The Dynamics of Literary Response

by Norman N. Holland

“The definitive work in psychoanalytic criticism, combining what went before with brilliant new insights and theoretical postulations. ― Psychiatry and Social Science Review Reading a poem or a novel, seeing a play or a film, is a special kind of experience. Yet the essential nature of that experience has remained a mystery. Philosophers have discussed the writer’s role, and critics the writer’s craft, but there has been little disciplined inquiry into the relation of literature to people’s minds―the way in which people re-create within themselves the literary experience. Norman Holland approaches the problem armed with a thorough understanding of psychoanalytic concepts, and develops a comprehensive theory of the psychology of literature that deals with poetry, theater, and film, as well as with fiction, myth, pornography, and humor.

Genres: Nonfiction

404 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1975

About the author

Norman N. Holland (born 1927) is an American literary critic and Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the University of Florida.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_...

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Canım çıktı ama ben böyle bir şey görmedim. Çok önemli çok.

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a surprisingly insightful read. I've tried reading a few other books on literary theory, and was put off by them, for their lack of clarity and rigor. This book stands up on those fronts, and moreover presents an idea that seems to be largely truthful, and that may fruitfully inspire further investigation. Holland's question is: How are we to understand the peculiar character of the often vivid, absorbing, and emotional experiences we have of fictions? His answer is basically: Fictions are like chambers in which all our psychological defense mechanisms are shut off, because we are aware that any fictional world isn't real, and isn't connected to our real life and world. Fictions tap into our unconscious fantasies and scaffold our expressing these fantasies, into the worlds and forms offered by the fiction. Different sorts of art do this to us in differing ways, but this overall insight is supposed to hold true across media: in instrumental music, for example, the art gives us very little structure, so we can develop our fantasy in any which way. In contrast, in realist literature, the art gives us a lot of structure and directs the development of our fantasy.

These main points can be gleaned by reading through chapters 1 and 3 (although there are interesting points dispersed throughout chapters 1-6). (The second half of the book seems to consist in applying the theory to making sense of particular works of art, and to critiquing other literary theories; I am not as interested in that, and so didn't read through these parts). A bonus of this book is that chapter 2 gives a wonderfully clear and concise overview of Freud's theory of the three stages of development (the oral, anal, and phallic phases). It was both hilarious and fascinating to read through these. Holland moreover explains the main Freudian defense mechanisms of displacement, projection, introjection, sublimation, and rationalization. This was helpful.

Amazingly, it seems that the only main flaws in Holland's thought are superficial ones, which can be subtracted from his overall theory, which may stand firm. First, Holland too readily assumes that the sorts of fantasies that drive our engagement with fiction are the traditionally Freudian ones, when I doubt this is true (given that Freud wrote under a particular era and culture, and there are surely many sorts of fantasies different people can have). Second, Holland (in chapters 4 and 5) gives a detailed account of how particular literary devices (e.g., rhyme, rhythm) specifically lower certain defense mechanisms in certain ways - this seemed too fine-grained, and I doubt particular literary forms add to the lowering of such defenses. It seems that the bare fact that the fictional world shows up as make-believe, as disconnected from reality, simpliciter suffices to remove all these "defense mechanisms."

To pursue some questions Holland's thought opens for me: Why do fictional worlds, exactly, eliminate "defense mechanisms"? How are we to understand this without reliance upon Freudian theory, but rather in terms of our secular folk psychology? It seems that when we engage with real life, we are immediately or mandatorily aware of how anything we feel or do may have consequences upon our later states, and the states of other people and the world, particularly of the people and things to which we're committed or responsible for. So if someone has a desire to cheat on their partner, for example, they are compelled to not think about this further, to nip the desire in the bud. In contrast, if he reads a novel about an affair, the make-believe events portrayed may "latch" upon his unconscious desire, and the activation of this desire and emotion underlies his make-believe experience of this fictional world. He is aware throughout that he is not embarking on this affair, and the characters who are aren't real but are merely cooked up by the author. But the events may be psychologically engaged with as symbolic of possibilities that could happen in the real world, and the reader may be able to indirectly but seriously think about those real world possibilities, through the proxy of the fictional events. The reader need not feel guilty or worried in doing this, because directly, he only thinks about the fictional events, which he knows are in principle not to be found anywhere in the real world, and so could not bear any real life consequences.

This leaves open the question for me: What exactly is this connection between the fictional world and the real world? I've spoken about this above in terms of our letting fictional events "symbolize" real world events. This notion of symbolization is crude and likely misleading, and definitely oversimplifying. There are likely many other psychological processes that go on, whose naming is an endeavor to undertake. For example, it could be that we're not consciously aware, at all, of any real world events, but there is some form of genuinely unconscious processing of real world events, processing which matches or is coherent with the structures or forms of the fictional events of which we are conscious and "virtually" experiencing. Or, alternatively, it might be that the relation must be drawn by us consciously; we must consciously recollect our real life experiences or knowledge of what goes down in the world, in order for this real world effect to occur, but it is quite easy to do this, because the fictional events prime us to draw such mental associations. Or, alternatively, it could be that we consciously but ineffably register these real life events, by virtue of "seeing" the fictional event "as" these real life events. This depth of "perception" can be as ineffable and automatic as seeing the identities and personalities of our friends, by virtue of perceiving their physical forms; or, another analogy is we may see the possibilities of acting upon a flower (e.g., plucking it; drawing it) by virtue of perceiving the physical form of that flower. These thoughts are all speculative, and I'd like to find ways of proceeding in this morass of intuitions.

I found my way here through my interest in the philosophical debate on whether apparent emotions had in response to fictions consist in actual emotions. This book gives much food for thought regarding this debate; I think an argument could be made that actual emotion requires all the psychological and behavioral happenings that depend upon the activation or presence of "defense mechanisms" (e.g., sense of the potential real life consequences of this event, our getting readied to react in a certain way in light of this), so that because the apparent emotions in response to fictions lack these, they cannot count as emotions. More generally, I think anyone interested in the imagination, make-believe, and emotions (either philosophically or psychologically) may find this book valuable.

[Yağmur · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am certain that this one stands as one of the most enjoyable and comprehensible literary theory books I've ever read - especially when I am able to suppress my majestic cringe, remembering all those one-way gender interpretations. I believe Holland might have understood Freud better than Freud ever managed to understand himself.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

And thus continues my unintentional schooling in psychoanalytic approaches to reading. I guess not entirely in this sense, since I knew that was Holland's bag in a way it surprised me a little in Radaway.

I think this book is really rather lucid about it's subject-- I might not agree with what Holland says about how the various Freudian developmental stages manifest in poems and stories, and what they mean, but he lays out his ideas remarkably clearly, especially in the first half of the book-- the second half does feel a bit like a series of responses to questions someone asked of his theory. It does have that feeling of follow-up, or the As to a series of live Qs. The result is as you'd expect, pretty mixed. On some I think he's got a really good answer, and on others, well, I don't think he quite responds appropriately-- I'm thinking of his attempt to integrate myth into his theory, which seems poorly worked out, not really taking into account what myth is, and what distinguishes it from the other works of lit he encounters.

The book is marred, and I mean that word, by some really odd and one must imagine unintentionally sexist language. It's a weird echo of the patriarchy that though Holland can integrate women researchers and thinkers in his book and take their ideas seriously, but also write the book with a default audience that is so obviously not only male, but patriarchal, that it's a little embarrassing. It's a product of its time, to be sure.