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shadowkatTRADING CLOTHES & RINGING PAVLOV’s BELL
I have never attempted a meta quite like this before. Oh sure, I’ve written metas about Spike and about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a cult television series that ended in 2003 but I still love with wild abandon, but not a meta that includes embedded videos and screen shots, which take up space. This is my first Web 2.0 meta or essay. Also, a confession – every time I write and post a meta – I am afraid. Afraid no one will read it. And if they do, they won’t like it enough to bother responding. I find myself counting the responses – to see how good the post was or how well it was received. Which is silly of course – a sort of behavioral conditioning if you think about it. If a post gets no responses, I will often decide to either delete it or never write anything like it again. It’s almost as if in my own journal, much against my better judgment, I am trading clothes and ringing pavolov’s bell. (Sigh, writing like painting, is a difficult love, chock-full of rejection, and the lucky few get past that. Also, much as the saying goes - does a tree fall if no one sees it, does a post or a piece of writing exist if no one but you reads it?)
The below is a meta on behavioral conditioning, the soul or conscience and its effects on the persona in relation to the character of Spike, a vampire on the fictional television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was inspired in part by conversations with people on my flist, as well as fanfiction regarding the character, and the tv series itself. In a way it expresses why I prefer the television series version of Spike or Canon!Spike to the character most people have written about in their fanfiction. [Warning: Long and may be difficult to download on dial-up.]
Aimee Mann’s song Pavolv’s Bell in many ways summarizes my feelings regarding Spike, his journey and the battle going on inside the character. The song is superficially about addiction, but it is also about relationships and our struggle to connect with others. What clothes do we have to wear? What bells to push?
In flashbacks we see Spike trading clothes much as he trades personas. He goes from repressed Victorian to street-wise, tough talking, North London, punk, to Billy Idol wannabe (although he predates Billy Idol by half a century), to Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. He tries on personas and coats, to see the effect, keeping the ones that work and discarding the rest. In the process, he almost loses himself. It is not clear at a certain point who he is underneath the bravado. He is the consummate performer – but scratch the surface and what lies beneath? A poet’s heart, an artist’s soul, and a James Dean Rebel Without A Cause who struggles with society’s constraints, and society’s rejection.
1. The Chip
Spike is introduced in the second season of BTVS as a disposable yet cool bad guy. He attempts to kill our heroine in Wyle E. Coyote fashion, failing comically. Then around the end of the season, instead of having Angelus kill Spike as originally planned, Spike helps Buffy save the world - in order to nab his vampire girlfriend, Dru, who is busy playing footsie with Buffy’s ex-lover now turned super-villian, Angelus. Time moves forward, and Spike re-enters the plot in Season 4, again intent on killing and/or raping Buffy ( see the episodes: Harsh Light of Day, Wild at Heart, and The Initiative). He is a nasty, irredeemable vampire, who tortures, kills, and maims for fun. A regular "Alex" from Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' classic sci-fi psychological thriller A Clockwork Orange.
In Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Alex gleefully enjoys a bit of violence with his mates. He goes about doing the old "in/out" or the occasional "rape" and the beating. He's a regular fiend, talking much like Spike does in rhyming slang (cockney as opposed to North London), with his mates, heavy on the eye makeup and the oh so dashing costume. That is until the government nabs him and conditions Alex to get physically and painfully ill whenever he sees or attempts to do any type of violence.
In BTVS, the Initiative, an army covert operation run by a somewhat deranged psychology professor named Walsh, captures Spike and as Doug Petrie, one of the writers, notes in commentary: “Clockwork Oranges him”. They implant an electronic device into Spike’s brain that will send an electrical shock any time he intentionally attempts to bite, kill, maim, punch, or harm a human. He can't hit humans, kick humans, bite them, or hurt them without feeling intense pain to the cortex of his brain - the equivalent of an intense migraine headache.
The behavorial modification device that the Intitiative uses and is referenced by novelists from Anthony Burgess to Adolus Huxely is due in part to a psychologist named B.F. Skinner . Skinner more or less originated the behavorism movement along with the psychologists John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, much to the annoyance of many a psychology major who preferred Jungian/Freudian or psychoanalysis. In college, my psychology classes tended to be slanted towards behaviorism, I think I managed to get one of the few non-behavorists in the department and we still did the pavolian rat experiment - ie. Put a rat in a maze and through a series of behavior modification/stimulus techniques teach it to go the right direction in pursuit of reward.
Skinner's philosophy was:
A rather good critique of Skinner - can be found here:
Pavlovian theory is similar. Pavlov studied neurological responses to external stimuli, and determined through bell experiments with dogs that certain responses could be taught. Pavlov conditioned the dog to believe that whenever a bell was rung, dinner would be served. The dog salivated in expectation of being fed. After a while the dog would salivate just upon hearing the bell, all Pavlov had to was ring it and the dog would salivate - the smell of food was not required. Because the dog associated the ringing of the bell with food, the dog salivated whenever he heard the bell, regardless of whether food was actually served. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in Adolus Huxley's A Brave New World. It is also a theme in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange.
In BTVS, Spike is arguably conditioned under the Pavolian and Watsonian theory. John B. Watson came up with behaviorist psychology defined as:
Professor Walsh sees Spike as little more than an animal that can be conditioned to obey commands based on stimuli much as Pavlov’s dog had been. Her desire to control criminal behavior by these means is similar to Michael Focault’s theory of prisoner rehabilitation through psychological and disciplinary means. Focault believed that the psychologist could change and rehabilitate the criminal mind, that execution or life-time imprisonment was not necessary. In BTVS, the writers test this theory, by exploring the degree to which an individual can be changed based on neurological stimulus. They ask the question – what would happen to a vampire if we inserted a behavioral conditioning device in his head? If we disciplined him to believe that killing humans was painful? If every time he tried to kill someone – he was physically punished, and every time he helped he was physically awarded – treated like a man? And what happens when those awards stop?
Drusilla, Spike’s old paramour and sire, in Crush, Buffy S5, argues upon discovering his current status:
Drusilla’s argument is similar to the Kubrick’s and the anti-behavorists – which is that behavior modification doesn’t change the behavior long term, it only changes it while the conditioning is still in effect. It acts as sort of pseudo or artificial super-ego, constraining the id and ego from acting out without pain. Instead of twinges of conscience or guilt, emotional embarrassment, it substitutes actual physical pain or neurological pain in the hope that over time the brain will interpret that as the direct result of the action undertaken – sort of like Pavlov’s dog associates the ringing bell with food. For example if Spike attacks humans, he feels pain. But the anti-behavorists argue, as Dru does above – that as long as Spike knows it is the chip causing the pain – then he will not see it as a direct result of his actions, but merely those of a superimposed superego – implanted by an outside source. If he can remove it, he can do as he likes. He has no choice – it is not “his” superego or human soul that is telling him to stop, but an artificial one.
Much as pavlov's dog salivates before the bell rings, Spike's chip seemingly goes off when he intends to harm his victim. Yet, if he doesn't know his victim is human and the victim actually is - it still goes off regardless. This emphasizes what is stated above – that Spike equates pain with the chip not with harming people per se. As he states to Buffy, you’d think they could create a chip that would distinguish between good and bad people. Note he does not see eating people in general as a bad thing, only eating good people or those that Buffy would disapprove of him killing. Buffy has taken on the role of Spike’s super-ego or conscience. In some respects it is Buffy not the chip that is reigning in Spike. It is his desire to win her affection, her love, and those of her mates that in effect motivates him to do good deeds. As long as they positively reinforce his good deeds, he will do them, as long as they negatively reinforce his bad ones, he won’t. He is in some respects the pavlovian dog on a leash.
But Spike isn’t so sure, as he argues in Seeing Red, Buffy S6, after his attempt to rape Buffy:
Spike is wondering why he has gone against his natural impulse to rape and kill Buffy. Why does he feel wracked with guilt and remorse after attempting to rape her? Why did he stop? By the same token, he also wonders why he tried to rape her at all - shouldn't he have stopped? Shouldn't his conditioning under the chip have stopped him? Shouldn’t his feelings for Buffy have stopped him? How could he treat a woman he loved in this manner? Granted the chip or electronic implant no longer works against Buffy (due to how she was brought back from the grave), but wouldn't his conditioning per Pavlovian theory have made him think twice? Wouldn’t it have kept the id in check?
Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick ask the same questions in A Clockwork Orange, providing different answers. After the government successfully alters Alex’s behavior, a group of activists get together to deprogram Alex from his conditioning. In Kubrick's film version - Alex goes back to his raping, murdering, and thieving ways without a glimmer of remorse. In Burgess' novel - Alex discovers that the bit of violence is rather boring, it no longer holds any appeal, and turns his back on it, reformed.
In BTVS, the answer is not as simple. Spike is to a degree deprogrammed by his S&M sex with Buffy and the mixed messages Buffy and her friends give him after she returns. He discovers that he can hurt her, without pain, but the hurt is requested and is pleasurable to her. It is not against her will nor is it forced upon her at least not until Seeing Red. When he does attempt to rape her, he is strung out, possibly drunk, and desperate - not quite himself. But that doesn't excuse his crime - and freaked by it, not to mention her horrified response to it and the knowledge that he has irredeemably hurt her and in a way he promised that he never would -he runs off to find a soul – the item that he believes will prevent him from hurting her – something stronger than the chip and his love for her, something that is his, and not forced upon him from an external source or an authority outside of himself.
Why does he decide to get a soul? Why not get the chip out?
This has been debated for years. Many people still believe that he did not require one.
Over the years, Spike has been arguably conditioned to see the chip as a bit of a blessing - it allows him to be a part of the heroine's group, it prevents her from staking him, and it provides him with access to her. Perhaps in his head, not to mention Dawn's, the chip functions as a mechanical soul. He can be good now.
Can he be good without a soul? Is the chip enough?
The chip only stimulates pain under certain circumstances - as Spike himself states, if there is no intent, it does not go off. And he can find other ways to hurt them. The fact that he doesn't may have to do with their behavior towards him. He gets Buffy when he sacrifices himself to Glory, is tortured protecting Buffy’s secret - Buffy kisses him. He loses Buffy and is ostracized when he kidnaps her, chains her up and threatens her. He gets her friends approval when he sacrifices himself for Dawn, he loses it when he threatens them. Much like the pavlovian dog - Spike is ringing the bell that gets him fed.
But when they are not around or when they reinforce negative behavioral patterns - such as the one's Buffy inadvertently reinforces by her own negative behavior towards him, Spike regresses to who he once was. She cannot be his compass. She can't be responsible for him twenty-four seven. If he changes, he will have to do so without her help.
The conditioning can only go so far. She does, unintentionally, place the idea of a soul in his head. Stating that he cannot be good without one. Over and over again, Buffy tells him that a soul is required in order for him to be a "man" in her eyes. Not a thing.
In the season 6 episode Smashed, after they’ve made out twice, Spike confronts Buffy and again asks if they can form a relationship.
He discovers in the above scene that he can hit her and gleefully goes off to kill things. If he is not a man then he will bloody be a monster. His response is to the negative stimuli she’s provided. When he hits her and does not receive the expected shock, he reacts with glee.
The chip keeps him from hurting the woman, but Spike chooses to hurt her. He is a bit confused about it – talks himself into it. And is to a degree rebelling against Buffy, who has rejected him. Demonstrating what he’d do if the chip ceased to work and Buffy ceased to show she loved him. Take away his ability to obtain Buffy and take away the chip – Spike reverts to his old ways. But he does have to talk himself into it. But Spike does not go after his soul because of Buffy, but rather because of this line stated here in The Gift and the one later in both Smashed and Seeing Red
.
Spike himself has come to believe that he cannot be good without a soul. That he can’t be a man. But he also believes that the soul will restore him to who he once was, much as he believes it restored Angel to who he once was. His conviction is not based purely on Buffy, but rather his own actions towards Buffy, the fact that he can hurt her, that he cannot be trusted, and that the chip does not prevent him from doing things that will and do cause her pain.
Spike is motivated to get the soul, because he realizes without it – he is beneath Buffy, he cannot choose to be a man or a monster. The chip prevents him from being the monster, but it does not provide him with the ability to be a man – to have the same moral structure and choices that Buffy and her friends do. His moral structure is still the opposite. The chip in effect suppresses that moral structure, while superimposing a contrary one – but he is aware that it is external. As he states to Buffy in Sleeper, “the chip is something that was done to me, I had no choice regarding it.”
2. The Soul
The concept of a soul has been debated by philosophers for years.
The Soul has numerous interpretations/definitions and for most of them go here. I've included a few of the more interesting interpretations below:
Or go Here for a definition of the conscience.
In his Cultural Humanist Q&A - Joss Whedon was asked point blank, if the vampire with the soul, Angel and his formerly soulless vampire alter-ego, Angelus were separate people and to describe what a soul was - or at least give an idea. This question had been posed before but in another way. Each time Whedon answers it - he makes it clear that he does not define a soul by religious terms, so much as by psychological or scientific terms. Whedon defines a soul as a super-ego. (Note, I do not necessarily agree with Whedon’s definition and I’m guessing from Buffy as well as other works, Whedon is somewhat agnostic about it himself.)
Whedon stated at the Q&A:
"Angel and Angelus are the same and different, in that they have two different moral structures. The demon soul is one moral structure and the human soul is another one. That was the framework of our series."
http://psychology.about.com/od/sindex/g/def_superego.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/ego-superego-and-id#
(You can also go to wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego,_and_super-ego)
The superego is why we feel the pain of embarrassment, it is what shows us the consequences of our actions and is often considered the same as a conscience.
According to Freud - it does not exist at birth. We are not born with it, but rather it is internalized over time. Children are innocent, they will do horrible things without realizing these are wrong until told otherwise - they have no superego, this is taught. But some psychologists view it as innate, something we are born with, that is passed down to us that is akin to a soul. Some religions may even equate the superego with the soul or the soul as the totality of the human personality separate from the body. Giles in Buffy seems to equate a soul thusly – when he states to Buffy and the gang in S1, that the vampire is a demon that takes on the human persona but is not the human. This definition of a vampire dates back to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Bram Stocker’s Dracula:
Yet, Angel throws Gile’s explanation into question, and continues to do so. Stating to Buffy:
Spike has a superego prior to getting a soul - that is the demon or demonic superego. The demon's soul replaces the human's soul. But its morality is the opposite of a human's. It promotes evil. Chaos. Glories in violence and the spread of vampirism. Bucking death.
From Bram Stoker’s Dracula:
While the human version of the superego - promotes the opposite. The super-ego in the human wants what society dictates, the morality of that culture and age.
The idea that the soul in the BTVS series acts as a super-ego is reinforced in the episode Living Conditions - where Buffy’s roommate systematically removes portions of Buffy’s soul. Without her soul, Buffy gives in to the id, her ego and id take over. She takes another girl’s sandwich because she wants it. Or she will punch someone because she feels anger. Societal constraints ingrained over time are gone. As soon as she retrieves her soul – she listens to them again.
Just because you have a super-ego, does not necessarily mean you will listen to it. This is explored in depth in the series through various characters, specifically Faith and Warren who ignore their super-egos and follow their id’s and egos. They suppress and/or rebel against super-ego.
Spike over time, in part due to his chip, listens to the ego and id. The ego is the personality - the mind, the part of us that thinks through things, our name, our knowledge. While the id is well what we desire, dream, covet, want and yearn for. Spike is ruled and has been most of his existence by id and ego. One can love with ego and id – but as Drusilla states not wisely but quite well.
As William, the man, Spike was ruled primarily by his superego - the rules of society, its dictates. When he becomes a vampire - he says the hell with society's rules. He glories in the id/ego and rebels against the superego which once kept him repressed. Although the demon soul that now inhabits him relishes and encourages his wildness.
Angel is the opposite. As a man, Liam cared nothing for the superego, he rebelled against it. Went on drunken orgies, stole, and rebelled against Daddy. As a vampire - he
is almost all superego. Repressed. Even as Angelus - everything he does is for the demon superego - to obtain the demon world's approval and respect. He even chides Spike, telling him that they shouldn’t brawl and bring notice to themselves, that it is all about the artistry.
Substitute the names Angelus and Spike for superego and id, and have the same discussion. Spike wants the thrill, the rush, the challenge. He gets off on it. Rules are for “poofters” and “sissies” – which is who he once was as a human. While Angelus likes the artistry. There are rules to be followed. Guidelines. And he throws the “slayer” at Spike much as someone might throw a cop or prison at a wayward child as a threat. But the id sees it as a challenge.
The same is true of Angel. Superego rules his world. He doesn't eat anything but blood. He is a "vampire". He follows the rules - which is the realm of the super-ego. This is why Angel and Angelus are the same yet also different - they have the same id and the same ego, personality and desire remain, what has changed is the superego that rules them - which the id and ego in Angel have always catered to. This is why when Angel loses his soul – he is evil incarnate, there is no human desire or love left in him. It is why the Judge, who is also all demon super-ego, machine like, with no id or ego, cannot burn Angelus. The id does not exist in Angelus and if it does, he suppresses it. He kills to please the super-ego. The reminder of love or human desire sickens him – he sees it as weakness. The id to Angelus is weak, and should be suppressed.
Angel likewise sees his human desires as weak and fights against them – for it is his human desire for Buffy that costs him his soul. If he gives in to his “id” he loses everything. As a vampire – he must cater to the super-ego. Being a hero, a champion, his destiny precludes all pleasure, all joy. It is why when given the choice, he turns down the option to become human – because it goes against the dictates of the super-ego. Of course he can’t do this 24/7, he does slip up. He does fall in love. He does drink too much. He does at times cater to his id – but when he does, he is punished for it.
Spike is the opposite. As a vampire, he's ignored the dictates of the super-ego. As he states - he follows his blood, his desires, his heart. Or at least he's attempted to.
He can't entirely, of course. This is why you see him in conflict prior to getting the chip. The id and ego don't want to destroy the world - they are rather enjoying it. They don't want to be the ultimate evil if it means going to hell and losing Dru to Angelus...so they basically tell the old super-ego to go to hell and follow their gut.
Spike is rewarded for suppressing the super-ego. He enjoys life with wild-abandon. Even with the chip – he compensates. He can’t kill humans? Fine, he can kill demons. Bigger challenge anyway. He can’t have Drusilla? He goes after Buffy and has sex with Harmony. He sees nothing wrong with using Harmony for sex or with Buffy using him for sex . But William, the man he once was – would. The chip isn’t enough – it only takes away the ability to eat humans, but Spike has found other ways to get off – such as making fun of humans, stealing from humans, and engaging in a bit of gambling and smuggling on the side.
So what happens when Spike of all people chooses to get a soul? Note, unlike Angelus who has a separate super-ego/soul forced upon him and is now forced to choose good, Spike goes after it on his own. Spike, who has to a degree rebelled against the super-ego and denounced his human soul/persona – seeks it out. By seeking it out, he has not only acknowledged its importance, but unlike his demonic super-ego, granted it some leverage. True he was a fiend as demon. But he did not follow the rules. As the Mayor stated – “we never knew what he was going to do next.” We don’t with the id and ego.
As evidenced above – Spike got the soul to become a “man”. The super-ego/soul, “William”, or the man that he has become is disgusted with what Spike the vampire did. His position on the cross – is something that William the super-ego would dictate. Spike probably isn’t religious or rebelled against it, but William may well have been. He embraces the symbol of his super-ego, the authority that his super-ego adheres to.
But unlike the demon’s super-ego, the man has not replaced what was already there. It is added. Spike’s id, ego, and the demon super-ego are still intact, along with the chip in his head. These are all battling for dominance. His old super-ego comes complete with all the societal rules that he once rebelled against. As he states in subsequent episodes – the soul is not all pennywhistles and moonbeams, love, it is about the self-loathing. As wretched and evil as I was, I never truly hated myself, not like I do now. With his human moral structure intact – he now understands the full impact of what he did to Buffy – his attempt to rape her, the attempts he made on her life and others lives, the people he killed, and the people he still wants to kill. The demonic desires raging inside him. He is compelled now to suppress the id. And that’s the change in his persona – it is no longer the chip that is suppressing it – but Spike himself. As demonstrated by his refusal to sleep with Anya again, or for that matter to act out of jealousy either in regards to the Principal or Angel. He’s not perfect – the id is still there.
Spike to Buffy in Sleeper: I can barely live with what I’ve done, if you think I’d willingly add to the body count – you are insane.
Does he feel remorse? Certainly. As is demonstrated in the episode Sleeper – when he remembers what he has done and is repulsed by his own actions. The vampire sucking blood is no longer fun – it repulses the super-ego. It is not Buffy’s revulsion that he is reacting to, but his own. Granted this may not extend to Robin Wood, but having a super-ego doesn’t automatically make one good. Or perfect. 24/7. Angel often fell off the wagon. Plus, Spike, to give him some credit – does not kill Wood. He actually goes out of his way to save Robin on more than one occasion. And in Lies, tells Buffy that he gave Wood a pass – he did not kill him, even though Wood attempted to murder Spike, on account of the fact that he intentionally and brutally stalked and killed Wood’s mother. He stops himself out of respect for the woman that he did murder. The mother. The woman – whose coat he still wears. His super-ego prevents him from killing Wood, even though both ego and id desire it.
3. The Trigger
Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me…how could you use a poor maiden so…
For the video of Early One Morning - go here, because I can't figure out how to post it without losing content.
In the Machurian Candidate, the 1962 film based on Richard Condon's 1959 best-selling poltical thriller, the lead character, Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey in the film version, is conditioned to be the unwitting assasin whose actions are triggered by a Queen of Diamonds playing card. It is gradually revealed during the film that Shaw's mother, Mrs. Islein (portrayed by Angela Langsbury), is the operative who holds the trigger. She's literally the Queen of Diamonds. When confronted she insists that she had no idea that her son was the assasin, and that she will grind her associates to dust - then gives her son a decidedly non-maternal kiss. The trigger was associated in part with Shaw's relationship to his mother and his desire for her approval - it was her that causes him to kill. There is no clear father presence, he has a step-father. And he hates both parents, particularly the domineering mother who has shaped and controlled his life.
After Spike gets his soul, the First Evil places a trigger in Spike's head. Similar to the one in The Manchurian Candidate - the trigger causes Spike to go into a hypnotic state, he becomes the vampire, and he is little more than the tool of the agent triggering him. The trigger, we soon discover, is based on an old English folk song that Spike’s mother used to sing him – entitled Early One Morning. Much like the Manchurian Candidate - the song is associated with the mother, who in this case is not so much domineering as dependent on him. The song is about a young maiden who has been deceived and abandoned by her lover/husband, much as Spike's mother was most likely abandoned by her's. The point of view is third person – and has been sung by male and female folk singers alike, everyone from Pernell Roberts to Eva Summer.
In Buffy, the first evil sings it to Spike disguised as Spike, and as Drusilla. It is also sung by his mother in a flashback. In flashbacks, we are shown that William was the sole caretaker of his mother. Outside of their servants there were no other family members or individuals living with his mother. She was dependent on William. And he was devoted to her. Her approval and comfort – was all he cared for, outside of the attentions and respect of Cecily, who he adored from afar.
The nature of William’s relationship with his mother is alluded to but never clearly defined – in Lies My Parents Told Me and Fool For Love. We are shown William reading poetry to his mother, his insistence to Drusilla that he must return to her, that she is expecting him, and his concern regarding her illness. It is clear that she is dying, possibly from tuberculosis or consumption – since we see her coughing up blood in William’s company. After he is turned by Dru – William is motivated to turn his mother into a vampire – as an attempt to save her. But it doesn’t quite turn out the way he would have liked. She turns on him – accuses him of desiring her in a sexual manner and derides his poetry and manhood. So he stakes her.
William could not leave his mother to go off with Drusilla. Nor could he merely kill her.
The song that she must have sung to him since he was a small child – has clearly been ingrained. It has become part of what Freud would call the super-ego. To leave a woman, to abandon her is the worst thing that he could ever do. He reacts to the song much in the same way he reacts to the chip, much in the same way Pavlov’s dog reacted to the bell.
Spike – never leaves Drusilla. Drusilla dumps and leaves Spike. When she returns, he has moved on and refuses to abandon his new love for Dru. But he is not lying when he tells Buffy that killing Drusilla for her is no small thing. In some regards it would be a bigger sacrifice for Spike than Angel’s staking of Darla in Season 1. Dru is his vampire mother. Yet, at the same time, his offer to kill Dru in Crush is a repeat of what he did when he was first turned – he sired his mother then killed her, moving on to Dru as his new mother, new super-ego. Unlike Angel/Angelus – Spike went to female role models or women as super-egos, hence the reason the First mainly plays the roles of Dru and Buffy in Spike’s head. This may also be why Angelus throws the female slayer in Spike’s face – he may realize that a powerful woman is the only guidepost that Spike understands.
For all we know – Spike never had a male role model. Angelus may well be the only one.
In Angel’s back story – we do not see his mother, she is not given a name or a face, and is barely mentioned – while his father on the other hand is larger than life and mentioned repeatedly. And Angel trades his father for the Master. And rebels against the Master just as he rebelled against his father. It is also Giles that Angel has a relationship with in BTVS not Joyce. While Spike develops a close relationship with Joyce and barely acknowledges Giles.
Spike won’t leave Dru – he takes care of her when she is ill, caters to her( School Hard – What’s My Line). And when Joyce gets ill – he comforts Buffy (Fool for Love). Buffy in a way takes over Drusilla’s role. Harmony never quite manages it. Harmony never quite reaches that level of importance, he never takes her seriously. In some respects – he takes out his fury regarding women on her. It’s not until after he gets a soul – that he acknowledges his behavior towards Harmony was wrong and backs off. (Harm’s Way). In Harm’s Way – he apologizes to her, or comes about as close to an apology as he can manage. Comforting her. He seems to acknowledge, without saying anything that he knows she cared for him and he was wrong to abuse it.
The trigger exists partly because Spike believes he did abandon and fail his mother. That he failed her dictates. The first is stating through the song that he has failed both his mothers, the demon one and the human one. That he can’t win. The soul means nothing. You’ve never listened to it before, why would you now? And if that is what you need – if Buffy was your superego, while the chip suppressed the demonic one – how about I do the same with the trigger? I condition you through a song that gives you pain. A hypnotic suggestion ingrained in a long suppressed and painful memory of a painful failing – something you promised you’d never do, just as you promised Buffy that you would never intentionally hurt her – you failed both times.
Through the song – the First Evil suppresses both the artificial/man-made super-ego or chip and the soul. The First becomes Buffy, plays both Buffy and Dru – both taunting Spike, forcing out the monster inside, the one that desires blood. And the monsters attacks mostly women – because women are the super-ego, they constrain him, they are his achilees heel. Without them…he can be the wild beast, indulge. With Angel it is the opposite – when he indulges women – the id is released. He gives into it. Women allow Angel to be the wild beast.
Spike overcomes the trigger with the help of Wood – who is representative of the kill that Spike is the most proud of. The one kill that he does not want to show remorse for – and stated “wanted it”. It’s not until Damage that he is forced to see that even that kill was wrong. Nikki was his equal, bad-ass, and a mother – which I think was the key factor. It’s similar in a way to Buffy – who becomes like a mother when Dawn enters her life and Joyce is removed from it. Spike’s attraction and love for Buffy grows after Dawn enters her life. For Spike – it is about mothers – they are his god, so to speak. The thought that his biological mother despised him – is enough to make him reel. The soul can’t handle what happened to his mother. And it is the leverage the demon needs to obtain dominance. What breaks the cycle is when he relives it and by reliving it through the eyes of his soul, not the demon, he realizes that he did not abandon or deceive his mother. That his mother did not hate him. She wanted release.
In Chosen, Buffy returns the favor. She releases Spike. She allows him to move on. Prior to Chosen, she asks him to stay. Begs him not to leave, giving little in return.[First Date, S7]And he can’t leave her – because of well the song, which lies at the center of his super-ego, it defines him.
Yet, at the same time, he is no longer the 26 year old Victorian gentleman who sat at his mother’s knee while she sang a folk ditty about men leaving women in the dust. He has changed. He retains the poet’s heart, but it does not define him. He can suppress the super-ego and still does on occasion. What separates him from Angel is that he does not allow the super-ego to dictate his choices. He does follow his blood. He does enjoy being alive or undead. He may feel guilty, but he does not require approval – well except perhaps from women, who remain to a degree his achiles heel in part because of the song.
Without the soul – I’m not sure Spike would have been able to come to this epithany. To choose his own path. As he states to Wood and Buffy, “ I got my own free will, now. I'm not under the First's or anyone else's influences now.”
The soul provides Spike with the capacity to choose good. He still has the demon soul. He still has dark inside him. It is a metaphor of sorts for the battle between light and dark that rages inside us all. How to know which voice to listen to? Spike’s battle is a human one. And how to live with the crimes of the past? Even if you were under a different moral structure or guide when committing them. Spike – has learned that it is not excuse, he could have resisted those desires, he does resist them with the chip – to a degree. The question that the writers leave unanswered is to what degree does the super-ego control us, to what degree are we responsible for our actions – when it is not guiding us? And to what degree can external measures such as a chip truly change behavior? What comprises human identity? And how much control do we have over it? How much if any free will?
Spike at the end of the story, as seen in the Angel Series finale, Not Fade Away, has obtained free will. He chooses to aid Angel and his friends. He chooses to fight Angel’s fight, even if it may or may not be the right one – it feels right to him. He chooses to stay with Angel and not seek out Buffy, not rejoin her or her friends. He chooses to follow his conscience or super-ego. Buffy is not guiding him, Angel isn’t, he guides himself and goes into that dark alley, by Angel’s side, to fight demons, even if it means his own destruction. He has changed and he has chosen his own fate. His chip has been removed along with the trigger. He is no longer ringing pavlov’s bell and trading clothes .
I have never attempted a meta quite like this before. Oh sure, I’ve written metas about Spike and about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a cult television series that ended in 2003 but I still love with wild abandon, but not a meta that includes embedded videos and screen shots, which take up space. This is my first Web 2.0 meta or essay. Also, a confession – every time I write and post a meta – I am afraid. Afraid no one will read it. And if they do, they won’t like it enough to bother responding. I find myself counting the responses – to see how good the post was or how well it was received. Which is silly of course – a sort of behavioral conditioning if you think about it. If a post gets no responses, I will often decide to either delete it or never write anything like it again. It’s almost as if in my own journal, much against my better judgment, I am trading clothes and ringing pavolov’s bell. (Sigh, writing like painting, is a difficult love, chock-full of rejection, and the lucky few get past that. Also, much as the saying goes - does a tree fall if no one sees it, does a post or a piece of writing exist if no one but you reads it?)
The below is a meta on behavioral conditioning, the soul or conscience and its effects on the persona in relation to the character of Spike, a vampire on the fictional television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was inspired in part by conversations with people on my flist, as well as fanfiction regarding the character, and the tv series itself. In a way it expresses why I prefer the television series version of Spike or Canon!Spike to the character most people have written about in their fanfiction. [Warning: Long and may be difficult to download on dial-up.]
History shows and shows so well, nobody Knows that is how I nearly fell, trading
clothes and ringing pavlov’s bell
Aimee Mann’s song Pavolv’s Bell in many ways summarizes my feelings regarding Spike, his journey and the battle going on inside the character. The song is superficially about addiction, but it is also about relationships and our struggle to connect with others. What clothes do we have to wear? What bells to push?
In flashbacks we see Spike trading clothes much as he trades personas. He goes from repressed Victorian to street-wise, tough talking, North London, punk, to Billy Idol wannabe (although he predates Billy Idol by half a century), to Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. He tries on personas and coats, to see the effect, keeping the ones that work and discarding the rest. In the process, he almost loses himself. It is not clear at a certain point who he is underneath the bravado. He is the consummate performer – but scratch the surface and what lies beneath? A poet’s heart, an artist’s soul, and a James Dean Rebel Without A Cause who struggles with society’s constraints, and society’s rejection.
1. The Chip
Spike is introduced in the second season of BTVS as a disposable yet cool bad guy. He attempts to kill our heroine in Wyle E. Coyote fashion, failing comically. Then around the end of the season, instead of having Angelus kill Spike as originally planned, Spike helps Buffy save the world - in order to nab his vampire girlfriend, Dru, who is busy playing footsie with Buffy’s ex-lover now turned super-villian, Angelus. Time moves forward, and Spike re-enters the plot in Season 4, again intent on killing and/or raping Buffy ( see the episodes: Harsh Light of Day, Wild at Heart, and The Initiative). He is a nasty, irredeemable vampire, who tortures, kills, and maims for fun. A regular "Alex" from Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Anthony Burgess' classic sci-fi psychological thriller A Clockwork Orange.
In Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Alex gleefully enjoys a bit of violence with his mates. He goes about doing the old "in/out" or the occasional "rape" and the beating. He's a regular fiend, talking much like Spike does in rhyming slang (cockney as opposed to North London), with his mates, heavy on the eye makeup and the oh so dashing costume. That is until the government nabs him and conditions Alex to get physically and painfully ill whenever he sees or attempts to do any type of violence.
In BTVS, the Initiative, an army covert operation run by a somewhat deranged psychology professor named Walsh, captures Spike and as Doug Petrie, one of the writers, notes in commentary: “Clockwork Oranges him”. They implant an electronic device into Spike’s brain that will send an electrical shock any time he intentionally attempts to bite, kill, maim, punch, or harm a human. He can't hit humans, kick humans, bite them, or hurt them without feeling intense pain to the cortex of his brain - the equivalent of an intense migraine headache.
The behavorial modification device that the Intitiative uses and is referenced by novelists from Anthony Burgess to Adolus Huxely is due in part to a psychologist named B.F. Skinner . Skinner more or less originated the behavorism movement along with the psychologists John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, much to the annoyance of many a psychology major who preferred Jungian/Freudian or psychoanalysis. In college, my psychology classes tended to be slanted towards behaviorism, I think I managed to get one of the few non-behavorists in the department and we still did the pavolian rat experiment - ie. Put a rat in a maze and through a series of behavior modification/stimulus techniques teach it to go the right direction in pursuit of reward.
Skinner's philosophy was:
Changes in behavior are the result of an individual's response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. A response produces a consequence such as defining a word, hitting a ball, or solving a math problem. When a particular Stimulus-Response (S-R) pattern is reinforced (rewarded), the individual is conditioned to respond. The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning relative to previous forms of behaviorism (e.g., Thorndike, Hull) is that the organism can emit responses instead of only eliciting response due to an external stimulus.
A rather good critique of Skinner - can be found here:
The rule, or measuring rod, which the behaviorist puts in front of him always is: Can I describe this bit of behavior I see in terms of "stimulus and response"? Per Watson, "By stimulus we mean any object in the general environment or any change in the tissues themselves due to the physiological condition of the animal, such as the change we get when we keep an animal from sex activity, when we keep it from feeding, when we keep it from building a nest. By response we mean anything the animal does - such as turning toward or away from a light, jumping at a sound, and more highly organized activities such as building a skyscraper, drawing plans, having babies, writing books, and the like."
Pavlovian theory is similar. Pavlov studied neurological responses to external stimuli, and determined through bell experiments with dogs that certain responses could be taught. Pavlov conditioned the dog to believe that whenever a bell was rung, dinner would be served. The dog salivated in expectation of being fed. After a while the dog would salivate just upon hearing the bell, all Pavlov had to was ring it and the dog would salivate - the smell of food was not required. Because the dog associated the ringing of the bell with food, the dog salivated whenever he heard the bell, regardless of whether food was actually served. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in Adolus Huxley's A Brave New World. It is also a theme in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange.
In BTVS, Spike is arguably conditioned under the Pavolian and Watsonian theory. John B. Watson came up with behaviorist psychology defined as:
Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation.
Professor Walsh sees Spike as little more than an animal that can be conditioned to obey commands based on stimuli much as Pavlov’s dog had been. Her desire to control criminal behavior by these means is similar to Michael Focault’s theory of prisoner rehabilitation through psychological and disciplinary means. Focault believed that the psychologist could change and rehabilitate the criminal mind, that execution or life-time imprisonment was not necessary. In BTVS, the writers test this theory, by exploring the degree to which an individual can be changed based on neurological stimulus. They ask the question – what would happen to a vampire if we inserted a behavioral conditioning device in his head? If we disciplined him to believe that killing humans was painful? If every time he tried to kill someone – he was physically punished, and every time he helped he was physically awarded – treated like a man? And what happens when those awards stop?
Drusilla, Spike’s old paramour and sire, in Crush, Buffy S5, argues upon discovering his current status:
DRUSILLA: I don't believe in science. All those bits and molecules no one's ever seen. I trust eyes and heart alone. (Walks over to him) And do you know what mine is singing out right now? (She takes Spike's hand and puts it over her heart. He stares at her.) You're a killer. Born to slash ... and bash ... and... (gives a little gasp of pleasure) oh, bleed like beautiful poetry. (Dru breathes faster, getting excited. They turn in a circle, still with Spike's hand on her chest. )
DRUSILLA: No little tinker-toy could ever stop you from flowing.
SPIKE: (shakes his head, removes his hand from her) But the pain ... love, you don't understand, it's ... it's searing. It's, um, blinding. (She puts her hand on the top of his head and pulls it down toward her. )
DRUSILLA: All in your head. I can see it. Little bit of ... plastic, spiderwebbing out nasty blue shocks. (moves her fingers across his head imitating a spider) And every one is a lie. (Spike keeps his head bent) Electricity lies, Spike. It tells you you're not a bad dog, but you are.
Drusilla’s argument is similar to the Kubrick’s and the anti-behavorists – which is that behavior modification doesn’t change the behavior long term, it only changes it while the conditioning is still in effect. It acts as sort of pseudo or artificial super-ego, constraining the id and ego from acting out without pain. Instead of twinges of conscience or guilt, emotional embarrassment, it substitutes actual physical pain or neurological pain in the hope that over time the brain will interpret that as the direct result of the action undertaken – sort of like Pavlov’s dog associates the ringing bell with food. For example if Spike attacks humans, he feels pain. But the anti-behavorists argue, as Dru does above – that as long as Spike knows it is the chip causing the pain – then he will not see it as a direct result of his actions, but merely those of a superimposed superego – implanted by an outside source. If he can remove it, he can do as he likes. He has no choice – it is not “his” superego or human soul that is telling him to stop, but an artificial one.
Much as pavlov's dog salivates before the bell rings, Spike's chip seemingly goes off when he intends to harm his victim. Yet, if he doesn't know his victim is human and the victim actually is - it still goes off regardless. This emphasizes what is stated above – that Spike equates pain with the chip not with harming people per se. As he states to Buffy, you’d think they could create a chip that would distinguish between good and bad people. Note he does not see eating people in general as a bad thing, only eating good people or those that Buffy would disapprove of him killing. Buffy has taken on the role of Spike’s super-ego or conscience. In some respects it is Buffy not the chip that is reigning in Spike. It is his desire to win her affection, her love, and those of her mates that in effect motivates him to do good deeds. As long as they positively reinforce his good deeds, he will do them, as long as they negatively reinforce his bad ones, he won’t. He is in some respects the pavlovian dog on a leash.
But Spike isn’t so sure, as he argues in Seeing Red, Buffy S6, after his attempt to rape Buffy:
SPIKE: (desperate) Why do I feel this way?
CLEM: (shrugs) Love's a funny thing.
SPIKE: Is that what this is? (Clem looking uncertain) I can feel it. Squirming in my head. (puts hand to his head)
CLEM: Love?
SPIKE: The chip. Gnawing bits and chunks. (Spike puts his fingers against his head as if he's trying to dig his way into his skull. ) You know, everything used to be so clear. Slayer. Vampire. Vampire kills Slayer, sucks her dry, picks his teeth with her bones. It's always been that way. I've tasted the life of two Slayers. But with Buffy... (grimacing in anguish) It isn't supposed to be this way! (angrily) It's the chip! Steel and wires and silicon. (sighs) It won't let me be a monster. (quietly) And I can't be a man. I'm nothing.
Spike is wondering why he has gone against his natural impulse to rape and kill Buffy. Why does he feel wracked with guilt and remorse after attempting to rape her? Why did he stop? By the same token, he also wonders why he tried to rape her at all - shouldn't he have stopped? Shouldn't his conditioning under the chip have stopped him? Shouldn’t his feelings for Buffy have stopped him? How could he treat a woman he loved in this manner? Granted the chip or electronic implant no longer works against Buffy (due to how she was brought back from the grave), but wouldn't his conditioning per Pavlovian theory have made him think twice? Wouldn’t it have kept the id in check?
Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick ask the same questions in A Clockwork Orange, providing different answers. After the government successfully alters Alex’s behavior, a group of activists get together to deprogram Alex from his conditioning. In Kubrick's film version - Alex goes back to his raping, murdering, and thieving ways without a glimmer of remorse. In Burgess' novel - Alex discovers that the bit of violence is rather boring, it no longer holds any appeal, and turns his back on it, reformed.
In BTVS, the answer is not as simple. Spike is to a degree deprogrammed by his S&M sex with Buffy and the mixed messages Buffy and her friends give him after she returns. He discovers that he can hurt her, without pain, but the hurt is requested and is pleasurable to her. It is not against her will nor is it forced upon her at least not until Seeing Red. When he does attempt to rape her, he is strung out, possibly drunk, and desperate - not quite himself. But that doesn't excuse his crime - and freaked by it, not to mention her horrified response to it and the knowledge that he has irredeemably hurt her and in a way he promised that he never would -he runs off to find a soul – the item that he believes will prevent him from hurting her – something stronger than the chip and his love for her, something that is his, and not forced upon him from an external source or an authority outside of himself.
Why does he decide to get a soul? Why not get the chip out?
This has been debated for years. Many people still believe that he did not require one.
Over the years, Spike has been arguably conditioned to see the chip as a bit of a blessing - it allows him to be a part of the heroine's group, it prevents her from staking him, and it provides him with access to her. Perhaps in his head, not to mention Dawn's, the chip functions as a mechanical soul. He can be good now.
BUFFY: He's a killer, Dawn. You cannot have a crush on something that is ... dead, and, and evil, and a vampire.
DAWN: Right, that's why you were never with Angel for three years.
BUFFY: (quietly) Angel's different. He has a soul.
DAWN: Spike has a chip. Same diff.
Can he be good without a soul? Is the chip enough?
The chip only stimulates pain under certain circumstances - as Spike himself states, if there is no intent, it does not go off. And he can find other ways to hurt them. The fact that he doesn't may have to do with their behavior towards him. He gets Buffy when he sacrifices himself to Glory, is tortured protecting Buffy’s secret - Buffy kisses him. He loses Buffy and is ostracized when he kidnaps her, chains her up and threatens her. He gets her friends approval when he sacrifices himself for Dawn, he loses it when he threatens them. Much like the pavlovian dog - Spike is ringing the bell that gets him fed.
But when they are not around or when they reinforce negative behavioral patterns - such as the one's Buffy inadvertently reinforces by her own negative behavior towards him, Spike regresses to who he once was. She cannot be his compass. She can't be responsible for him twenty-four seven. If he changes, he will have to do so without her help.
The conditioning can only go so far. She does, unintentionally, place the idea of a soul in his head. Stating that he cannot be good without one. Over and over again, Buffy tells him that a soul is required in order for him to be a "man" in her eyes. Not a thing.
In the season 6 episode Smashed, after they’ve made out twice, Spike confronts Buffy and again asks if they can form a relationship.
Spike: A man can change.
(She again stops walking and faces him.)
BUFFY: You're not a man. You're a thing.
He discovers in the above scene that he can hit her and gleefully goes off to kill things. If he is not a man then he will bloody be a monster. His response is to the negative stimuli she’s provided. When he hits her and does not receive the expected shock, he reacts with glee.
Open on the street, downtown, night. People walking around, talking, etc. Spike walks out from an alley, looks around, grins. Pan across the street. Lots of people going about their business.
SPIKE: (to himself) Look at all the goodies.
(He continues looking around, pauses as he spots something. Closer shot of a young blonde woman standing on the corner, looking at her watch, looking around, hugging herself as if she's cold. She turns and starts to walk away. Spike moves to follow her. Cut to an alley. The young woman walks along, still hugging herself, looking nervous. Suddenly Spike steps out in front of her. She screams.)
SPIKE: That's right, you should scream. (She tries to get away but he moves to intercept her. She looks scared. )
SPIKE: Creature of the night here, yeah? (indicating himself) Some people forget that. (He advances on the woman. She backs away, shaking her head fearfully, backs up against a wall.)
WOMAN: Please.
SPIKE: She thinks I'm housebroken. She forgot who she's dealing with.
WOMAN: Anything you want, please-
SPIKE: Just 'cause she's confused about where she fits in, I'm supposed to be too? 'Cause I'm not. (pacing back and forth) I know what I am. I'm dangerous. I'm evil.
WOMAN: (scared) I-I'm sure you're not evil.
SPIKE: Yes, I am. I am a killer. (moves closer to her) That's what I do. I kill. And, yeah, maybe it's been a long time, but ... it's not like you forget how.
The chip keeps him from hurting the woman, but Spike chooses to hurt her. He is a bit confused about it – talks himself into it. And is to a degree rebelling against Buffy, who has rejected him. Demonstrating what he’d do if the chip ceased to work and Buffy ceased to show she loved him. Take away his ability to obtain Buffy and take away the chip – Spike reverts to his old ways. But he does have to talk himself into it. But Spike does not go after his soul because of Buffy, but rather because of this line stated here in The Gift and the one later in both Smashed and Seeing Red
.
Spike: "I know you can never love me. I know I am a monster. But you treat me like a man and that..."
Spike himself has come to believe that he cannot be good without a soul. That he can’t be a man. But he also believes that the soul will restore him to who he once was, much as he believes it restored Angel to who he once was. His conviction is not based purely on Buffy, but rather his own actions towards Buffy, the fact that he can hurt her, that he cannot be trusted, and that the chip does not prevent him from doing things that will and do cause her pain.
Spike: "It would cause her pain...and I can't live with her being in that much pain."(Intervention)
Spike is motivated to get the soul, because he realizes without it – he is beneath Buffy, he cannot choose to be a man or a monster. The chip prevents him from being the monster, but it does not provide him with the ability to be a man – to have the same moral structure and choices that Buffy and her friends do. His moral structure is still the opposite. The chip in effect suppresses that moral structure, while superimposing a contrary one – but he is aware that it is external. As he states to Buffy in Sleeper, “the chip is something that was done to me, I had no choice regarding it.”
2. The Soul
The concept of a soul has been debated by philosophers for years.
The Soul has numerous interpretations/definitions and for most of them go here. I've included a few of the more interesting interpretations below:
1. G. I. Gurdjieff taught that nobody is ever born with a soul. Rather, you must create a soul during the course of your life. Without a soul, Gurdjieff taught that you will "die like a dog".
2.Sikhism considers Soul (atma) to be part of Universal Soul, which is God (Parmatma). Various hymns are cited from the holy book "Sri Guru Granth Sahib" (SGGS) that suggests this belief. "God is in the Soul and the Soul is in the God."[47] The same concept is repeated at various pages of the SGGS. For example: "The soul is divine; divine is the soul. Worship Him with love."[48] and "The soul is the Lord, and the Lord is the soul; contemplating the Shabad, the Lord is found."[49]
3. Jewish views regarding the soul - for example:
Saadia Gaon, in his Emunoth ve-Deoth 6:3, explained classical rabbinic teaching about the soul. He held that the soul comprises that part of a person's mind which constitutes physical desire, emotion, and thought.
Maimonides, in his The Guide for the Perplexed, explained classical rabbinic teaching about the soul through the lens of neo-Aristotelian philosophy, and viewed the soul as a person's developed intellect, which has no substance.
4. Islam:According to a few verses from the Qur'an the following information can be deduced: In part 15 verse 29,[43] the creation of humans involves God "breathing" souls into them. This intangible part of an individual's existence is "pure" at birth. It has the potential of growing and achieving nearness to God if the person leads a righteous life.
5. Science: Much of the scientific study relating to the soul has been involved in investigating the soul as a human belief or as concept that shapes cognition and understanding of the world (see Memetics), rather than as an entity in and of itself.
An oft-encountered analogy is that the brain is to the mind as computer hardware is to computer software. The idea of the mind as software has led some scientists to use the word "soul" to emphasize their belief that the human mind has powers beyond or at least qualitatively different from what artificial software can do.
The human survival strategy depends heavily on adoption of the intentional stance, a behavioral strategy that predicts the actions of others based on the expectation that they have a mind like one's own (see theory of mind).(Or that the mind conceives of a universal consciousness or universal soul.)
Or go Here for a definition of the conscience.
Conscience etymologically derives from the Latin conscientia meaning "privity of knowledge", or "with-knowledge". The English word implies internal awareness of a moral standard in the mind concerning the quality of one's motives, as well as a consciousness of our own actions. Thus, conscience properly considered philosophically may be first, and perhaps most commonly, a largely unexamined "gut feeling" or "vague sense of guilt" about what ought to be, or should have been, done, not necessarily the end product of any sustained process of personal rational consideration of the morally relevant features of a problematic situation (or the applicable normative principles, rules or laws), and perhaps arising from prior parental, peer group, religious, state or corporate indoctrination, which may or may not be presently consciously acceptable to the person ("traditional conscience").
In his Cultural Humanist Q&A - Joss Whedon was asked point blank, if the vampire with the soul, Angel and his formerly soulless vampire alter-ego, Angelus were separate people and to describe what a soul was - or at least give an idea. This question had been posed before but in another way. Each time Whedon answers it - he makes it clear that he does not define a soul by religious terms, so much as by psychological or scientific terms. Whedon defines a soul as a super-ego. (Note, I do not necessarily agree with Whedon’s definition and I’m guessing from Buffy as well as other works, Whedon is somewhat agnostic about it himself.)
Whedon stated at the Q&A:
"Angel and Angelus are the same and different, in that they have two different moral structures. The demon soul is one moral structure and the human soul is another one. That was the framework of our series."
Definition: According to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the superego is the component of personality composed of our internalized ideals that we have acquired from our parents and from society. The superego works to suppress the urges of the id and tries to make the ego behave morally, rather than realistically.
http://psychology.about.com/od/sindex/g/def_superego.htm
In Freudian theory, the division of the unconscious that is formed through the internalization of moral standards of parents and society, and that censors and restrains the ego.
http://www.answers.com/topic/ego-superego-and-id#
(You can also go to wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego,_and_super-ego)
The superego is why we feel the pain of embarrassment, it is what shows us the consequences of our actions and is often considered the same as a conscience.
According to Freud - it does not exist at birth. We are not born with it, but rather it is internalized over time. Children are innocent, they will do horrible things without realizing these are wrong until told otherwise - they have no superego, this is taught. But some psychologists view it as innate, something we are born with, that is passed down to us that is akin to a soul. Some religions may even equate the superego with the soul or the soul as the totality of the human personality separate from the body. Giles in Buffy seems to equate a soul thusly – when he states to Buffy and the gang in S1, that the vampire is a demon that takes on the human persona but is not the human. This definition of a vampire dates back to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Giles: A vampire isn't a person at all. (clears his throat) It may have the movements, the, the memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway.
Bram Stocker’s Dracula:
Dr. Seward: But there was no love in my own heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy’s shape without her soul.
Arthur: Is this really Lucy’s body, or only a demon in her shape?
Van Helsing: It is her body, and yet not it.
Yet, Angel throws Gile’s explanation into question, and continues to do so. Stating to Buffy:
Angel: When you become a vampire the demon takes your body, but it doesn't get your soul. That's gone! No conscience, no remorse... It's an easy way to live. You have no idea what it's like to have done the things I've done... and to care. I haven't fed on a living human being since that day.
Spike has a superego prior to getting a soul - that is the demon or demonic superego. The demon's soul replaces the human's soul. But its morality is the opposite of a human's. It promotes evil. Chaos. Glories in violence and the spread of vampirism. Bucking death.
From Bram Stoker’s Dracula:
Before we do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the Un-Dead. When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world…
While the human version of the superego - promotes the opposite. The super-ego in the human wants what society dictates, the morality of that culture and age.
The idea that the soul in the BTVS series acts as a super-ego is reinforced in the episode Living Conditions - where Buffy’s roommate systematically removes portions of Buffy’s soul. Without her soul, Buffy gives in to the id, her ego and id take over. She takes another girl’s sandwich because she wants it. Or she will punch someone because she feels anger. Societal constraints ingrained over time are gone. As soon as she retrieves her soul – she listens to them again.
Just because you have a super-ego, does not necessarily mean you will listen to it. This is explored in depth in the series through various characters, specifically Faith and Warren who ignore their super-egos and follow their id’s and egos. They suppress and/or rebel against super-ego.
Spike over time, in part due to his chip, listens to the ego and id. The ego is the personality - the mind, the part of us that thinks through things, our name, our knowledge. While the id is well what we desire, dream, covet, want and yearn for. Spike is ruled and has been most of his existence by id and ego. One can love with ego and id – but as Drusilla states not wisely but quite well.
As William, the man, Spike was ruled primarily by his superego - the rules of society, its dictates. When he becomes a vampire - he says the hell with society's rules. He glories in the id/ego and rebels against the superego which once kept him repressed. Although the demon soul that now inhabits him relishes and encourages his wildness.
Angel is the opposite. As a man, Liam cared nothing for the superego, he rebelled against it. Went on drunken orgies, stole, and rebelled against Daddy. As a vampire - he
is almost all superego. Repressed. Even as Angelus - everything he does is for the demon superego - to obtain the demon world's approval and respect. He even chides Spike, telling him that they shouldn’t brawl and bring notice to themselves, that it is all about the artistry.
ANGELUS: No. A real kill. A good kill. It takes pure artistry. Without that, we're just animals.
SPIKE: Poofter!
(Angelus shoves Spike and the fight is on. Angelus snaps a metal rod in half, lifts Spike up and slams him down on his back, raising the makeshift stake. Spike stops it inches from his heart and smiles up at Angelus.)
SPIKE: Now you're gettin' it! (Angelus drops the rod and backs off.)
ANGELUS: You can't keep this up forever. If I can't teach you, maybe someday an angry crowd will. That... or the Slayer. (Spike sits up, suddenly interested.)
SPIKE: What's a Slayer?
Substitute the names Angelus and Spike for superego and id, and have the same discussion. Spike wants the thrill, the rush, the challenge. He gets off on it. Rules are for “poofters” and “sissies” – which is who he once was as a human. While Angelus likes the artistry. There are rules to be followed. Guidelines. And he throws the “slayer” at Spike much as someone might throw a cop or prison at a wayward child as a threat. But the id sees it as a challenge.
The same is true of Angel. Superego rules his world. He doesn't eat anything but blood. He is a "vampire". He follows the rules - which is the realm of the super-ego. This is why Angel and Angelus are the same yet also different - they have the same id and the same ego, personality and desire remain, what has changed is the superego that rules them - which the id and ego in Angel have always catered to. This is why when Angel loses his soul – he is evil incarnate, there is no human desire or love left in him. It is why the Judge, who is also all demon super-ego, machine like, with no id or ego, cannot burn Angelus. The id does not exist in Angelus and if it does, he suppresses it. He kills to please the super-ego. The reminder of love or human desire sickens him – he sees it as weakness. The id to Angelus is weak, and should be suppressed.
Angel likewise sees his human desires as weak and fights against them – for it is his human desire for Buffy that costs him his soul. If he gives in to his “id” he loses everything. As a vampire – he must cater to the super-ego. Being a hero, a champion, his destiny precludes all pleasure, all joy. It is why when given the choice, he turns down the option to become human – because it goes against the dictates of the super-ego. Of course he can’t do this 24/7, he does slip up. He does fall in love. He does drink too much. He does at times cater to his id – but when he does, he is punished for it.
Spike is the opposite. As a vampire, he's ignored the dictates of the super-ego. As he states - he follows his blood, his desires, his heart. Or at least he's attempted to.
He can't entirely, of course. This is why you see him in conflict prior to getting the chip. The id and ego don't want to destroy the world - they are rather enjoying it. They don't want to be the ultimate evil if it means going to hell and losing Dru to Angelus...so they basically tell the old super-ego to go to hell and follow their gut.
Spike is rewarded for suppressing the super-ego. He enjoys life with wild-abandon. Even with the chip – he compensates. He can’t kill humans? Fine, he can kill demons. Bigger challenge anyway. He can’t have Drusilla? He goes after Buffy and has sex with Harmony. He sees nothing wrong with using Harmony for sex or with Buffy using him for sex . But William, the man he once was – would. The chip isn’t enough – it only takes away the ability to eat humans, but Spike has found other ways to get off – such as making fun of humans, stealing from humans, and engaging in a bit of gambling and smuggling on the side.
So what happens when Spike of all people chooses to get a soul? Note, unlike Angelus who has a separate super-ego/soul forced upon him and is now forced to choose good, Spike goes after it on his own. Spike, who has to a degree rebelled against the super-ego and denounced his human soul/persona – seeks it out. By seeking it out, he has not only acknowledged its importance, but unlike his demonic super-ego, granted it some leverage. True he was a fiend as demon. But he did not follow the rules. As the Mayor stated – “we never knew what he was going to do next.” We don’t with the id and ego.
BUFFY: Why? Why would you do that—
SPIKE: Buffy, shame on you. Why does a man do what he mustn't? For her. To be hers. To be the kind of man who would nev— (looks away) to be a kind of man. She shall look on him with forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved. (Spike embraces the crucifix, resting one arm over each side of the cross bar, and resting his head in the corner of the vertex. His body is sizzling and smoke is rising from where it touches the cross.)
As evidenced above – Spike got the soul to become a “man”. The super-ego/soul, “William”, or the man that he has become is disgusted with what Spike the vampire did. His position on the cross – is something that William the super-ego would dictate. Spike probably isn’t religious or rebelled against it, but William may well have been. He embraces the symbol of his super-ego, the authority that his super-ego adheres to.
But unlike the demon’s super-ego, the man has not replaced what was already there. It is added. Spike’s id, ego, and the demon super-ego are still intact, along with the chip in his head. These are all battling for dominance. His old super-ego comes complete with all the societal rules that he once rebelled against. As he states in subsequent episodes – the soul is not all pennywhistles and moonbeams, love, it is about the self-loathing. As wretched and evil as I was, I never truly hated myself, not like I do now. With his human moral structure intact – he now understands the full impact of what he did to Buffy – his attempt to rape her, the attempts he made on her life and others lives, the people he killed, and the people he still wants to kill. The demonic desires raging inside him. He is compelled now to suppress the id. And that’s the change in his persona – it is no longer the chip that is suppressing it – but Spike himself. As demonstrated by his refusal to sleep with Anya again, or for that matter to act out of jealousy either in regards to the Principal or Angel. He’s not perfect – the id is still there.
Spike to Buffy in Sleeper: I can barely live with what I’ve done, if you think I’d willingly add to the body count – you are insane.
Does he feel remorse? Certainly. As is demonstrated in the episode Sleeper – when he remembers what he has done and is repulsed by his own actions. The vampire sucking blood is no longer fun – it repulses the super-ego. It is not Buffy’s revulsion that he is reacting to, but his own. Granted this may not extend to Robin Wood, but having a super-ego doesn’t automatically make one good. Or perfect. 24/7. Angel often fell off the wagon. Plus, Spike, to give him some credit – does not kill Wood. He actually goes out of his way to save Robin on more than one occasion. And in Lies, tells Buffy that he gave Wood a pass – he did not kill him, even though Wood attempted to murder Spike, on account of the fact that he intentionally and brutally stalked and killed Wood’s mother. He stops himself out of respect for the woman that he did murder. The mother. The woman – whose coat he still wears. His super-ego prevents him from killing Wood, even though both ego and id desire it.
3. The Trigger
Oh don’t deceive me, oh never leave me…how could you use a poor maiden so…
"early one morning as the sun was rising, I looked into the valley down below, I saw fair maid weeping, oh don't deceive, oh never leave me, how could you treat a poor maiden so..."
For the video of Early One Morning - go here, because I can't figure out how to post it without losing content.
In the Machurian Candidate, the 1962 film based on Richard Condon's 1959 best-selling poltical thriller, the lead character, Shaw, played by Laurence Harvey in the film version, is conditioned to be the unwitting assasin whose actions are triggered by a Queen of Diamonds playing card. It is gradually revealed during the film that Shaw's mother, Mrs. Islein (portrayed by Angela Langsbury), is the operative who holds the trigger. She's literally the Queen of Diamonds. When confronted she insists that she had no idea that her son was the assasin, and that she will grind her associates to dust - then gives her son a decidedly non-maternal kiss. The trigger was associated in part with Shaw's relationship to his mother and his desire for her approval - it was her that causes him to kill. There is no clear father presence, he has a step-father. And he hates both parents, particularly the domineering mother who has shaped and controlled his life.
After Spike gets his soul, the First Evil places a trigger in Spike's head. Similar to the one in The Manchurian Candidate - the trigger causes Spike to go into a hypnotic state, he becomes the vampire, and he is little more than the tool of the agent triggering him. The trigger, we soon discover, is based on an old English folk song that Spike’s mother used to sing him – entitled Early One Morning. Much like the Manchurian Candidate - the song is associated with the mother, who in this case is not so much domineering as dependent on him. The song is about a young maiden who has been deceived and abandoned by her lover/husband, much as Spike's mother was most likely abandoned by her's. The point of view is third person – and has been sung by male and female folk singers alike, everyone from Pernell Roberts to Eva Summer.
In Buffy, the first evil sings it to Spike disguised as Spike, and as Drusilla. It is also sung by his mother in a flashback. In flashbacks, we are shown that William was the sole caretaker of his mother. Outside of their servants there were no other family members or individuals living with his mother. She was dependent on William. And he was devoted to her. Her approval and comfort – was all he cared for, outside of the attentions and respect of Cecily, who he adored from afar.
The nature of William’s relationship with his mother is alluded to but never clearly defined – in Lies My Parents Told Me and Fool For Love. We are shown William reading poetry to his mother, his insistence to Drusilla that he must return to her, that she is expecting him, and his concern regarding her illness. It is clear that she is dying, possibly from tuberculosis or consumption – since we see her coughing up blood in William’s company. After he is turned by Dru – William is motivated to turn his mother into a vampire – as an attempt to save her. But it doesn’t quite turn out the way he would have liked. She turns on him – accuses him of desiring her in a sexual manner and derides his poetry and manhood. So he stakes her.
William could not leave his mother to go off with Drusilla. Nor could he merely kill her.
The song that she must have sung to him since he was a small child – has clearly been ingrained. It has become part of what Freud would call the super-ego. To leave a woman, to abandon her is the worst thing that he could ever do. He reacts to the song much in the same way he reacts to the chip, much in the same way Pavlov’s dog reacted to the bell.
Spike – never leaves Drusilla. Drusilla dumps and leaves Spike. When she returns, he has moved on and refuses to abandon his new love for Dru. But he is not lying when he tells Buffy that killing Drusilla for her is no small thing. In some regards it would be a bigger sacrifice for Spike than Angel’s staking of Darla in Season 1. Dru is his vampire mother. Yet, at the same time, his offer to kill Dru in Crush is a repeat of what he did when he was first turned – he sired his mother then killed her, moving on to Dru as his new mother, new super-ego. Unlike Angel/Angelus – Spike went to female role models or women as super-egos, hence the reason the First mainly plays the roles of Dru and Buffy in Spike’s head. This may also be why Angelus throws the female slayer in Spike’s face – he may realize that a powerful woman is the only guidepost that Spike understands.
For all we know – Spike never had a male role model. Angelus may well be the only one.
In Angel’s back story – we do not see his mother, she is not given a name or a face, and is barely mentioned – while his father on the other hand is larger than life and mentioned repeatedly. And Angel trades his father for the Master. And rebels against the Master just as he rebelled against his father. It is also Giles that Angel has a relationship with in BTVS not Joyce. While Spike develops a close relationship with Joyce and barely acknowledges Giles.
Spike won’t leave Dru – he takes care of her when she is ill, caters to her( School Hard – What’s My Line). And when Joyce gets ill – he comforts Buffy (Fool for Love). Buffy in a way takes over Drusilla’s role. Harmony never quite manages it. Harmony never quite reaches that level of importance, he never takes her seriously. In some respects – he takes out his fury regarding women on her. It’s not until after he gets a soul – that he acknowledges his behavior towards Harmony was wrong and backs off. (Harm’s Way). In Harm’s Way – he apologizes to her, or comes about as close to an apology as he can manage. Comforting her. He seems to acknowledge, without saying anything that he knows she cared for him and he was wrong to abuse it.
The trigger exists partly because Spike believes he did abandon and fail his mother. That he failed her dictates. The first is stating through the song that he has failed both his mothers, the demon one and the human one. That he can’t win. The soul means nothing. You’ve never listened to it before, why would you now? And if that is what you need – if Buffy was your superego, while the chip suppressed the demonic one – how about I do the same with the trigger? I condition you through a song that gives you pain. A hypnotic suggestion ingrained in a long suppressed and painful memory of a painful failing – something you promised you’d never do, just as you promised Buffy that you would never intentionally hurt her – you failed both times.
Through the song – the First Evil suppresses both the artificial/man-made super-ego or chip and the soul. The First becomes Buffy, plays both Buffy and Dru – both taunting Spike, forcing out the monster inside, the one that desires blood. And the monsters attacks mostly women – because women are the super-ego, they constrain him, they are his achilees heel. Without them…he can be the wild beast, indulge. With Angel it is the opposite – when he indulges women – the id is released. He gives into it. Women allow Angel to be the wild beast.
Spike overcomes the trigger with the help of Wood – who is representative of the kill that Spike is the most proud of. The one kill that he does not want to show remorse for – and stated “wanted it”. It’s not until Damage that he is forced to see that even that kill was wrong. Nikki was his equal, bad-ass, and a mother – which I think was the key factor. It’s similar in a way to Buffy – who becomes like a mother when Dawn enters her life and Joyce is removed from it. Spike’s attraction and love for Buffy grows after Dawn enters her life. For Spike – it is about mothers – they are his god, so to speak. The thought that his biological mother despised him – is enough to make him reel. The soul can’t handle what happened to his mother. And it is the leverage the demon needs to obtain dominance. What breaks the cycle is when he relives it and by reliving it through the eyes of his soul, not the demon, he realizes that he did not abandon or deceive his mother. That his mother did not hate him. She wanted release.
In Chosen, Buffy returns the favor. She releases Spike. She allows him to move on. Prior to Chosen, she asks him to stay. Begs him not to leave, giving little in return.[First Date, S7]And he can’t leave her – because of well the song, which lies at the center of his super-ego, it defines him.
Yet, at the same time, he is no longer the 26 year old Victorian gentleman who sat at his mother’s knee while she sang a folk ditty about men leaving women in the dust. He has changed. He retains the poet’s heart, but it does not define him. He can suppress the super-ego and still does on occasion. What separates him from Angel is that he does not allow the super-ego to dictate his choices. He does follow his blood. He does enjoy being alive or undead. He may feel guilty, but he does not require approval – well except perhaps from women, who remain to a degree his achiles heel in part because of the song.
Without the soul – I’m not sure Spike would have been able to come to this epithany. To choose his own path. As he states to Wood and Buffy, “ I got my own free will, now. I'm not under the First's or anyone else's influences now.”
The soul provides Spike with the capacity to choose good. He still has the demon soul. He still has dark inside him. It is a metaphor of sorts for the battle between light and dark that rages inside us all. How to know which voice to listen to? Spike’s battle is a human one. And how to live with the crimes of the past? Even if you were under a different moral structure or guide when committing them. Spike – has learned that it is not excuse, he could have resisted those desires, he does resist them with the chip – to a degree. The question that the writers leave unanswered is to what degree does the super-ego control us, to what degree are we responsible for our actions – when it is not guiding us? And to what degree can external measures such as a chip truly change behavior? What comprises human identity? And how much control do we have over it? How much if any free will?
Spike at the end of the story, as seen in the Angel Series finale, Not Fade Away, has obtained free will. He chooses to aid Angel and his friends. He chooses to fight Angel’s fight, even if it may or may not be the right one – it feels right to him. He chooses to stay with Angel and not seek out Buffy, not rejoin her or her friends. He chooses to follow his conscience or super-ego. Buffy is not guiding him, Angel isn’t, he guides himself and goes into that dark alley, by Angel’s side, to fight demons, even if it means his own destruction. He has changed and he has chosen his own fate. His chip has been removed along with the trigger. He is no longer ringing pavlov’s bell and trading clothes .
