General Discussions
Would you say River is the soul of the ship?
POSTED BY: PhyreLight
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 14:54
VIEWED: 10095
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Tuesday, January 8, 2008 2:54 PM
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Originally posted by christhecynic:
You lost me at the last sentence. I admit that I have not studied psychology all that much, but in what I have come across I have never heard anyone make that kind of a claim.
I'll freely admit here, that I'm arguing purely on a pop-psychology understanding of "The Subconscious" (thunder-lightning) as generally portrayed on tv, as it's the level I suppose River would be presented and interpreted, were that the case. (This being tv of a great quality but not necessarily great scientific value. See: reader, terraforming, little girls impossibly beating up dozens of Reavers, etc.)
This is, obviously, ignoring the real science of it. I was not trying to say anything about the subconscious as psychologists may see it.
Do I need to feel really really bad or just really bad for not saying so upfront?
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There's an obvious counter example right in this thread where someone posted, "Jane doesn't like Sally, finds her bitchy and superior and annoying. (Truth: Sally's always talking about her experiences in college and Jane didn't go to college and feels insecure over it.)"
To me that seems very believable, I don't see any reason that the parenthetical couldn't describe Jane's subconscious reason for feeling as she does. Assuming you don't find it unrealistic either (and if you do find it unrealistic tell me) I'd like to use it as an example.
No no, it's fine.
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Jane consciously dislikes Sally finding her bitchy and superior and annoying, what difference does it make to Jane or Sally if that is because of insecurities over college or because Sally subconsciously reminds Jane of someone else, or even that Jane's subconscious made the determination that Sally was those things?
It does make a difference because were Sally to really examine her feelings for Jane, she would have to aknowledge that they are a projection - and a developed person would stop projecting or try to.
Her subcobscious reason would, therefor, be the only thing upholding that effect of annoyance - and the effect should disappear once revealed.
I have a hard time finding a similar analogy for River working that way on the crew as a whole - or even within the context of the ship, aside from the overly simple aspect of her knowing things the others don't.
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In every case you'd have the same situation facing Jane and Sally both, since Jane is unaware of her reasoning it isn't going to effect how she decides to deal with not liking Sally.
Yes, but the inconsistencies between Jane's behavior and Sally's reaction to it could or would become apparent (to others), drawing attention to the existence of a subconscious reason.
It migh not, but in that case it'd be entirely irrelevant to the onlooker (i.e., us who we are contemplating them.) If the subconscious did not manifest itself, we would have no reason to consider it to exist, so River's role as such would only exist in its revealed effect on the crew. Which.. I don't see anywhere.
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Because, I do not think that those things apply to River.
I should probably point out, again, that I don't really feel either way about the idea of River being the subconscious, I just disagree with your reason for refuting it. That's why there's a lack of, "No, look at what she does in ____, she's clearly the subconscious," in my posts.
May I ask if you have your own theory of refuting that idea? I'm just curious.
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I agree with you that River has information not available to the rest of the crew, for obvious reasons, however no one said, to my knowledge, that she is the subconscious of the crew members. Just as no one has said, to my knowledge, that Kaylee is the hope inside of Jayne. Kaylee doesn't necessarily know what Jayne hopes for, Kaylee probably doesn't want to know what Jayne hopes for.
Since I don't operate a crew-focus myself (rather, on a Mal-focus) I can only guess
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