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Continued... Page 4 > Developing a Theme that Sells

It is a very tricky business to try and reduce a fact pattern to the basic core theme which will communicate with all humanity. Different people perceive the same set of facts in different ways, depending upon their life's experiences and personalities. For example, trial lawyers must often try to communicate the theme that human beings are diminished by the loss of physical function and pain. While we all recognize that certain injuries almost invariably cause suffering, pain is a private experience that is invisible in its workings and is subjective in its effects as love. It is hard to talk about.

If jurors or their family or friends themselves have not had life experiences of pain or limitation, they may well not be able to appreciate the level of suffering by the plaintiff. The danger of this circumstance was stated over 200 years ago by Dr. Samuel Johnson:

It is not easy to make allowance for sensations in others, which we ourselves have not at the time. We must all have experienced how very differently we are affected by the complaints of our neighbors, when we are well and when we are ill. In full health, we can scarcely believe that they suffer much; so faint is the image of pain upon our imagination: When softened by sickness, we readily sympathize with the sufferings of others. Boswell, ìLife Of Samuel Johnson (1791) at p. 164.

USE OF BASIC HUMAN NEEDS AS A GUIDE TO THEME SELECTION

In order to understand what themes resonate with human beings, an examination of the works of theoretical psychology is useful. For example, Abraham H. Maslow developed a holistic-dynamic view of human behavior. He saw an innate goodness in human beings whereby normality is the ideal state people seek to achieve through successful need gratification. Maslow theorized that human beings, when given safety, love, and respect, work better, perceive more efficiently, use intelligence more fully and think to correct conclusions more often.

Maslow distinguished between the basic underlying needs of love, safety, and respect and societal conventions of habits and manners:

We learn to eat three times a day, say ìThank you,î use forks and spoons, table and chair. We are forced to wear clothes shoes, to sleep in a bed at night, and to speak English. We eat cows and sheep but not dogs and cats. We keep clean, compete for grades, and yearn for money. And yet any and all of these powerful habits can be frustrated without hurt and occasionally even with positive benefit. Under certain circumstances, as on a canoe or camping trip, we acknowledge their extrinsic nature by dropping them all with a sigh of relief. But this can never be said for love, for safety or for respect.

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