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Monday, December 4, 2006

A paragraph of clues

Paddy Chayefsky was a screenwriter who is probably best known for the films Network and Marty, the latter of which he originally wrote for television. I read a biography of him recently, Shaun Considine's Mad As Hell.

The books' notion is that "Sidney"-Chayefsky's real first name-was his original self, and that "Paddy" was a self created:

Chayefsky's obsessive traits of workaholism and perfectionism and his increasingly uncontrollable anger were indicative of a pesonality emotionally arrested at an early stage of development, [his analyst] Frankenthal told him. To overcome the fear and helplessness he experienced as a child, Sidney Chayefsky felt compelled to compensate. He began to rely overly on his intelligence and his communicative and performing skills. These brought attention and approval, which warded off his feelings of abandonment. A new self had emerged out of these defenses, one that served to entertain and take care of Sidney and everyone around him. In the creation of this second, superresponsible self, Sidney felt forfeited, "dehumanized." His parents compounded this misrepresentation. By encouraging the boy to believe that life's meaning lay in their and other people's approval, Sidney's true development was impeded. The realization that he was being praised and loved not as Sidney but as this other, new self sowed the first seeds of frustration. When grown, the other, dominant self, now identified as "Paddy," was less inclined to repress the feelings of frustration and rage. His tyranny, however, was directed toward outsiders rather than toward the real cause of his pain, his parents, specifically his mother, who had used him to bolster her lack of self-esteem.

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