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A few thoughts on Tim Hodgens' comments...

There was a sci-fi film made, I believe, in the late 50's called The Body=

Snatchers (a later remake was made, but I refer here to the original).  I=
n
the film were pods that appeared and inside each pod an exact duplicate o=
f
the various characters was slowing growing to maturation. When "ripe" it
would wait for the real corresponding character to fall asleep at which
time the surrogate would take over the real character's body.  The
remaining real characters could not tell whether their compatriots were
real or the podded substitutes except by one peculiar feature.  A charact=
er
who had been body snatched was incapable of love. The film was originally=

written as an allegory for the "communist menace" so prevalent in the 50'=
s.
However, in a sense it has validity to the masked face situation of PWP. =

We are often perceived as being incapable of love or unloving because our=

persona takes on the demeanor of the expressionless body snatched
characters.  Indeed, in a sense our bodies have been snatched as well. =

However, in truth our fate is far worse than the body snatched characters=
=2E
It is their nature to be incapable of love and so they are true to their
nature when they don't express it.  But PWP are, of course, fully capable=

of love although their expressionless mask often communicates indifferenc=
e
and this is very hard on significant others - even when the significant
others are fully aware of the problem. Furthermore it is the Parkinsonian=

who gets all the sympathy while all the significant other gets is the gri=
ef
and endless work.  In the film the last two unbody-snatched characters ar=
e
lovers and they struggle heroically past the point of total exhaustion no=
t
to fall asleep.  Finally one does fall asleep and is taken over but the
point is not that they failed but rather that they struggled so couragous=
ly
to remain in love.

Regards,

Tom