We\u2019re assumed acting and psychological pain go together for a long time, writes Judith Ohikuare. \u201cAs a result, the sudden and often surprising deaths of talented actors sometimes inspire fearful, knowing whispers about the dangers of delving \u201ctoo deep\u201d into harrowing roles.\u201d But there\u2019s less science around the subject than you might think, she writes.<\/p>\n In truth, cognitive scientists and psychologists have been reluctant to embrace acting as a serious subject of study. But researchers like Thalia Goldstein, an assistant professor of psychology at Pace University, have recently started to investigate the links between the two fields with the idea that both disciplines can be enriched by a study of their commonalities. In a joint paper from Goldstein and Yale professor Paul Bloom, \u201cThe mind on stage: why cognitive scientists should study acting<\/a>,\u201d Goldstein argues that psychologists can look to how actors create emotions in order to understand human nature in a new way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The story gets into various psychological theories, the resemblance between acting and lying, as well as the history of acting, including the \u201cbelievable truth\u201d of Stanislavsy and disciples like Lee Strasberg, and what this all tells us about how actors practice their craft.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all complex and hard to sum up succinctly. (I urge everyone interested in this to revisit Edmund Wilson’s classic essay, “The Wound and the Bow.”) But playwright and performance artist Deborah Margolin, who knows how hard acting is, comes down this way:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve gone to dark places in terms of the roles I\u2019ve played, and I\u2019ve also gone to dark places just living. There\u2019s this whole thing about suffering for your art and I think that\u2019s baloney. I tell my students not to worry about the suffering. Suffering will find you\u2014seek the joy.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"200px-Bernhardt_Hamlet2\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/200px-Bernhardt_Hamlet2.jpg\")
<\/a>Sitting behind this story, of course, is the recent death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was able not only to inhabit a huge variety of roles but to seem to many people who knew him in real life far more stable than he turned out to be.<\/p>\n