POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18357, 24 March 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY.

NOVEL-READING.

BY A. EfiNEST MANDER.

Why do people read novels ? Why do they go to the cinema.? To say that they do these things because they enjoy doing them is not to answer the question. Why do they enjoy doing them ? What causes their enjoyment ? What is the nature of the satisfaction they obtain? And why does a particular person enjoy one novel or screen-play and not another? It is only during the last ten or 12 years that any serious, scientific attempt has been made to solve such problems as this. Until quite recently the science of psychology was something unreal, remote from these practical affairs of everyday life; and so, until quite recently, psychology was one of the least interesting of all the sciences to the man-in-the-street. But now all that is changed; and the psychology of to-day comes forward as a scientific attempt to explain human nature and to solve such problems as the one mentioned above. Thus modern psychology reveals itself as one of the most interesting, and as one of the most practically useful, of the sciences. It helps us to understand ourselves one another. A knowledge of human nature is one of the biggest assets we can have in life; and modern psychology is the science of human nature.

Before we can answer the questions at the beginning of this article (we must realise how it is < possible for us " in imagination " to identify ourselves with others. Under the right conditions we can lose our self-consciousness, our sense of our own identity and individuality: and so unconsciously we are able to " think " of ourselves as being somebody else. This process of unconsciously putting oneself in another person's place is known as personation. Blood and Thunder. Temporary and partial personation is very common: we all indulge in —often. Take the school boy who is absorbed in some blood-and-thunder story. Who can doubt that, while he is reading, he is actually thinking of himself as the dauntless hero, putting himself in the hero's place and living by proxy through the stirring adventures of the story Unconsciously the boy thinks of himself doing all the hero does. It is he himself, who discovers the vile plot and brings the villain to his knees; it is he himself, who has such hairbreadth escapes; it is he himself, who, singlehanded, turns the tables on the pirate captain and recaptures the good ship. It is evident that the boy enjoys the story because he is " putting himself in the place " of the heroliving, as it were, through him. But the important fact to note is this that the satisfaction which the boy thus obtains is the satisfaction " in imagination " of certain natural instinctive desires which he cannot satisfy in real life. Every normal, healthy schoolboy craves (consciously or unconsciously) for excitement and adventure, for the recognition of his personal prowess, for the leadership and mastery of others, for freedom from the restraints and compulsions of real life; he cannot satisfy these natural cravings in real life; but he can satisfy them, to some extent, in fiction. His enjoyment of the story depends, then, upon the fact that he is finding indirect satisfaction in this realm of imagination for some instinctive hunger which he cannot satisfy in life. Compensations for Life. But this is. tru» not only of the schoolboy with his " Dead wood, Dick " or his " Sexton' Blake, Detective." It is true to everyone who can sometimes " live through " and thoroughly enjoy a novel. We may indeed obtain from our novel-reading some other, fainter kinds of pleasure: the work may appeal to us aesthetically, or it may awaken old, pleasant memories. Yet the enioyment we thus obtain is feeble and colourness when compared with that inexpressible satisfaction we sometimes get by living through a story. But whenever we do find a novel that grips us, one that we can lose ourselves in, one that we can live through, that always means that we are able (unconsciously, of course), to identify ourselves with one of the leading characters and then, through him (or her), to obtain satisfaction for some instinctive hunger which we cannot satisfy in real life. Perhaps the best way of expressing it is like this: We may find in fiction some compensation for the deficiencies of life.

It follows that the kind of novel which will be most satisfying to any given person will depend upon the particular kind of instinctive hunger which is most unsatisfied in his (or her) real life. Often the hunger is not even recognised by the person in whom it exists unsatisfied: yet a. list of the novels which he has most thoroughly enjoyed will afford a certain clue to it. It is true indeed that " a man is known by the books he reads"; and this saying has a special application to -the reader of popular fiction.

Popular notion. The craving for adventure is strong in most men. Nearly everyone of us loathes --or at least a part of him does— dull routine and monotony of every-day existence; and, therefore, we find satisfaction wrir rn * Jac £ , London ° some similar writer ?i 8 well-known that the biggest demand for adventure stories is among city-dwelhng men who live quiet, pS ful lives, .vftile the man who Is livifiThis adventures will have no use for adventur" Novels and novelettes about the very rich are read almost exclusively by the very poor. The people who obtain the greatest faction from reading about high society" are those who in real which denied the honour and luxury J which they read, people in very hJmble positions. A certain writer in EnXid turned out nearly a BCOre of novelette? and every one of them was the story of a UroS ?h ft eVe^, Ually married Li i «°V or the mill-owner's son. It is said that every mill-lass in La nca J ni " devoured every one of the twenty" ™ rx>b£ en fi?- re the Safest readers of popular fiction; and most popular novels womT"ThT? S Writte ",' women, ine woman who is denied r^ "£ for"? SET*, *£ " to ful men arJ' «i ° f stron S> mas^rdominated, but who iTreal We are either phablo husbands. (Of course other respect the marriag°e ma y VSS !tt*M "iS ° nl thisono particular de woman IC £ "■** Sa " Bfied ' whi(s > «S3 the s n vl> ? r V= °^^t SL' aScteL p tU S %s*!s& ?m d ent n a ? OnSCIOUBIy - <«va]rous ancfsS timental - young men, then to satisfy her by e heroine of .the story must be adoS accost » sentimental young ■& This accounts tor the popularity a tew vt"rs and Gen ft C V r erS £ 8 Florence BaSy and Gene Stratton Porter: they catered '"£ D rel d de£ r "* ** *£ we S °enfov US' *" popular fiction that we enjoy, not merely ' r as literature." but because we can "live through it" We can test it for ourselves by thinking of the novels which have been most satLfy! chf«t US ' by . ask, "g «'"-selves which with SYYe, e ch [ e % identified ourselves 2' f. nd . then by finding out what instinctive * hunger (unsatisfied in life) we The able to satisfy 1 by proxy in the story The kinds of unsatisfied hunger which are most usually catered for m popular fiction arc :~(1) Tho hunger toR I centre of attention; (2) the hunger to | dominate or to be dominated (3) the hunger for romantic love; and (4) the hunger for escape from monotony and i routine, for a life • in which " things happen./' • .