Motherhood and Magical Thinking / 1

May 9, 2008
What exactly is magical thinking?

With all the references to magical thinking (and I’m recalling two memoirs in particular, Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs and Joan Didion’s reflection on grieving The Year of Magical Thinking), I’m compelled to find an actual definition of the term.

The Wikipedia entry is so illuminating, I have to copy part of it here:

In anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science, magical thinking is nonscientific causal reasoning that often includes such ideas as the ability of the mind to affect the physical world, correlation equaling causation, the law of contagion, the power of symbols, and the meaningfulness of synchronicity.
Magical thinking can occur when one simply does not understand possible causes, as illustrated by Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s suggestion that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (see Clarke’s three laws), but can also occur in response to situations that are largely random or chaotic, such as a coin toss, as well as in situations that one has little or no control over, especially those one is emotionally invested in. (Indeed, this can be seen as a special case of failure to understand possible causes: specifically, a failure to understand the laws of probability that guarantee the occurrence of coincidences and seeming patterns.) See below for more specific examples.
Sir James George Frazer and Bronisław Malinowski said that magic is more like science than religion, and that societies with magical beliefs often had separate religious beliefs and practices.[citation needed] The difference between science and magical thinking emerges in 17th century philosophy. Both worldviews are mechanistic and based on causality, but the scientific worldview is distinguished by the scientific method and by skepticism, requiring the falsifiability of any scientific hypothesis.
According to Frazer,[1] magical thinking depends on two laws: the law of similarity (an effect resembles its cause), and the law of contagion (things which were once in physical contact maintain a connection even after physical contact has been broken). These two laws govern the operation of what Frazer called “sympathetic magic”, the idea that the manipulation of effigies or similar symbols or tokens can cause changes to occur in the thing the symbol represented. Typical examples of sympathetic magic include the use of voodoo dolls, and the fetishization of cargo cults. Others have described these two laws as examples of “analogical reasoning” (rather than logical reasoning). Magical thinking is a common phase in child development. From the age of a toddler to early school age children will often link the outside world with their internal consciousness, e.g. “It is raining because I am sad”.
Typically, people use magic to attempt to explain things that science has not acceptably explained, or to attempt to control things that science cannot. The classic example is of the collapsing roof, described in E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Magic, and Oracles Among the Azande, in which the Azande claimed that a roof fell on a particular person because of a magical spell cast (unwittingly) by another person.
The Azande knew perfectly well a scientific explanation for the collapsing room (that termites had eaten through the supporting posts), but pointed out that this scientific explanation could not explain why the roof happened to collapse at precisely the same moment that the particular man was resting beneath it. The magic explains why two independent chains of causation intersect. Thus, from the point of view of the practitioners, magic explains what scientists would call “coincidences” or “contingency”. From the point of view of outside observers, magic is a way of making coincidences meaningful in social terms. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity for experiences of this type.
Adherents of magical belief systems often do not see their beliefs as being magical. In Asia, many coincidences and contingencies are explained in terms of karma in which a person’s actions in a past life affects current events. Likewise in the west, ideas of “motivation” and “positive thinking” in themselves achieving outcomes are not seen as magical by those who tout their benefits.
A common form of magical thinking is that one’s own thoughts can influence events, either beneficially, by creating good luck, or for the worse, as in divine punishment for “bad thoughts”. Freud reflected on these phenomena in his essay, “The Uncanny”. These beliefs reflect an incorrect understanding of the boundaries of self; one can indeed will to move one’s own arm, but not the ashtray on the table, at least not by any direct means (e.g. we can will our arm to move the ashtray, or there may be even less direct routes of influence). We can also make the opposite error: thinking that outside agencies can see into or influence our thoughts (paranoia).
Another form of magical thinking occurs when people believe that words can directly affect the world. This can mean avoiding talking about certain subjects (“speak of the devil and he’ll appear”), using euphemisms instead of certain words, or believing that to know the “true name” of something gives one power over it, or that certain chants, prayers or mystical phrases will change things. More generally, it is magical thinking to take a symbol to be its referent.

Caveat: Blogging lends itself to one’s exhortation of ideas in an asumed vacuum. I can say some thought, relatively unique among the flurry of my general everyday thoughts, and put it here, as if it has had no precedent in the history of humankind– a kind of magical thinking in and of itself. However, I am sure what I am about to say has a precedent, I just don’t know what it is. That said, the following observation may seem a bit inflated, overly full of itself.

The stories of a culture create a kind of matrix within which our actions and ideas take shape. That matrix (or context) can dictate a person’s way of thinking. This isn’t brainwashing, necessarily. But when immersed in stories with a particular pattern or outcome, our brains begin to follow those well-trained pathways willingly.

Although the post quotes that magic is more like science than religion, when I see this definition, I think of religion, specifically my own Christian upbringing. Is this bad? Does this diminsh religion because it is merely an institutionalization of poorly concluded causal analysis? Or does the connection elevate magical thinking to something uniquely human, developed over time, that we have come to need? For example: Adherents of magical belief systems often do not see their beliefs as being magical. In Asia, many coincidences and contingencies are explained in terms of karma in which a person’s actions in a past life affects current events. Likewise in the west, ideas of “motivation” and “positive thinking” in themselves achieving outcomes are not seen as magical by those who tout their benefits. Are these examples of “magical thinking” another way that humans craft a narrative (authority) that can serve as a kind of moral compass?

I’m beginning to plan lessons for next year, and I’m considering teaching The Scarlet Letter for the first time in ten years. What a fantastic example of magical thinking! From the righteous mob at the scaffold, to the guilt-ridden Dimmesdale, to the penitent Hester– all engage in different roles, serving the same end: redemption.

Come to think of it, The Great Gatsby exhibits its share of magical thinking…And One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest makes magical thinking the norm because the story is told from an unreliable narrator who tells us “it’s the truth, even if it didn’t happen.”

Maybe all literature is a kind of magical thinking???

As the title of this series (Motherhood and Magical Thinking) suggests, I have had time to notice my own brushes with this kind of thinking. Specifically, I have been living with this assumption that after spending a year away from teaching, I would automatically resume my old life. The change I have been trying to accomodate is staying home for a year. I have ignored the obvious fact that I will never return to the way I was as a teacher. I will never be able to pick up the patterns I forged over 10 years. Yes, undeniably parts of me will be the same. I’ll still use discussion more than independent or group work, I’ll still assign mor paper than “creative” projects, I’ll still have to work not to ignore students sitting on the left side of the room, etc. But the energy, the way I worked, and how I used my time: Gone. The habit of letting work expand to fill any and all time I had: Gone.

I have files and boxes of teaching materials waiting for me, presumably to help ease my transition back into teaching. But their usefulness is practically unrecognizable, as is the peson who so earnestly prepared them and stowed them for safekeeping.