Notes and Comments I Literary Realism and Psychology A Response to Moghaddam’s Proposal

Abstract. Moghaddam has suggested that psychologists could profit from the study of fiction. Although agreeing with Moghaddam in general, I feel it necessary to specify, fairly closely, the type of fiction which might be susceptible to psychological analysis. I choose literary realism, as defined by Wellek, as a possible area for fruitful analysis. Having discounted the difficulties possibly besetting such an analysis, I give some examples of the ways in which the study of the works of those working in the literary realist tradition could enlarge and enhance our understanding of psychological processes. Ultimately, however, I conclude that, in order to benefit fully from such a study, psychology would have to undergo a conceptual transformation since the two areas into which, ostensibly, literary knowl-edge could be incorporated (personality theory and the practice and theory of psychotherapy) are not constituted in such a way that such incorporation is possible. Key Words: fiction, literary realism, personality, psychology, psycho-therapy Moghaddam (2004) has argued that, because psychology and literature share in common a commitment to understanding human nature, we should explore their commonalities. However, his failure to specify precisely the literary forms that he considers worthy of our attention constitutes a fundamental problem. He mentions, ‘novels, plays and poetry ’ (p. 507). At the same time, he urges us to treat literature as a source of knowledge about psychological states during past historical epochs. But, to make a very fundamental point, even if we limit ourselves to the novel, we have to realize that it is a fairly recent literary creation with a long antecedent history and a particular course of development (for a history of the novel’s development, see Levin, 1963, Ch. 1). Thus, someone uninstructed in literary theory or literary scholarship cannot draw the same sorts of inferences from a contemporary novel and a prose epic like Sir Thomas Malory’s La Morte d’Arthur, written in the 15th century. Moghaddam, apparently, commend