CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I | Psychology and Fiction | [15] |
| II | Ireland's Latest Literary Antinomian: James Joyce | [35] |
| III | Feodor Dostoievsky: Tragedist, Prophet, and Psychologist | [61] |
| IV | Dorothy Richardson and Her Censor | [96] |
| V | Marcel Proust: Master Psychologist and Pilot of the “Vraie Vie” | [116] |
| VI | Two Literary Ladies of London: Katherine Mansfield and Rebecca West | [151] |
| VII | Two Lesser Literary Ladies of London: Stella Benson and Virginia Woolf | [181] |
| VIII | The Psychology of the Diarist: W. N. T. Barbellion | [191] |
| IX | The Psychology of the Diarist: Henri-Frédéric Amiel | [219] |
| X | Georges Duhamel: Poet, Pacifist, and Physician | [237] |
| XI | Even Yet It Can't Be Told—the Whole Truth about D. H. Lawrence | [256] |
| XII | The Joy of Living and Writing about It: John St. Loe Strachey | [289] |
| XIII | The King of Gath unto His Servant: Magazine Insanity | [307] |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| PAGE | |
| JAMES JOYCE | [37] |
| FEODOR DOSTOIEVSKY | [63] |
| MARCEL PROUST IN 1890 | [119] |
| A PAGE OF CORRECTED PROOF SHOWING MARCEL PROUST'S METHOD OF REVISION | [127] |
| KATHERINE MANSFIELD | [153] |
| REBECCA WEST Photograph by Yevonde, London | [173] |
| STELLA BENSON | [183] |
| HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL | [221] |
| GEORGES DUHAMEL From a Drawing by Ivan Opffer in THE BOOKMAN | [239] |
| D. H. LAWRENCE | [259] |
| D. H. LAWRENCE From a drawing by Jan Juta | [267] |
| J. ST. LOE STRACHEY From a Drawing by W. Rothenstein | [291] |
THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE
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 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.