arry Potter may be a wonderful children's tale, beloved by
children and adults all over the world. But it is also interesting
to anyone who's curious about the brain. It's as if J.K. Rowling wanted
to teach in a child-friendly way about an even more fascinating subject
that children need to know about: developmental neuropsychiatric
disorders. The HP books are well worth the read from that point of view, if you
can stand near-fatal levels of adorableness and cuteness.*
Notice I'm not saying the story is a depiction of any disorder. Rather, it's educational: children might not know, for instance, what depression feels like or that it's something that can harm them and needs to be resisted.
Depression
Dementors
J. K. Rowling said that the dementors, which are supernatural creatures in the story that suck out a person's soul, were inspired by her own experience with depression. In the story, Harry experiences them firsthand. Even his neighbor, Mrs. Figg, who is a “squib” and therefore unable to cast magic spells, can see them. She describes their presence as a feeling that all the happiness has gone from the world.
In the movie, Harry is constantly attacked by dementors that hit unpredictably and leave him almost paralyzed. While showing him how to protect himself, a professor tells him they feed on every happy feeling, every happy memory, leaving one with nothing but their worst memories. Harry's godfather is also susceptible: dementors attack and almost kill him after a stressful event. Other times, a cheerful friend shows up and pulls Harry out of it or gives him food. You could even say the whole story is about people struggling with depression.
Paranoid schizophrenia
In the story one character accuses Harry being unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. The story provides a rational explanation: the crippling headaches and the hallucinations are caused by an evil wizard. But when looked at scientifically, the story can be seen as a depiction of a person imperceptibly sliding into psychiatric illness, perhaps induced by the childhood trauma of witnessing his parents being brutally murdered. Harry calls himself the “chosen one.” He hears snakes in the walls telling him to kill. He believes he can fly and has magical powers. And he is convinced that evil wizards are transmitting their thoughts to him and that paintings on the wall are giving him advice. It all seems perfectly innocent and reasonable in the book, but to an adult what's being described seems reminiscent of some (though not all) of the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
Some researchers now classify schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder because it typically begins in adolescence, though Eric Taylor, the author of Developmental Neuropsychiatry, a fascinating book which I'm reading at the moment, disputes this. Whatever its etiology, the hallucinations and the delusions that accompany them are depicted beautifully in the books, yet somehow J. K. Rowling turned this child's torment into an uplifting story: Harry struggles against his condition, which is personified as a living person (Voldemort, whose name everyone is afraid so speak for fear of making him real), and he finally works up the courage to face it and overcome it.
Self-harming and self-hate
An important scene in the book is when Ginny's will is taken over by the memory of the villain found in a diary and starts writing death threats against herself on the wall in her own blood (or maybe chicken blood; it's not clear in the movie. The book says it was some kind of paint). Harry finds her lying in a sewer and destroys the diary. This act of concern restores Ginny's feelings of self-worth and she immediately snaps out of it. Harry eventually married her. It was a perfect match . . . .
Again, in the story the villain was responsible, but it's actually giving children an important message: this is something that could happen, and it would seem as though an evil wizard put you in a sort of trance. A child self-harming is probably every parent's nightmare. There's not much about it in the scientific literature. It occurs mainly in girls, and it seems to be an attempt to release endorphins and adrenaline to compensate for or express dysphoria. Drug abuse is essentially another form of self-harm that is very common among young people with low self-esteem.
In the past, it was thought that autism spectrum disorder or ASD protected children against drug abuse; however, according to Taylor, the normalization of ASD and its association with ADHD, which is often associated with drug abuse, have changed that picture. Indeed, people diagnosed with ASD now have twice the risk of drug abuse as age-matched controls.
Lewy body dementia
In Lewy body dementia, the part of the brain that identifies other people is damaged and the patient hallucinates dark shadowy figures of animals and other humans, much like the ghosts, dementors, invisible horses, and other supernatural creatures the children interact with in the story. It is the second most common dementing illness in the elderly. In familial cases, where LBD is caused by a genetic mutation, it has been known to start as early as age 26.
That said, as far as I know there are no reported cases of Lewy body dementia or frontotemporal dementia in teenagers, so we can rule out the possibility that Hogwarts was actually a hospital for children with early-onset dementia. So, forget that one.
Capgras syndrome
Capgras syndrome is when the patient believes an impostor has replaced a familiar person. A related disorder is Frégoli syndrome, where the patient is convinced a stranger is really a familiar person in disguise. Both of these neurological disorders are nicely depicted in the Potter story: in one scene, Barty Crouch Jr. takes on the appearance of Harry's friend Mad-Eye Moody. Harry almost gets killed several times before he figures out what was going on.
In another scene, several of Harry's friends drink a magic potion that makes them sound and appear identical to Harry. Harry himself used the same potion to impersonate the students Crabb and Goyle, and Crabb and Goyle also used it to take on the appearance and demeanor of innocent little girls—an action that is now very popular among certain muggles about whom we are not permitted to speak. . . .
Capgras and Frégoli are caused by damage to a specialized part of the brain known as the fusiform cortex, which is dedicated to identifying faces. Without it, we could not distinguish one person from another. People with damage to the fusiform face area may conclude that everyone is just a copy of the same person. Another part of the brain called the anterior insular cortex is dedicated to recognizing the presence of other minds. It's essential for us as social animals and it gives us our religious impulse, our empathy, and its flip side, our capacity for loneliness. There's a growing scientific literature on the connections between empathy and loneliness and how empathy is lost in conditions such as frontotemporal dementia.
Anger issues
In the story, Harry is often depicted as having uncontrollable anger. He yells at his favorite psychiatrist / professor, Dumbledore, and issues death threats toward his friend Dobby for breaking his arm. He also threatens to kill his godfather, Sirius, who is also his dog, who he thought had murdered his parents. Yet his anger is not only healthy and understandable, it's also essential to his recovery.
As children age, they learn to control and hide their anger. By fifteen months, effortful self-control becomes possible, and by age five they are able to conceal their anger. In adolescence, uneven brain development can cause difficulty, as maturation of the amygdala (which decides emotional valence) and other subcortical regions precedes maturation the frontal cortical regions of the brain. MRI studies have shown that activation in the amygdala and hippocampus in response to emotionally salient stimuli decreases with age.
Anger issues can also be accompanied by other mental health problems, such as bipolar depression, PTSD, and unipolar depression. However, some of the diagnoses listed in the DSM-5 and ICD-11 manuals, such as oppositional-defiant disorder, are regarded by biologists as having a flimsy biological basis. The problem is not so much in diagnosing them, but in deciding whether they have a medical basis or are merely descriptions of unwanted behavior.
Dyslexia
Taylor says this about dyslexia:
Some authorities have restricted SRI [specific reading impairment, i.e. dyslexia] to those with supposedly distinctive symptoms such as reversing letters when writing or right-left disorientation. Research, however, has largely discredited the notion that these ‘distinctive’ features cluster into a syndrome or that they are different from the kinds of mistake that are made by typically developing children in the early stages of learning or by those with the broader problems of reading backwardness.
In short: dyslexia is not a myth, but mistaken ideas about it have hindered our understanding. Language is so important to the brain that even though language is lateralized to the left side, damage to the left hemisphere during childhood causes the brain to transfer language from the left to the right side. This preserves language but crowds out and impairs spatial processing.
Nobody seems to have dyslexia in the story. J. K. Rowling seems to have missed that one. In the movie Prof. McGonagall writes an entire lecture on the blackboard backwards. However, it is only a myth that backwards writing is a characteristic of dyslexia.
Asperger's syndrome and head injury
Although Harry tends to get fixated on his enemy, he doesn't have Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism that is said to coincide with above-average IQ: throughout the book it's clear that Harry's intelligence is strictly average. But throughout the story Harry gets a number of head injuries, starting with the scene in the Chamber of Secrets when the Sorting Hat shows up, Harry puts the hat on his head and immediately almost gets knocked unconscious when the Sword of Griffindor comes out of it.
The skull does not reach its full thickness until age 16–21, so children are more susceptible than adults to head injury. In fact, It's interesting to note that 36% of children with head injury are subsequently diagnosed with psychiatric problems, mainly ADHD.
As for Asperger's syndrome itself, psychiatrists have largely stopped using the term. Not because it's not real, but because Johann ‘Hans’ Asperger has come to be associated with Nazism for reasons that are not clear.
What is clear is that, as a field that is still struggling to gain scientific respectability, psychology is still strongly influenced by political considerations. In recent years it has greatly improved in terms of rigor by its association with neuroscience. What is remarkable is to see neuropsychiatric symptoms portrayed in fiction so convincingly.
* I am still in detox after reading the damn thing twice.
mar 30 2022, 6:23 am. revised apr 01 2022
