Journal# 16: Ophelia Syndrome

I really loved a reading we did about the Ophelia Syndrome because it got me thinking about my thoughts about my thoughts(that is not a typo). Have you ever wondered why you think the way you do or why your mind associates with certain morals and values? Who told you or taught you to think the way you do? Why do you do it? Ophelia is a character in Shakespeare's Hamlet who does not have many thoughts of her own. In this scene from Hamlet, she is seeking counsel from her father, Polonius.

Ophelia: "I do not know, my lord, what I should think," 

Polonius:   "I'll teach you. Think yourself a baby." 

Here, Ophelia expresses her concerns to her father about how she is not sure what she should think and Polonius counsels her to think herself as a baby, essentially counseling her to get rid of all she knows and just learn from him. This syndrome can be so detrimental to the thinking of a student, a child, an adult, anyone really. Especially in my field, it is important that anthropologists are able to have free thought and it is essential that we are able to analyze data and think about our thoughts in a way that is our own. That is how new theories and new ideas come about. Because people are not succumbing to the Ophelia Syndrome and simply taking every one elses word for it,  our world and our society is constantly growing and expanding. Of course there is the other side of the spectrum where theories and ideas that come from the founders of the field must be taken into account and built off of because there is no plausible way that one can think their own ideas and only their own ideas. Both sides of this idea will apply in my case. The sources and ideas that I have built my project off of are not my own, though the things that I take away from interviews and my everyday experiences are going to be built off of the ideas that have been engrained into my being through those experiences that have shaped who I am and what I believe.