Some time ago, Crossover Queen posted a book review on her site. This review was not a favorable one for the book in question, but that hardly mattered when I read it and it is of no interest to me now. What is of interest is one particular passage from her review, which jumped out at me:
“But it’s the lack of trust and memory-wiping that grinds my gears even worse, because it robs the main character of the primary advantage humans have, in a world where every Thing else has magic. Our ability to work in groups, put together ideas and solutions that no one person can come up with alone, and watch each other’s backs. And beyond that, the mere fact of having someone else to vent to, to keep the pressure from driving you crazy.”
Like Crossover, I have a very big problem with memory-wiping or somehow “jiggering” the minds of characters in fiction, so much so that it is mentioned as a defining reason why psychics in my story “The Long Dream” (available in Planetary Anthology: Uranus*) are so widely distrusted. Those without telepathy can never be certain that those who possess this power will not abuse it, leaving their victims none the wiser for their manipulation.
Depending on the level of power the telepath has they can convince random bystanders they meet that they have known one another since childhood. They can also do much, much worse and never be caught or brought to justice for it. Or if they are caught, it may be too late for the person they manipulated.
There are a variety of stories where the dark side of telepathy, as opposed to the bright side described here, comes up. These stories were mentioned indirectly in this article here about “cursed characters.” Sometimes the curse is what others do with a power that the main character did not ask for and has little ability to control.
Marvel’s Jessica Jones was telepathically abused by the Purple Man (Zebediah Killgrave) during her early adult years. He used his power to convince her to strip and beg him for sexual intercourse, then manipulated her into using her powers for his benefit. Although the Purple Man does not actually rape her, Jessica is left an emotional and psychological wreck following her rescue from this situation. Once a bright, optimistic girl she becomes a drunk to cope with the effects of Killgrave’s malicious handling of her psyche for his own pleasure.
Another example is Gilderoy Lockhart from the Harry Potter series. Lockhart claimed to have defeated many dark creatures and magicians over the course of his career, which is how he got a job as the professor in charge of the Defence Against the Dark Arts class at Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*. In reality he coaxed the real wizards and witches who had done these deeds into telling him about their adventures. He would then use a memory charm to erase their memory of the deed and his questioning them about it, allowing him to claim credit for their exploits without fear of reprisal.
Even heroes are not immune to misusing their powers over the mind. Hermione Granger used a spell to make her Muggle parents forget her and travel to Australia to “protect them” and herself from Voldemort’s Death Eaters when she joined Harry and Ron on the run. Likewise, Jean Grey – while possessing the Phoenix Force – altered the memories of young Kitty Pryde’s parents to convince them to let her join the X-Men. Since Kitty was being pursued by another organization that planned to use her and her power for evil, she was actually safer with the X-Men than she would have been almost anywhere else.
That being said, “two wrongs do not make a right.” In each of the cited stories above, the agency or sovereign wills of the parents were overridden “for their own good” and that of their daughters. Rather than ask her parents to leave for Australia and pretend they do not know her, Hermione makes the decision for her parents. To this day I do not know if she ever undid the charm which she put on them or if it was even reversible in the first place. Hermione took away her own mother and father’s ability to choose so as to protect herself and not make herself a liability to her friends’ mission. That is wrong.
Similarly, Jean Grey voided the Prydes’ concerns for their daughter by rearranging their minds to convince them to let Kitty join the X-Men, leaving them under the impression that their daughter was only going to a prestigious school, not joining a group of superheroes who regularly faced world-ending threats. Rather than abide by their sovereign (if mistaken) decision to keep their daughter safe their way, Jean stripped them of their rights because she knew better than they did how to care for their own child. Worse, no one in the X-Men ever called her to account for it, and Kitty was never shown to be disturbed by her actions. The writers’ decision to have the Prydes file for divorce later makes a sad amount of sense in this light.
Yes, there were valid reasons for the X-Men to be concerned that Kitty would continue to be pursued by the villainous White Queen/Emma Frost (a telepath with no qualms about misusing her powers even now), but that does not make Jean’s behavior any less immoral. She committed a crime against humanity and nature itself by essentially forcing a couple to give their daughter up to an extremely dangerous lifestyle at the tender age of thirteen. There ought to have been at least some token arguments about that, but none were forthcoming, nor has the incident been brought up since. In contrast to the more obvious beating Professor X has received in recent years for misusing his telepathy (via retcon, in a number of cases), Jean gets a complete pass for her actions in recruiting Kitty Pryde more or less by fiat.
Combined with these posts here, here, and here, this brief overview should explain quite well the pitfalls of telepathy as a power. The “will to power,” as Nietzsche put it, exists for both hero and villain. By far the villains tend to fall into this trap more often than heroes but the fact remains that even heroes can be tempted to violate another’s autonomy. Power corrupts if abused regularly and the temptation to mind rape another human being and make them one’s puppet remains ever present. We are fallen creatures prone to sin, and the attraction of subsuming another’s will to replace it with our own is and always will be with us.
A good series, such as The Dresden Files* and Andre Norton’s Witch World*, makes clear why this type of evil is so despicable. Following Crossover’s point in her post on trust, proper confidence in others requires respect for and understanding of others’ boundaries. A person cannot safely trust everyone with everything, and those he does choose to trust ought to be vetted carefully before he puts faith in them, since he is essentially letting someone within the “threshold” of his psychological as well as physical dominions.
Once one opens that psychological door, closing it before he can be hurt is next to impossible. If that door is forced open against his will, then the individual is in grave danger and well within his rights to fight back. He is no less at risk in the realm of the mind than he is physically to loss of life, limb, and even his sanity.
The human body and mind are sovereign; they belong to the individual and none other, to be shared at his discretion and held against all comers to his last breath. As stated in the Writerly Sound Bites mini-series on broken or traumatized characters, mental assault carries the same risk – and results – as a physical or sexual attack. Kill the mind, you kill the person.
One of the ways that you can kill a person is by destroying their ability to trust others. If a man, woman, or child’s ability to put their faith in others is compromised violently from someone close to them, forming bonds with others will become more difficult. As Crossover Queen said, we need other people in our lives. Perhaps not many, but we still require companionship to survive and even thrive.
Taking that away from someone for petty and/or selfish reasons is evil. Doing so for “their own good” or “the greater good” is a worse perfidy because by doing so, one cloaks selfish aims in fair dress. By violating the sacred boundaries of mind and/or body, one makes it difficult for the victim to establish or re-establish healthy boundaries with others. Whether those others are people the victim knew and trusted before they were attacked or people they meet after, relearning to trust and rely on other people will be hard. The more often a character is violated telepathically, the less likely they are to trust others or even themselves, since their memories will be suspect due to the psychic games played upon them. Who do you trust when you cannot trust yourself?
If you are writing a story with characters who have telepathic or psychic powers, keep these points in mind. Far too many people simply skip over the “dark side” of telepathy for a variety of reasons. Do not be one of them; go where few writers dare to enter, because they are afraid to find themselves mirrored within not the villain’s mind but the ostensible hero’s thoughts.
There is a little bit of bad in every good person, and a little bit of good in every bad one. The bad ones generally strangle the good while the heroes do their best to clamp down on the evil in their heart. See if your heroes measure up – and if they fall short, try to find a way to help them back from the brink.
Real heroes in the real world generally do their best to make amends for past misdeeds, after all. Why should fictional ones be any different?
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Mercedes Lackey's character Vanyel Ashkevron (The Last Herald-Mage) cast a mind-control spell over all of Valdemar to make its people to forget that "Magic" really existed for a "good reason".
Of course, once Valdemar learned that magic was actually real (and threated them), NOBODY SAID ANY BAD about long dead Vanyel.