Room of Requirement, and they probably have something very similar in the London Ministry of Magic building. The reason the room was never removed is most likely because it is not possible to actually destroy the room or stop people from accessing it. After the school moved into the Castle, the teachers simply had to do their best to contain the damage it could potentially do.

I believe that it in the 18th or 19th century the Ministry of Magic decided to move out of Hogwarts and into London. There are many possible reasons why this move happened. Firstly London by the 18th century was the commercial and cultural heart of Britain, containing a significant proportion of the entire population, including magical people. Thus it made sense for the Ministry to relocate to London, if only so that it was easier for them to contain the numerous magical leaks occurring in the capital. Secondly, there may have reached a point where Hogwarts could not easily expand any further. The castle had already swallowed the whole town; there must have been very little suitable land to left to build on. Magic of course could be used on new extensions but I believe that the ancient magical source on the site of Hogwarts hill is an integral part of the castle’s protection. Extensions that are not actually on the original hill would not be protected by the ancient magic.

No matter what the reason, the Ministry did relocate to an underground complex in the centre of London. Some of the subterranean rooms in the London complex must date from long before seclusion. The Veil in the department of mysteries is most likely a well framed natural break in the fabric of “space-time” allowing us a glimpse into the “afterlife”. Other sources of ancient magic must also exist underneath London and were being exploited long before the Ministry relocated. The Ministry simply add a large scale expansion to the original warren of subterranean rooms, which is now the heart of the Department of Mysteries.

The School

In my previous essay I explained why Hogwarts School only came into existence in the 14th/15th century. The building of classrooms and the creation of a curriculum were ideas introduced from muggle schools that started to appear in the 14th century. Before that all students were trade apprentices learning a specific trade by working on the actual business premises in the Hogwarts town.

As the school gradually moved to a more academic model of education, the Ministry probably let the students a small portion of the castle to serve as living quarters and classrooms. When the Ministry moved out in the 18th/19th century, the entire castle suddenly became vacant and the school simply expanded to fill the space even though the castle was far too large for the student body. This is why Harry and Ron spend so much of their time moving from place to place and there are many empty floors, rooms and corridors. It was expected that Hogwarts School would eventually grow into the castle, as the student numbers expanded. Currently they still have a lot of room to expand.

The Chamber of Secrets and its relationship to the Castle is discussed in Hogwarts: Chamber of Secrets.

[wellingtongoose]

Hogwarts: An Evolution

(Copyright - mellie-lyn)

Hogwarts did not appear fully form out of the founders’ shared vision; it evolved slowly over the centuries to the recognisable school in the Harry Potter books.

The modern version of Hogwarts is a post-industrial concept of education, where children are organised by age and progress in a linear fashion through distinct phases of learning. It is nothing like what the founders would have set up over 1000 years ago.

I have previously explained that the concept of school, as we understand it, simply did not exist during the founders’ time (Hogwarts: a Founding). The only form of instruction that existed for common people in dark ages was apprenticeships. The founders must have taken dozens of personal apprentices to be instructed in their own unique trades.

In essence what the founders set up were four individual apprenticeship schemes which were independent of each other but happened to inhabit the same area – most likely a fortified town call Hogwarts which had existed on this site for millennia (Hogwarts: a Founding)

However the four individual “schools” did eventually unite into one. I explain:

What prompted the four different apprenticeship schemes to unite into one

What happened after Slytherin left

The original role of the sorting hat

How Hogwarts evolved into the modern school seen in the books

The Great Schism

It is likely that in the beginning, the four founders were already friends and pooled certain resources like food, magic components, equipment and dwellings so that they could keep their enterprises economically viable. They would have worked independently and taught independently but there would have always been an element of sharing and co-operation.

To outsiders, the four founders and their apprentices probably looked like one entity long before they truly united. Unlike in fanfiction, we must remember that most changes in real life take time, and evolve gradually. It is most likely that Hogwarts School came into being in stages rather than one well planned leap. 

I would pinpoint the beginnings of true unity in Slytherin departing from Hogwarts (the town). We will never know exactly what caused the strife which prompted Slytherin to leave but never does the sorting hat blame Slytherin. In fact the sorting hat makes it clear in the song that fighting engulfed all the founders and probably also the entire town of Hogwarts. 

Slytherin’s departure left a large number of apprentices without a master, and probably also deprived Hogwarts town of a vital service.

In the dark ages apprentices did not receive a broad education, as this was not the point of apprenticeship. Instead, they were customarily bound to one master for a set number of years during which they worked for the master and learned on the job. In magical apprenticeships, legal documents were probably superseded by binding magical contracts.

The apprentices Slytherin left behind may still be magically bound to him, even if he was no longer physically present. Thus the other founders couldn’t just step into the void and take these apprentices on as their own. Additionally these apprentices probably weren’t suited to the different lines of work that the other three founders engaged in. The renowned sorting criteria for each house must have originally had the practical purpose of choosing apprentices who would be suitable for each trade the founders engaged in. For example I postulated that Gryffindor wanted brave apprentices because he was the resident beast tamer/monster hunter.

The only way the founders could save the situation would have been to start the process of amalgamation so that the abandoned Slytherin apprentices would not be left in the lurch. It may be that they dissolved the individual binding contracts of all the apprentices so that no one was confined to only one master. This meant that the apprentices could all receive training in more than one trade and obtain a broader education over all. This option may not have necessarily been a good thing for the apprentices because they would likely become jack-of-all traders and master of none, so I believe that most apprentices would have continued to stick to the more specialised and rigid system of learning from only one master.

Chinese Whispers

The “free” Slytherin apprentices may have chosen to stay on to work for the other three founders, but most likely previous apprentices who had finished training under Slytherin became his successors and took on his role.

With Slytherin’s departure, his ethos, methods of instruction and the qualities that Slytherin personally prized in his apprentices became diluted by the views and agendas of his successors. These successors had more of an influence on what we now consider to be the central ethos of Slytherin house than Slytherin himself. They took control at a vulnerable time and as they likely started young, managed to outlive all the other three founders, thus transmitting what they believed Slytherin would have wanted to future generations without any competing sources.

It is likely that they, and not Slytherin himself, contributed to the charming of the sorting hat. This explains why the sorting hat gives contradictory and inconsistent sorting criteria for Slytherin house. How ambition and cunning is linked to the dark arts and being a pureblood is beyond my capacity for explanation. Surely being from a noble and ancient lineage does not automatically make one hunger for greatness.

The Sorting Hat Speaks

It is likely that by the time the founders were reaching the end of their lives, they had become famous masters throughout the British Isles and even Europe. There is no reason to believe that they confined themselves to only British students at the time. Thus there probably were many more children wanting to become apprentices than could be accommodated by the founders.

It seemed that the founders either did not fully trust their chosen successors to choose the correct apprentices or perhaps everyone involved wanted a quicker, more objective way of picking out promising apprentices.

I believe that in the beginning the sorting hat didn’t just place children in the correct type of apprenticeship but it also had an option to reject them altogether. The idea that Hogwarts should have a place for every magical child in Britain was most likely a much later invention influenced by the muggle idea of compulsory education.  Masters have always reserved the right to reject children for apprentices based on their own preferences so there is no reason why the sorting hat couldn’t reject certain children entirely – especially as before the Hogwarts quill was invented, there was nothing stopping non-magical children from applying.

The invention of the sorting hat itself, with input from all the three remaining founders and Slytherin’s successors was the next stage of unification. At the beginning, children would directly apply to only the particularly founder they wanted to be apprenticed to because they wanted to learn the founder’s particular trade. However after the founders’ deaths all children wanting to become any type of apprentice with this establishment had to pass the same test

Thus in the eyes of the candidates and the wider community, the four apprenticeship schemes which had been completely separate were now one greater entity. It is likely that from this point in time, people simply talked about getting an apprenticeship in Hogwarts town instead of distinguishing between the different apprenticeships. Due to the fame of the founders, people now cared less about exactly which trade their children ended up learning. They simply wanted their child to become an apprentice in Hogwarts town.

Following the introduction of the sorting hat, I imagine that the four different apprenticeship schemes become more interwined.

Zeitgeist - Becoming a Real School

I find it impossible to pinpoint the exact time when Hogwarts the school came into being. It is likely that the apprenticeships at Hogwarts came to dominate magical training in the British Isles, though the monopoly that Hogwarts has today was not yet established.

However as the country entered the late Middles Ages, the government became more stable and everyday life was less violent. Instead of constantly feuding, the aristocracy became busy funding the successive military campaigns in France, which ironically made England more peaceful.

There was a growing middle class of tradesmen, businessmen and rich farmers cashing in on the stability and the increased international trade. As this middle class grew so did the demand for education. Whilst in the Dark Ages literacy was only required if you were a monk copying scrolls, the new middle classes need to be educated to run their businesses. Latin at the time was a lingua franca of Europe and fluency was required for international trade. Not all of the newly minted middle class could not afford private tutors, so a larger scale and more economic method of education was needed.

This was where schools, as we would understand them, started to appear. They were independent from religious institutions where Latin was taught to young religious initiates. The first formal schools: Winchester and Owestry were set up in 1382 and 1407. Eton followed in 1440. They were almost all charitable institutions with noble sponsors designed to educate children of lesser means than the aristocracy. Latin was the core of the curriculum but pupils also received a boarder education and it was expect that pupils would go onto to become scholars at Universities.

It may have been around this time in the 15th century that Hogwarts changed its model of apprentices physically working in businesses to a more school-like environment. However even the modern Hogwarts school resembles a specialist vocational training institute more than a modern British secondary school, so the original practical ethos continued to exert a great influence.  

Hogwarts probably officially became a “school” in the late 15th/16th century. It is most likely that in this period specific classrooms were created inside Hogwarts castle, and a board curriculum was established. Instruction of pupils would have become completely amalgamated; all students would receive the same education, unlikely previously where instruction depended on which apprenticeship you had subscribed to.

Hogwarts would have been influenced to perform these changes during this time by the growth of the grammar schools. These schools were widely built from the 16th century onwards and they set the template for the modern British secondary education. They had dedicated classrooms, teaching aids and professional teachers. The curriculum in grammar schools was very similar throughout the country: consisting of English, Latin, arithmetic and religious instruction.

To preserve the traditions of each of the four different apprenticeship schemes, Hogwarts school used the very muggle idea of house systems borrowed from schools like Winchester and Eton to create four different houses. The pupils of each house would receive the same education but they would live, work and play together like the apprentices of each founder used to do in the beginning.

These changes towards to a more formal academic education would have been well underway by the time that wizarding seclusion was imposed in the 17th century.

However once seclusion was imposed, muggle developments in education would have only very slowly filtered into Hogwarts. Since seclusion Hogwarts has not really been directly influenced by the muggle education system. Instead it has continued along its own trajectory, evolving according to the needs of the isolated magical population.

We do know that Hogwarts follows the relatively new muggle primary/secondary school system, where by children change schools at age 11. This is most likely used to exploit the natural break in education so that muggleborn children do not need to be pulled out of school, which would cause the educational authorities to take an unhealthy interested. Hogwarts also makes its students take standardised external exams, which even for the muggle world was a relatively recently invention (last 70 years). This is most likely due to the need for the ministry of magic to discriminate between the increasingly large numbers of applicants it gets.

Despite becoming more like a modern day school, Hogwarts in the books is still primarily focused on vocational training and does not provide a broader education in subjects not directly related to the use of magic. For example English literature/language, mathematics, geography and religious studies do not feature in the curriculum.

The history of the castle itself will be explored in Hogwarts: the Castle.

The curriculum at Hogwarts is explored in Hogwarts: an Inspection

[wellingtongoose]

Hogwarts: a Founding

I have seen many writers assume that the Hogwarts has remained exactly the same since the time of the founding. Fanfiction often describes the first students having very similar experiences to Harry.

Although the founders created what would become Hogwarts School, the modern school we see today evolved slowly over time. 

The original establishment had no resemblance to a modern boarding school with four houses. In fact it could not have been a school as we would understand it. What the founders really set up was four different apprenticeship schemes with four different trade masters within in the same fortified town called Hogwarts.

I explain

What existed on the site of Hogwarts before the founders

Where the name Hogwarts comes from

Why the founders choose to located their “school” a remote part of Scotland

What the founders actually taught and the style of education the first students would have received

What each founders actually did for a living – because there were no professional teachers in the Dark Ages.

Before the Founding

The founders lived over 1000 years ago from 1991 and most people imagine that Hogwarts castle was built around this time. Castles are a Norman introduction to the British Isles (post-1066), thus something must have existed on the site of Hogwarts castle long before it was built. There is nothing in the literature that states the founders established themselves on a brand new green field site and built everything from scratch.

If you were setting up any kind of new enterprise, wouldn’t it make more sense to choose somewhere that already had willing customers and all the amenities (like fresh drinking water and food)?

The school we see today is a huge complex according to both the books and the films. The buildings and grounds probably cover the area of a large village or small town. I believe that before the castle was built the site had been a substantial fortified settlement for millennia. Many British settlements today can trace permanent human habitation back to the Bronze Age or even further. The mountain on which Hogwarts stands may possess a source of ancient magic that drew pre-historic magical people there and slowly over time the first permanent dwellings grew up on the shores of the lake.

Over time the original settlement probably evolved into a Bronze Age/Iron Age hill fort that became an important site of commerce and social gathering for the magical peoples of the British Isles. Both the remoteness of its location and the fortifications of the later castle, suggests that this was an important refuge for magical peoples. Though wizards had magic, we have no idea how effective offensive magic was throughout history. Magic is constantly evolving and improving, it is likely that for most of history, wizards had the upper hand in single combat but may not have been able to defend their settlements from an invading army. Thus physical fortification was just as important to them as it was to muggles.  Hogwarts may never have been an exclusively magical settlement but as probably dominated by magical peoples at most times in its history. The size and content of the settlement will have fluctuated greatly through the ages depending on the state of muggle-wizard relationships.

It was most likely at a time when the settlement had expanded to the largest it had ever been that the founders made the logistically sound decision to set up their “school” in the fortified hill town called Hogwarts.

Etymology of Hogwarts

If the settlement site of Hogwarts is as old I expect it probably went through several different names and reiterations. However the sorting hat does claim that the place was called Hogwarts during the founder’s day.

The prefix “Hog” could have any number of meanings. The most obviously one being pig. However this meaning was not used until the 13th century. It is also Middle English word, which would be an unusual place name in predominately Gaelic speaking Scotland.

Haug/Hoag/Hogg/Hogge was (and still is) a surname that is recorded in Scotland and England from around 1000. Although there is some disagreement most scholars believe it comes from Old Norse, which was bought to Scotland by the Vikings during their repeated incursions. Perhaps the Hog part is a derivative of the name of the leading family that lived in the area.

“warts” comes from the old norse world “varta” which means exactly the same as it does today: a small round protuberance.

So Hogwarts is probably the name for a hill in the land dominated by the Hoag/Hogg/Hogge family.

Magical Apprenticeships

“School” is a very inappropriate term for what the founders actually set up. The concept of formal educational establishments died with the Roman Empire. Throughout the Dark Ages knowledge was controlled by the church and formalised education was largely confined to religious institutions. There were “schools” but only for the initiates of holy orders and the curriculum consisted only of Latin and Holy Scripture. The aristocracy educated their children at home through private tutors and not in any establishments resembling schools.

Even if the founders had wanted to set up a school, as we would understand, they would not have known where to start because the concept simply did not exist at the time. The original training (not education) offered by the founders would have been nothing like what is taught by a modern school.

The best training the vast majority of children could hope for in the Dark Ages was to be taught a useful trade. Magic must have been a skill that was taught within the family, but children could be apprenticed out to other families to learn a different set of skills. Magic was unlikely a trade onto itself but something that people used to booster their original trades. Magical blacksmiths might use the beginnings of alchemy to forge stronger swords. Magical farmers may use magic to hasten crop maturity or produce bigger vegetables.

Instead of actually setting up a school, what the founders actually did was turn up at the town and start takingpersonal apprentices. This was not out of the ordinary but the founders, unlike other tradesmen at the time revolutionised the way in apprenticeships worked.

The reason most traders limit their apprentices to one or two is because apprentices like all children require a great deal of supervision and they are as often economically detrimental as they are productive. The founders probably took a dozen or more apprentices each, and thus vastly expanded their services.  All the founders took a great risk in taking on so many apprentices, but I believe it was the shrewd thing to do in the unsettled times of 10thcentury Britain.

At the start of the new millenium in 1000, the west coast of Britain was constantly under attack from Vikings.  The Scottish Kingdoms of Alba and Fortriu were often at war, and in the England Ethelred the Unready was a notorious weak king leading to deep instability in his realm. Even with magic, I do not think wizards wanted to be in the firing line and children, with an unsteady grip of magic were most vulnerable, hence the attraction of sending children to a well-protected magical settlement to be taught by powerful sorcerers.

The scattered magical peoples of Great Britain probably started to retreat to the ancient sanctuary of Hogwarts decades before the founders arrived. What had essentially been a village on a hill, would have expanded many times over to become a large town. Hogwarts, well defended with a supply of clean water, was probably a lot safer than the areas the new comers had left, thus a baby boom occurred in the years of this expansion giving rise to a larger number of children than society knew what to do with.

The founders were fulfilling a huge demand for apprentice placements, as well as providing much needed service/resources for the vastly enlarge population of Hogwarts.

Additionally I believe that around this time some form of mass transit system had just been invented – most likely floo powder, which enabled a much larger number of children from further afield to travel to Hogwarts for training.

Not Schools but Businesses

Each founder would have been solely responsible for education of their own apprentices, as was the custom. Apprentices did not swap masters, or received a board education. Their instruction was limited to only what their masters knew and where willing to teach. In this era, muggle apprentices were often legally bound to their masters after paying a lump sum of money for the privilege of becoming their apprentice. It is not inconceivable that there was a parallel type of magical contract which did the same thing.

However the founders would not have worked and taught in isolation. It would have been more economical for the founders to share food, potions ingredients, dwellings etc. This may have been the actual beginnings of what would evolve into Hogwarts School.

We must not forget that each founder would have practiced a trade as their primary source of income even after taking apprentices. In a world where there was no formal education, none of the founders could have survived on being full-time professional educators. Nor would they ever have acquired students to teach because who would want to be apprenticed to a master without a useful trade?

The renowned sorting criteria for each house must have been directly linked to what trade each master was engaged in.

Gryffindor prized apprentices who were bold and brave because in his line of work he encountered a great deal of danger. I think Gryffindor was the settlement’s beast tamer/monster hunter. Ravenclaw prized wit and learning. She most likely fulfilled a role akin to that of maester in the Game of Thrones: scholar, healer, record keeper and general learned person. Hufflepuff wanted apprentices who were hard-working and unafraid of toil because her line of work required a great deal of physical work: most likely farming of mundane and magical crops or blacksmithing/magic forging.

I hesitate to speculate about Slytherin’s trade because the sorting hat has some very strange and contradictory things to say about Slytherin’s ideal apprentices, unlike the criteria for the other founders which are focused and consistent. On the one hand they had to be ambitious and cunning but on the other they had to be pureblooded. These things don’t necessarily match up as being from an ancient and noble line doesn’t exactly fire ones ambitions to become great, in fact it probably has the opposite effect. I think the sorting hat was only made after Slytherin had left Hogwarts town and the other founders were forced to cobble together a criteria from their own confused understanding and prejudice.

However we do know that Slytherin built the Chamber of Secrets. I would postulate that Slytherin was probably a master architect, given the complexities of the chamber he built. Part of his job was to strengthen and fortify defences of Hogwarts town before the castle itself was built. He probably also had mundane tasks like erecting barns/houses and building magical bridges across gorges.  How Hogwarts became the modern school we see in the books will be explored in Hogwarts: a Unification

[wellingtongoose]

The Making of Lord Voldemort

Is Voldemort truly evil or does he have a psychiatric condition?

Why is he unable to love?

If he is incapable of love can he truly be held responsible for his actions?

Voldemort remains one the most iconic villains in children’s literature. However, because of his iconic status, it can be difficult to recognise and relate to him him as a truly three dimensional character because in order to do so we must analyse him as a real person rather than a plot device. I explore the root cause for Voldemort's inability to love and why, regardless of this "handicap" Voldemort is still ultimately responsible for his choices and his actions.

Many writers have analysed Voldemort in the past and come to the common conclusion that he has “sociopathy” or to use the current psychiatric term “antisocial personality disorder” (APD), which is a psychiatric condition characterised by a lack of conscience and socially unacceptable behaviour. Many people believe that this diagnosis of a mental disorder explains all of his actions, motivations and emotions throughout the books.

As a doctor I find this explanation deeply unsatisfying because at the core of Voldemort’s character is the idea that he is completely incapable of understanding or experiencing love. There is no evidence that patients with APD are incapable of love. The closest science can come to proving the existence of love is by measuring function in the mirror neurones in our brain which engage in empathy, and patients with APD are fully capable of true empathy. However they do have an abnormal tendency to be able to turn off their empathy at will and are slower to learn from pain inducing stimuli.

Instead, there is one glaringly obvious reason why Voldemort cannot love: his upbringing in the orphanage.

It appears that because in the sixth book, Harry judge the orphans to be well fed and clean, most of the fan community have decided that Voldemort wasn’t abused and his childhood did dramatically contribute to his later choices in life

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However we known from studies done on children from the state orphanages of Romania and Bulgaria that having enough food and clothes does not equate to producing emotional healthy adults.  These orphanages were often likened to giant battery farms for children. Whilst they were adequately fed and clothed, no emotional support was offered as a matter of policy. Unlike the orphanages of 1930s Britain, many of the newborn babies who arrived in the orphanage did eventually live into their adult years, which enabled us to assess the impact of emotional neglect on their adult lives

The institutional life actually created some degree of emotional detachment in all children regardless of age, but in babies who arrived at the orphanage before the age of 9-12 months it was discovered that the vast majority of them were unable to build any successful human relationships as adults. Although these adults had a variety of other psychiatric disorders including depression, it was clear from functional MRI scans that the part of their brain used to process empathy and emotions relating others was underdeveloped and rarely activated. The cause for this was identified as complete lack of emotional stimulation during those crucial first 9-12 months of life.

In effect, what we learnt from these studies was that humans are not born able to love. Love and empathy are skills that we learn by example.

Tom Riddle, born in the orphanage, would never have been given the chance to learn by example. This is the reason why Tom is incapable of love. Harry on the other hand lived 15 months with his birth parents and was shown how to love. Even when he was at the Dursleys he saw what love was because even though the Dursley are very unpleasant, they definitely love each other and have no shame flaunting it before Harry. Harry has grown up knowing what love is, even if he does not received any of it.

Many people have commented that if Voldemort does have a psychiatric condition this completely undermines the idea that he was truly evil. There is never any true discussion about why Voldemort made the choices that turned him into a caricature of evil. In a children’s book that preaches the importance of our choices over our origins, Voldemort as a central character is tragically ironic.

However, it is important to remember that just because Voldemort could not experience or understand love does not negate the fact that he murdered, tortured, pillaged and nearly destroyed the wizarding world. At the end of the series almost every main character has been burn by tragedy from the wizarding war. The resulting fall out of Voldemort’s uprising has created a Ministry of Magic that no longer understands the meaning of justice and is willing to throw everyone innocent or guilty to the Dementors for their own peace of mind.

Having an inability to love is not a reason for Voldemort to be declared innocent of the crimes he has committed. He is not insane; his logical and reasoning faculties are completely intact. Voldemort still has the full logical and intellectual capacity to make the correct decisions in life. They may not come naturally to him and they may not be emotionally fulfilling for him but this does not mean he is incapable of separating right from wrong. To say that Voldemort should be exempt from the same ethical and moral standards as the rest of humanity is a disservice to all the orphans who did become productive, functional members of society upon leaving the orphanage.

The vast majority of orphans from the studies conducted in Romania and Bulgaria who did have neurological damage from their upbringing in the orphanage have built functional, productive lives. We may pity their inability to form long term relationships and worry about the consequences, but that is a very ablest way of viewing the situation.  They have overcome a huge challenge in their lives that the majorities of us will never begin to comprehend and despite all their disadvantages they have succeed in becoming members of society. To say that the inability to love turns people into murderous psychopath is completely untrue, and it takes all value out of our personal choices.

Voldemort’s choices were important regardless of what neurological/psychiatric condition he may or may not have. Tom Riddle became Voldemort because he did not want to conform to the ethics and moral of society, not because he was completely unable to do so.  Although making the right choices would not come naturally for Tom Riddle, he could have done so if only he could have looked beyond his own narrow desire for power. However Tom Riddle enjoyed making all the wrong choices and Lord Voldemort certainly enjoyed the consequences of his actions.

Voldemort should be held culpable for his actions, and the families of all the people he harmed do deserve justice.