{"id":2262,"date":"2016-10-07T11:28:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T09:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=59723"},"modified":"2026-02-10T17:07:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:07:05","slug":"je-krijgt-meer-begrip-voor-anderen-als-je-af-en-toe-een-boek-open-slaat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2016\/10\/07\/je-krijgt-meer-begrip-voor-anderen-als-je-af-en-toe-een-boek-open-slaat\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You gain a better understanding of others by reading a book now and again\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLevien Willemse<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

It all started with Martha Nussbaum, she says. Emy Koopman, with a short mass of blonde curls and wearing a respectable jacket, deftly doffs both her leather shoulder bag and her rucksack \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m staying over in Amsterdam tonight\u2019 \u2013 and joins me at a table in Lebkov coffee bar. It\u2019s one of the last sunny autumn mornings and we\u2019re sitting outside, looking out on the gleaming roof of Rotterdam Central Station. Around the corner, buses pull up with a heavy sigh. A saxophone echoes from the bicycle tunnel.<\/p>\n

So it all started with Nussbaum, the famous American philosopher who writes about \u2018the good life\u2019 and who claims that literature makes us better people. It\u2019s a congenial hypothesis. Only, it\u2019s never been proven (apart from that one\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0that whipped up\u00a0a bit of controversy<\/a>). Koopman, who studied both clinical psychology and comparative literary studies, was tired of all these claims. So she decided to research it herself.<\/p>\n

Cum laude<\/h3>

In short, the answer is yes: you gain a better understanding of people\u2019s troubles by reading a book now and again. Literary language brings us into contact with new, often complex and mixed emotions (although it\u2019s not clear whether reading one of the classics such as\u00a0Tolstoy or Multatuli<\/a>\u00a0will result in more benevolent behaviour than reading a few pages of a popular\u00a0bestseller<\/a>). The doctoral committee was so impressed that she received the designation cum laude \u2013 \u2018I\u2019ve no idea how often that occurs, but at our faculty at least not often\u2019.<\/p>\n

When I ask her what we can do with these findings, she shifts uncomfortably in her chair. \u201cAs a psychologist, I think about how we can make people better. You could use literature in mental healthcare, to help people talk about mental illness in cases where a loved one suffers from a mental disorder, for example. But from the perspective of literary theory, I do have a little trouble with this use of instrumentalism. It\u2019s not simply about utility. It\u2019s also about beauty. A tree is not simply beautiful because you can make a piece of IKEA furniture from it.\u201d<\/p>\n\t

\n\t\t

Emy Koopman (1985) studied literature studies and clinical psychology at Utrecht University. This autumn she finished her\u00a0thesis ‘Reading Suffering: An Empirical Inquiry into Affective and Reflective Responses to Narratives about Mental Pain’ succesfully. In September, her debut novel Orewoet<\/em>\u00a0was published by Prometheus. Earlier, she wrote\u00a0De Correspondent<\/a>, Hard\/\/hoofd<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0De Groene Amsterdammer<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n

Lyrics<\/h3>
<\/div>

Koopman grew up in Haren \u2013 \u2018yes, the same town as the Project X riots<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 before moving to Oss. Her father worked as a headmaster at a secondary school and her mother was an assistant professor of French at Radboud University in Nijmegen. She was an avid reader. She was also a keen writer of short stories, but never thought her work was good enough for publication. In secondary school she wrote the lyrics for her band Fallen Angels<\/em>. \u201cOur great example back then was Anneke van Giersbergen of\u00a0The Gathering<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0who called it \u2018poppy\u2019 with an \u2018edge\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The novel she was working on when she started her comparative literary studies degree in Utrecht was shelved. She mainly wrote reviews and essays for online magazines such as\u00a08weekly<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and Hard\/\/hoofd<\/em><\/a>, which led to having a \u2018cup of coffee\u2019 with an editor from Nijgh & Van Ditmar, but nothing else.<\/p>\n

In 2014, however, at the end of a Hard\/\/hoofd event in the Torpedo Theatre in Amsterdam, she made a breakthrough when she was approached by a woman from the publisher Prometheus. \u201cIt came at exactly the right time, just when I actually had something to show. It\u2019s something I\u2019d wish on everyone: no pressure in the beginning, but at a given time to be offered a contract that encourages you to finish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teaching<\/h3>

\u201cMy plan was to spend at least one day working on the book in the weekend and three evenings during the week. That didn\u2019t always come off, because sometimes I was simply exhausted from my work at the university or I needed to take some time out with friends. But the intention did help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Normally, PhD candidates\u00a0have enough on their plate<\/a>\u00a0carrying out their research, especially when fulfilling the demands of their teaching commitments. With Koopman, however, this was different. She still had enough energy over from writing her dissertation and novel to attend a masterclass in investigative journalism. And on those occasions when she felt it was becoming too much, she would think of the tip her mother gave her.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe once told me on the phone that she\u2019d seen a snail in the back garden that morning. It was a whole story about how the animal appeared not to move. But then in the evening she\u2019d actually found it again in the front garden.\u201d She laughs. \u201cShe meant it\u2019s a question of battling on. If you do that, you\u2019ll get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cancer patient<\/h3>

Then all of a sudden it was the summer of 2015. And she was all ready to make the final sprint \u2013\u00a0\u2018just work three times as hard and I\u2019ll be over the line\u2019 \u2013 when she received the news. It was just part of the national screening programme. Nothing to worry about, she thought at the time. But the gynaecologist came with the result: it was cervical cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden I was a cancer patient,\u201d she wrote in a\u00a0personal account<\/a> a few months later. \u201cAnd my two most pressing questions were: does my womb need to be removed and will I survive this?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answers to the questions are now clear: no, and yes. She had to undergo surgery, that was certain. And have a check-up every three months. But in no time at all she was back at work and was even able to join the masterclass in investigative journalism she had enrolled in. She recounts it in good spirits.<\/p>\n

I ask whether she feels proud of how she\u2019s dealt with it all.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really reflect on it in normative terms. I wouldn\u2019t know how there is a \u2018bad\u2019 way of dealing with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, by breaking down perhaps, I say \u2013 something that would be quite normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially, I was of course shocked and emotional,\u201d she explains. \u201cBut at a certain time I tend to start looking at things from a distance. So I think: that was actually quite strange, how the doctor did that. Or: that was interesting, how that woman behaved.\u201d<\/p>\n

She laughs, contritely: \u201cThis is simply a way of creating order in the chaotic reality. It\u2019s called\u00a0coping.<\/em>\u00a0I can talk about it with friends or write a scene about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love triangle<\/h3>

Her debut novel\u00a0Orewoet<\/em>\u00a0(from Middle Dutch, meaning \u2018a violent burning desire\u2019) is based on a similar \u2018interesting\u2019 situation: a love triangle she ended up in when she was about twenty-five. The story is set in the mid-1970s \u2013 \u2018the heyday of anti-psychiatry\u2019 \u2013 and is largely written from a male perspective.<\/p>\n

I ask her whether her research into empathy helped her in any way.<\/p>\n

She laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s not as if my research has furnished me with a whole collection of literary characters I can call on to satisfy the emotions of the reader. I write what I\u2019d like to read myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

She will continue in science, as an independent, but intends to focus primarily on writing and journalism. \u201cScience is more stable. I could always try for a Veni grant, seeing that I\u2019ve already published quite a bit. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s currently such an attractive environment. You\u2019re always fighting for your money. And if I have to fight, then I\u2019d prefer to do so for a second novel rather than for a new research project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would you like to hear more? Emy Koopman will be discussing her research and her novel in\u00a0<\/em>Studio Erasmus<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg at 20.30 on Tuesday 11 October.<\/em><\/p>\n

Interview with professor Maikel Peppelenbosch<\/h2>