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I discovered this piece this week, and it rang true. It’s about the “Batman effect,” which is the idea that a certain “self-distancing” can help people see problems or conflicts more dispassionately. One way to do that is to postulate (or generate) an alter ego, and to think about how that alter ego would handle it.
As someone who used to write under a pseudonym, it rang true.
Over the years, the pseudonym started to feel like training wheels: useful at first, but eventually limiting. But at some level, it contained a shred of truth. The written version of me is sometimes better than the real-life version. That’s because the written version benefits from editing and the ability to step back and think a situation through. The act of writing prompts me to think a situation through. That isn’t always possible in the moment.
Although I retired the “Dean Dad” pseudonym years ago, I still sometimes find myself wondering how Dean Dad would handle a situation. It’s a shorthand way of asking myself how I would look back on the situation a week later, when the momentary mood has passed. Sometimes that method saves me from myself.
(While on it, a word on why I chose “Dean Dad.” It reflected the two roles that occupied most of my working hours at the time, and it put parenthood and professional identity together. I believed then, and believe now, that we’ll never make meaningful progress on “work/life balance” as long as it’s considered a women’s issue. It’s a parents’ issue. Men who are parents need to step up and start talking about this stuff, too. When we make decisions about, say, reopening campuses, we need to think about their impacts on students and employees who are parents. I’ve read recently that the pandemic-driven shutdown has hit women’s professional productivity much more harshly than it has hit men’s. To me, that’s an indication that the discussion of work/life balance has much, much farther to go.)
I’ve seen far too many decisions made impulsively, even by people I would have expected to know better. Some self-distancing could go a long way. That can mean, for instance, stopping to question “gut” feelings. What do they reflect? What errors do they keep making? We all have patterns of behavior, many good, some not. Interrupting the bad ones can involve stepping back.
That isn’t only true in professional settings. It can be true in relationships, too. The first time I met my now-wife, my first impression was “not my type.” That was true, as far as it went; up to that point, I had a fairly consistent type, and she wasn’t it. But I also had a fairly consistent pattern of relationships falling apart in pretty much the same way. I remember the moment of clarity in which I decided that just defaulting to “my type,” as I had in the past, wasn’t working. I had to step back and tell myself to try something different. Twenty-one years of marriage and two children later, I’m glad I did.
Of course, self-distancing also implies a certain level of self-awareness. That can’t always be assumed. If we could figure out ways to make self-awareness a gen ed outcome, I’d be on board with it.
I might not go as far as Batman, but there’s something to be said for stopping to think about your situation externally. If naming the idea after Batman helps people get it, so be it.
My writerly alter ego makes me a better person. I can’t offer a stronger endorsement than that.
