Keith Hawk (KH) John Granger (JG) Louise Freeman (LF) Cassandra Dinius (CD)
[Show music begins]
Eric: Hey! Josée! Wait up!
Josée: Oh hi, Eric! I'm sorry, I really can't talk right now. I'm running late.
Eric: Late? Late for what?
Josée: Oh, it's because I have to go meet Keith and John Granger. I'm actually going to listen to a Harry Potter literature lesson at MuggleNet Academia.
Eric: Oh cool, that sounds awesome. Can I come with?
Josée: Yes, of course you can. Just come with me.
Eric: Okay. Let's go!
[Show music continues]
["Umbrella" by Rihanna plays]
KH: Welcome back to MuggleNet Academia Lesson 11. The Casual Vacancy just came out, just heard the song from Rihanna that's featured in the book. I know you've finished the book, what did you think of it?
JG: Oh my goodness! Is this going to be the show for today? I just posted twelve comments on Hogwarts Professor detailing the artistry and meaning of Casual Vacancy, it's a huge topic. Anyway, yeah, I loved it. It's definitely a different stroke than anything we're used to here at MuggleNet Academia and our discussion of Harry Potter, but yeah, it was a blast.
KH: I thought it was really well done. The first part, I thought, was really tough to get through, and I think for most people that I talked to it was also a really difficult read in getting to know these characters. Obviously, they're so much different. But I mean, it's a different book, different themes, and everything else. But once it started to roll, it really went fast and the last half of the book was like... to me, I was done in just a couple of hours it seemed. And I really did like it. The themes were... wow. It's just... it wasn't what I was expecting from JK Rowling, that's all. And it just blew me away, some of the ways that she wrote things.
JG: Well, I'm glad we're talking about psychology today because those of us who have just finished Casual Vacancy, which I guess is most of us, are going to look back at Harry Potter and thinking about sort of the sociopathology or psychopathology of the Dark Lord in view of a world at least as dark in Casual Vacancy.
KH: Yeah, we need to get Dr. Louise Freeman on here right away because after reading that I thought I needed a psychologist.
[JG laughs]
KH: Lay down on the couch, and tell all about my depression and stuff. So welcome, Dr. Louise Freeman. How are you today?
LF: I'm doing very well, thank you!
KH: Great! Tell us a little bit about yourself, if you don't mind.
LF: All right. Well, first thing I should probably do is clarify...
[JG laughs]
LF: ...what type of psychologist I am. I have a laboratory, I don't have a couch.
[JG laughs]
LF: So, my training is actually in physiological psychology and I study actually... my research especially is the area of hormones and the hormone behavior relationships. So, I'm probably not going to be too much help to you as far as anything that you might have experienced from Casual Vacancy.
JG: I don't know. I don't know, Dr. Louise! Fats and his relationship with Krystal seemed to have a lot of hormonal activity going on.
LF: Oh no, not that there weren't hormones in the book. There were plenty of hormones going on there.
[JG and LF laugh]
LF: But I don't know that the readers... engaging the readers and adjusting their testosterone levels is going to be particularly helpful. So I teach, I do research, but I am not a licensed clinician, so I don't actually diagnose or treat people.
KH: Well, then maybe our student guest should be able to help me out.
[JG laughs]
KH: Let me introduce Cassandra Dinius. Cassandra, tell us a little bit about yourself.
CD: Hi, thanks for having me on. I'm currently a second year graduate student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. And unfortunately, I am studying as an experimental psychologist so I don't have a couch either. I might not be very helpful when it comes to counseling information but I have been a teaching assistant for intro to psychology for the last two years, so I have a lot of information on the broad aspects of psychology. As for my specialty area, I work with older adults trying to develop techniques for successful aging.
KH: Great. Well, welcome to the show. I'm glad to have you on board, both you and Professor Freeman. John, tell us a little bit about what we're going to be studying here in a little bit.
JG: Ahh, well what I'm dying to get into here is I heard Dr. Louise Freeman - who I know as Louise, she's a frequent contributor to HogwartsProfessor.com - talk about just this subject, the psychology of Harry Potter, in a way the psycho-pathologies of what goes on inside the series, at a conference at James Madison University last year, and so I've asked her on to share with us and our audience the insights that she has about the psychological profiles of the characters inside the Hogwarts Saga. I know that you're going to be wowed by this because I remember being just knocked off my chair when I listened to her talk at James Madison. And James Madison is right up the street from Mary Baldwin College. I don't know if Dr. Louise has mentioned the name yet of the school where she teaches, this wonderful school in Staunton, Virginia, Mary Baldwin College, of which I'm a big fan. I've given a talk there and such. Anyway, but yeah, this is going to be about what makes the Dark Lord tick and why Harry isn't as messed up as he should be, maybe, and how Neville Longbottom grows to be the guy that he is. This is going to be a wow show and I know our listeners are going to love it.
KH: Great, I can't wait to get into it. But before we do that, I do want to talk about a couple of things. JK Rowling earlier this week - or last week I guess it was, when you're listening to the show - was on the Scholastic Harry Potter Reading Club. Did you get a chance to watch this broadcast that she did, John?
JG: I missed that. Tell me about it.
KH: Well, she read a little bit of Sorcerer's Stone. She read the Ollivander's scene, which was really good. But she had children from across the world asking her questions and it was all part of Scholastic's new Harry Potter reading club that was kicked off last week, and one of the questions I thought that was very interesting was somebody asked her what house she would be sorted into and she said, "I am a Gryffindor." Now, at the same time, the kid was destroying the Hufflepuff house and she stood up for the Hufflepuff house.
[JG laughs]
KH: So, it was really... if you haven't seen this, go onto MuggleNet.com. We posted a story on this and you can actually watch a replay of this. The actual web chat was recorded, so you can head on over to HPRead.Scholastic.com to watch this web chat, and it was really interesting. The reason I go into JK Rowling right away is because on Tuesday, just two short days from when we're recording this show, I will be meeting the queen herself and I am so excited about this.
[JG laughs]
KH: She is coming to New York City and she will be at the David H Koch Theater - I am taking my daughter with me - and she will be doing a reading of The Casual Vacancy, answering some questions that were sent in. Hopefully my question gets answered, that would be really cool. But then we are going to be getting lined up and meeting her in person while she signs our book.
JG: How neat.
KH: So, there's going to be about 2,000 people that are attending, and MuggleNet staff will be in full force there. We have a bunch of our staff members coming. Also, we are going to be meeting at the Bethesda Fountain before the event at 5:30 where we're going to be putting on a little display. We are going to be spelling out...
[Show music begins]
KH: ..."JK Rowling in New York City," take some photographs of this - we're doing this with human beings by the way, John.
[JG laughs]
KH: And then we're going to take some pictures of this and put it up on a digital frame, picture frame, and hand it to her at the event. Josée Leblanc has been in charge of all this. So, it's really going to be a lot of fun. I think we're going to have maybe 100 people or so showing up to this event. So John, let's kick off this show. From MuggleNet.com, my name is Keith Hawk.
JG: I'm John Granger, the Hogwarts Professor and author of The Deathly Hallows Lectures.
LF: Dr. Louise Freeman, Psychology Department, Mary Baldwin College.
CD: And I'm Cassie Dinius, a graduate student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
[Show music continues]
KH: All right, and here we are with Lesson 11: Psychology in Harry Potter with Professor Louise Freeman from Mary Baldwin College and Cassandra from Southern Illinois University. John, I'm excited to get on to the show, so let me open this up with our synopsis here so people out there have an idea as to what we're doing.
JG: Great.
KH: As soon as serious discussion of the Harry Potter novels began, there were interpretations of the books from a specifically psychological perspective. I mean, we had Jungians, we had Freudians, and other schools of Western psychology that have engaged the books as texts about psychological types and spiritual archetypes, even use them in therapy with patients, believe it or not. MuggleNet Academia - what we're here for is we're going to be interviewing psychology professor Louise Freeman of Mary Baldwin College for answers to questions about the Dark Lord's psychological condition: socio or psychopath? Ms. Rowling admitted depression and cognitive behavior therapy, and penetrating second looks at Mad-Eye Moody, Dudley Dursley, and even we'll cover Winky! So, stand by for some fascinating insights into the artistry and meaning of the Hogwarts Saga from the position on the doctor's couch. Louise, do me a favor. Tell us about how a psychology professor like yourself becomes interested in the imaginative world of Harry Potter.
LF: Well, for me that came about the same way as it did for a lot of adults, by reading them to and reading them with my children. I heard very good things about the books early on when they were first published, and I believe I bought the first two around 1999. My daughter at the time was about 3, with the intention of reading them for myself but I got busy and never found the time and they sat on my bookshelf for a couple of years. And finally I decided to just wait until my daughter was old enough to enjoy them and read them aloud to her. So, I think I finally started the series with her when she was about 5 or 6 in 2002. I'm very glad, looking back on it, that I waited because it really was a wonderful experience to have that first-time read through them along with her. So, by the time Order of the Phoenix came out in 2003, we were both big fans. We had read all the books, we were dressing up in costumes to go to the parties at the bookstore. And then a few years later, I started the process all over again with my son. So, by the time the seventh book came out, he was a big fan and we were going to the bookstore parties. So, between the two kids, I've read all seven books out loud through twice and re-read them for myself many other times.
KH: Cassie, let me ask you: when did you start the books? How old were you?
CD: I started reading the books right when the third one came out, so I was in early middle school and I just really liked the writing style. There are so many aspects of choice and free will in these books, and that was something else that I really enjoyed. It wasn't until later when I majored in psychology, when I started analyzing them... my favorite book was the sixth book, Half-Blood Prince, and I really think that's because there is so much psychology in the background of Voldemort in that book, so that might be one of the reasons I enjoyed them so much.
JG: Oh! Well, we're going to talk about that today, that's for sure. That's great, so we have two psychology experts that got into the books by reading aloud, largely about relationships, and then thinking about the psychological relationships of that. So Keith, you've found another great student to complement our professor here. I love how you do this.
KH: I love how I do it, too.
JG:[laughs] Can I jump right into the psych stuff? Professor Freeman, you're an old friend of mine, we've been talking for years about these books and I always learn something. I'm going to jump into this: I think we've all heard that Ms. Rowling thinks of the Dementors as images of clinical depression. These are floating clouds of angst and fear.
LF: Mhm.
JG: This is more serious than the blues, obviously. This is not just feeling bad because you failed a test or you lost a boyfriend or something. Can you tell us what depression really is, and why the Dementors are good or bad representations of it?
LF: Oh, sure. Yes, well JK Rowling has said many times that the Dementors were inspired by her own experience with clinical depression. She no doubt drew from her own experience, but I think she probably did quite a bit of professional reading about the subject too, just because she nails it so well with her depiction of the Dementors. The American Psychiatric Association publishes a book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - I know Cassie has heard of that one, right? [laughs] - DSM-IV. It's in the fourth edition now, and the fifth edition should be coming out next year. But it is the professional's guide to diagnosing mental illness. And the DSM-IV actually lists nine separate symptoms associated with full-blown clinical depression, and a patient has to have five of the nine in order to get an [unintelligible] diagnosis. Well, Rowling's depiction of the Dementors at one point or another show us all nine of these traits.
JG: Wow. That's incredible.
LF: Every one of them gets nailed at some point. Do you want me to tell you the whole thing?
JG: Yeah, go for it! I love this.
LF: All right. Well, the two most important ones and ones that are essential for the depression diagnosis are the profound feeling of sadness - utter despair, complete total depressed mood.
JG: Something to knock you off your broomstick.
LF: Yes, absolutely. You're quite right. Much more than the blues. Utter hopelessness. But the second part that goes along with that is the inability to feel happiness at the same time. So, that feeling that every happy memory has been sucked out of you. That is exactly what a depressed person feels, and so of course I don't think it's any coincidence at all that that's exactly what the Dementors do to you.
JG: Well, let me ask you this though because everybody has felt depression at some point in time, that's listening to the show. We've all felt a sense of helplessness, of hopelessness. Just in our everyday lives. Something comes up, we have a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and you feel like your world is crumbling. But that doesn't mean that everybody suffers from depression, right? I mean, there has to be substantial...
LF: Yup.
JG: ...length of time of which this occurs. Is that correct?
LF: Right, right, right. And the DSM-IV specifies... I believe it's a month that you have to feel these symptoms and feel them in the absence of any particular cause. Yes, if you've just experienced the death of a loved one, you're going to feel like this probably for several days or weeks. But it's when you feel like this for months on end and can't imagine feeling any other way, that is when you get to be a point where you probably would be diagnosed with clinical depression.
JG: What are some of the other things? I think you've got two or three other more things that link right into the Dementors.
LF: Yes. Okay, well three of the others actually Sirius Black tells us about when he's describing Azkaban prison. The three symptoms are weight loss, sleep disturbances, and what's called psychomotor retardation, which is simply slowing down, physically or mentally. The prisoners of Azkaban, they stop eating, they shriek in their sleep, and they all "go quiet" at the end.
JG:[laughs] That's right.
LF: They stop talking, they stop moving, they stop trying to escape. Lupin told us that Azkaban doesn't actually need its walls or its water to keep the prisoners in. They can't... they're put in that state where they can't really help themselves. The last four symptoms. Fatigue and loss of energy: Harry talks about his strength leaving him when he's approached by the Dementors. Feelings of guilt and worthlessness: the guilt Harry feels as he relives his parents' death and the fact that he feels guilty about wanting to hear their voices even if it means experiencing these Dementors. You saw that when he was in training and trying to learn the Patronus Charm. The inability to think or concentrate: they talk about Dementors "fogging your brain."
[JG laughs]
LF: You can't think when they are approaching you. And the final symptom is thoughts of death and suicide. And if you look particularly at how the Dementors affect Harry - and of course, they affect Harry more than they affect a lot of other kids - is he relives his parents' death at first. In the later texts, like when he's attacked in Order of the Phoenix in his neighborhood, he relives Voldemort in the cemetery telling him to, "Bow to death, Harry."
JG: That's right, that's right.
KH: Well, there's also the one where he goes into the forest in "7" and the Dementors - it's during the battle, and the three of them, Harry, Ron, and Hermione...
LF: Yes.
KH: ...are all out there in the fields, and the Dementors approach, and they all three can't get their Patronus working and they feel like they're going to die. And Harry specifically says this is the end right here, and then all of a sudden these Patronuses come out of nowhere from Luna, Dean, and I think Seamus or something - no, it was Ernie Macmillan - and save them. But it was like for that little moment in time, they felt like that was the end of it.
JG: This is fascinating, Louise, in that I've always... people ask me what would I ask Joanne Rowling if I was in a position like Keith to meet her at a signing or something, and I thought, well, I don't know if I want to ask her questions. I want to see her bookshelf. You're suggesting that we should look on her bookshelf to see if there's a DSM-IV there [laughs] to see if she's actually...
LF: Yeah.
JG: ...studied a little psychological diagnosis because the Dementors - from what you're saying - show it all, that basically the critical symptoms of depression are all evident in the story depiction of the Dementors and how we experience them.
LF: That's exactly right.
JG: Well, how about the chocolate? Tell me... [laughs] what's the deal with the chocolate as a cure? Is there any science to that?
LF: Well, now remember, chocolate is not the cure. Chocolate helps you recover after the attack.
JG: Oh, okay. Yeah, you can't throw chocolate at a Dementor, "Eat this! Go away!" [laughs]
LF: It doesn't... you can't chase the Dementors off with the Chocolate Frog, otherwise you'd never need the Patronus Charm. Well, that's very interesting. That's a little bit of popular psychology, I think, working its way in. The idea that chocolate has magical or medicinal properties isn't new. Its name, actually - its scientific name, theobroma - means "food of the gods."
[JG laughs]
LF: So, many people do believe it counteracts depression. Many people take it when they're depressed to make themselves feel better, and it actually does have some what you might call "feel good chemicals" in it. It has caffeine, of course. It has another caffeine-like stimulant, theobromine, that's specific to chocolate. And, interestingly enough, it was discovered about ten or fifteen years ago now that it has at least one ingredient in it that closely resembles THC, which is the active ingredient in marijuana.
JG: Woo-hoo! [laughs]
LF: Ah-ha! [laughs]
KH: I've suffered from a few chocolate highs in my time.
[JG laughs]
LF: Okay. Well...
KH: Cassi, do you think chocolate was used as the... not a cure, but as the way to deal with the depression from the Dementors because JK Rowling simply likes chocolate and it makes her feel comfortable? Or do you think it was actually that she wrote that because of a clinical reason?
[JG laughs]
CD: That's a great question. Well, there is a short-term benefit with eating chocolate as it increases certain brain chemicals, but it's not a long-term fix. And that's why maybe they're still susceptible to the Dementors when they come back later.
JG: I get it. Well, okay, so the chocolate thing - again, not a cure, but a treatment, in a way, to bring you back from the depression you experience when you meet one of these things. Rowling obviously had this depression thing, she had her own personal Dementors. She admitted suffering from depression and that she went into therapy for it, and a specific type of therapy. What can you tell us about that, Louise? And, can you see this therapeutic element inside the stories?
LF: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, in 2008, Ms. Rowling told a student newspaper in... I think it was Edinburgh, that she was treated with cognitive behavioral therapy at the worst of her depression, and this was a type of therapy that was actually developed specifically for depression, although it's used for a variety of situations now, by a man named Aaron Beck in the 1960s. But the process of cognitive behavioral therapy - Beck found out in his studies of depressed patient is that they tend to automatically formulate very negative thoughts about themselves, and the world, and the future. They had a hard time recalling happy times. They had a very good... very easy, however, for them to recall sad memories, or depressing memories, or frightening memories. So, in cognitive behavioral therapy, a patient works with a therapist and learns specific ways of changing their thoughts. They are taught to identify, evaluate, and replace these dysfunctional thoughts they are having with more positive ones. It is a very effective way of treating depression. So, the idea that you would summon up your Patronus to fight off the Dementors, or to fight off depression...
JG: Oh! [laughs]
LF: ...by focusing on a happy memory is really exactly what a cognitive behavioral therapist would recommend. And, Keith, that scene that you were talking about before when... in the Battle of Hogwarts when, for the first time, Harry and Ron and Hermione are unable to get their Patronuses out and fight off the Dementors, and their three friends, Ernie, Seamus, and Luna, turn up. Well, Luna is the cognitive behavioral therapist in that scene.
[JG laughs]
LF: She's the one who tells Harry...
JG: That's great. She identifies, she evaluates, and replaces. Did I get that right?
LF: Basically, she just very calmly tells him, think of something happy. Harry is in a bad state, with quite good reason. He's just seen Fred die, he's just seen Hagrid carried off by the spiders - so he's justifiably upset, distraught, sad - but he's making the situation worse through his thought processes. What he is thinking under those influences of those Dementors is: how many other people must be dead? If Fred is dead and if Hagrid has been carried off by spiders, there must be a million other people dead that I don't know about, and this is hopeless. And what Luna tells him - she says, "We're all still here, we're all still fighting." She tried to get him to focus on what he did have, what he had left. The fact that these three of his friends... I don't think it's a coincidence that one represents each house: one Ravenclaw, one Hufflepuff, one Gryffindor.
JG:[laughs] That's great.
LF: They're still there, they're still fighting, and that gets through to him and he's able to pull himself together and conjure up the stag patronus.
KH: That's great. I like that, I like that a lot. I want to dive into though, if you don't mind - I want to get into those characterizations. Some of the people that are in the stories that, I think, suffer from depression or... what am I? I'm not a psychologist or anything related.
[LF laughs]
KH: I'm not even notable at all. But in my opinion, from what I know of depression, one of the characters that stands out the most as far as depression to me goes to Winky. Winky is just... I mean, she is severely depressed to the point that she is drinking all the time, just not taking care of herself, not taking care of her clothes. Would you agree that Winky is probably one of the most depressed characters in the book?
LF: Well, Winky is like... Winky is experiencing a type of traumatic stress, I think. But I think a lot of psychologists would call Winky's condition something different. They'd call Winky as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome is a condition. It got its name in 1973 after a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, where a number of people were held hostage in a bank vault by these bank robbers for six days. They were threatened with death, they were stuck in this bank vault with their captors for six days, and a very strange thing happened: they started identifying with the captors and they started thinking the captors were their friends and the police and everyone who was trying to rescue them were their enemies. So, after they were rescued they remained very loyal to their captors, they... some of them contributed money to the defensive funds of their captors, and they refused to testify against the robbers in the trial. They seemed to have, for some strange reason, developed this devotion to the person that was holding them hostage. And so, this model, this idea of Stockholm Syndrome, has been expanded to consider other relationships, for instance why a battered woman might choose to stay with an abusive spouse, and in some cases have also been applied to slave-master relationships, and used to explain the very child-like dependency some African American slaves, for instance, had with their masters. So, I think that would be probably the specific condition Winky would be described as having, is Stockholm Syndrome.
KH: Okay, so Winky is suffering it because as a regular house-elf who is doing her job... I mean, in the house-elf magic, that's what they do. They are obedient to their master, and the only way they get freed is if they're given clothes. So, you're saying this... it's almost like a prisoner of war.
LF: Yeah.
KH: They get to rely on their captors for their food, for their safety, for everything else, and they're just totally submissive to them. But when they escape from that, I think it all clears up but for Winky it never did.
LF: Yeah.
KH: A prisoner of war from Vietnam who comes back to American soil, they can re-adjust to the regular life. They may still have nightmares and visual images of what they went through, but I think they still want that freedom. Whereas for Winky, it's totally different. They don't want the freedom as a house-elf. They want to be, as you said, in this Stockholm Syndrome world. I don't know if I buy that it's a depression, though.
LF: I'm not saying it's... I think it would be diagnosed as something different than clinical depression.
JG: Right.
LF: I probably think...
JG: And we're going to... Keith is up on this because we're going to be talking about this next week, I hope, or next show is going to be about just the house-elves and...
LF: Oh, wonderful.
JG: ...what they represent inside the story. But yeah, this is fascinating, Professor Louise, because I remember growing up that this syndrome was used to describe Patty Hearst and her relationship with...
LF: Patty Hearst, yes.
JG: ...the Symbionese Liberation Army that kidnapped her...
LF: Yes.
JG: ...and then she became an active member of this really violent sect. She went from prisoner to active member in bank robberies and such. That's exactly what we're talking about. And Winky never seems to get it.
LF: Yeah.
JG: She's still right with Barty Crouch until the end when they rub her mask off or whatever. But we're talking about crazy characters. How about Mad-Eye Moody? He seems wonderfully heroic and he's a guy that's crazy. "Take that wand out of your pants or you'll blow your buttocks off," or whatever. He's like a man unhinged. What does a psychologist see in the Auror and the guy who winds up, really, the marder of the series? Should we love him? Should we loathe him? Should we pity him? [laughs] What's the appropriate response to Mad-Eye Moody as a psychological profile?
LF: At the end, Harry honored him and I think that's really the best way of approaching Mad-Eye. Mad-Eye, I think, is a caricature of another condition, post traumatic stress disorder. That also... he doesn't have every single symptom in the DSM, but he has quite a number of them. First, you can look at his name. One of the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder is moodiness or irritability, of course.
JG: There it is. [laughs]
LF: When you name a character Moody, who is moody, an irritability, and proned out [unintelligible]. But his first name, Alastor - that means avenger, which literally translates as "he who does not forget." One of the characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder patients is that they keep having intrusive recollections or intrusive memories. They can't forget the trauma they've suffered. They keep reliving the experience. So, I think naming him Alastor, Alastor Moody, is a good indication that he is heading in that direction. Another symptom they have is hyper vigilance.
JG:[laughs] That fits.
LF: And when your motto is "constant vigilance"...
JG: That's right.
LF: And when you have a magical eye that allows you to see far beyond mortal men, you might say, see what you're concerned about. When your magical eye is always twirling around and looking for danger, that's a very... that's another symptom. He has the exaggerated startle reflex, he has the jumpiness, the twitchiness. A post-traumatic stress disorder patient also tends to believe themselves to have a foreshortened future. They believe they're going to die soon.
[JG laughs]
LF: Moody, of course, was paranoid about being poisoned, he drank only from his own flask. He was overly cautious, like with not wanting to put your wand in your pants pocket, as you mentioned, John.
[JG laughs]
LF: And when you look at the first rescue, we saw the real Moody as opposed to Barty Crouch Jr. lead in Order of the Phoenix. He is completely paranoid. He is convinced they're going to be attacked as soon as they leave Privet Drive. And Tonks is there, she's telling him he's crazy. Kingsley Shacklebolt is there, he's saying don't worry, no one is going to die, we're not going to get attacked, we're going to be just fine. Moody is completely, completely paranoid at that point.
JG: But in Book 7, right? He's completely right on.
LF: Exactly.
JG: It's not paranoia if you're right, if they are out to get you!
LF: Well, exactly. And those post-traumatic stress disorder - yeah, well I think so. The PTSD symptoms, they come in handy when you're actually on the battlefield.
JG:[laughs] That's right.
LF: It's actually a very useful thing. It's not a bad thing.
JG: You're right. Moody has... basically he's a basket case, psychologically, but he has all of his...
LF: During peacetime, he is.
JG: ...symptoms when he puts them to service against the Dark Lord and his minions. He winds up being the man of the hour. It's sort of like Winston Churchill. You don't want Winston Churchill to really be in charge unless you're in a war, but boy, in wartime you want Winston Churchill! I get it, I get it.
KH: John, let me jump in. Let me ask Cassie a question. Actually, I'll swing it around the whole table, but I want to start off with Cassie. Cassie, who is your favorite and what psychological listing would you put them under?
CD: Oh gosh, that's a great question. I really like Hermione, but as far as assigning her a pathology, not every character has some sort of a disorder. Part of what we need to consider for mental disorders is whether it's unusual for their culture, which, in these books, is obviously different than our own culture. As far as Hermione, I think she is a little bit different than the other characters, but I don't think that we give her a clinical diagnosis.
KH: You don't think she has a little obsessive compulsive disorder?
JG:[laughs] That's great.
CD: Well, if she does have OCD, I don't think it's disruptive for her, which is part of the criteria. But I can definitely see how she's maybe leaning in that direction.
JG: That's great. Louise, who is your favorite character?
LF: Oh, well, Hermione is my favorite too, of course. I have to go for the brainy young woman.
[JG laughs]
LF: But I think my second favorite character would be Neville.
JG: Keith? How about you? What's your favorite?
KH: My favorite is Luna Lovegood. I love Luna.
[JG laughs]
KH: She's such a rich character. I mean, obviously we don't get introduced to her until Book 5, but she... she's not at all depressed. She's also... I don't know if there's any kind of psychological thing that she is except just in her own world. She's more of the truth of the story, so...
JG: That's a great point, Keith, because she's the only character who never lies!
KH: She doesn't do anything wrong! Everything is true to herself, she is true in the story, she is a friend to everybody...
JG: She's a bit of a nutter, Keith. She believes in creatures that don't exist and that kind of thing. But I get the honesty part.
KH: Is that really a nutter, though? Seriously? Is that really a nutter, who sees things that we don't see? I think that's it, she's just the truth of the book. It's there, it's in her head, whether or not it's, say, visual reality to her or not, she understands it in her own way. And I wish most people would be like that.
JG: I hear you!
KH: This world would be a lot happier if we had more Lunas in this world.
JG: I hear you, I've written and spoken at length about Luna in Harry Potter Smart Talk or whatever. She represents a whole different side of feminine intelligence, if you will, than Professor McGonagall and Hermione. Sort of the intuitive and the cardiac intelligence. And yeah, in a way she's a real balancing factor inside the books. My favorite character in terms of psychological issues is Hagrid, Rubeus Hagrid. Here's a guy that has issues from the very start, you know? He just looks different than everybody else, [laughs] his mom has left him, his dad dies when he's at school, he identifies with Albus Dumbledore who's sort of Superman in the books and no one that Hagrid can ever really be like, and yet he has this excellent heart. Like Luna. Keith and I both go for the guys and gals with the big hearts that are loyal, sacrificial, and they try to see the larger picture. They try to see the inside bigger than the outside inside each person. Anyway, that was a great question. Let's go for the person that nobody likes! How about the Dark Lord? I've heard Lord Voldemort, online and in person, called both a psychopath and a sociopath. Louise, can you explain the difference between those two terms? Because I think one of them, at least, is misused when applied to the Dark Lord.
LF: Well, I mean, there are psychologists who would argue that there really is no difference. And, in fact, if you consult the DSM-IV, it really would block both of them into one category: antisocial personality disorder. So psychopaths and sociopaths, they share a lot in common. They both disregard social norms, they disregard the rights of others, they often physically bully others or torture animals as children, Voldemort certainly did that. They lack remorse for their actions, they lack a conscious, and they lack empathy for the victims. So, the psychologist that's most likely to try to make a distinction between the two is the forensic psychologist, the one who is examining psychology and the legal system, or psychology and crime. And that type of person, that type of researcher, is going to be looking at the very small minority of psychopaths and sociopaths that commit violent crimes. It's important to keep in mind that many people - estimates range from 1-5% of the total population - might actually meet the criteria for antisocial personality disorder, so might be a psychopath or sociopath. Only a very small minority of those go on to actually commit violent crime and therefore encounter the legal system.
But a psychopathic person is going to be very organized about their activities. They're going to plan their crimes, plan their murders if they're a murderer, very carefully, very ritualistically. They're often very charming people, superficially. They may successfully live in society, hold down a job, conceal their activities for many years passing as a normal human being, but having this dark side, this secret life. Ted Bundy is a classic case of a psychopath. They have absolutely no genuine affection or attachment to anyone, even their family and their closest friends.
Now, the sociopath has no empathy, no sympathy, no relationships with most people, but is actually capable of forming some bonds with a select few, maybe the immediate family or the few close friends. And either they don't harm those people, or if they do they feel bad about it. But they're often more impulsive, they're often more disorganized, so that they are not as likely to be successful in hiding their activity, so they're more likely to have gotten in trouble with the law, been kicked out of school, lost jobs, live on the fringes of society. So sociopaths, a lot of people know they have problems. Psychopaths may go for years and fool a lot of people, as the young Voldemort did.
JG: Okay, so basically you're saying Tom Riddle Jr. is a psychopath...
LF: I think... yeah. [laughs]
JG: ...because he can hide this stuff, he can plan out his things, he can keep himself in hiding, he can be charming when he wants to be, et cetera. I get it. Do you think the root of this... and Rowling seems... as Cassie said, we seem to get into this most in Half-Blood Prince. Do you think it's genetics, primarily? The wacko origins, the relationship of his parents? Or is it his upbringing at the orphanage?
LF: Oh, most researchers I think would say specifically psychopaths are probably born that way. With sociopaths, you may be more likely to be able to point to specific trauma or abuse or something like that in the history. But a lot of psychopaths seem to be basically born that way. When you think about his upbringing, yes, an orphanage is not a pleasant place. It's going to be bleak at times. But if you look at the specific orphanage that Tom lived in, it was not an Oliver Twist type situation.
JG: Right.
LF: Mrs. Cole was not Mrs. Bumble. He was not locked in a cupboard or starved or beaten. The place was clean, the children had food, medical care, toys, pets. They got to go on vacation at the sea shore. By orphanage standards, it wasn't that bad. Yes, the lack of parents, the lack of affection would have been serious, but probably not enough by itself to create something like Voldemort. Now, if you look at his, Voldemort's, blood relatives - his grandfather and uncle, Marvolo and Morfin - those would probably be more typically sociopaths. They're the ones... they're trouble makers. They live off by themselves on the fringes of society, they're always in trouble, that type of thing. So, there may very well have been some genetic situation. If poor upbringing before you got to Hogwarts was a problem - it was going to automatically make you turn into an evil wizard - well, Harry would have been a very evil wizard because my guess is there were many times he would have happily traded the Dursleys in for Tom's orphanage.
JG: I get it. And Rowling recently said in an interview about Casual Vacancy that Harry Potter almost certainly would have been one damaged puppy if he had gone through everything he was supposed to have experienced from Stone to Hallows. Do you agree or disagree with that?
LF: Oh, I would agree. I think that's... how many times did he watch someone he cared about either get tortured or get killed...
[JG laughs]
LF: ...in front of his eyes? There's only so many times one can go through that. But I think that's true of child heroes of all sorts, particularly in the fantasy genre. They have very high levels of resilience. Otherwise all of the Batman comics...
[JG laughs]
LF: ...published since about 1950 would have shown Batman visiting Robin in the psychiatric hospital because there's only so many times you can be kidnapped by your arch enemy before it starts to affect you. Yes, in a realistic world, I think Harry could have wound up more like Peeta or Katniss at the end of Mockingjay. He was okay, he survived, he could even be happy, have a life, but still permanently affected. The magic of Rowling's world allowed her to say at the end, "All is well."
JG: I get it. But you think outside of the genre requirements that Harry's year with his biological parents relatively immunized him against the abuses he suffered at the Dursleys?
LF: I don't know. I'd like to hear Cassie's opinion on this. A lot of psychologists would say probably... it certainly wouldn't have hurt, having a good relationship for the first year. But I think most psychologists would say those years in which you are forming the memories - the later years, the early childhood, two, three, four, five, and up - would probably have a bigger effect than that first year where few, if any, memories get sown. Would you agree, Cassie?
CD: Absolutely, yeah. We talk about what we call psychological resiliency and how important that is, especially in this case. Most of us don't start to have solid memories until maybe three or four years of age, so things prior to that I'm not sure how much you'd remember. Having such supportive parents couldn't have hurt though, so I don't know how much that first year benefited him because he is certainly an outstanding individual through the rest of the series, but it's tough to know where that comes from.
JG: Well, the obvious contrast is with his cousin, Dudley. Why isn't Dudders more messed up than he is? Do you suppose the Dementor attack woke him up a little? Because he's a train wreck until he seems to get his wake-up call from the Dementors. That's open to all three of you. I don't get how Dudders all of a sudden at the end seems to be a pretty nice guy when he's...
LF: Well, nice being a relative term [laughs] with Dudley. Well, Rowling I think addressed this in one of her other interviews, is that during that experience - and this is not shown in the book itself. I know you talked about canon on the show a few weeks ago, so this is non-canonical...
[JG laughs]
LF: ...according to some, at least. But what the Dementors showed him was himself as he was, as this spoiled, bullying brat, basically, that he is. And that experience probably forced a little empathy on him. He suddenly saw himself as others saw him, and how he appeared to others, and suddenly, he had maybe some empathy for the people he had bullied, like Harry. And of course, empathy is what the classic sociopath or psychopath doesn't have.
KH: We didn't really see Dudley in Half-Blood Prince that much. I mean, they were just sitting on the couch getting attacked by Dumbledore's glasses.
[JG laughs]
KH: The mugs of whisky or whatever that he had over their heads. But the last time we see Dudley being a brat is before he got attacked in Order of the Phoenix.
CD: Right, right.
KH: So, I agree. And I did hear JK Rowling say the same thing, that he did see himself as who he was, and I do think he woke up and said, "Hey, you know what? I'm not a very good guy and Harry is really not that bad guy, so I'll change."
CD: I think, too, if the reason he gained a little bit more respect for Harry is because his perception of magic is probably a little bit skewed. Us, Muggles, where we see magic as maybe helping us or being beneficial, but this kind of gives you the downside to being magical and the type of things that Harry might have had to battle against. So, maybe it helped to develop Harry's bravery and Dudley gained a little bit of respect for Harry as well.
JG: That sounds, forgive me, like the fantasy fiction part of the genre or whatever because Dudders gets a tail, he gets a giant tongue - believe me, he knows the downside to magic because [laughs] he seems to have suffered from the downside of magic. But I think you're right. Rowling is trying to say that the Dementor attacks can serve a positive thing if you're your worst nightmare. [laughs] If looking in the mirror is actually the worst experience you've ever had, I guess it works for Dudders.
How about some other characters here? One of my favorite characters is Harry's kind of doppelganger - the guy is born in the same month and could have been the subject of the prophecy - Neville Longbottom.
LF: Oh...
JG: He goes through a remarkable psychological transformation over the course of the books. What makes him so different?
LF: Yeah, Neville is my second favorite character, I guess. After Hermione, of course. But he does have a lot in common with Harry. He makes a similar journey at the end, although he goes at a very different pace and through a very different path, I think. He's also an orphan of Lord Voldemort. Voldemort's people didn't kill his parents, but what they put them in was actually a state that's very much like late-stage Alzheimer's disease, which, emotionally for the family, is very similar to death. It's been called "The Long Good-Bye" or "The Long Death". A lot of Alzheimer... family members of Alzheimer's patients feel like their loved one is dead long before their physical body is dead because that connection to them, that memory, that ability to recognize each other, is gone. And Rowling has said that the scene in St. Mungo's that some of us really thought was going to have some significance where Neville's mother hands him the bubblegum wrapper, and he takes it and sticks it in his pocket even though his grandmother tells him to throw it away - that was actually inspired by a friend of hers whose mother was in an Alzheimer's ward. And this friend visited his mother, he brought his mother candy so his mother connected him with the candy that he brought her. And so people who are at this very late stage of Alzheimer's, where there are points where they can't speak, they don't recognize their loved ones, they don't really know people at all, sometimes do show some hint of recognition to very familiar people, like their children. So, Neville's mother connected to him in some way: this was this boy that visits me and I hand him bubblegum wrappers. And that made the wrappers meaningful to Neville in a very sad way because that was the only connection he had.
Neville probably does show some signs of depression, which is actually common among children of Alzheimer's parents, especially when first they didn't have a close relationship prior to the onset of the disease. Of course, Neville didn't have that chance. He was only a baby when his parents were tortured. And number two is when they lack a strong social support network. Neville hadn't... Neville doesn't make friends easily. He doesn't seem to have a very good relationship, at least in the early part of the book, with his grandmother. She's a bit of a bully, she browbeats him a bit. And he struggles in school. What's interesting is some of the challenges Neville has are actually typical of boys who are raised by grandparents. Now, this doesn't mean that grandparents who are out there raising grandchildren are doing a bad job. It's far from it, they're often doing a wonderful job. But it seems to be the result of whatever unfortunate circumstance that left the parents unable to care for the child. But boys who are raised by grandmothers actually show reduced attention span, lower academic achievement; they tend to be less mature, and they tend to be more introverted, which sounds like Neville, really, up through the first five books.
JG: This is great because we see in Harry... he has no parents, he looks at Neville, with his parents on the ward and his grandmother, and he says, maybe I got off easy. My parents just died.
LF: Exactly.
JG: They didn't have this long death. And there are other... can you talk about parenting styles, from a psychological viewpoint? Because we see all sorts of parents in these books. We've got crazy Xenophilius, we've got the Weasleys - tell us about what we should know about parenting styles from a psychological perspective.
LF: Well, what I love about Harry Potter and parenting styles is - well again, you have to go back to the Dursleys - there are actually four different parenting styles. There's authoritarian, there's permissive, and there's uninvolved. Those are sort of the three bad parenting styles. And then the good one which is authoritative. The Dursleys - you get all three bad ones from the Dursleys. You have them... they're very permissive, they're very indulgent with Dudley, which leads, of course, to the kid who has no social skills, who is very self centered, very selfish, bullying, et cetera. Vernon and Petunia are probably what you would consider, for the most part, uninvolved or neglectful with Harry. They really more ignore him than actively abuse him. However, when Aunt Marge comes to visit, she's the authoritarian one. She's the one who won't leave him alone, who's always berating him for something or other, complaining that St. Brutus's where she thinks he goes to school isn't beating him hard enough with the cane, that sort of thing.
[JG laughs]
LF: So, you've got all three bad parenting styles in one family right there. And I loved it, in that scene that Keith mentioned earlier when Dumbledore comes to visit and he calls them on it. He tells them, you damaged Dudley more than you did Harry, and I thought that was very...
KH: So then obviously the Weasleys, with Molly being the authoritative figure, that's a great family to be raised in.
LF: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah, Molly can blow her temper at times, but usually only when the kids really, really have done something that's out of line. She doesn't... an authoritative parent has consistent expectations, high expectations for their children, does discipline them when they need it, but also encourage their independence and take real pride in their accomplishments, and you certainly see that from Molly.
KH: That's great. I want to get into one other subject though, John, before we close up this show. No show would be complete without talking about this character on a psychology level, but I want to also just back into... Goddess_Clio sent us this email into us and requested that we do this actual show. And she was looking at the Voldemort sociopathy, which we already discussed, she was looking at Harry's pathos, which we pretty much discussed, Hermione's know-it-all attitude - but the one thing we didn't cover is Bellatrix. And Bellatrix is a psychological character profile, I think, to the nth degree. Can you tell us what your analysis is? And let's start off with Cassie on this one, get her involved here. Cassie, tell us what your thoughts are on Bellatrix as a character, and maybe even the Black family because there's different levels all around from Sirius to Tonks to Narcissa, Andromeda with marrying the Muggle - there's a whole spectrum of psychoanalysis in this family, but Bellatrix is where I want to basically focus on later.
CD: Yeah, the family does. There's so much diversity there. We have some people that have adapted better, and we have some people that really haven't adapted and end up with a worse outcome. I definitely think there's an element of anti-social personality disorder.
[LF laughs]
CD: The other idea that hasn't come up yet is maybe borderline personality disorder. What suggests that is her relationship with Voldemort. She's always really looking for his praise, and she seems to idolize him much more than anybody else. People with borderline personality disorder usually have rigid thinking, and she's really set in black and white ideas with her prejudice. She seems to have some of those symptoms, so I wonder if it could be an element of borderline personality disorder and maybe anti-social personality as well. The character is really rich in different types of psychological analyses that you can do.
KH: Great. And professor, what are your thoughts on it?
LF: Oh, I think Cassie's got it right on the money there. She probably would not meet the definition of a psychopath just because she does have some affection for a few people. Whether this relationship she has with Voldemort is true affection versus obsession or something like that I'm not quite sure, but she does seem to for instance genuinely love her sister. She has enough... she cares for Malfoy - Draco - enough to teach him Occlumency. I'm surprised she had the mental control for Occlumency, but apparently she does because she's the one who taught Draco. So, I think she probably would not be considered psychopathic. Maybe sociopathic, I think, with some of the personality disorders, anti-social, borderline. Ironically, of course she's also, I think... well, the whole family, I think. The name Narcissa indicates that the whole family is probably a little bit narcissistic, which is another, of course, personality disorder. This self-involvement, this focus on yourself, and this sort of realizing this attitude of I'm the one that's right and everyone else has the problem. [laughs] I think you get a lot of that in the Black family, which I think is what makes them ultimately such bigots and guilty of such prejudice.
JG: Well, it seems that this self-importance and this inability to identify to any degree with something that is other, is sort of the backdrop to the whole pureblood theme inside these books and prejudice, that the establishment, the regime, is narcissistic in that it's itself justifying its... we have the power because we deserve it, et cetera. And we see that, as you say, in the Black family. I want to take us to a final turn, Keith, if you don't mind. We've got a psychology professor here and a psychology student, both of whom are neck-deep in Harry Potter studies, and they love these stories, and they're academics. Do you see... is Harry Potter really part of the conversation now in academia? When you start talking about concepts, do you throw out... when you're talking about psychopathology, do you say, "Let's look at the Dark Lord and you'll see how this person looks like it?" Is this now part... is this shared text now informing psychological study at the levels you two are studying and teaching?
LF: Oh, I think it is. I mean, just because it's a book that most of your students - if they're not familiar with the books they're familiar with the movies. So, if you want to illustrate, say, permissive parenting, you say, "Like Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley," and they know instantly what you're talking about. It's interesting, the first time Harry Potter ever came up in my classroom, after I was teaching a course in drugs and behavior, and we were talking about anti-collanergics, this class of drugs that affect acetylcholine levels in your brain, and I happened to mention mandrakes.
[JG laughs]
LF: I was completely unfamiliar with Harry Potter at the time, but about eight hands in my class went up and they said, "You mean like in Harry Potter?" And of course I did not know what they were talking about at that point, having not read the books, so I had to get them to explain. But we made a connection there with, okay yes, mandrakes do in fact have this chemical that blocks acetylcholine in your brain, and it is traditionally used in folk medicine and in witchcraft, and to my knowledge you cannot unpetrify anyone. But yes, you certainly can connect to students and I think that's why some therapists have found the Harry Potter illustrations, when they have a client who has read the series, who knows the series well, to look at this. I mean, if I were to go out and decide to treat someone with cognitive behavioral therapy - which I can't do because I'm not licensed - but if they had read the Harry Potter books, I might have said, "Okay, this is sort of like the Patronus Charm," and in fact it really is.
JG: Cassie, you're up from the different end of this because Louise - she was already a very serious student of psychology, certified, et cetera, when she came to Harry Potter. You experienced Harry Potter first and then began to explore psychology. When you read a psychology text, are you thinking, "Oh, this is like this. I recognize this syndrome"? Does that inform the way you came into the subject?
CD: It definitely does, yeah. I'm also a lecturer for an intro class, so I have used Voldemort in particular because some of my students - maybe they haven't read the books, but they have seen the movie, and so I've been able to use him to describe certain concepts, like specifically with anti-social personality disorder. Personally, I find myself - when I'm learning a new concept, I link these concepts to the books. And I've been surprised too because I'm a cognitive psychologist, which deals more with the mind and the power of choice and free will, and I see similar concepts in Harry Potter. And I wonder, which came first? Is it something I believed and drew me to Harry Potter, or is it that Harry Potter brought that out in me and that's why I have an interest in cognitive psychology?
JG: Wow. [laughs] Louise, we talked to Suzanne Keen who is down the road from where you teach - she's at Washington and Lee - and she says that her literature students have different skills and different understanding consequent to reading these books about literature. Do you find that your students who have come through Harry Potter and Hunger Games, et cetera, are different than the generation before Generation X, or are they pretty much the same?
LF: Well, it's hard for me to say. I think the biggest difference is that in many cases - and I've heard this more from literature professors than I encounter in my own field, but I've had some of my colleagues in English classes tell me that students are not as intimidated by long books the way they used to be.
JG:[laughs] Yeah, if you grew up carrying around 800-page books, I guess it doesn't have the same fear factor than it would otherwise.
LF: Yeah, so that's certainly one difference. Psychology itself, I'm not sure. I think there was a time when you were going to talk about these shared experiences or what you called the "shared texts," you would probably have had to find an example for the most popular movie of the day or the most popular television show of the day to find something that enough of the class is familiar with that you could illustrate this particular concept. Now, you can go to Harry Potter and do that, and you're actually, I think, more likely to find an entire class full of students familiar with Harry Potter than you are familiar with the latest TV show.
KH: Well, do you have any other questions, John, for these lovely ladies?
JG: I mean, this has been a great show. We're just about at an hour.
KH: It was definitely interesting. Yeah, it was definitely an interesting show. I like diving into the psychoanalysis of Voldemort especially, but also touching on some of the characters that we really like.
JG: Yeah, I'm loving the Winky Stockholm Syndrome thing. I'm seeing Winky dressed up like Patty Hearst. It's a wonderful mental picture for me.
KH: Yeah, I never actually thought of that. That was really good. Well, I can't say thank you enough to both of you. Dr. Louise Freeman, professor at Mary Baldwin College, we appreciate you coming on the show and being our special guest today.
LF: Well, thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.
KH: And Cassandra from Southern Illinois University, thank you for coming on the show and being our student guest today.
CD: Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to be a part of the show.
KH: Great, I'm glad you did.
LF: Good luck with your thesis.
CD: Thank you very much, professor.
KH: If you would like to be a guest student on the show, all you need to do is go to MuggleNet Academia, go on the website, and we have some information that you need to send into us. You need to be a college student who is majoring in a particular subject with a couple of years experience, or a graduate student, or actually a recent graduate that is working out in the field. We'd love to have your opinions on our show as well. We do have a couple of good shows coming up. We have the next two already scheduled. Next Sunday, we are going to be meeting with Professor Katie McDaniel who is Associate Professor of History at Marietta College, and we're going to be talking about Elfin Mystique. You want to give a little preview of that, John, at all, or do you want to just wait until next week?
JG: Oh, yeah. Well, just very quickly, Professor McDaniel was the person who really broke the code on the house-elves as housewives, and Rowling's talking about feminist theory inside the books using the house-elves. Believe me, that's going to be a mind-blowing show.
KH: And then the following one which would be, I believe, Lesson 13, would be with Professor Nexon for Harry Potter and political science. That one's going to be a little different.
JG: Oh, yeah! Because Professor Nexon - he went to Columbia and Harvard, and now he teaches at Georgetown. We're talking about the whitest of the ivory towers, the highest of the ivory towers here, and he's written about how Harry Potter's language and ideas really have come to inform the discussion of international relations and political science. So, we're going to talk about everything from the Nazis to the war on terror, to the latest election. The presidential election is coming right up! We'll do that show right before the big elections. That promises, too, to be a...
KH: That's why we timed it that way, right? [laughs] Get it done before the presidential election, aye?
[JG and KH laugh]
JG: You schedule them, Keith. You schedule them!
KH: All right, John. I guess that's going to wrap up this show. Another good episode! So, if you have any input into the show, and you want to write a quibble on what you just listened on the psychology of Harry Potter, feel free to send it in to keith at staff dot mugglenet dot com. I'll be happy to put it on the site. We had a recent quibble that came in from Bethan Jones on Lesson 10 on the canon of Harry Potter. It was really well-written, it gave a really good analysis of the discussion, made some valid points. And there were also a few emails on that lesson that came in on the subject of Harry Potter canon. It seemed to be a really popular show, and it was really well-received. But we would like to hear from you guys. If you also have any inputs on the subjects that you'd like to hear on future episodes, feel free to send that in as well. In fact, we even had this lesson on the psychology of Harry Potter from a suggestion by a fan, so that was really good. MuggleNet Academia also has a mobile app. If you have a smartphone, either an iOS device like an iPhone, iPod touch, or an iPad, you go to download Podcast Box in the iTunes Store. Podcast Box is a free application, and then from there, you search for MuggleNet Academia and you download the MuggleNet Academia app for $1.99.
[Show music begins]
KH: If you have an Android device, you simply go to Amazon.com and download the MuggleNet Academia mobile app from there for $1.99. Right now, we have five bonus shows on there. We spoke to four different instructors and they were all really interesting, based on what subjects they teach in college, and it's a good listen. But otherwise, I think that's it for us! So, thank you for listening. From MuggleNet.com, my name is Keith Hawk.
JG: I'm John Granger, the Hogwarts Professor and author of The Deathly Hallows Lectures.
LF: Louise Freeman, Psychology Department, Mary Baldwin College.
CD: And I'm Cassie Dinius, a graduate student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
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