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 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 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 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 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.