Goodreads asked Bryan Murphy:

Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Bryan Murphy My favourite literary couple is Paul and Miriam in DH Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, because they got me into university. My dream was to study Social Psychology at one of the two places in the UK it was then possible to do so: the University of Sussex. I got an interview with the formidable but friendly Marie Jahoda, during which I was asked about my A-level studies, in particular Sons and Lovers, and whether I thought Lawrence's alter ego suffered from an Oedipus complex. I answered that that was too glib a solution, and that more complex factors must have been interacting, which was what made the relationship interesting. Faced with a stream of candidates who equated psychology with Freud, the good Prof, who had set up a department that wanted psychology treated as a science, must have deemed my answer half decent, for an offer duly arrived, and three interesting years later I had a degree fit for no obvious profession (the British Psychological Association refused to recognise the course because it did not devote enough time to the study of rats).

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