Comic Con on the Couch: Analyzing Superheroes and the People Who Dress Like Them
The shrink wants to know how Batman is feeling.
In this case, Batman is a husky mid-40s native of uptown Manhattan’s working-class Washington Heights neighborhood, his own personal Gotham. Under his thick black rubber mask, he grunts in his best Christian Bale, “The person that’s under the mask doesn’t exist.”
But the woman he’s talking to wants to get deep under that mask. She’s Robin Rosenberg, a middle-aged Palo Alto psychologist in private practice who specializes in an unusual clinical cohort: superheroes. Rosenberg, a columnist for Psychology Today and the author and editor of several books, including the anthology The Psychology of Superheroes, wants to know what motivates Batman. Yes, Robin is questioning Batman.
There’s no leather couch in the Batcave, so Rosenberg has to settle for walking the floor of New York’s cavernous Javits Center — which, on this rainy October afternoon, is the perfect place to shine the Bat-Signal. The center is host to New York Comic Con, one of the largest gatherings of the comic book industry, where all the major comics publishers come to hawk their wares, and “cosplayers” — fans in elaborate costumes — adopt the personas of their favorite characters. These aren’t just people in dress-up. There’s something, Rosenberg believes, more psychologically complex going on.
Two or three times a year, Rosenberg attends the major U.S. comics conventions and starts conversations with fans — especially the cosplayers, whom she greets with a business card identifying herself as a psychologist. “I don’t want people to think I’m a freak,” she says.
Batman can relate. He loves coming here in costume. “It feels good,” he tells Rosenberg, who records their conversation on her iPhone. He’s not talking about the fit, Rosenberg learns when she pries a bit further. “It’s like nothing can hurt me.”
Batman — in pain?
Rosenberg knows how to comfort him: by letting him talk. Soon, his friend, dressed as Batman’s erstwhile ally Green Lantern — a character whose power stems from overcoming the kind of fear Batman instills — catches up from elsewhere at the convention. He quickly puts himself on Rosenberg’s couch. “To be a superhero,” says Green Lantern, a little too demonstratively, “you have to have real willpower.”