The Empty Hearse – Holmes Brothers a Psychoanalysis

 (Sherlock Meta by wellingtongoose)

What I really love about The Empty Hearse are the scenes between Sherlock and Mycroft. It added wonderful new details to their relationship – slowly painting in the backdrop to their currently antagonistic affection. It also gives us new insights into the personality and emotional coping strategies of Mycroft and Sherlock.

I analyse the new details we have been given and explain how Mycroft and Sherlock developed into the characters we see, why their relationship is so difficult and yet filled with such deep emotion.

Sherlock’s and Mycroft’s behaviour are classic patterns of different emotional coping strategies and their conversation in The Empty Hearse had finally vindicated my original theories.

A Hat Trick

 

The deduction scene for the hat was well written, I just wished it actually tied in with the plot a bit more. It gives us an idea that Sherlock has always been running to keep up with his older brother even as an adult. Sherlock appears to deduce people on a conscious basis – he puts effort into his deductions but Mycroft deduces almost on reflex and is actually quicker than Sherlock. I have said before that Mycroft is very good at reading people on a level that Sherlock simply does not match. This is a vital component of his work as a “minor civil servant” (for more info on Mycroft’s job read James Bond was a Civil Servant too). Living people and their twisted motivations are often much more complex and difficult to deduce in comparison to objects in isolation, so I’m not surprised that Mycroft always wins.

I found it rather touching that Sherlock presents the hat to Mycroft for deduction and despite the brilliance of Mycroft’s logic he does not reach the same emotional conclusion about the hat as his brother. Sherlock believes it shows isolation whereas Mycroft merely believes that the wearer doesn’t care about being different.

I find it very interesting that Mycroft’s response is almost a refusal to acknowledge the possibility of negative emotions associated with being alone, whereas Sherlock’s response is very much laced with emotion. Thus we can see even from this short scene that the brothers project their emotions in different ways.

 I am of the firm opinion that Mycroft is intellectually very close to his younger brother – but that does not mean Mycroft fully understands Sherlock on an emotional level, which brings us onto the Thinker and Feelers.


The Controlled Hurricane and the Overblown Breeze

When people point out that The Empty Hearse shows us that Sherlock is now capable of experiencing emotion – I often feel the urge to write a very sarcastic reply.

Really? Have we been watching the same show or did I just have a very elaborate set of visual hallucinations?

Sherlock has always been capable of experiencing and expressing emotion. In fact he expresses his emotions in such a melodramatic fashion, even aliens from outer space could probably spot his unhappiness (think back to all the times Sherlock has screamed the word “bored”). The reason why it appears that Sherlock is both “odd” and “cold” is that he expresses emotions in socially unacceptable ways and fails to express appropriate emotion at socially acceptable times. His emotional outbursts are often the root cause of his social dysfunction.

Whilst many people have tried to fit Sherlock into all kinds of psychiatric boxes, I am of the firm opinion that Sherlock and Mycroft need to be approached from a completely different angle.

The development maturation model provides us with a perfect reason for the behaviour we see in both Holmes Brothers.

Sherlock is a classically dysfunctional Feeler and Mycroft is a classically dysfunctional Thinker.

The model predicts that during the first years of life, infants learn coping strategies for emotion. It is a vital part of human development which everyone undergoes but the path an infant “chooses” determines their future personality, their susceptibility to psychiatric conditions and response to psychiatric therapy.

All infants start off with the basic instinctive need to gain attention; it is an essential survival strategy but there are two broadly different methods that infants learn to use to gain attention.

“Feelers” are infants who learn the best way to cope with emotions is to amplify them because this brings attention/comfort from the primary care giver. “Thinkers” on the other hand learn that internalising their emotions in favour of pleasing the primary care giver leads to attention/comfort.

I think the best analogy for Thinkers and Feelers I can come up with is this:

If emotions were fine wine, the Feelers would all be drunk and the Thinkers utterly sober.

The functional Feelers would be amusingly tipsy, bringing joy and laughter to the party, whilst the functional Thinkers would be savoring all the subtle aromas of the bouquet and discussing the quality of the vintage.

The dysfunctional feelers would be smashing up the wine cellar in a drunken rage, whilst the dysfunctional Thinkers would be stoically standing the in the middle of the carnage refusing to acknowledge that wine can stain their suits.

Most well adjusted adults exist somewhere on the spectrum between two extremes. They are able to retain the good parts from their original “path” and learn the beneficial strategies of the opposite “path”.

Mycroft and Sherlock, unfortunately, are firmly stuck on opposing ends of the spectrum but they share one commonality - they are both dysfunctional.

Bored, Bored, Bored!



Sherlock is the classical dysfunctional Feeler. He never attempts to control his emotions when he does not feel the need to do so. For example when Sherlock is discontent everyone around him will know and suffer. Neither John nor Mrs Hudson can avoid giving him attention during one of his emotional tantrums. Sherlock has never learnt to put aside his own feels in consideration for the feelings of others. He is still very much stuck in the infantile stage of his emotional coping strategy whereby he will stop at nothing to get the external attention/comfort he needs to cope with negative emotions.

Of course Sherlock no longer cries like a baby – he has moved on to emotionally manipulating people in various crude ways. This is never clearer than in The Empty Hearse when he deliberately allows John to continue believing that he is going to die in the underground train. Sherlock needed to hear John say that he was forgiven because he simply didn’t want to live with his own guilt for a moment longer. It didn’t matter that John had to relive the worst memories he has ever experienced – Sherlock’s feelings were more important.

Feelers generally are not prone to introspection (which can be good  because too much introspection will make you depressed). Sherlock definitely doesn’t engage in introspection or self-reflection which is why he is often unintentionally rude to people and then looks completely baffled when he is criticized for it. It is not a sign that he does not understand human interaction – he has just never bother to reflect on the emotional impact of his words. I have often wondered if before meeting John, Sherlock truly understood that other people have emotions in the same way as he does.

Mycroft on the other hand is a different brand of nutter.

Mycroft vs Goldfish 



He is the classic dysfunctional Thinker. He copes with emotions by internalising and analysing them. Dysfunctional Thinkers never take the time to simply acknowledge that they are feeling emotion, they have to engage all cognitive facilities to evaluate the emotion for its “usefulness”. “Useful” emotions are kept for further appropriate expression, whilst “useless” emotions are suppressed and ignored.  An extreme Thinker like Mycroft does not display his emotions until he has consciously or subconsciously filtered, reflected and censored everything he experiences. This is why Mycroft is “The Iceman”.

Intelligent thinkers often turn their own emotional expression into a potent form of social lubricant. Emotions become a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.

Mycroft aims to only display emotion that is social appropriate and advantageous. The Iceman is in effect performing an eternally tasteful pantomime for the benefit of his audience (until his control slips).

Functional thinkers can be the nicest people you will ever meet. They make wonderful caring friends who will always be on hand to give you emotional support whenever you need it.

Dysfunctional thinkers on the other hand have taken the advantages of being a Thinker a few steps too far. They are out of touch with their own emotions but ironically very aware of other people’s emotional states, making them ideally suited to reading other people. Their obsessive and relentless campaign of filtering, analysing and organising their emotions often spills out into other aspects of their life making them predisposed to OCD. Unsurprisingly they are also more prone to chronic and treatment resistant depression – sadly because they won’t consciously or subconsciously accept that they are experiencing depression.

I think the exchange between the Holmes Brothers sums Mycroft up perfectly.

Mycroft: “I’m not lonely,”

Sherlock: “How would you know?”

Two men at the dysfunctional extremes of emotion management are very unlikely to emotionally understand each other. They are locked in a perpetual cycle of antagonism. Sherlock is metaphorically wrecking the wine cellar and Mycroft is still pretending that his Saville Row suit is waterproof.

I have no doubt there is deep love between the brothers and they do emotionally connect but it can never be the joyous function relationship that some siblings have the luck to experience.

Don’t Be Smart Sherlock, I’m the Smart One

 

This brings us onto the question: why did two brothers develop such different emotional coping strategies?

As I said before most well adjusted adults start off one path and then quickly learn elements of the other producing their own unique hybrid coping strategies. What the end result very much depends one’s social environment. Meeting a wide variety of people with a wide range of hybrid coping strategies really helps children to learn and develop into well adjusted adults.

Unfortunately it appears that in Mycroft and Sherlock’s formative years they didn’t get this vital opportunity. The scene in The Empty Hearse makes it quite clear Mycroft and Sherlock spent their early childhood isolated from other children. In fact they didn’t properly meet other children until Sherlock was old enough to have his intelligence judged.

I have several theories on why this happened which I explore in Mycroft vs Sherlock vs Goldfish

Whether an infant develops into a Feeler or a Thinker has a genetic influence but more importantly it is behaviour of their primary care givers that determines their “path”.

Thinkers usually develop in response to care givers who provide the infant with consistent attention (positive or negative) but according to the care giver’s own schedule. Whether the baby cries loudly or softly does not vastly affect the time lapse between episodes of attention. Feelers on the other hand have inconsistent primary care givers who respond quicker in certain circumstances leading to the infant learning that louder cries generate a quicker response.

Mycroft evidently had consistent primary care givers who firmly stuck to a strict schedule. Infant Mycroft had no power to dictate the time of attention he was given, so he learns to internalise his own feelings and project an image whereby he receives only positive attention when attention arrives.

This situation is not uncommon in the eldest of a group of siblings. Humans always start off with the best of intentions and usually spend a great deal of time researching, planning and organizing their lives for the first baby. They have an idealised view of how they will raise the child. Obvious when the baby eventually arrives, some parents break down quickly and all their plans fly out the window, but other parents whether out of stubbornness or resilience will stick it out because they still believe that their schedule will make the perfect child.

However the chances of people being able to repeat the feat again diminishes with each subsequent baby, if only because there are now more children for you to consistently parent. Many parents simply throw in the towel after the first child and let the others dictate their own schedule. We can call it “when Mummy gave up syndrome”.

Sherlock may suffer from this problem but even if family circumstances did not change between the birth of the two brothers Sherlock had an extra source of attention: his older brother Mycroft.

How many seven year olds are able to independently follow an external schedule and give consistent attention to a baby? Not even Mycroft is going to be able to do that. Besides Mycroft is a Thinker – his default operational mode is suppressing his own feelings for the benefit of others. So in the middle of the night when baby Sherlock is crying – how long do you think it takes for Mycroft to give him attention?

Even if their parents or nanny tried to be consistent, Mycroft was too young to have the self-discipline to follow their lead. Instead Sherlock ends up a Feeler and not a Thinker.

However this might have been easily rectified in early childhood by a wide range of peer interactions but the Holmes Brothers were almost completely isolated. The combination of a firmly entrenched Thinker and a developing Feeler spending nearly all their time together is a recipe for dysfunction, particularly as Mycroft is the Thinker and the older sibling with the socially imposed obligations to look after Sherlock.

Being the Thinker, Mycroft sacrifices his own emotional needs to tend to those of his younger brother. However infant Sherlock has already centered his entire narrow universe on his feelings, he does not need more attention when he expresses emotion but unfortunately seven year old Mycroft hadn’t quite finished a degree in child psychology yet.

Sherlock grows up with the reinforced fact that his emotions are paramount. He never has the chance to learn that other people’s emotions are just as important has his. Sherlock never acquires the skills or the motivation to think about other people’s emotions in a  meaningful way. Conversely, Mycroft never gets the chance to feel his own emotions because there aren’t other Thinkers around willing to facilitate his emotional expression. Had Mycroft spent most of his formative years in school with other children he would have made friends with other Thinkers and Feelers who would allow him to experiment with new Feeler type strategies.

Unfortunately Sherlock’s method of coping with negative emotions i.e. act out and demand attention doesn’t work in the adult world. If Sherlock seems curiously childish it is because he has never development beyond late infancy in his emotional coping strategy.

 Mycroft’s strategy on the other hand does work in the adult world, which is why Mycroft looks superficially better adjusted than his younger brother but he pays a very high personal price for the mask he wears.