This is a book of psychological literary criticism. The various psychologies I employ in these readings would be immediately recognizable by both clinical and experimental psychologists; they are not, emphatically not, based on Freudian and/or Lacanian metatheories. I propose in this book, then, a trio of psychological approaches to six literary texts, preceeded by a priliminary discussion, in chapter one, of the current state of psychological criticism, analyzing the conceptual and procedural difficulties with Freudian-based metatheories by examining briefly the recent history of Freudian metatheory as it has been employed by literary critics. 

Following this discussion of theoretical matters, I then focus, in chapters three, four, and five, on practical readings of six literary texts, each analyzed with the help of a particular psychological system. In the third chapter, I employ family systems therapy to analyze problems of theme and characterization in D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and in Henry Roth's Call It Sleep. In the fourth chapter, I borrow insights from writings in the philosophy of science and in personality theory to examine two characters who happen to be scientists: the first from John Steinbeck's short story, "The Snake" (from The Long Valley); the second character I investigate is the narrator in Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 

In the fifth chapter, I discuss first the seedy "anti-hero" of George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying and second, the major female character in John Fowles's The Magus, both in the light of a neo-Piagetian theoretical framework (from Robert Kegan's The Evolving Self and Aaron Beck's Treatment of Depression) concerned with the development of adult emotions. In the last chapter, I investigate the process of disciplinary expansion: How do new idea, alien methods, & foreign concepts gain admission to our discipline and ultimately get promoted by literary critics and scholars? Understanding how ideas become part of the tacit knowledge in literary study may help us understand why Freudian metatheory has taken such possession of our discipline to the exclusion of almost all other psychologies. 

Readers of this book include psychologists interested in the uses of narrative to analyze character, both real and fictional, and literary critics and scholars who might wish to learn what their psychological sisters and brothers are doing when members of both disciplines look at literary texts. Generally speaking, many literary people have long since rejected the basic premises of classical Freudian dogma while still cheerfully employing concepts and vocabulary reflecting late nineteenth century "science." Thus, for those who automatically look for the clues to intrapsychic behavior by investigating first childhood antecedents of adult personality, for those who wish to examine a character's (singular) "unconscious," looking for real motives, for those who think psycho-sexual conflict forms the root of all or almost all of a literary character's neuroses--for all such readers this book offers several contemporary alternatives to these ancient Freudian metatheoretical assumptions.