The King’s Speech: Perspective Shifting

People of all sorts have a tendency to take one aspect of themselves and treat it like it’s their whole self. It’s a kind of psychological shorthand. Someone says “I’m an engineer” rather than “I work in engineering,” or “I’m a soldier” rather than “I’m in the military.” But this thinking is a tremendous millstone for people who have to confront serious challenges in their lives. Example numero uno is Bertie (Colin Firth in the recent film The King’s Speech), a.k.a. Albert Frederick Arthur George, the Duke of York, and much later, King George VI.

As portrayed in the movie, Bertie’s label for himself is ineffectual stutterer. He can’t remember a time when he didn’t splutter and stammer in almost any social situation or when he wasn’t utterly terrified of his father and of not living up to his royal responsibilities. He has tried various treatments, all of which failed. And he has become convinced that a stutterer is just what he is and what he always will be.

The perspective shift comes after a trick demonstrated by Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) that allows Bertie to hear a recording of himself reading a passage from Shakespeare with no stuttering at all. That’s when Bertie’s self-label begins to get fuzzy. He can see Bertie the man and the stammering he suffers from as two distinct things.
Why does this matter? There are so many situations where we might cause ourselves unnecessary problems by equating some label with our whole selves. It might be an architect whose job disappeared when the economy tanked, and she doesn’t know what she is anymore. Or a Marine who is discharged and feels like he has no identity. Medical conditions, too, can have a similar effect. Think about the difference between being a “cancer victim” and a “person with cancer”—the former leaves little room for anything but the disease; the latter couches the disease as just one descriptor applied to a person. The next time you’re struggling with the labels you have for yourself, try flipping it around this way and see where it takes you.