The Psychology of Harry Potter: An Unauthorized Examination Of The Boy Who Lived

by Neil Mulholland (Editor), Robin S. Rosenberg (Contributor), Wind Goodfriend (Contributor)

Harry Potter has provided a portal to the wizarding world for millions of readers, but an examination of Harry, his friends and his enemies will take us on yet another through the psyche of the Muggle (and wizard!) mind. The twists and turns of the series, as well as the psychological depth and complexity of J. K. Rowling’s characters, have kept fans enthralled with and puzzling over the many mysteries that permeate Hogwarts and

   • Do the Harry Potter books encourage disobedience?
   • Why is everyone so fascinated by Professor Lupin?
   • What exactly will Harry and his friends do when they finally pass those N.E.W.T.s?
   • Do even wizards live by the ticking of the clock?
   • Is Harry destined to end up alone? And why did it take Ron and Hermione so long to get together?


Now, in The Psychology of Harry Potter , leading psychologists delve into the ultimate Chamber of Secrets, analyzing human mind and motivation by examining the themes and characters that make the Harry Potter books the bestselling fantasy series of all time. Grab a spot on the nearest couch, and settle in for some fresh revelations about our favorite young wizard!

Genres: Harry Potter, Psychology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Pop Culture, Essays, Books About Books

326 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2007

Reviews

[Jess the Shelf-Declared Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fairly interesting, though much of it felt overly basic and obvious.

[T Dot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being i giant Harry Potter nerd with a background in Psychology i knew i had to read this. For the most part i really liked the individual essays. Some critiqued the teaching styles at hogwarts others looked at character flaws. The last part of the book i really did not enjoy; these essays were simply using Harry Potter to illustrate psychological principles and methods; this stuff i already knew so i was kind of bored.

I wished the essays had delved deeper into character psyche. I mean, you could write a whole book on Ron's insecurities! I would have loved lengthy chapters exploring each of the trio's issues/flaws/strengths/personalities using psychological principles to discuss why they behave the way they did in certain situations.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an amazing and incredibly interesting way for me to pretend that Harry Potter isn't really over. Because it's a compilation of essays on various topics from various authors, some parts were less interesting to me than others, and I certainly didn't agree with every essay, but each section made me think. It made me think about common conceptions, my personal ideas, and about Harry's world. If you're worried about too much psychological jargon, don't be--I'm in high school and have never taken a psychology course and got through it just fine. It's an immensely interesting supplement to the magical world of HP✨⚡️

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good book.
Some chapter were really interesting, some were just boring.

The book was published a couple of months before the last Harry Potter book was published so it needs to be updated.

I was hoping to read more of each character analysis from a psychological perspective.
Overall, it was a good read, I would recommend it to those interested in both psychology and Harry Potter.

[Cudahy Family Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first six essays in this book were excellent; they really delved into topics in the Harry Potter universe that had always been questions for me. For example, they make you take a closer look at the fact that wizards coming from wizarding families are far less likely to question where magic comes from and to experiment with what it can do than those who come from Muggle homes, who seem to create new spells, potions, and the like far more often. There was also an essay on how sorting into Houses really sets the students against each other right from the start and there really is no opportunity for them to branch out and make friends from other Houses. They then give examples on how Hogwarts can change this. After reading those first essays, I was excited to see what the rest of the book had to offer, but it fell flat. The last parts of the book just weren’t any good. Rather than examining things from the Harry Potter series through a psychological lens, it was more like the authors wanted to discuss a particular psychological topic and tried to throw in a paragraph about Harry Potter to make it fit in this book. Overall, it’s not something you need to rush out and read but if you can borrow it, the ones listed below are where it’s at.

BEST
1. What Do Students Learn from Hogwarts Classes?
2. Harry’s Curiosity
3. Intergroup Conflict in the World of Harry Potter
4. “Have You Got What It Takes to Train Security Trolls?”
5. Hogwarts Academy
6. Attachment Styles at Hogwarts

OKAY
1. Evolution, Development, and the Magic of Harry Potter
2. Using Psychological Treatment with Harry
3. Resisting Social Influence
4. Harry Potter and the Magic of Transformation

[Maria ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not as good as the twilight psychology book, but still I found it amusing and interesting. Would recommend!

[Takuro Ishikawa · Rating 2 out of 5]

In reading this collection of articles I realized how useless it is to apply psychology to fictional individuals or to art in general. You can pretty much say whatever you want: Hogwarts is a terrible school, Hogwarts is great, Harry is a very resilient stable individual, Harry is incapable of building relationships, etc.

Made me remember those pedantic psychoanalysts I met in my dark and embarrassing past: they thought that analyzing art justifies their baloney theory. How risible...

In any case, I think this book can benefit someone who likes Harry Potter and is interested in learning psychology 101 to 301.

[Hasnaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Alenka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic! Different experts share their opinions and interpretations in different essays. Questions which haunted us for years like 'will Harry be okay?' 'How does he even cope with all of this?' are finally answered. Even more so, questions you didn't even have before are answered. The authors put in a lot of work, even writing down sentences from the novels (with page references!) to support their statements. As each chapter was written by a different person, some chapters are contradictory, leaving space for you to make up your own mind. Highly recommended for every Potter head and psychology enthusiast!

[Vicky Lisle · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend got me this book while I was getting my undergraduate degree in psychology, and I finally read it while I was finishing up my final year of grad school for counseling. Overall, I enjoyed the book, since it revolves around two of my favorite topics! However, some of the essays are certainly better than others. In a few places, it feels like the authors are trying too hard to get their research to apply to their Harry Potter topic. I appreciated the numerous references to psychological studies, many that I'm familiar with, and a few I hadn't heard of before. Some of my favorite essays dealt with attachment styles, mental illness in the wizarding world, childhood trauma, the struggle of good and evil, using Harry Potter in therapy, and racial prejudice. I'd recommend this book to any Harry Potter fans that have a background or strong interest in psychology. I'd also recommend it to psych professors in order to build a stronger rapport with students and to make learning fun... bring Harry into the classroom!

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very cute read. If you are addicted to Harry Potter than it is fun to read. However, if you have anything more than a BA in psychology there are no real surprises. My favorite part, however, was at the end of each chapter there is a short bio on the authors of the particular chapter which are a little different than other books. Meaning, the authors do everything from explain when they fell in love with Harry to whom they would be to what they would teach if they were at Hogwarts.

[joyce w. laudon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Potter fans are many and many among them may enjoy this title. It offers a compilation of articles on topics dear to the hearts of those Muggles who enjoy the wizarding world. There are sections on Hogwarts as a school; Harry’s psychology, including his resilience; Magic, the worlds of Muggles and magicians; and, a final section on learning from Harry.

This is a book that can be read in any order or straight through. Each article begins with an introduction by the editor. Many of the authors are well credentialed and have PhDs, including the author, a therapist. He believes that lessons from Harry’s world may be a helpful focus for young people who are struggling.

I found many of these articles to be intriguing, beginning with the very first one on learning at Hogwarts. It gave me pause as I reflected on the amount of rote learning that was in the curriculum. The author of this piece wonders why curiosity was not more encouraged but rather everything was accepted. One example of this was the owls who always knew where to bring their messages; this author questions why no one ever wondered how this was accomplished. Of course there are notable exceptions to this theory, of whom Hermione is one and given credit here. There are also some professors, especially in Defense Agaisnt the Dark Arts classes who encourage more independent thinking. As this article goes on readers get a crash course in learning and the scientific method. Other entries are equally interesting.

I found the application of psychology to aspects of Harry’s world to be interesting and thought provoking. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. It may be enjoyed by HP fans and psychologists. All opinions are my own.

[Holmes Girl]

This book is older; but some of the topics seemed interesting to me, so I gave it a whirl.

It wasn't quite what I expected; but not a total dispappintment either. Essentially the book takes various psychological ideas or topics and discusses not only what the field has to say on them; but then explain their relevance to the Harry Potter world. It does fairly well presenting the material so that it's understood by the average reader.

There were a few chapters that were quite insightful and provided a perspective that I had never considered or given much time to. The chapters dealing with the structure of the Hogwarts & the magical educational system, and the interpersonal relationships section definitely held my attention. However, there were some chapters that were really grasping on trying to bring the Harry Potter universe into the discussion to make it relevant.

What I find puzzling is when this book was released. It is clear that the happenings in the "Half Blood Prince" novel are known at the time of publication, which was book #6. It was known that a seventh & final novel was coming. Why didn't they wait for this novel to be published before examining the psychology of the Potter Universe? They would have had the complete story. Thus there was an erroneous statement made by Harry, that wouldn't have happened if they had waited for the final novel.

Overall, just an ok read for me.

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just like the last book I read, The Social Animal, I thoroughly enjoyed reading another non-fiction psychological analysis of a fictional book, The Psychology of Harry Potter. I liked how well rounded the book was, jumping from topic to topic not staying too focused on one point. I also appreciated how each different “chapter” was written by different psychologists all with their different styles. They all obviously put a lot of work into their respective sections and every passage feels polished. The only criticism I could think of is at some points I think the authors forget Harry Potter didn’t actually happen. So some connections they try to make seem far-fetched since the argument was built off a fictional character. I appreciate the length as well, it’s not too big of a read and it makes the information more digestible since it doesn't drag. My personal favorite section was the three relationship types being perfectly related to Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. It was cool to see natural relationship types form out of a fictitious story. It highlights how in-depth some stories can be.

[Danielle Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book on Netgalley about a year or two ago, and finally got around to reading it.

I didn't realize the book was originally written in 2004, which was before the final book of the Harry Potter series was released. Since both the books and movies are now complete, the absence of The Deathly Hallows is very much apparent.

I minored in social psychology in college, so I do recall some of the studies referenced throughout the book. In ways, this book felt a little like a refresher crash course with a magical spin to it.

The reason I didn't rate it higher was because some sections were very interesting, while others I struggled to stay present while reading. I can't exactly say anything presented was wrong, but some topics (such as Hogwarts being a metaphor for psychotherapy) felt like a bit of a stretch.


Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free digital copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full disclosure any knowledge or connection I have to the subject of psychology can be summed up to my junior year psych class, so obviously that is not why I decided to read this book. I was mainly interested in seeing Harry Potter from a different perspective. For most part that is what I got, a new way to see the characters and the wizard world.
After a while though, a few felt like they were overreaching and trying to draw parallels to the simplest thing in the series. It also bothered me that they didn't wait for the final book to be published, I doubt it would have made a huge difference from what was already written, but there were one too many "At this time we don't know what the future holds for Harry."
I found many of the topics discussed interesting and easy to understand but I did end up also skimming a few because there's only so much attention this subject can hold for someone who has no real interested in taking a deep dive into it.

[Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really very interesting for any HP fan who also has an interest in psychology. This book has a vast amount of essays written by different people, all exploring various points and scenarios regarding the first six HP books and the wizarding world in general. Some of the points and discussions are really quite fascinating.

There are some factual errors littered throughout:

-Astrology is not a subject at Hogwarts, it is Astronomy
-Mad Eye Moody is never actually a professor
-Cho and Harry are not classmates
-Charlie and hippogriff misspellings (hippograff)
-The use of the polyjuice potion to find out the heir of Slytherin is in the second book, The Chamber of Secrets.. not The Order of the Phoenix

...just to name a few

Overall a very interesting read.

*Free e-copy received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Rosie · Rating 2 out of 5]

My overall rating for this is probably 2.5/5. I was deathly bored often enough it doesn’t deserve a three. A few of these articles were very fascinating and entertaining, but the majority were mediocre, and some were plain bad. I wish more of the authors used their psychological knowledge to analyze Harry Potter and his world, rather than used Harry Potter as a prop to forward their unremarkable psychological theories (sometimes not even new theories, but just widely accepted facts about the human mind no one really cares about). Maybe I’ll find something better looking up articles on somewhere like Jstor. What’s cool is that almost all of the authors have PhD’s, and the ones who don’t have MA’s, or are in doctorate programs, though. All of these highly educated women and men geeking out over Harry Potter! I can't blame them.

[PuPilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Igazi pszichológiai csemege HP rajongóknak. Nem egy könnyed, felszínes utazás, hanem tényleg leás sokszor a lélek mélyére. Csak néhányszor éreztem erőltetettnek a HP univerzummal vont párhuzamokat, többségében tetszettek a tanulmányok, és nagyon sok érdekesség volt bennük. A kedvencem a kötődési mintázatok voltak. Ha Rowling mindezt ennyire tudatosan építette fel, akkor le a kalappal, ha a véletlen műve sokszor, nos, hát akkor is! :D
Nagy kár, hogy a kötetet a hetedik rész megjelenése előtt állították össze, és adták ki. Akkor lenne kerek egész, ha a történet vége is ismert lett volna a szerzők számára.

Hamarosan bővebben a blogon.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/27/22 - I'm only one essay into this book, and even that one essay is half good and half "Wha??" Most of these pop culture analysis books (The Psychology of..., ...and Philosophy, etc.) are hit-or-miss (some essays can be really strong while others seems to miss the point), but within this one essay are both valid *and* asinine points.

But here's the thing that's really making me wary about this book: the Reference bibliographies in the first two essays are a mix of listing authors by First name Last name and by Last, First. I've never seen any style guide that would have a writer mix them, so I have no idea why this book is like that. Sloppy editing?
(Update about 20 days later) This has continued to bother me so much that I had to look it up. Right after I first posted the above, I realized that they might be using APA, since it's a book about psychology, and I'm not very familiar with APA. When I was first looking at the list, it seemed like *maybe* there was a different way of citing books vs. articles (Last, First vs. First Last), but even with that, I still found one or two that didn't match that theory (I think there were 2 articles that had their citations that matched books'), so perhaps still sloppy editing, but less than I originally thought. But today, I couldn't take it anymore. Over the past week, I've had to work with APA, and I know that at least the current edition (7th) doesn't show any citations that are First Last for the author. But this is an old book, so maybe a previous edition used First Last. So I went to Google, figured out which edition of APA would have been used when this book was published, found a site that still had how to do a reference list from that edition (5th) and still no! That edition also says Last, First, even for articles! So I have no idea what's going on with this book. If anyone can tell me, it would ease my mind. *deep breath* :)

3/24/22 (The actual review) - Like most pop culture analysis books (as I said above), the overall collection of essays here is hit-and-miss. Some are really good or even great ("Intergroup Conflict in the World of Harry Potter," "Attachment Styles at Hogwarts," "What Harry and Fawkes Have in Common" [spoiler: resilience and grief], "Harry Potter and the Resilience to Adversity," "Time and Time Again," "Self-Inflicted Cuts, Burns, and Bruises in Harry Potter," "Exploring the Dark Side" [this essay is part psychology and part lit comparison of evil in various stories], "Harry Potter and the Word That Shall Not Be Named" [race], "Evolution, Development, and the Magic of Harry Potter," "Using Psychological Treatment with Harry," "Defense Against the Real Dark Arts," and "Resisting Social Influence" [so 11 out of 22 essays]); some have a promising topic, but the essay misses (e.g., "What Do Students Learn From Hogwarts Classes?", "'Have You Got What It Takes to Train Security Trolls?'" [career counseling at Hogwarts], "Mental Illness in the World of Wizardry," and "The Werewolf in the Wardrobe"); and the rest are either so bad they're not worth mentioning or are just so-so. I didn't hate reading the book, but I was let down overall.

[Elon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always find scientific takes on fictional worlds interesting, and Harry Potter and Psychology both lies close to my heart, so this was something I just had to read. It's interesting, but at times also boring and seemingly irrellevant, drawing illogical paralells between psychological phenomenoms and spells in the Potter universe. More focus on the Harry Potter world and less on psychoanalasys and cognitive phenomenoms, or at least with clearer connections to each other, would have been preferable.

[Nadhilla Melia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the essays in here were brilliant, offering a new perspective on the Harry Potter series through the lens of psychological theory. Unfortunately, I found that most of the essays fell short of doing this. A lot of them simply used examples from Harry Potter as a jumping off point to talk about some basic psychological concepts. The discussion of the concepts was fine (although I'm not quite sure how accessible the writing is to laymen) but I would have liked to see them used to analyse Harry Potter in a deeper and more meaningful way.

[Dirty Dayna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am soon to have a PhD in psychology and a huge harry potter nerd.. so therefore i presumed this would be the book i would be buying for all my potter friends..
This book could maybe be called what it is but it references so lightly to the actually dynamics of the harry potter world. I would say this book would be suited better to simply psychology persons and then they can see fictional examples of various psychology aspects. it didnt work the other way round (ie how the book presents itself). it was also not entertaining to read and took me a month to push myself to finish

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5*s - there are some good, thought provoking articles in here, but too few. I enjoyed:
‘What do students learn from Hogwarts classes?’; ‘Have you got what it takes to train security trolls?’; ‘Attachment styles at Hogwarts’; ‘Time and time again’; ‘“Dobby has to iron his hands sir!”: self-inflicted cuts, burns and bruises in Harry Potter’; Exploring the dark side’; ‘Resisting social influence’.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag. Some of the essays were interesting, others a bit silly. None were in off-putting academic language, but all were very American. Unfortunately I wince every time I see 'Sorceror's stone' instead of 'Philosopher's'! And not one single writer had grasped the fact that the books were not written in America, and that the British school system (even outside Hogwarts) might be a bit different to the American.

[Kayla Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read if you are a big HP fan and have a psych background! Some essays were really fun and interesting. Others were a little boring, as they just seemed to review psych theories that I already know. I agree with others who noted that it would be really interesting to have more in-depth essays about each of the main characters and their personality traits. I also would have enjoyed it a little more is they would have waited to publish until after the series was completed.

[V.K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so different from anything I had ever read but in the best way possible. It did an amazing job of combining Harry Potter and Psychology and relating them to each other. I have always been fascinating with fiction and the psychological elements within them and this book was perfect to feed that urge.
----
I would highly recommend this book to anyone that is interested in psychology.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a brilliant ride through so many topics humans face during their lifetime and it got me truly, deeply, madly invested. From trauma to kid's needs, parental issues and racism, many more. I always wanted to know why such a wide range of people connect to this franchise and these essays shine a light on this mystery. I enjoyed it very much.

[Judy]

Daft essay seriously pondered if educational programs in real life could benefit from imitating aspects of Hogwarts programs. As though Hogwarts and 100% of the activities there there's a, r. is real rather than a fabrication of Rowling's imagination.