CHAPTER IPSYCHOLOGY 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 forceswhich 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 substituteexperiment 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 tobe 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 livingorganisms, 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 countlessages 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.
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, andrests 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 givehim 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 thatmakes 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.
The New Psychology is different. And this “difference” is exactly why it has proved to be almost as effective bait to the feminine angler after romance which may serve her as caviar to the prosaic diet of every-day existence as are spiritualism and the many other cults and new religions whose attraction and apparent potency are now explainable by what we understand of this very psychology—or the science of the mind. There is no reason to suppose that the current doctrines of the subconscious will do more for civilisation or art than the older doctrines of consciousness. The fact that they seize the popular fancy and are espoused with enthusiasm is of no particular significance, since the very same attitude was an accompaniment of the older doctrines.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the prevalent interest in psychology. I shall cite three indications of it: The pastor of one of the large and influential churches in New York asked me a short time ago if I would give a talk on Psychology before the Girls' Club of his church. When I suggested that some other subject might be more fitting and helpful, he replied thatall the girls were reading books on psychology, that he was sure none or few of them understood what they read, and that he was convinced that their indulgence was unhealthy. Should one go into any large general book-shop in New York or elsewhere and survey the display, he will find that a conspicuous department is devoted to “Books on Advanced Thinking,” and upon inquiry he will find that it is the most popular department of the store. The most uniform information that a psychiatrist elicits from the families of youths whose minds have undergone dissolution is that for some time previous to the onset of symptoms they displayed a great interest in books on philosophy and psychology, and many of them had taken up psychoanalysis, or whatever passes under that name; joined some League of the Higher Illumination; or gone in for “mental fancy work” of some kind.
Before taking up specific illustrations of psychology in modern fiction, I wish to say to amateurs interested in the study of psychology, that frank recognition of their own unconscious minds or of the part of their instinctive life or memories which may have been intentionally or automatically pushed out of consciousness, does not call for digging into the unconscious through elaborate processes of introspection or through invoking the symbolism of dreams. Even were it done, the result would probably reveal nothing more startling than would a faithful account of the undirected thoughts which float uninvited through the mind during any idle hour. For most normal persons such thoughts need neither to be proclaimed nor denied. The involuntary effort toward equilibrium of a normal mind will take adequate care of them. The study of such mental conditions and processes in abnormal individuals, however, is often of great service to the psychologist and facilitates understanding of the workings of both the normal and the unbalanced mind.
I also desire to call attention to the value of an objective mental attitude if one would conserve mental equilibrium andkeep the working mind at its highest point of health and productivity. One of the greatest safeguards of mental equilibrium is the desire for objective truth. This is an indication that the mind is seeking for harmony between itself and the external world, and it has a biological basis in the fact that such harmony between the organism and the external world makes for security. The desire for objective truth is a straight pathway between the ego-complex and the ideal of a rational unified self. Parallel with this rational self there is an ethical self which has freed itself from the complexes caused by the conflict between the egoistic instincts and the external moral codes, and uses the rational self to secure harmony of thought and action based on self-knowledge. These two ideals may be pursued consciously and may be made the main support of that complete and enlightened self-consciousness which is essential for the most highly developed harmonious personality.
For a time it seemed to the casual observer that the New Psychology was so steeped in pruriency that it could not be investigated without armour and gas mask. Happily such belief is passing, and many now see in it something more than the dominancy and vagaries of the libido, which convention has insisted shall veil its face and which expediency has suggested shall sit at the foot of the table rather than at the head. It has awakened a new interest in the life of the spirit, which is in part or in whole outside consciousness, and it has finally challenged the statement of the father of modern psychology, Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”
The religionist advises us to “Get right with God.” At least he is bidding for integration of interests. The humanist in literature who tries to get life going right with its memories is doing the same thing. To be on good terms with memory is happiness; to be on bad terms with it is tragedy. Both are fields for literary workmanship. The more the individual works up his memories in contact with his experiences, the more objective he becomes. On “Main Street” everybodyremembers everything about everybody else and thinking becomes objective, with aspects no finer than the daily experiences of the thinkers. There is no chance for romance and adventure because the memories of the few who erred by embarking on adventurous ways are so vivid in the minds of their neighbours, and so often rehearsed by them, as to inhibit the venturesome. Instead of mental equilibrium between vital and struggling interests, there is only inertia. This makes a good theme for a sporadic novel, but it is not a basis for a school of novelists. Mr. Lewis set himself a task that he could perform. On a level where life is richer and memories are crowded out by sensational experiences the task is harder.
It is a mistake to think that psychology is all introspection and conjecture of the unconscious. Mental life in the broadest sense is behaviour, instinctive and intelligent. Few have shown themselves more competent to observe, estimate, and describe such behaviour than the author of “Main Street.” That novel was a study of temperament, a portrayal of environment, and an attempt to estimate their interaction and to state the result. It was recognised by those who had encountered or experienced the temperament and who had lived, voluntarily or compulsorily, in the environment, to be a true cross-section of life focussed beneath a microscopic lens, and anyone who examined it had before him an accurate representation of the conscious experiences of at least two individuals, and a suggestion of their unconscious experiences as well. This permitted the reader, even suggested to him, to compare them with his own sensations and ideas. Thus it was that emotions, sentiments, and judgments were engendered which, given expression, constituted something akin to public opinion. The result was a beneficence to American literature, for the purpose of the writer was known, and it was obvious to the knowing that he had accomplished it.
In “Babbitt” Mr. Lewis set himself a much more limited task. The picture is life in a Middle Western city of theU. S. A. It is as accurate as if it had been reflected from a giant mirror or reproduced from a photographic plate. George F. Babbitt is signalled by his fellow townsmen as an enviable success from a financial and familiar point of view. Nevertheless he grows more discontent with life as prosperity overtakes him. The burden of his complaint is that he has never done a single thing he wanted to in his whole life. It is hard to square his words with his actions, but he convinces himself. So having run the gamut of prosperity, paternity, applause, wine, women, and song—in his case it is dance, not song—without appeasement, he finally gets it vicariously through observing his son who not only knows what he wants to do, but does it. He summarises what life has taught him in a few words: “Don't be scared of the family. No, nor of all Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!”
Mr. Lewis' purpose was to describe the behaviour of a certain type of man in a certain kind of city, of which the world is full. He gives the former a definite heredity, an education with an amalgam of sentiment, a vague belief that material success spells happiness, that vulgar contact with one's fellows constitutes companionship, and that Pisgah sights of life are to be had by gaining a social elevation just beyond the one occupied. Then he thwarts his ambition to become a lawyer with an incontrovertible outburst of sex and sentimentality, and all his life he hears a bell tolling the echoes of his thwarted ambition. He feels that he has been tricked by circumstance and environment, and that display of chivalry to his wife and loyalty to his chum were wasted. They were indeed, for they had been offered, like the prayers of the hypocrites, in clubs and in corners of the street, and displayed for his own glory.
Materialism was Babbitt's undoing. It destroyed the framework on which man slings happiness and contentment, and which is called morality and idealism. When that went he becamea creature of Mr. Karel Capek's creation. Mr. Babbitt, in common with countless benighted parents, cherished a delusion. He believed that filial love, so-called, is an integral part of an offspring's make-up. It is an artefact, an acquisition, a convention: it is a thing like patriotism and creed. One is born with a certain slant toward it and as soon as he becomes a cognisant, sentient organism he realises that it is proper to have it and to display it. In fact he is made to do so during his formative years; thus it becomes second nature. And that is just what it is—second nature. Parental love is first nature. If this were a disquisition on love, instead of on novelists, I should contend that there are two kinds of love: a parent's love for its child, especially the mother's; and a believer's love for God. When Mr. Babbitt wallows in the trough of the waves of emotion because he doesn't get the affection and recognition from his children which is his due, he alienates our sympathy and Mr. Lewis reveals the vulnerable tendon of his own psychology.
Were I the dispenser of eugenic licenses to marry, I should insist that everyone contemplating parenthood should have read the life history of the spider, especially the female of the species, who is devoured by her offspring. All novelists should study spiders first-hand. Filial love, or the delusion of it, furnishes the material for some of the finest ironies and deepest tragedies of life, and as Mr. Lewis adopts it as a medium for characterisation quite free from the teaching of the Freudians who would make it a fundamental instinct, the reader is entitled to expect from him a more reasonable treatment of the subject.
Babbitt's tragedy in the failure of his children's affection is the tragedy of millions of parents the world over. There is hardly a note that would be more sure of wide appeal. But it cannot be explained by the mere fact that, despite the Decalogue, no person of reason will ever “honour” where honour is not merited. It is hard to pity Babbitt becausehe could not commandeer the filial respect and honour which he had failed to inspire. If this were all, the situation would be simple. But, like countless other deluded parents, Babbitt believes that merely by bringing children into the world he has staked out a claim on their love, just as the child has a claim on the love of those who brought him into the world. And in this belief lies the irony and the tragedy: in the disparity between tradition and fact; between reason and instinct. The tradition or convention that filial love corresponds to parental love probably had its origin in the mind of the parent who would have liked to supply the child with such reciprocal instinct—a love that would transcend reason and survive when respect and honour had failed—but nature has not kept pact with the parental wish. In the realisation and acceptance of the truth lies the Gethsemane that each parent must face who would mount to higher heights of parenthood than the planes of instinct. Hence the universal appeal: the reason why the reader sympathises with Babbitt even while condemning him. He has forfeited the right to what he might have claimed—honour and affection—to fall back upon more elemental rights which were a figment of the imagination. Mr. Lewis' psychology would have struck a truer note if he had differentiated more clearly between the universal parent tragedy and Babbitt's own failure as a parent.
With the regeneration or civic orientation of Babbitt I am not concerned—that is in the field of ethics. But, as a student of literary art and craftsmanship, it seems to me the sawdust in Mr. Lewis' last doll.
To depict the display of Babbitt's consciousness as Mr. Lewis has done is to make a contribution to behaviourism, to make a psychological chart of mental activity. One may call it realism if one likes, because it narrates facts, but it is first and foremost a narrative of the activities and operation of the human mind.
“Babbitt” may be construed as the American intelligence ofMr. Lewis' generation turning on its taskmaster. All men who live by writing, and have any regard for fine art and “belles lettres,” or any ideals for which, in extremity, they might be willing to get out alone with no support from cheering multitudes and do a little dying on barricades, live and work with the Babbitt iron in their souls. Mr. Lewis probably had his full dose of it. He had been an advertising copy-writer, selling goods by his skill with a pen, to Babbitts, and for Babbitts. He had been sub-editor for a time of one of those magazines which are owned and published by Babbitts and tricked out and bedizened for a “mass circulation” of Babbitts. He hated Babbitt. When he saw the favourable opportunity he meant to turn Babbitt inside out and hold him up to scorn. But Mr. Lewis is not savage enough, and his talent is not swinging and extravagant enough, and he has not humour enough, to make him a satirist. He is a photographic artist with an incomparable capacity for the lingo of “one hundred per cent Americans.” As he gets deeper and deeper into the odious and contemptible Babbitt, he begins to be sorry for him, and at the end he is rather fond of him—faithfully telling the facts about him all the while. He pities Babbitt in Babbitt's sense of frustration by social environment and circumstances, and admires him for telling his son not to let himself be similarly frustrated.
To call such a book “an exceedingly clever satire” and its leading character “an exceedingly clever caricature” is, it seems to me, to confess unacquaintance with one's countrymen or unfamiliarity with the conventional meaning of the words “satire” and “caricature.” Such admission on the part of the distinguished educator and critic who has recently applied these terms to it is most improbable.
If a photograph of a man is caricature and a phonographic record of his internal and externalised speech constitutes satire, then “Babbitt” is what the learned professor says it is.
There is a type of novel much in evidence at present calledpsychological, which is reputed to depict some of the established principles of psychology. It should be called the psychoanalytic novel, and psychoanalysis is only a step-child of psychology. There are hundreds of such novels. Some of them are considered at length later. Here I shall mention only one; “The Things We Are,” by John Middleton Murry. The story is of a young man, Boston by name, who has been unfitted for the experiences of adult life by excess of maternal love—the most familiar of all the Freudian themes. The narrative is developed largely through description of successive states of mind of the subject, with only the necessary thread of story carried by recounting outward events. After the death of his mother, Boston finds himself unable to take hold of life and dogged with a sense of the futility of all things. He tries various kinds of uncongenial work as cure for the sense that life is but a worthless experience, all of which fail. Finally he retires to a suburban inn to live on his income, and there, through the kindly human contact of the innkeeper and his wife, he experiences the awakening of a latent artistic impulse for expression and narration. He finds himself believing that he could give years to becoming the patient chronicler of the suburb which has provided him such beneficial retreat. Even his small peep at community and family life gives Mr. Boston uplift and expansion, and makes more significant the greatest of the Commandments. He sends for his one London friend, a literary man, who brings with him the young woman to whom he is practically engaged. The recently released libido of Mr. Boston focusses and remains focussed upon her. He interests her and finally wins her, and the long “inhibited” Mr. Boston finds himself in “normal” love. The environment prepared him and “he effected a transformation” on Felicia—in the language of the psychoanalyst. The thesis of the story is that for this particular kind of neurotic suffering, “suppression of the libido,” cure lies in “sublimation of thelibido,” best effected by art and love in this case, after work, social service, and religion have been tried and failed.
The psychology of the sick soul is a science in itself, and is known as psychotherapy. There are many sick souls in the world—far more than is suspected. Very few, comparatively, of them are confined in institutions or cloistered in religious retreats or universities. The majority of them toil to gain their daily bread. They are the chief consumers of cloudy stuff and mystic literature. The purveyors of the latter owe it to them not to deceive them about psychoanalysis. As a therapeutic measure it has not been very useful. The novelist should be careful not to give it more potentiality for righteousness than it possesses.
It is the history of panics, epidemics, revivals, and other emotional episodes that they always recur. The present generation is fated to be fed on novels embodying the Freudian theories of consciousness and personality. Like certain bottles sent out from the pharmacist, they should have a label “poison: to be used with care.” The contents properly used may be beneficial, even life saving. They may do harm, great harm. Freudianism will eventually go the way of all “isms,” but meanwhile it would be kind of May Sinclair, Harvey J. O'Higginset alto warn their readers that their fiction is based on fiction. A man's life may be determined for him by instincts which are beyond the power of his reason to influence or direct, but it has not been proven. It is hypothesis, and application of the doctrine is inimical to the system of ethics to which we have conformed our conduct, or tried to conform it, with indifferent success, for the past nineteen hundred years.
It is often said that man will never understand his mate. There are many things he will never understand. One of them is why he is attracted by spurious jewels when he can have the genuine for the same price. Ten years ago, or thereabouts, a jewel of literature was cast before the public and was scorned. I recall but one discerning critic who estimatedit justly, Mr. Harry Dounce. Yet “Bunker Bean” is one of the few really meritorious American psychological novels of the present generation. It is done with a lightness of touch worthy of Anthony Hope at his best; with an insight of motives, impulses, aspirations, and determinations equal to the creator of “Mr. Polly”; and with a knowledge of child psychology that would be creditable to Professor Watson.
There are few more vivid descriptions of the workings of the child mind than that given by Mr. Harry Leon Wilson in the account of Bunker's visit to “Granper” and “Grammer,” and the seduction of his early childhood by the shell from the sea. Dickens never portrayed infantile emotions and reactions with greater verisimilitude than Mr. Wilson when knowledge of the two inevitables of life—birth and death—came, nearly simultaneously, to Bunker's budding mind.
If journals whose purpose is to orient and guide unsophisticated readers, and to illuminate the road that prospective readers must travel, would give the “once over” to books when they are published and the review ten years later, it would mark a great advance on the present method. If such a plan were in operation at the present time “Bunker Bean” would be a best seller and “If Winter Comes” would be substituting in the coal famine.
Force or energy in a new form has come into fictional literature within the past decade, and I propose to consider it as it is displayed in the writings of those who are mostly responsible for it: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Marcel Proust, and to consider some of the younger English novelists from the point of view of psychology.