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Jefferson Singer asks, "Are You Ready for Your Close-Up?

By Jefferson Singer on March 06, 2008 in Life Scripts

In the classic Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson plays a washed-up silent film star. At the end of the film, after shooting her younger lover, she goes mad and surrounded by news cameras, imagines that she is back on a Hollywood set. She announces, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” In this one moment her life of vanity, glamour, and despair is captured. Are there single moments in your life, positive or negative, that capture who you are and what you are all about?

Professor Todd Schultz of Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon thinks so. For the last 10 years, he has written a number of fascinating articles and chapters about what he calls the “prototypical scene,” a powerful and compelling episode in an individual’s life that expresses the most critical themes or conflicts in his or her life. These prototypical scenes are a very special case of the more general self-defining memories that I study in my research (see my book Memories that Matter for more on the role that these memories play in our lives). Prof. Schultz draws on writers and artists for his examples and has illustrated his ideas by analyzing the memoirs, letters, and biographies of such luminaries as Kafka, Kerouac, Capote and Plath. For example, Kafka returned over and over to a scene in which he begged for water as a child with no response from his parents. Finally, his father took him from his room and carried him outside the house and set him down alone and shut the door, still without giving him water. Is it any wonder that one of Kafka’s greatest books is The Trial, in which a man wakes up to being arrested and is eventually carried away without ever receiving an explanation for what he has done wrong?

Schultz provides many more examples, but my purpose in this blog is to get you to think about yourself. Are there moments from your childhood or perhaps during your teenage years that are so self-defining that they serve as a symbolic statement or metaphor for what matters most to you? How might something someone said to you or that you said to someone else capture your philosophy of life or what you most dread or fear? I would love to hear some of your prototypical scenes (anonymously or with code names, of course). Are you ready for your close-up?

 

 

Comments

My Close-Up

Submitted by Ilka Hennig on March 14, 2008 - 2:12pm.

Years ago, my parents invited a friend over to their house. This friend told my parents about something that happened to him. I do not remember what it was. I just remembered this one sentence he said (, how he said it and were he sat when saying it): Every negative situation or happening also has a positive side or aspect.
Every time I am in a difficult or unpleasant situation I have to think of this one sentence. I have the feeling that I really internalized this philosophy or way of thinking. I think the sentence just fits in with my general optimistic attitude.


Walking

Submitted by Anonymous on March 14, 2008 - 4:11pm.

At sixteen I graduated in the top 10 of my high school class and went on to major in psychology at Louisiana's flagship university. A month after my eighteenth birthday I discovered I was pregnant. My self-concept metamorphed overnight as I was reduced from colloquial town role model to the girl all mothers told there daughters, "Don't be like..." It was a daunting conversion. I went on to have two beautiful children, excel at an impressive job, and continue life restored in my own mind as "Ruler of My Domain" because I eventually learned how to look at life in perspective. Having children wasn't the worst thing that could or did ever happen to me.

The pregnancy prefaced a single moment in my life that seemed to yield a great epiphany:

I was walking to the bus stop right after class to catch a bus to a job that I hated, working 10:00p.m. to 7:00 a.m. and getting up to head back to class. I got to work, did my job, took the bus home. A Louisiana summer was wreaking havoc on my pregnant body, and I was basically miserable. From the bus stop, I still had four blocks to walk home. 8 months pregnant and all. But as I walked with the sun beaming down warm and intoxicating, even though there were parts of my body aching that I didn't even know could ache, I began to tell myself "All you have to do is keep walking until you pass the blue mailbox." From there, "All you have to do is keep walking until you pass the big tree." From there, "All you have to do is keep walking until you cross the street." And as I said these things in my mind, it occured to me that life is a lot like a long walk when you feel you can't put one foot in front of the other and you have to keep going anyway. From that moment on I've been living my life like that. Bad times inspire my "All you have do is keep doing this" speech. I keep going.

Story of my life.


Music

Submitted by Vocallise on June 5, 2008 - 7:59pm.

Songs.
There are songs that hold the trauma.
Different songs for each.
Music was played in the house, so thats
where I learned to store. If I stayed away from
that song, it never hurt.
Wasn't allowed to watch tv, no way would you
want them to find you wrote it down either.

Since then, I still use songs.
Maybe its the pitch of the voices, the high pitch,
the low pitch, what the song is saying, the piano,
guitar, drums...the sounds I wasn't ever able to make.

Wow ! I never thought about it til now.


The future is a mirror that

Submitted by Alex on June 5, 2008 - 8:29pm.

The future is a mirror that reflects the past.


This is great that there are

Submitted by Dylon on June 30, 2008 - 11:19pm.

This is great that there are such blogs. I often realize that something distracts me from thinking about who I am and what I am for. All this running and rolling... It is so hard just to seat and think about these basic things.


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Jefferson A. Singer, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at Connecticut College and a clinical psychologist in private practice. He is the author of Memories that Matter: How to Use Self-defining Memories to Understand and Change Your Life.

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