True Crime, Meet High Anxiety

Jessica Grose wrote a recent article in The NYTimes exploring why true crime appeals to women. Much ink has been spilled about this phenomenon, the crimes that people pore over, their rapt attention like thousands of magnifying glasses. Grose’s take suggests that the genre provides a crisp sense of justice we rarely get to see played out in life. This sounds right to me. Even more so, that it is the careful consideration of what happened, the generous scrutiny of specifics attended to in the aftermath, that makes carefully rendered true crime accounts so appealing.

The level of attention paid to the minutiae of (a relatively non-gory) crime is like a tonic for the anxious mind. While none of us actually want to be literally subjected to the cold examination of detective work, we do want what the true crime genre offers - the after-the-fact warmth of being seen and pondered from all angles, particularly the empathetic ones. We want matters to be viewed by intelligent, circumspect figures who will run through the details with us, over and over if we must, and analyze, reflect, and make meaning. 

This relates to a similar impulse to seek therapy—to have someone bear witness, ask the right questions, challenge us, write notes about us afterward. Though therapy is nothing like a court case (which I find myself saying to couples attempting to litigate each other in session), it is paradoxically not not like a court case. Therapy, like a trial, is a careful sifting through of the past, to absolve - and sometimes incriminate - parts of ourselves and our memories that left us wounded. 

There is an innate human need to be seen. It’s a complicated yearning that D.W. Winnicott—British psychoanalyst and pediatrician who philosophized on the subject of mother and child— captured when he wrote, “It is a joy to be hidden, and a disaster not to be found.” A certain type of anxious person might take great pains to hide parts of themselves, only to find great solace in a sympathetic and judicious gaze. The anxious mind ruminates, puzzles over details, and feels very alone in this careful work. To recognize one is not alone in this grueling overview can provide great relief. 

Why does true crime appeal to women in particular? Well, there’s the fact that violent crime is more often directed at us. But women’s history is often one of omission—being an integral part of the story and then ignored in the telling. There is great pain in being omitted from the story. True crime, in its retelling, promises to illustrate history, to look at the scene in depth. The well done documentary series about a crime, or biographical article or book, accomplishes this in vitro, through the easy medium of entertainment. 

Therapy’s promise is less easy, of course. It requires an ability to personally tolerate toggling between being hidden and found, rather than experiencing it vicariously. Winnicott described therapy's promise succinctly, "I cannot tell you exactly what to do, but I can talk about what it all means.” Its gift is in the attempt to grapple at once with the knowable and the unknowable. I think that's the most interesting part of our attempts at justice, too. 

That's my take. If interested in therapy, reach out here. 

Cover Image: "Foggy Forest in Japan". Original public domain image by Bo Nielsen – justwalkedby.com