THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE

PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF LIFE AND LETTERS

BY

JOSEPH COLLINS

AUTHOR OF “THE WAY WITH THE NERVES,” “MY ITALIAN YEAR,” “IDLING IN ITALY,” ETC.

NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE. I

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

In Memoriam

PEARCE BAILEY

DEVOTED COLLEAGUE LOYAL COADJUTOR INDULGENT FRIEND

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author wishes to express his thanks to the editors of the North American Review, the New York Times and the Literary Digest International Book Review for permission to elaborate material used by them into certain chapters of this volume.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

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THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE

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THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE

CHAPTER I PSYCHOLOGY AND FICTION

Few words attract us like the word psychology. It has the call of the unknown, the lure of the mysterious. It is used and heard so frequently that it has come to have a definite connotation, but the individual who is asked to say what it is finds it difficult either to be exact or exhaustive. Psychologists themselves experience similar difficulty. Psychology means the science of the soul, but we have no clearer conception of the soul today than Aristotle had when he wrote his treatise on it.

Professor Palmer states that William James once said that psychology was “a nasty little subject,” and that “all one cares to know lies outside.” Doubtless many who have far less knowledge of it have often felt the same way. The present fate of psychology, or the science of mental life, is to be handled either as a department of metaphysics, or as subsidiary to so-called intelligence testing. The few remaining true psychologists are the physiological psychologists and a small group of behaviourists. In this country Woodworth, who takes the ground of utilising the best in the arsenal of both the intro-spectionists and the behaviourists, and calls the result “dynamic psychology,” leads the former; and Watson the latter.

Psychology has no interest in the nature of the soul, its origin or destiny, or in the reality of ideas. Nor does it concern itself with explanation of mental phenomena in terms of forces[Pg 16] which can neither be experienced nor inferred from experience. It is concerned with the facts of mental life and with describing, analysing, and classifying them. When it has done this it hands the results over to the logician who occupies himself with them from a purposeful rather than a causal point of view; and he makes what he may of them, or he puts them at the disposal of fellow scientists who use them to support conjectures or to give foundation to theories.

It is universally admitted that when we want to get a true picture of human life: behaviour, manners, customs, aspirations, indulgences, vices, virtues, it is to the novelist and historian that we turn, not to the psychologist or the physiologist. The novelists gather materials more abundantly than the psychologists, who for the most part have a parsimonious outfit in anything but morbid psychology. Psychologists are the most indolent of scientists in collecting and ordering materials, James and Stanley Hall being outstanding exceptions.

Fiction writers should not attempt to carry over the results of psychological inquiries as the warp and woof of their work. They should study psychology to sharpen and discipline their wits, but after that the sooner they forget it the better. The best thing that fiction writers can do is to depict the problematic in life in all its intensity and perplexity, and put it up to the psychologists as a challenge.

In the fifty years that psychology has had its claims as a science begrudgingly allowed, there have arisen many different schools, the most important of which are: (1) Those that claim that psychology is the science of mental states, mental processes, mental contents, mental functions. They are the “Functionalists.” There is an alternative to the consciousness psychology—the psychology of habit—touched on its edges by Professor Dewey in “Habit and Conduct.” And (2) those that claim the true subject matter of psychology is not mind or consciousness, but behaviour. They refuse to occupy themselves with “consciousness,” and for introspection they substitute[Pg 17] experiment and observation of behaviour. Their theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviour. They are the “Behaviourists.” The literature infused with interest in psychological problems—fiction, criticism, and to a small extent social economics—has little connection with the older psychology based on subjectivities, except as it takes over the

vagaries of technique and terminology of the psychoanalysts. The literature of greatest merit seems to avail itself most profitably of definite psychological materials when it turns to the behaviourist type. Indeed, it is with this school that the novelist most closely allies himself. Or it was, until the “New Psychology” seduced him.

This last school claims that consciousness and all it implies is a barren field for the psychologist to till. If he is to gather a crop that will be an earnest of his effort, he must turn to the unconscious, which we have with us so conspicuously eight hours out of every twenty-four that even the most benighted recognise it, and which is inconspicuously with us always, looking out for our self- and species-preservation, conditioning our ends, and shaping our destinies.

The New Psychology, which is by no means synonymous with the teachings of Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, regards the human mind as an intricate and complex mechanism which has gradually evolved through the ages to suit the needs of its possessor. The adaptation has, however, not been perfect, and the imperfections reveal themselves in frequent, startling, and embarrassing lapses from the kind of mind which would best enable its possessor to adjust himself to the conditions and demands of modern civilisation. It recognises that it deals with a mind which sometimes insists upon behaving like a savage, but which is nevertheless the main engine of the human machinery, human personality, from which society expects and exacts behaviour consistent with the ideals of advanced civilisation. The practical psychologist realises that he has to cope with this wayward mind, and if he is to[Pg 18] be of service in effecting a reconciliation between it and the requirements of civilisation, he cannot ignore it, spank it, or coerce it by calling it bad names. He must understand it first;

then he may train it. The trouble with the New Psychology, whether it is “New Thought” or one of the mutually antagonistic schools of psychoanalysis, is that it almost inevitably runs off into what James terms “bitch-philosophy.”

Through this tangled web of vagaries there is a thin thread of work that is not only fiction, but literature; and this is usually characterised by obvious parade of psychological technique.

Just as civilised man's body has been evolved gradually from more primitive species and has changed through the various stages of evolution to meet the changing conditions of the environment and necessities, so has his mind. In this advance and transformation the body has not lost the fundamental functions necessary for the preservation of the physical being. Neither has the mind. But both the body and the mind, or the physical and psychical planes of the individual, have been slowly developed by environment and life in such a way that these fundamental functions and instincts have been brought more and more into harmony with the changing demands of life. This process, outwardly in man's circumstances and his acts, inwardly in his ability to shape one and perform the other, constitutes civilisation. It is doubtful if the instincts are quite as definite as some of our professors, McDougall and his followers, claim, and they lack utility when used as a basis for social interpretation either in essays or fiction.

Dr. Loeb's forced movements as a basis for a structure of interests is far more plausible. It is the interplay of interests, rather than of instincts, which is the clay our practical activities are pottered from, and should be the reliable source of materials for literature. Whenever fiction cuts itself down to instincts it becomes ephemeral as literature.

The two fundamental and primitive instincts of all living[Pg 19] organisms, civilised man included, are the nutritional urge and the creative urge, or the instinct of self-preservation and that of the preservation of the species. To these there is added, even in the most primitive savages, the herd instinct, which leads men to form groups or tribes, to fight and labour for the preservation of them, and to conform to certain standards or symbols of identification with the tribe. The Freudians do not recognise the herd instinct as anything but sublimated bi-sexuality, attributing the tendency to regard the opinion of one's associates to the psychic censor, instead of to an instinct. These three instincts are recognised in their commonest and most normal expression today as the tendency to provide for oneself and one's family; the tendency to marry and rear children under the best conditions known; and the tendency to regard the opinion of one's associates and to be a consistent member of the social order to which one acknowledges adherence.

It is small wonder, then, that the realist and the romanticist, whose arsenal consists of observation and imagination, find in narration of dominancy and display of these instincts and tendencies the way to the goal for which they strive: viz., interest of others, possibly edification. Certain novelists, Mr. D. H. Lawrence for instance, pursue discussion of the fundamental ones with such assiduity and vehemence that the unsophisticated reader might well suspect that life was made up of the display and vagaries of these essences of all living beings. But without cant or piety it may be said there is such a thing as higher life, spiritual life, and readers of psychoanalytic novels must keep in mind the fact that the Freudian psychology denies the reality of any such higher life, accounting for the evidences of it which are unescapable in terms of “subliminations,” such as “taboos.” Though these three instincts form the basis upon which the whole of man's mental activity is built, they by no means form its boundary. At some

prehistoric period it is possible that they did, but during countless[Pg 20] ages man's mind has been subject to experiences which called for other mental activity than the direct and primitive expression of these urges, and he has had to use his mental machinery as best he could to meet these demands. He had no choice. He could not scrap his old machinery and supply his mind with a new equipment better fitted to do the complex work civilisation demanded.

The result is that the working of these instincts on the experience presented to the mind has brought about innumerable complications. These are known in the New Psychology as mental complexes. They have been to some modern novelists what the miraculous food given to Israel in the Wilderness was—their sole nutriment. Complexes, or conflicts resulting from adaptation of the primitive mental machinery to more intricate and varied processes than those with which it was originally intended to cope, determine much of man's mental life.

To understand the workings of a mind is like trying to unravel a tangled skein of thread. The two main difficulties are: (1) That up to this time our mental training, our perceptions, our consciousness, our reason, have been exercised for the specific purpose of maintaining ourselves in the world. They have not been concerned with helping us to understand ourselves; (2) That there are parts of our minds whose existence we do not recognise, either because we will not or because we cannot, for the reason that they have come to be regarded as being in conflict with other parts which we have long admitted as having the first claim to recognition. In other words, not having known how to adapt certain parts of our mental machinery to the newer purposes for which we needed them, we have tried to suppress them or ignore them. In doing so we have only deceived ourselves, because they are still connected up with the main engine and influence all of the latter's output, harmoniously or jarringly—sometimes to the extent of interfering seriously with its working.

[Pg 21]

The work of the practical psychologist is to learn how to overcome these two difficulties and to teach others how to use the knowledge. This is the task novelists frequently set themselves, and some, Willa Cather in “Paul's Case” and Booth Tarkington in “Alice Adams,” accomplish it admirably. Like the teacher and the priest, they have learned that surplus energy of the mind may be diverted from the biologically necessary activities into other fields of useful and elevating effort. They have learned that the second difficulty can be best overcome by facing the truth about our minds, however unpleasant and unflattering it may at first sight appear to be. Recognition of the existence of the two primitive urges, the instincts of self-preservation and of the preservation of the race, is the first step toward appreciation of their reasonable limitations and the extent to which they may be brought into harmony with the requirements of a well-balanced life.

This leads us to refer for a moment to a tremendous force which, in any discussion of the working of the instincts, cannot be ignored. It is a constant effort or tendency, lying behind all instincts, to attain and maintain mental, emotional, and spiritual equilibrium. The tendency is expressed by the interaction, usually automatic and unconscious, which goes on between complexes and tends to establish the equilibrium. At the same time the working of individual instincts tends to upset it. Whenever the automatic process is suspended to any great degree, as by the cutting off from the rest of the mind of one complex, the result is a one-sided development which causes mental disturbances and often eventually mental derangement. As the instincts and complexes incline to war among themselves, there is a stabilising influence at work tending to hold us in mental equilibrium and thus to keep us balanced or sane. No one in the domain of letters has understood this force and its potentialities like Dostoievsky. “The Possessed” is a chart of that sea so subject to storm and agitation.

The effort toward integration is perhaps a true instinct, and[Pg 22] rests on a sound physiological basis, so well described by Sherrington. It furnishes a genuine theme for description of life's activities, and well-wrought studies of integration and disintegration take highest rank in fiction.

With all their prolixity, the Victorian novelists managed to depict progress in one direction or another. This is more than can be said of most modern novelists, who are exhausted when they have succeeded in a single analysis, and commit the crass literary error of seeking to explain, when all that the most acute psychologist could possibly do would be to catch at a pattern, a direction, and an outcome, as mere description—problem rather than explanation being the dramatic motive.

While the novelist's business is to see life and his aspiration is to understand what he sees, many novelists of today are, by their work, claiming to understand life in a sense that is not humanly possible. Human conduct affords the best raw material for the novelist. If he represents this in such a way that it seems to reflect life faithfully he is an artist; but the psychological novelist goes further and feels bound to account for what he represents. Ordinarily he accounts for it in one of three ways: (1) by the inscrutability of Providence—as many of the older novelists did; (2) by theories of his own; (3) by the theories of those whose profession to understand life and conduct he accepts. In short, he must have a philosophy of life. The mistake many novelists are making is to confuse such a philosophy of life with an explanation of mental processes and a formula for regulating them. Neither philosophy nor psychology is an exact science. If a novelist wishes to describe an operation for appendicitis or a death from a gastric

ulcer, he can easily get the data necessary for making the description true to fact. But if he aspires to depict the conduct, under stress, of a person who has for years been a prey to conflicting fear and aspiration, or jealousy and remorse, or hatred and conscience, what psychologist can give[Pg 23] him a formula for the correct procedure? Who can predict the reactions of his closest friend under unusual conditions?

With our earnest realistic novelist ready to sit at the feet of science and avail himself of its investigations—prepared, as Shaw would say, to base his work on a genuinely scientific natural history—there is danger of his basing it, too, upon psychology which is not “genuinely scientific,” because its claims cannot be substantiated by experience. While the novelist is in such a receptive state along comes a scientist, hedged also with that special authority which physicians possess in the eyes of many laymen, and offers the complete outfit of knowledge and (as he assures the novelist) inductively derived theory that the novelist has been sighing for. This is Freud. He or his disciples can explain anything in the character and conduct line while you wait. If you want to know why a given person is what he is, or why he acts as he does, Freud can tell you. His outfit is not, ostensibly, “metaphysical,” like much of the older psychology that our novelist encountered in college days. It is human, concrete, and surprisingly easy to understand. A child can grasp the main

principles. Our novelist tests out a few of them on life as he has known it and finds that they seem to work. If he is not completely carried off his feet, he may grin at some of the formulas as he might at a smutty joke, but his own observations concerning the excessively mothered boy and his reading of some of the great dramas of the world are to him sufficient evidence of their soundness; and he bases the behaviour of his characters upon them with the same assurance of their accuracy that he would have in basing the account of a surgical operation and its results upon the data supplied him by a surgeon who had successfully performed hundreds of exactly similar operations and watched their after effects.

One of the rudimentary instincts of human nature is curiosity, an urge to investigate the unknown, the mysterious. It is mystery that constitutes romance. It is the unknown that[Pg 24] makes romance of one's future, fate, fortune, mind—at least that part of the mind which we do not understand and which is always taking us by surprise and playing us tricks. Curiosity is forced movement developed along the lines of interest. It is quite likely to follow the line of least resistance, and just now there is little resistance to sex curiosity. Those who find fascination in the New Psychology today found the old psychology of a quarter of a century ago a stupid bore. The old psychology dealt exclusively with what is now called the “conscious mind:” with analysing the concept of directed thought, with measuring the processes of the mind which we harnessed, or believed we harnessed, and drove subject to our wills to do our work. The old psychology was academic, dry, as proper and conventional as the C Major scale, without mystery, without thrills, and therefore without interest, except

to the psychologist.