Why We Read Fiction_ Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine [34]
Katerina Ivanovna does not like the thought of accepting advice from her landlady (whom she considers infinitely beneath herself), and she lets it show. The disagreement between the two women escalates into an ugly fight. At this moment, a temporary lodger enters the room, a respectable well-to-do lawyer Petr Petrovich Luzhin. Earlier, Katerina Ivanovna had told everyone that Luzhin was a friend of her first husband, a protege of her father, and the very man who would use his significant connections to secure her the pension (all of which is, of course, her invention). Now Katerina Ivanovna turns to this near-stranger for support:
"Petr Petrovich!" cried she, "at least you protect me! Impress upon that stupid beast that she cannot treat this way a gentlewoman in distress, that there is court and justice .. . I will to the Governor-General. . . She will answer for it.. . In the memory of my father's past hospitality, protect us orphans!"
"Excuse me, Madam .. . I beg your pardon, excuse me, Madam," Petr Petrovich was trying to get past her. "I've never had an honor of meeting your dear father, as you well know yourself. .. beg your pardon, Madam!" (Someone in the room roared with laughter.) "And I have not the least intention to participate in your endless squabbles with [your landlady . . |."
Katerina Ivanovna stood still, unable to move, as if struck by lightning. She could not comprehend how Petr Petrovich could disavow the hospitality of her dear father. Having once invented that hospitality, she now completely believed it herself. . . . (407-8; translation mine)
I have no intention of "diagnosing" the poor Katerina Ivanovna with selective amnesia or schizophrenia, but I do want to point out that her delusions clearly stem from the failure to monitor properly the source of her representations. Katerina Ivanovna's "I wish I could get a pension for my husband" changes to "I get a pension for my husband," and her "I wish this respectable and influential man (i.e., Petr Petrovich) were a friend of my first husband and a protege of my father" registers in her mind as "This respectable and influential man was a friend of my first husband and a protege of my father." Note that because these representations are allowed to circulate freely, that is, without "tags" pointing to herself as their source, in Katerina Ivanovna's mind they produce inferences that can corrupt the already existing stores of knowledge. After all, Katerina Ivanovna's late father had been a socially prominent figure, and Petr Petrovich could have been, in principle, welcomed in his house, if the two men had ever had a chance to meet. What happens here is that Katerina Ivanovna's original memory of her father's house is now corrupted by the conviction that Petr Petrovich used to be a frequent guest there. (Compare it to the hypothetical situation above, in which the information that it is raining gold, when assimilated without a source-specifying tag, such as, "It was Eve who told me," begins to impact our other knowledge stores and results in harmful behavior, such as canceling classes, quitting the job, maxing out on credit cards, etc.).
EVERYDAY FAILURES OF SOURCE-MONITORING
f course, it is not just the hapless Katerina Ivanovna who invents stories about the state of affairs in the world and begins to act upon them as if they were real. We all do it. In many cases, such self-deception is quite beneficial—as one of the more level-headed (or just differently insane) characters from Crime and Punishment observes, "Best lives he who dupes himself the best" (502). But generally, especially if we consider the closely related issue of personal memories, it makes sense to think of our partial failures to keep track of some of the sources of our representations as part of the normal functioning of the metarepresenting brain. When I say "normal," I mean to contrast it both with the sustained, pathological pattern of such failures typical for schizophrenic patients and with the deliberately planned and carefully highlighted instances of such