What Game of Thrones is teaching us about loneliness…
Thursday, November 2, 2023.
What I love about this study is that it confirms something I’ve suspected for a while. The use of creative imagination in both individual and couples therapy is sorely lacking.
During COVID I was dealing with so many whip smart couples trying to live, work, and parent from their living rooms.
The toxic proxemics were taking a toll. I asked my couples, “whenever you see a mess, blame your imaginary housemate, Darleen Corona. You both get to bitch about her, but you both have to clean up after her. You can only complain about Darlene, never each other…but you can be as vicious and nasty as you like.”
It worked. Bickering and fighting were reduced by an average of 50%. I called it the “Darlene Corona Intervention.”
Blurring the line between fantasy and fact…
New research suggests that there is a real utility to fictional characters. In fact, some humans may use fictional characters to compensate for a deficit in their real lives.
The line between real-life and fictional characters is more blurred in the brains of humans who are lonely, new research finds.
Brain scans showed that some lonely humans favorite characters from the series of “Game of Thrones” were neural introjects in their brains, in almost the same way as their real-life friends.
This study suggests that the more lonely people are, the more they can come to think of fictional characters in the same way they do their real-life friends.
It may be that people use fictional characters to fill an emotional need that is unfulfilled in their lives.
The researchers posit that some humans can imagine that what is happening to the fictional character is actually happening to themselves.
How the study was conducted
The conclusions come from a study of 19 self-described fans of the fantasy HBO series, “Game of Thrones”.
They chose their favorite characters from the show and had their brains scanned while they thought about either that character, themselves or another real person.
Dr. Dylan Wagner, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“There were clear boundaries between where real and fictional characters were represented in the brains of the least lonely participant in our study.
But the boundaries between real and some fictional people were nearly non-existent for the loneliest participant.”
The researchers focused on an area of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), which is active when we think about ourselves and other people.
Dr. Wagner said:
“When we analyzed brain patterns in the MPFC, real people were represented very distinctly from fictional people in the non-lonely participants.
But among the lonelier people, the boundary starts breaking down.
You don’t see the stark lines between the two groups.”
For the lonely, fictional characters provide a sense of belonging, which everyone needs. Is it pathology of delusion or an efficient truth of perceived kinship?
Dr. Wagner said:
“The neural representation of fictional characters comes to resemble those of real-world friends.”
Final thoughts
None of this is to say that identifying with fictional characters is necessarily a sign of loneliness.
Even the least lonely people in the study were affected by the fictional characters to which they felt closest. This is also why I believe that Cinema Therapy is a vital tool for emotional unpacking.
As the study’s authors write:
“When Robin Williams died in 2014, social media was flooded with messages from saddened educators stating that they had been inspired to teach by Williams’s portrayal of Mr. Keating in the film Dead Poets Society.
Similarly, I’ve met many women in medicine who have frankly told me that they actually felt a relationship bloom over 17 years, with Ellen Pompeo’s character on Grey’s Anatomy, and either credit, or curse her character for their career choice.
Back in the late 1960’s there was a sudden increase in college graduates applying to police academies. LOL I think it was the Mod Squad, and the waif-like charm of Peggy Lipton that was responsible.
The film “Top Gun” resulted in a 500% increase in applicants to the Navy’s aviation program. They even established recruiting booths outside large movie theaters.
Not to mention the attorneys I’ve met who credit various iterations of Perry Mason, or my personal favorite, Clinton Judd for their career path”
Final Thoughts
I marvel at how humans adapt, how they can get used to almost anything, and use almost anything, imaginary or real, to make it through the night. I find this a fascinating piece of research, and I hate to quibble, really I do.
It’s just that I need to say more about the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC).
The mPFC is a crucial cortical region that integrates information from numerous cortical and subcortical areas and converges updated information to output structures.
It plays essential roles in the cognitive process, regulation of emotion, motivation, and sociability. This is an area of the brain where there can be huge differences expressed across a population.
Dysfunction of the mPFC has been found in various neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and addiction.
This is a wicked small study. I would have preferred a larger study, sorting out of neurotypical brains vs.neurodiverse brains.in a side-by-side comparison. Coming out of the gate, I’m pretty fu*king confident that the cohort of Game of throne fans in this study was well represented by the neurodiverse, and I truly wish that they had focused more on that.
On the other hand, I really want to learn more about this. Let’s have larger research projects.
Brian Olgolsky has an intervention where the client creates an imaginary relative, and then writes out advice from this fictional character for 7 minutes.
The human imagination is activated by stories, and characters we love can be as real, and as true to us as life itself.
Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.
RESEARCH:
Timothy W Broom, Dylan D Wagner, The boundary between real and fictional others in the medial prefrontal cortex is blurred in lonelier individuals, Cerebral Cortex, Volume 33, Issue 16, 15 August 2023, Pages 9677–9689, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhad237
