PSYCHOLOGY AND FICTION.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17628, 4 December 1922, Page 10

PSYCHOLOGY AND FICTION.

AUTHORS' CLUB DEBATE.

(FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, October 13.

Professor John Adams (London University) as the guess of the Authors' Club this week, provided its members -with an interesting address that resulted in an informing discussion on Psychology and i'iction. Tue chairman (-Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins) thought there were two extraordinary features about childhood—one the desire to acquire personal property, and the other to be present on occasions upon which the presence of children was not required. These two instincts went very deep into human nature, and accounted lor a great deal of trouble in politics. Two Kinds of Psychology. From the welter of aennitions of the question "Is there any cliiference between psychology and rationr ,; Professor Adams said two stand out with prominence: (J; pile stiwy 01 conociousness; (2) the study of beuaviour. Naturahy novelists sciect the iaccer. iiLit weji this hopeful definition does not quite meet the case of the writer ot fiction. He studies behaviour, no doubt, but in quite a different spirit from the psychologist. The scientiiic spirit js, or ought to be, absent trom tiie noveyst. He shares in the feelings of the characters he creates. He feels with them. The psychologist stands coldly aloof. Thackeray, weeping as he penned the death ot Colonel Nevvcome, had no thing in common with the psychologist. Coquelin, holding animated converse with his demon while impressing his audiences, was more to the psychologist's taete. Yet all feel that the novelist is a kind of psychologist. Do we not have the psychological novel, and do not novelists talk a great deal about psychology? The quaiities essential to the one branch of writing are sometimes thought to bo transferable to tiie other. There are really two different kinds of psychology. The old-fashioned psychology that every educated man was expected to know—the sort of thing written by Stewart, ReiS, Hamilton, and Brown— could be applied in an easy way to the needs of social ufe. It was not too technical, and had a gentlemanly rin£ about it. Philosophy was its realm rather than science. Since then its tendency had been more and more away from metaphysics and towards physical science and even mathematics. Titchener tells that the psychological test-book of the future will be aa full of formula as the textbooks on physics are to-day and. Honest man, he does a good deal in his own writing to justify this threat. Not this way lie the novelist's desires. Littla help can he hope for from mathematical equations. (TTaeers and laughter.) The novelist's psychology is not scientific but artistic. He deals, not with tynes, but with individuals. No doubt, in order to understand the individual, he must, to some extent at least, study the type. But there is nothing more melancholy in fiction than the dominance of type. The novelist claims to be a creator, and must be allowed freedom in his work. Yet he must study the common element of humanity in order to keep hia characters within the realm of possibility. For<him psychology has a negative rather a positive value. "The time spent in its study must be regarded in the light of insurance investment rather than n direct help in his creative work. It would be absurd to deny to Sir Barrie a knowledge of psychology; it would be equally absurd to esp ct 1 ira to know anything about Titcliener'a formulae. The artistic psychologist is aa important as the scientific, but the work of the two is quite different. The novelist has no more need for scientific and quantitative psvchologv than ho has of physiologv. 15 :ch might possibly be of use in working up a p'ot—nnt T ' ; n?; can come amiss to the modern writer of fiction —but in the actual practice of his craft' a.s such it has no nlcee. There is a good deal in common between tho dream and the novel. Since the p. ychoanclysts are reducing the interpreting of dreams to something approaching a science, it is obvious that the novel lends itself to treatment by this developing method. Rending the man in his novel is no new thing, but writers of fiction must recognise tlmt this new instrument is going to put fresh power into the hands of book appraisers. Everyone who publishes a nov.l put 3 into the hands of the critics a body of evidence about the inner workings of his mind. It is only fair to give him the usual police warning that anything lie may say will be used in'evideno3 against him. (Cheers and laughter.) Degrees of Mechanism. Mr Hamlin Garland, the eminent American writer, confessed that his work was a kind of day dream. Beyond that it was a kind of autohypnosis. He found that if. he went into a familiar room at the same hour of the morning and put a piece of blank Eaper before him and took his pen in is hand, he could consciously go on with his work. He found himself exceedingly sensitive to certain kinds of interruption—wallpaper and furniture. Some people imagined thnt because a man of his type went regularly to his work he was mechanical in it. Now he was mechanical only to tie point of inducing this hvpnotic state. After he had provided -all these familiar and supposedly delightful surroundings he wrote if he could. He did not know what this unconscious self was ? and he did not care a hang so long as it helped him and did the work for- him, as it did. The painter in painting a landscape used the same thing. Ho could not write fiction that was worth anything, so far as it was worth anvthina. unless this subconscious lif© came in and helped him, and often he had found it very helpful to §0 over the chapters he had written during the day just hefore going to sleep. He would fall asleep with the problem, in his mind as it became lazy with slumber, and the /iext morning the problem would be solved. He did not know who did it, but somebody seemed to come in and help him out He never had planned a story ahead—it had flown from the point or nis pen in some mysterious fashion.