FWD: Group psychology in cyberspace

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

Similarities to real persons are of course purely coincidental...

Thema:        Group Psychology in Cyberspace
Datum:  24.04.01 14:01:06 (MEZ) - Mitteleurop. Sommerzeit
From:   Ellen2 at JIMANDELLEN.ORG (Ellen Moody)
Sender: NETDYNAM at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU (NetDynam / Network Group Dynamics 
Mailing List)
Reply-to:   NETDYNAM at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU (NetDynam / Network Group Dynamics 
Mailing List)
To: NETDYNAM at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU

Dear el don and Netdynamic Friends,

el don's message was of real interest to me and
I thank her for the elaboration of interpellation.
While I am a student of literature and teach
and write about literature, only very recently
have I begun to understand and see the usefulness
of literary theory.  Some of the language remains
obscure to me -- it's as if words are forced to
do jobs they weren't meant to do, and whole
sentences are got up in abstract ways
whose sense derives from a body of
thought I don't always understand, and=7F
whose thrust or underlying attitudes I sometimes
find perversely wrong-headed when I do.  Then
again I find some of it "right on", really capturing
important aspects of experience and life and
art in ways earlier ways of talking about
literature and social experience and psychology
never came close to.

I haste to say that indeed I did overspeak or
talk in exaggerated ways:  indeed I do
respond with real hurt, sensitivity and
trouble -- and equally with real joy,
interest, and active challenge to life here
on the Net.  I was for a very long time (really)
a target of humiliating flaming and bullying
on the Austen-l list I have already referred
to more than once.  I have also been
flamed and bullied and shamed on a
couple of other lists.  These experiences
affected my life outside the list; have
affected me.  I have very strong responses
to feelings of shame or when I am
made to feel foolish.  I have a hard
time coping with postings which
are aimed at me that way -- even
when I know (intellectually) that the
poster is writing out of his or her
weaknesses and troubles.

I know that one of my techniques
seems strange and strikes others
as pretty feeble too.  I have avoided
reading messages which are painful
to me.  This was one way I managed
to stay on Austen-l for quite a time.
I wanted to be there to talk of Austen and
meet people who were interested in
her.  First it's not that uncommon:
there are lots of jokes about authors
who right before a book is published
go on long trips.  Poor Maria Edgeworth
travelled round Europe for 2 years
after she published a book, only to
come home to find her friends had
saved up her reviews.  George Lewes
used to monitor all George Eliot's
reviews and the responses to her
work.  If she had read them, they really
would have affected her writing badly --
her sense of self, her desire for an
audience that understood her.
I could name more modern instances,
but two will do.  Actually nowadays I
don't do this; if I find I cannot make
it somewhere I just get off the list
or resort to listening (I don't like the
word "lurk" as I don't want to pound
on anyone from my posture of
invisibility).

Yet I have had such rejuvenating experiences here on
the Net -- real interactions with people --
such as I've not had ever before and
which have changed my life.  I have a
book published, I gave a lecture to the
Trollope Society, I nowadays get invitations
to do reviews, essays and essay-reviews
and have both virtual and real friends as
a result of my life here on the Net.  The
truth is I probably spend on average 3
hours a day on the Net -- sometimes more.
These bouts usually occur early in the
morning or very late at night.  I would
say that my life has gone from what I=7F
would call failure in a number of areas
that are important to me to modest
success in these areas -- as a writer,
teacher, social person.

Why then was I led to use these pragmatic explanations?
Well, I know my behavior in cyberspace is
different than my behavior in virtual reality.
So I seek for some explanation.  Since
I am a commonsensical sort of person, I reach
for these as significant elements in the reasons
I cannot get myself easily to be forward or interactive in
life.  I know these are not all the story:  some of
my years of reclusive behavior come from bad
experiences (sexual) as a teenager, experiences
which showed me -- repeatedly -- that I did not
do well in encounters with strong personalities,
and that I came away maimed or badly hurt.
My younger daughter -- of whom I spoke --
has inherited some of my predispositions.

Still I think to myself that there has to be
some explanation for the difference between
the way I behave online and the way I behave
off.  Again another persuasive explanation is
that my writing self differs from my public
"real" and physical self.  I have long known
this.  I can write things I could never speak.
I love to write -- as I love to read books that
are deeply congenial to me -- and many=7F
of the "literary classics", older and modern,
are.  I love to teach when I can share my
understanding with students who (to use
this new bit of language) allow
me to "interpellate" them as a person
like myself.  What I didn't know until I got
onto the Net was I would be irresistibly
impelled to write to others the kinds of
things I used to write to myself or in
essays and stories which I never used to
manage to publish.  Of course I shape
them for public consumption somewhat,
but I do try my best to tell truths as
I see them.

I always come back to this business of
not being face-to-face, of my sense that
there is nothing immediately riding on
what the conversation is about.  In
some of the above I have at least alluded
to experiences that I would not be able
to talk of aloud in a group of people without
intense emotions of anxiety and distress
and just emotional intensities in general
almost overcoming my voice.  Yet I
can write of them -- and in a public forum
as well as in private email letters.  This
is a form of freeing.

I came onto Netdynamics because I would
like to understand cyberspace behavior
as I am something of a puzzle to myself.
I originally wrote that I wanted simply to
do better in cyberspace, to understand
better what motivates others.  I also
want better to understand myself.

This is egoism unashamed :).  I feel I ought
(as I am brought up to do what I ought to
do or at least acknowledge the validity of
Kantian categorical imperatives) somehow
to justify this beyond myself.  Well if I
better understood myself I would understand
what I read better, write better (my writing
is very important to me), make a better
moderator in cyberspace, maybe even
be a more effective teacher.  I am aware that
I can be laughed at for what I just wrote
as hopelessly Pollyanna.  But really to do
better is to feel better about oneself
and probably that's the instigating motive for me.

Cheers to all,
Ellen Moody

Kurt-Werner Pörtner