Does Love Come from Idealization? Love, Hate, Care, Anger, Fear, Sadness, Surprise, are all part of the complex human structure. A structure that in today’s world can be created through all the advanced technologies, and there are objects that look like human exists. Yet, they are not quite human, they are rather objects called robots with some artificial intelligence. So, why are they not “human”. What lacks in them? The answer to that are one of the most complex gift humans are born with that are expressed with the simplest words possible. Emotion and feelings. And these two things combined creates the character of a human being as well as the being’s capability on having opinions and idealism over the society they live in. Mixing the emotions, brings up expectation and hope over something or someone by a person. These over time becomes polished and then becomes something that the person prefers, something “ideal”. This “ideal” or idealism creates ideas and thoughts in a person that both can be influenced by the society or by the person himself. Now you may ask now, okay all these happens, so what? Well, the what answer is something very closely related to a term called the “The Don Quixote Effect”, that has been integrated in us, which creates images and pictures that reflects all the ideals you believe in that you created. As a definition, The Don Quixote Effect is an effect that takes place in a person’s head, when the person either entertains through various readings or listens to a lot of stories or novels that reflects their ideals and over time, they start to think themselves as the perfect protagonist of the ideal story they creates.

The Don Quixote Effect is a very broad subject on its own, and it is something that has been proven to be true from the publication of the novel itself named Don Quixote(1615) by Miguel de Cervantes. The effect has been seen throughout various different old works of literature to even modern arts and literatures. And this is something that even we have in ourselves into some extent. However, the uncovering of this effect occurred through one of the most interesting ways in the society of Russia, and the effect were highlighted into various works of literature especially around the nineteenth century, and they were mostly closest related to the nobilities of the country. So, The Don Quixote Effect was a psychological upshot that occurred in nineteenth century Russian nobility due to lack of physical activity and entertainment choices, which in today’s world shows how a person is differed from his idealistic world to the reality.

Since Russia in nineteenth century has been one of the greatest times to bring out works of art and literature related to The Don Quixote Effect, it is much more acceptable to use a prime example from on of the works of the time. The work here is called “The Blizzard” by Vladimir Sorokin, where a girl from the Russian nobility called Marya, reads so much romantic novels, that she falls in love with a character who is “poor”. Her noble class was a restricted rich class in the society where she is only eligible to marry someone only from her class or rank of the society. But, her love of romantic novel went so deep into her heart, that she felt only breaking the rules of the society will show her how much of a romantic person she is and how capable their relation would be. Thus, she finds someone named vladimir, who was as said, a very poor person and was not from the noble class. She falls in love with Vladimir and finally agrees on getting married as soon as possible. As, it will prove her idealism of what she thought love should be. To her, love should be something that is so powerful that to prove its worth to the significant other, societies rules must be broken. However, since her love was not for the person, rather the “poor” character, fate itself enters the stage of her manic performance and through One Blizzard, her marriage gets broken, and she was never able to see vladimir again.(“The Blizzard”). In context, her derivation onto breaking the rules of society came from her idealism, but her unrealistic ideal broke her heart instead of fulfilling it. But, she would not have done all of these if she had never read the novels. Her obsession on the novels made her psychologically so dramatic that she was overwhelmed with all her emotions, and overcast the reality with them. However, this example fulfills a great purpose, and it is the fact that it is a prove that The Don Quixote Effect helps to free a person from the shackles of the society. Although Marya failed in her relationship, she later om finds herself much more conscious and capable of understanding and using empowering emotions.

In contrast to the short story, a reality situation is outlined by different researchers on different medical students on how they feel or behave when they are in movies. It is done in order to understand the fact that why human beings differ in thoughts and understanding on situations that they can imagine or idealise (as happened in “The Blizzard”), versus in reality. The research simply takes multiple medical students to show a movie, and it was a movie relatively related to their daily working experience. Thus, a prediction was made that the students will react to the movie the way the do in their occupation. It turned out that the hypothesis was totally wrong. In the article “The Don Quixote effect: why going to the movies can help develop empathy and altruism in medical students and residents” it is said that, “ While watching a movie, however, the learner is freed from this immediate clinical responsibility. In the protected 2-hr space of a movie, there is nothing the learner is supposed to do! … What appears in film evokes feelings of joy, sorrow, or anger, and the learner has the luxury of experiencing emotions for which he or she bears no accountability in the real world.”(Shapiro and Rucker) Explains the emotion of a human being as, when the person is not responsible, the trigger to show the innermost emotion is activated. Thus, the emotion is then capable of overtaking the mind and the body harvested in real world. Since the entertainment factors hold no direct responsibility to the audience before hand, they are able to dive into their emotions and ideals to make up a story or even set themselves into the protagonists shoes of the fantasy.

Despite The Don Quixote Effect being a very old psychological system in human beings that separates a person from reality to fantasy or fantasy to reality, it is still undoubtedly one of the strongest psychological factors of human nature. Furthermore, it has been also proven to be “adaptable to modern and postmodern circumstances.” (Bayliss). And indeed it is. The Don Quixote Effect is still existing in today’s modern culture and society. Music has been a heavily influential to creating this effect. Examples can be given from the experience of people who goes to their favorite concerts and feels so elevated and away from their rigorous daily lives.

This effect is something that exists within all of us, and it is something that should exist as it is what creates our imagination and dreams, and gives us the hope to push us forward in our lives. When the effect does not match with what the reality is, then the life of that person would become very troublesome, but if someone is able to find the fine line between their ideal imaginations and the reality, then the person can psychologically acknowledge themselves and find their better being that had been residing within us.

Works Cited

Bayliss, Robert. Comparative Literature Studies. 2006, Vol. 43 Issue 4, p 382-397. 16p. ,

Database: Academic Search Complete

Shapiro, Johanna, and Lloyd Rucker. “The Don Quixote effect: why going to the movies can help

develop empathy and altruism in medical students and residents.” Families, Systems &

Health, vol. 22, no. 4, 2004, p. 445+. Academic OneFile,

https://link-galegroup-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A127012546/AON

      E?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=249a8390. Accessed 29 Oct. 2018.

Sorokin, Vladimir. “The Blizzard.”