Being an Animal, for Awhile

Over the course of my lifetime, there has been an increase in the number of Halloween costumes that are gory.  I am not a professional psychologist, but I would speculate that the increase in bloody, gruesome depictions has something to do with the increase in experiences of random violence (broadcast over TV) and truly violent movies.  Perhaps wearing a gory costume helps some children and youth face their inability to prevent random violence. Nevertheless, I would like to put in my vote for another type of costuming:  Animal masks and costumes.

What am I?

Of course, there are still some non-gory costumes among the trick-or-treaters who ring my doorbell.  An occasional princess. Or a cowboy.  Nevertheless, I think some animal costumes could add some variety and sparkle to trick-or-treating.  Even a simple animal mask might provide a psychological channel for children in their learning to adjust to the world and their own emotions.  As Paul Shepard writes:  "Putting [a mask] on and taking it off is a becoming.... The principle which they embody is like the assertion 'I am a young man, but I am also a frog' or 'I am a maiden, yet I am also a bird,' a way of saying 'I am both physical and spiritual, animal and human, good and bad.' "

Most every parent who has purchased or checked out of a library some children's books has encountered this uncanny ability of small children to identify with animal characters.  In children's stories, as also in many folktales, animal characters are both similar and dissimilar to the real animals they pretend to represent.  And they are both similar and dissimilar to our human selves.

"Bye, Baby Bunting"
from
  Denslow's Mother Goose

Somehow, an animal enables a child to name -- and thus perhaps unconsciously address -- their multiple emotions.  The complex emotions of human adults can be baffling to a small child (and sometimes inscrutable even to a teenager).  In contrast, a children's book's depictions of animals, even though oversimplified compared to the real animals they are derived from, help children to begin to name their emotions. For example:  I sometimes feel hungry like a bear.  I sometimes feel happy like a singing bird.

Paul Shepard, who was quoted above, is actually an ecologist, although of an unusual type.  He has studied and explored not so much our actions upon the environment as the reverse: the effects of the natural world upon humans, our psychology, and cultures.  Sometimes, as in the matter of humans' use of masks, those effects are subtle and too often overlooked.

There is another side of the coin to this matter of our identifying with animals, even if that identification simplifies the animal's nature.  Namely, that we can have an ambiguous response to most animals.  Not only do I experience myself as both "good and bad,"  but I can experience most animals as either good or bad, both beneficial to me and a possible danger to me.  Is that perhaps the way I can also experience many a human being?

~~~

As a child, did you ever wear an animal costume?  Do you ever feel  like any animal?

(The Shepard quote is from The Others, © 1996.   pp. 131-132.)