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The Potentials of Psychological Approaches to Literature

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

THE POTENTIALS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE

PÉTER BÉNYEI*

Abstract The interplay of literature and psychology, the cross-section of these areas
opens up vast possibilities for literary studies, but, at the same time, they cause just as
many dilemmas: the reader enters an uncertain terrain when s/he endeavours to lay
down the foundations for his/her reading at the cross-sections of the two disciplines.
This paper sets out to answer a number of strategically posed questions: in what kind
of conceptual discourse can we interpret the psychological representations of literary
texts? What are at stake at such interpretations? Another aim of this investigation is
to find a conceptual and discursive structure in which the novels of Mór Jókai can be
analyzed within the framework of psychological criticism.
Keywords literature and psychology, psychological criticism, reader-response
criticism, depth-hermeneutical interpretation, Mór Jókai

The interplay of literature and psychology, the cross-section of these areas opens up vast
possibilities for literary studies, but, at the same time, they cause just as many dilemmas.
These approaches are haunted by insecurities and prejudices: although the interpretational
framework is not without serious antecedents, the reader enters an uncertain terrain when
s/he endeavours to lay down the foundations for his/her reading at the cross-sections of the
two disciplines. This is the reason why my paper sets out to answer a number of strategically
posed questions: in what kind of conceptual discourse can we interpret the psychological
representations of literary texts? What are at stake at such interpretations? The overt aim of
my investigation is to find a conceptual and discursive structure in which the novels of the
th
famous 19 century Hungarian novelist, Mór Jókai (1825–1904) can be analyzed within the
framework of psychological criticism.

The Encounter of Literature and Psychology − Aversions towards Psychological Criticism

At a first glance it appears easy to map out the common terrain of literature and psychology,
1
since both “selectively examine particular parts of the whole of human experience”. From this

*
Insitute of Hungarian Cultural and Literary Studies, University of Debrecen, benyei.peter@arts.unideb.hu

68
 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

point of view, literature can even be described as an alternative, psychological form of

knowledge: the fictional texts are devoid of the protocols of the medical profession and the
constraints of academic discourses; however, they create lifelike “observations” and
2
“episodes,” and they are able to bring up close such mechanisms of the human soul which
metapsychology, in its own territory, cannot attempt to do. That is why “readers arrive at a
more satisfactory understanding of characters from reading literary works than from reading
3
works by psychologists”. This distinguished status of literature can mainly be attributed to the
fact that it presents long-term models of changes occurring in individuals, in human
4
relationships, and in social structures. It puts into perspective those phenomena which can be
observed by psychology using merely the experiences of the scattered individuality of case
studies as a basis.
The leading figures of psychoanalysis were also familiar with this feature of literary
cognitive techniques. Sigmund Freud, for example, in his seminal “text interpretation” suggests
that the uncanny appearing in works of fiction deserves special attention since “it is a much
more fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the whole of the latter and
5
something more besides, something that cannot be found in real life”: that is, the in-depth
study of the archaic fear lurking deep in the human soul is only possible with the help of fiction
(therefore Freud himself turned to The Sandman by Hoffman).
It is a trivial – albeit, in some cases, rather inspiring – fact: every work of fiction has
some psychological dimension and knowledge; one way or another, it represents psychological
processes, and therefore interpretations can hardly avoid references to psychological aspects.

The interrelations of literature and psychology derive from the inherently psychological
dimensions of literature as well as from the uses of psychology in the interpretation of
literary texts. Literary works carry their psychology within themselves, in the very
structure of relations they embody […]. […] Where there is a literary, as opposed to a
sacred or mythical, language of representation, we also find a historical concern with the
nature and problem of individual existence in society, and hence some psychology of the
6
individual, however schematic or rudimentary.

1
“More specifically, both psychology and literature adopt as one of their goals the better understanding
of overt behavior and the mental life of individuals, and how these are related.” Fathali M. Moghaddam,
“From Psychology in Literature to Psychology is Literature”, Theory & Psychology, 4 (2004): 505–525, 505.
2
Cf. Ferenc Mérei, Művészetpszichológia (Psychology of Art) (Budapest: Múzsák, 1986), 54–59.
3
Moghaddam, “From Psychology in Literature…”, 508–509. Cf. Mérei, Művészetpszichológia, 70.
4
See also Moghaddam, “From Psychology in Literature…” 509.
5
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”, trans. Alix Strachey, In The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XVII, ed. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1955),
217–252, 249.
6
Murray M. Schwartz and David Willbern, “Literature and Psychology”, In Interrelations of Literature, ed.
Jean-Pierre Barricelli and Joseph Gibaldi (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1982),
205–224, 205.

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

In the reception of Mór Jókai’s novels, this self-evident fact has been all but forgotten,
when the mere supposition of the psychological context opens up the gesture of interpreting
investigation: this is how I reached the topic of suicide, which was inspired both by recurring
7
thematic motifs of autobiographical traces (Mire megvénülünk – Debts of Honour, 1865); or
the description of socio-psychological tendencies behind the apparently unrealistic imitations
of human fates, interpersonal relationships (Rab Ráby – The Strange Story of Rab Raby, 1879).
In the development of the central character’s fate, several Jókai novels present the stages of
character development or disintegration based on the Jungian model (Az arany ember –
Modern Midas, 1872; Enyim, tied, övé – It's Mine, It's Yours, It's His, 1875), while the
autobiographical traces notoriously recurring in the novels leave behind a multitude of
psychological implications in certain texts (A tengerszemű hölgy – Eyes Like the Sea, 1890). Of
course, Ferenc Mérei’s authoritative statement also applies to the Jókai oeuvre, according to
whom “it would be pointless to conduct a psychological reading for every text. There are works
which need more of a sociological approach, others a philosophical treatment or explanation.
We should reserve psychological interpretation for such works in which the psychological
events are of major importance, characterized by some sort of psychological metamorphosis or
8
transubstantiation.”
And there is yet another important realization by the authors Murray Schwartz and
David Willbern: “if literature in some sense always includes a psychology, it is also true that
9
psychological assumptions always govern the interpretation of literary texts.” In the broadest
sense of the word, every criticism is psychological criticism, as every theory and interpretation
finds its point of reference in human psychology, which either creates or experiences
10
literature, or is depicted in it.
Schwartz and Willbern are, however, right to point out that these interpretations
should be kept in balance: “this type of research transcends naive adherence to ideas of
influence’ that claim to understand authors when some contemporary psychological theory is
found to underlie their literary creations and instead seeks to formulate the mutual effects of
psychology and literary expression, thus avoiding an unilateral subordination of one to the
11
other.” Critiques questioning the legitimacy of psychological approaches were wary of this
imbalance occurring in literary texts and their reception: pointless and didactic psychologising,
attributing the vision of readerly or writerly readings to these interpretational strategies. Peter
Brooks and Norman N. Holland, two outstanding figures of psychoanalytic criticism, listed
these grudges against psychological criticism. Brooks suggests that the application of

7
See also the chapter “Images and Trees” in the travelogue Utazás egy sírdomb körül (Journey around a
Grave, 1889) by Mór Jókai. Mór Jókai, Utazás egy sírdomb körül (Budapest: Unikornis, 1995), 153–162.
8
Mérei, Művészetpszichológia, 68.
9
Schwartz and Willbern, “Literature and Psychology”, 205.
10
See also Norman N. Holland, Psychoanalytic Psychology and Literature-and-Psychology (New York–
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990), 29.
11
Schwartz and Willbern, “Literature and Psychology”, 206.

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

psychological aspects in the study of literature “continues to evoke reductive manoeuvres that
flatten the richness of creative texts into well-worn categories, finding the same old stories
12
where we want new ones”. Besides, psychoanalytic interpretations have “regularly short-
13
circuited the difficult and necessary issues in poetics” and the conceptual framework of
psychology inevitably devours works of fiction, thus “the reference to psychoanalysis has
14
traditionally been used to close rather than open the argument and the text”. Holland, on the
other hand, finds the most vulnerable points of psychological criticism in analyzing fictional
characters as living human entities, the excessive subjectivity of interpretations, and the
15
uncritical use of extra-literary knowledge. In Brooks’ case, the listing of grudges leads to a
revision of the interpretational practice of psychoanalytic criticism, while Holland sets up a
model for subjective critical reading.
A similar dissonance can be found in the first comprehensive critique of the approach:
Roman Ingarden’s text from the end of the 1930s (which entered the broader academic arena
16
when it was published in English in New Literary History ) attacks the psychologising
tendencies of literary studies from a formalist basis. Although it tendentiously rejects the
psychological approach, the paper does present a polyphonic view: although Ingarden
stubbornly opposes psychologising experiments in literary studies, he duly reckons with the
valid aspects of this approach as well. Most of all, Ingarden is concerned about the immanency
of the literary text when faced with psychological approaches: “psychologism in literary
”
scholarship is a falsification of the peculiar nature of the subject matter it investigates ,
because it “poses the danger of inserting various factors into the literary work which it does
17
not contain”. The dismissing rhetoric of the paper, however, becomes more lenient in the
second half, and therefore – paradoxically − it has had a role in laying down the foundations
for the discursive framework of psychological approaches towards literature: “the elimination
of psychologism does not at all entail the elimination of psychology, particularly where we deal
explicitly with psychological facts and problems. Therefore, it is beyond doubt that psychology
18
is closely related to literary scholarship.” Ingarden is strict about studying the psychological
phenomena staged in the world created by fiction, but his major tendencies are still part of the
authoritative frame of reference in this field.

12
Peter Brooks, “The Idea of a Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism”, In Brooks, Psychoanalysis and
Storytelling (Oxford–Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), 20–45, 20.
13
Ibid., 24.
14
Ibid., 22.
15
Norman N. Holland, “Literary Interpretation and Three Phases of Psychoanalysis”, Critical Inquiry 3
(1976): 221–233, 223–224.
16
Roman Ingarden, “Psychologism and Psychology in Literary Scholarship”, New Literary History 2 (1974):
213–223.
17
Ibid., 216, 220. (highlight in the original)
18
Ibid., 219.

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

The following has to be kept in mind: (1) In this case the only source is the text of a
given work; (2) it is an investigation of certain components of the work rather than
some independent thing; […] Such a researcher also shuts himself off completely from
those problems of literary scholarship which emerge at the time we already know not
only the mind of the presented persons but also all the other components of a given
work (and most of all its other strata, the structure of the sequence of its parts, etc.)
and we are ready to determine what artistic function the presented person performs in
19
the work as a whole and what its experiences and conditions are.

Ingarden is right in his warning: every psychological reading must acknowledge the
constructedness of the text, as well as the interplay of its poetic components. If not for
anything else, than for the reason that the psychological phenomena under investigation are
created in this register and this is where they can be grasped the best. Although, in my opinion,
the involvement of metapsychological knowledge is essential in the interpretation of these
phenomena. In this respect, I am following Norman N. Holland’s intentions: “by literature-and-
20
psychology, I mean the application of psychology to explore literary problems and behavior.”

Reading strategies and approaches that focus on the author / the text / the reader
Theorists of the field tend to differentiate between three distinct fields of investigation in
literary psychology: the relations between author and text, between author and reader, and
21
the psychological relations of the literary text. This chapter discusses the most important
theoretical aspects and reading strategies of these fields – which are rather far-reaching
themselves.

(writerly reading: poetic implications)

Investigations regarding the psychological aspects of the coming about of a literary text –
th
which go back to the first few decades of the 19 century – have been considered the most
22
important trend in the research of psychological criticism. Psychologists have been interested
in the mental mechanisms contributing to the creation of the text, that is, the psychological
background of the creative process, as well as in the consequences which can be deduced from
the texts concerning the author’s personal psychological background. However, theories
regarding the psychology of creation (particularly the theories of Freud and Jung) have such
implications which can be turned into the discourse on the poetics of literary texts, and which
might even serve as starting points for literary interpretations.

19
Ibid., 222, 222–223. (Highlights in the original)
20
Holland, Psychoanalytic Psychology…, 29.
21
Cf. Csaba Pléh, “Pszichoanalízis, pszichológia és modern irodalom” (Psychoanalysis, Psychology and
Modern Literature)
http://villanyspenot.hu/villanyspenot/#!/fejezetek/SKfSXopdTiuUtsGAvn4exg (accessed 01.06.2016)
22
See also M. H. Abrams, “Psychological and Psychoanalytic Criticism”, In Abrams, A Glossary of Literary
Terms (Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999), 248–253, 248.

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

The main direction of Sigmund Freud’s investigations in psychological criticism was

psychobiography, the interpretation of the relationship between the artist’s life and their
oeuvre, the poetic creation, although a segment of Freud’s writings indirectly reveals
significant insights about the effects of literary texts. The main questions (“from what sources
that strange being, the creative writer, draws his material, and how he manages to make such
an impression on us with it, and to arouse in us emotions of which, perhaps, we had not even
23
thought ourselves capable” ) posed in Creative Writers and Daydreaming already open up two
possible paths of investigation: the psychological mechanisms of creation as well as the effect
mechanisms of literary texts (their reception and function) become subjects of examination.
Freud discovers the mental roots of poetic creation in the adult projections of the playing
24
child’s fantasy world (projection of desires, compensation, pseudo-satisfaction), while
another of his texts becomes significant in the interpretation of Jókai’s works. Freud – with his
particular “literary approach” – basically describes the most significant poetic aspects of the
romance novel, then immediately transforms this concept into the medium of other poetic
models (two versions of the realist-psychological novel).

One feature above all cannot fail to strike us about the creations of these story-writers:
each of them has a hero who is the centre of interest, for whom the writer tries to win
our sympathy by every possible means and whom he seems to place under the
protection of a special Providence. […] The same is true of the fact that the other
characters in the story are sharply divided into good and bad, in defiance of the variety
of human characters that are to be observed in real life. The ’good’ ones are the
helpers, while the ’bad’ ones are the enemies and rivals, of the ego which has become
the hero of the story. […] The psychological novel in general no doubt owes its special
nature to the inclination of the modern writer to split up his ego, by self-observation,
into many partegos, and, in consequence, to personify the conflicting currents of his
own mental life in several heroes. Certain novels, which might be described as
’eccentric’, seem to stand in quite special contrast to the type of the day-dream. In
these, the person who is introduced as the hero plays only a very small active part; he
25
sees the actions and sufferings of other people pass before him like a spectator.

The long passage quoted above – despite its author-centricity – not only explores the
psychological driving forces behind Jókai’s often criticised hyperbolic characters, but it can also
serve as an example for the description of delicate transformations occurring in the Hungarian
writer’s romance novel poetics. It is quite distinctive that the heroes in novels built around one
central character tend to retire from the midst of adventures: the life stories of Tímár (Az

23
Sigmund Freud, “Creative Writers and Day-dreaming” trans. James Strachey, In The Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, vol. IX (London: The Hogarth
Press, 1959): 141–154, 141.
24
Ibid., 144.
25
Ibid., 149–150. (italics mine)

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

arany ember) and Áldorfay (Enyim, tied, övé) are rather spectacular, yet they keep moving
towards passivity, while Lándory, the hero of A lélekidomár (The Trainer of Souls, 1888–89)
lives a significantly less intense life. However, what Freud described as the two main
components of the realist novel is true for all three characters: firstly, only the hero is
described from the inside, and secondly, the main character personifies the conflicts of his
internal life in several characters. The late section of the Jókai corpus provides ample examples
for the third version as well, especially in the novels staging the autobiographical self (A
tengerszemű hölgy; Öreg ember nem vén ember – An Old Man is not a Tottery Man, 1899;
Asszonyt kísér, Istent kísért – To Follow a Woman, to Challange God, 1880–81), where the
central figure is characterized by observation and by generally being on the outside. No matter
how simplifying Freud’s theory is, the rough poetics of the central characters interpreted as
the author’s fantasy projection gives a surprisingly correct summary of the progression of
Jókai’s art.
In Jung’s case, we can directly observe how the psychological analysis examining the
mental processes of poetic creation becomes a discussion about the “psychological structure”
of works of fiction. According to Jung, works of literature carry evident psychological messages:
they either make the represented mental processes directly accessible (he calls these
“psychological novels”), or their unusual content or avant-garde features elicits confusion,
surprise, rejection, or disgust from the reader, therefore they practically provoke psychological
26
readings. As opposed to Freud, Jung from the very beginning denies the fact that the author’s
personal psychology should give an explanation for the work of art: in two of his seminal
writings he focuses on the terrain of aesthetics, on examining the psychological structure of
the creation, and he seeks to discover which mental and life contents are expressed and made
directly accessible in works of art. A literary text is an ancient image emerging from the depths
of the soul, a message, and it carries such information which is inaccessible to the everyday
individual-collective consciousness: the unspeakable transforms into a literary image, a symbol
in works of art, and it affects the deep structure of texts. A work of literature is therefore not a
carrier of direct, rational knowledge, but a true symbol, in which the unknown, otherwise
27
inexpressible “essence” reveals itself. “The work presents us with a finished picture, and this
28
picture is amenable to analysis only to the extent that we can recognize it as a symbol.”
This is where Jung offers an interpretation of the effect function of works of art: they
carry such messages to contemporaries which remain hidden in the world of the everyday, or
they endeavour to compensate the dominant yet one-sided processes: “Every period has its

26
See Carl G. Jung, “Psychology and Literature”, trans. W. S. Dell and Cary F. Baines, In The Creative
Process: A Symposium, ed. Brewster Ghiselin (Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954,
217–233, 217–218.
27
“For a symbol is the intimation of a meaning beyond the level of our present powers of
comprehension.” Carl G. Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry”, trans. R. F. C. Hull, In
Jung, The Spirit of Man in Art and Literature, The Collected Works, vol. 15, ed. Herbert Read and Michael
Fordham (New York: Routledge, 2014), 65–83, 76.
28
Ibid., 79.

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

bias, its particular prejudice and its psychic ailment. An epoch is like an individual; it has its
own limitations of conscious outlook, and therefore requires a compensatory adjustment. This
is affected by the collective unconscious in that a poet, a seer or a leader allows himself to be
guided by the unexpressed desire of his times and shows the way, by word or deed. […] A work
of art is produced that contains what may truthfully be called a message to generations of
29
men.” Jung attributes a social mission to works of literature, a role in forming individual and
collective consciousnesses.
The characteristic features of the “psychological structures” of Jókai novels can be
described in the Jungian aesthetical system. The defining elements of the poetics of the
romance novel (a mythical-archaic referential system, visual imagery; characters as spheres of
action; widening the limits of the empirical worldview etc.) validate the presence of
psychological representations in symbolic forms for a segment of the oeuvre, just like the
archetypal way of seeing, the “psychological structure” coded in poetic structures, which we
can encounter in some of Jókai’s outstanding novels. In the background (“unconscious”) of the
metaphorical system of references abounding in Az arany ember, or the adventurous plotlines,
the rich texture of relationships between the characters depict the development of the heroes
in the form of a symbolic flow chart involving almost all of the components of the novel.

(text-centric approaches)
The second line of investigation in psychological criticism aims to grasp the works’
psychological structure and knowledge in the inner mechanisms of the text: the involvement of
psychology differentiates it from the presuppositions of structuralist-formalist theory, but it is
not concerned either with the psychology of the author or with the consequences of reception.
Mostly the endeavours of psychoanalytic criticism can be lined up under this label, but since I
do not apply this strategy in any of my interpretations, I am going to introduce another model
in this context. The “system of psychological mechanisms implied in the text” and its
interpretations have been explored in a versatile and fertile manner in Ferenc Mérei’s writings
on the psychology of art.
Although, as a psychologist, Mérei tends to turn to literature as a rich “collection of
documents,” his approach to literature does not regard texts as mere devices, and he suggests
some remarkable reading strategies, illustrated with text analyses. “Psychological analysis does
not attempt to measure the work of art using a predetermined set of categories, but it aims to
set the events taking place in the universe of the work in a system of mostly uncontroversial
psychological events. The aim is: to explain the human navigational system in which the author
defines his/her characters; to map out the psychological network in which the characters’
decisions and actions can be understood. In the contemporary language of psychology, the
analysis of implied mechanisms examines in what sort of conceptual systems the characters’
30
motivations and behaviours can be read in the analysed work.”

29
Jung, “Psychology and Literature”, 227.
30
Mérei, Művészetpszichológia, 82. (italics mine)

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 IDEAS • BOOKS • SOCIETY • READINGS

Mérei suggests three approaches: firstly, he closely examines the system of the
narrator’s psychological “observations,” descriptions, and those “episodes” which can
sensitively model a psychological situation. Secondly, he concentrates on the representation of
psychological processes in the whole of the text or in the imitated life story of one of the
characters, and thirdly, he pays special attention to the socio-psychological registers of texts,
31
and to reading strategies attempting to explore these registers. It is to Mérei’s credit that he
points out such text-organizing strategies which are usually banished into the background in
the context of literary studies. In Jókai’s case, for example, both focusing on observations and
episodes, and the socio-psychological approach seem to be fruitful, just like exploring the
psychological flow chart drawn up by the whole of the text and by the fates of the characters.
It is true, however, that the latter case raises some concerns regarding literary studies.
One of the neuralgic points of literary interpretations is the characters of fictional figures and
their psychologies. If we set the psychological registers of the characters as the focal point of
our investigation, the question, regarding the extent to which we attribute an actual existence
to the characters, becomes radicalized. The opposition of the two extreme views – a fictional
32
character is merely a sum of linguistic sings, or s/he can be regarded as a living entity – is not
overly fruitful in the practice of literary analysis. Therefore, Barthes differentiates between
“character” and “figure,” and he attributes the illusion of “real existence,” personality and self
33
to the first, and the terrain on which the signifiers come into play to the second. Peter Brooks
embraces a similar duality, and even though he discards the investigation of “the putative
unconscious of characters in fiction,” a few sentences later he calls attention to the fact that
“the identification and labelling of human relations in a psychoanalytic vocabulary were the
34
task of criticism,” which suggests a compromise of sorts. I am also leaning towards this idea:
when an interpretation fulfils the ultimate condition set by Ingarden (and Mérei), that is, the
interpretation of the psychology of fictional characters always takes place in the context of the
constructedness of the text, then attention should definitely be paid to the characters’
psychological processes – not as a collection of psychic symptoms but as created carriers of
psychological events.

(reader-response criticism)
The reader-response approach is not concerned with the psychic mechanisms or effects of
reading: these theories that openly attach themselves to the aesthetics of reception aim to
establish psychological approaches to reading. I will introduce three models in detail: the
hermeneutical reading of analytical psychology, the analysis of depth-hermeneutics, and the
registers of subjective criticism. The common aspect in all three is that they attempt to access

31
See also Ibid., 56–70, 117–144, 145.
32
See also Peter Lamarque, “How to Create a Fictional Character” In Lamarque, Work and Object:
Explorations in the Metaphysics of Art (Oxford–New York: Oxford UP, 2010), 188–207, 188–189.
33
See also Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 67–68, 190–191.
34
Brooks, “The Idea of a Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism”, 21.

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unconscious contents coded into literature (or called to life during reading), and to bring them
into the space of interpretive discourse.
The Jungian therapist, Marie-Louise von Franz claims that the psychological approach
to and the description of literary texts are actually special hermeneutical acts, which have
specific tasks and stakes: to interpret and explore the “archetypal pattern”, the literary images
35
called into being by the collective unconscious, which results in the critical extension, the
making visible of the compensatory-healing act. “What the psychologist does is a kind of
hermeneutics which can naturally be deep or shallow, to the point or beside it. If it is good, it
will help the artist's work get its message over to the public and in this way, remaining tactfully
36
in the background, promote its healing impact.” The independent hermeneutical
performance of psychological interpretation is therefore capable of opening up those symbolic,
37
visual layers of meaning, where this message can be coded, the therapeutic effect can be
accessed.
This approach starts out from Jungian dream analysis and from the model of
psychoanalytic therapy. As a first step of dream analysis or psychoanalysis, the therapist asks
for associations from the patient and then expands these with the associations of humanity,
opens up the mythological and religious associations linked to the dream. The method of
amplification had a significant role even in the creation of the work of art; therefore, it can be
introduced into the hermeneutical act of interpretation as well. The associations occurring
during the process of reading, then the expansion of these associations are followed by a third
step, in which the interpreter of the text turns the expanded material – to apply psychological
terminology – into interpretation performance. The acts of interpretation can be accompanied
38
by the revelation, the catharsis of recognition-realization.
39
Alfred Lorenzer and Achim Würker’s “depth-hermeneutical” idea is analogous with
Franz’s concept from several aspects, as they think about literary communication as a process
of visual understanding: they claim that it is the responsibility of art, and therefore that of
literature as well to turn the unconscious objects of reality and experience expectations into

35
“In such cases his work has a kind of double nature: psychologically, there is an immediately
comprehensible surface, a perfect drama of human passions and experiences, but underneath one can
detect an archetypal pattern as well, a dimension in depth which reaches into the realm of the eternal,
numinous, forever mysterious powers.” Marie-Louise von Franz, “Analytical Psychology and Literary
Criticism”, New Literary History 1 (1980): 119–126, 121–122.
36
Ibid., 123.
37
“The more a work of art is dictated directly by the unconscious, the more it tends to take on a
dreamlike form, namely a symbolic, visionary character.” Ibid., 120.
38
See also Ibid., 124–126.
39
Alfred Lorenzer and Achim Würker, “Depth-Hermeneutical Interpretation of Literature”, trans. Ruth
König, In Comprehension of Literary Discourse, ed. Dietrich Meutsch and Reinhoid Vienoff (Berlin–New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), 56–73.

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sensual-direct symbols, thus bring new ideas about life into the discussion, and therefore
40
abolish fossilized life plans.
The visual symbolization of texts stages some sort of “unconscious life plan” in literary
texts, and the unravelling of these plans is the primary aim of depth-hermeneutical readings.
“We direct attention to the fact that […] the root of depth-hermeneutical interpretation of
literature doesn’t just base upon the assumption of the unconscious, formed only by
repressions; it does not aim at de-symbolization caused by individual conflicts. These
assumptions stress the meaning of life projects not any more as consciously but collectively
meaningful projects of interaction which are not yet able to be linguistically named.” So, the
main goal is “to reveal the unconscious life projects with its close attention to directly sensual
41
symbolization”. The reader dissolving into reception faces such situations which s/he does
not encounter in everyday life, but the constructed worlds of fiction make them vivid. And this
is the point where the mechanisms of unconscious-interactions enter the picture: as, during
the process of visual interpretation, the reader attaches associations to the text, at the same
42
time “he must turn to his own unconscious like a receptive organ”, that is, s/he involves
his/her unconscious premonitions in the interpretation as well.
The tension between unconscious contents arising during the process of visual
43
understanding creates irritation in the recipient, which then becomes one of the major
motives of hermeneutical activity. “Endeavouring to solve such conflicts which are evoked in
the recipient as tensions and insecurity and which consequently irritate him, the next step of
understanding aims at the comprehension of congruities in the structure of such scenes that
illustrate points of irritation resp. of such scenes and other ones up to now registrated as
44
possibly being not so important.” The termination of this irritation will lead to the opening up
of the manifest meaning of the text, and, as a last step, to turning it into the practices of
45
everyday life.
At this point we arrive at the third model of reader-response criticism, the terrain of
“subjective criticism,” mostly attributed to the work of Norman N. Holland. He found the

40
Cf. Walter Schönau, “Kirajzolódnak egy pszichoanalitikus irodalomtudomány körvonalai” (The Contours
of Psychoanalytic Criticism Emerge), In Pszichoanalízis és irodalomtudomány (Psychoanalysis and Literary
Studies), ed. Antal Bókay and Ferenc Erős (Budapest: Filum, 1998), 31–41, 38.
41
Lorenzer and Würker, “Depth-Hermeneutical Interpretation of Literature”, 61.
42
Ibid., 67. “The specificity of scenic understanding makes it quite evident that the unconscious in literary
texts cannot be grasped in one single step but comprehension is an extended and complex process.”
Ibid., 68.
43
“The conception ’irritation’ aims at a persistent and after exact studying intensified precariousness
resulting from heterogeneous contradictions: the conflict between practical-to-life premises on the part
of the reader/interpreter and the scenes of the text; the contentions between scenic figures of the text
and their manifest interpretation in the text or contradictions within the manifest sense of the text, i.e.
between a figure of the text and another one or among several others.” Ibid., 68–69.
44
Ibid., 69.
45
See also Ibid., 71.

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46
anthropological focal point of his theory in a text by Heinz Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein
attempted to negotiate the dilemma of the continual changing and sameness of the self by
introducing the concept of the identity-theme. According to this concept, we can observe a
unique style, a recurring motif in the multitude of choices that an individual is forced to make
either in significant or in everyday moments, which motif is present in every situation where a
decision is made and it functions as the “continuity core” of the personality. “We can
understand another person as a continuing sameness within change, while we understand
change itself as change only by presupposing an underlying sameness. In effect, we can read
one another like music, hearing ourselves play our lives like variations on a melody, an identity
47
theme, which is, quite simply, our very essence.” According to Holland, the identity theme
provides the subjective core to every instance of reception and interpretation. “I can speak
about a person as about a poem, achieving rigor but retaining uniqueness. I can talk fully and
rigorously about the individual – person or poem – provided I remember that I am talking. […]
Not only do we perceive, we also perceive ourselves perceiving. We become able to
48
understand how our perceptions are themselves acts that express our identity themes.” This
approach, on the one hand, strengthens the hermeneutic aspect of self-knowledge: when
understanding works of fiction, we symbolize ourselves, and as such, we recreate ourselves.
On the other hand, he answers the open question regarding why readers and professional
49
critics occasionally interpret the same text or passage in radically different ways.
In Holland’s understanding, as the self loses its boundaries as a response to love and
50
mystical experiences, similarly we immerse ourselves in works of fiction. The dissolution and
transformation of our raw fantasies undoubtedly have their limits, though: Holland points out
that even an interpretation paying attention to the inner mechanisms of subjective reading
cannot lack the basic criteria of professionalism, what is more, these two aspects are often
inseparable. The relationship with a work of fiction includes the reader’s emotions, but also
includes the characteristics arising from the interpreter’s literary skills and knowledge. An
interesting reflexive moment of interpretation can be observing how the choices urged by
51
critical hypotheses are linked to the pulse of personal experiences. This interpretational
model shows not only what the critique says, but also “it tells you […] how it came to be me
52
who said it.” Holland argues that risking intimacy strengthens the role of a critical medium as
well, since the self-interpretational patterns behind interpretation can provide navigational
points for the reader: “the best interpreters will speak from self-knowledge as well as from the

46
Heinz Lichtenstein, The Dilemma of Human Identity (New York: Jason Aronson, 1977)
47
Holland, “Literary Interpretation…”, 230. cf. Holland, Psychoanalytic Psychology…, 69–71;
48
Holland, “Literary Interpretation…”, 231. (highlight in the original)
49
Ibid., 231–232.
50
See also Norman N. Holland, “Unity Identity Text Self”, PMLA 5 (1975): 813–822, 817–818.
51
“In fact, skills and feelings about skills and what the skills are being applied to are always inextricably
interinanimated.” Holland, “Literary Interpretation…”, 231.
52
Ibid., 232.

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53
knowledge of literature.” Holland’s views can encourage interpretations in the face of the
reflectional brakes generated by excessive professional expectations, although too frequent
applications may also raise doubts.

Historicity and therapy

One of the – so far untouched – neuralgic points of psychological criticism is the relation
between the reader and the historicity of the interpreted text. How can we give a valid and
authentic reading with such a metapsychological apparatus, which is embedded in an entirely
different historical and cultural context than the text under analysis? Moghaddam calls
attention, though indirectly, to this phenomenon, when summarizing the results of a
sociological criticism survey: “This across-time, within-society exploration revealed fascinating
shifts in emotional experiences, and highlighted the importance of historical context in the
construction of personal experience. […] There is a need for caution, however, as regards the
54
consideration of literature as a source of ’data’. What exactly do these ’data’ indicate?”
Moghaddam’s observation is to the point, and I feel this dilemma pertinent to my own
research as well, as methodological problems arise when the theories involved may have come
about as late as a century after the formation of the Jókai corpus; while psychoanalytical
theories and the proximity of the medical practice face us with the problem of asynchronism.
The psychoanalytic school neutralizes this issue to some extent by turning the basic principles
of Freudian theory into literary terminology. This dilemma is, in fact, a dual one: the
development of psychoanalytical metapsychology shows us that the changes in interpretive
metaphors and anthropological references follow the historical changes occurring in the
human psyche. The hysteria and neurosis dominant in Freud’s times have been banished to the
background: Heinz Kohut’s self-psychology or Eric Berne’s transaction analysis and games
theory sensitively react to the changes having occurred in the given period of time, both in the
medical practice and in the field of theoretical reflections. However, it is also indisputable that
the human psyche (both in its individual and collective aspects) has permanent mechanisms as
well, overarching historicity. These mechanisms involve the above mentioned theories about
55
identity themes, or Kohut’s ideas about the self-core. It is not only the collective unconscious
that represents some sort of permanence, but some aspects of certain, psychically defined
phenomena as well. Moghaddam’s argumentation is somewhat similar, although his
suggestion regarding classical masterpieces existing above time is not necessarily convincing.
“Indeed, the reason why we continue to pay such close attention to Hamlet, Crime and
Punishment and other great literary works, the reason why such works are timeless, is exactly
because they unearth important universal characteristics of human behavior. Thus, it is too

53
Ibid., 233.
54
Moghaddam, “From Psychology in Literature…”, 508.
55
See also Heinz Kohut, The Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1977), 63–
139.

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simplistic to depict such works as exclusively or even primarily concerned with local, unique
56
cases.”
Once again, I can refer to my own interpretations: if we browse through the cultural
history of views on suicide, we can find that theorists of different times applied rather similar
patterns to their approaches to the topic. What is more, there is a paradoxical point that
almost each and every attempt has encountered: this is the ambivalence of judging the
phenomenon. “The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one
entrance into life, but many exits. […] Live, if you so desire; if not, you may return to the place
whence you came.” “The most voluntary death is the fairest. Life depends on the will of others;
57
death, on our own” – claim Seneca and Montaigne, then they also propose: “The executioner
is upon you; wait for him. Why anticipate him?” “Not all troubles are worth our wanting to die
58
to avoid them.” These, of course, do not justify the historical permanence of suicidal
tendencies, what is more, the first works in sociology that attempted for the first time to bring
this phenomenon into the context of academic research, focused on the important aspects of
59
suicide’s social determination.
However, one of the most significant narrative passages in Mire megvénülünk
(“Because the self-inflicted bloodshed is such a terrible tradition! It spatters onto the sons and
brothers. That mocking temptress, who led the father’s hand holding the sharpened knife
towards his own heart, stands behind the backs of the descendants and keeps whispering:
Your father committed suicide, your brother brought death upon his own head: your sentence
is hanging over your head as well, you can run but you can’t run away from it, you carry your
60
murderer in your own right hand!” ) not only rhymes perfectly with the concept of the book
of fate introduced in What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (The Psychology of Human Destiny)
by Eric Berne, but both the plotline of the novel and fates of the two main characters feed back
into this idea. Another example can be Rab Ráby, which can be read in a socio-psychological
context. As I was reading it, I had the feeling that this novel traditionally read as a political
novel or roman engagé (and therefore tied to a certain era) not only puts the backward social
formations of its represented world into critical perspective, but the democratic institutional
system as well, which appears as a desired alternative, and also its modern versions, which are
in function even today. I also found it fruitful to include the strongly psychologising trauma
theories in the reading of Forradalmi- és csataképek (Hungarian Sketches in Peace and War,
1850), as this short story cycle – in the realistic situations of its fictional world or in symbolising

56
Moghaddam, “From Psychology in Literature…”, 515.
57
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, “Letter LXX” (“On the proper time to slip the cable”), In Seneca, Moral Letters
to Lucilius, vol. II, trans. Richard Mott Gummere (London–New York: William Heinemann, 1920), 56–73,
65; Michel de Montaigne, “A Custom of the Island of Cea”, trans. Donald M. Frame, In Montaigne,
Complete Essays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 251–261, 252.
58
Seneca, “Letter LXX”, 61; Montaigne, “A Custom of the Island of Cea”, 255.
59
See also Émile Durkheim, Suicide: a Study in Sociology, trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson
(Illinois: The Free Press, 1951), 145–151, 297–392.
60
Jókai Mór, Mire megvénülünk (Debts of Honour), ed. László Orosz (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1963), 27.

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its rhetorical tropes – presents several aspects of this phenomenon: the dialogue created by
the collective and cultural trauma narratives made several tendencies of the otherwise not
easily decipherable Jókai text narratable.
In the encounters between literature and psychology, in every instance of
psychological criticism the question inevitably poses itself: to what extent can we talk about (or
can we talk about at all) the “therapeutic” effect of literary texts, an effect that can alter the
61
reader’s worldview or way of life? This phenomenon is hard to verify scientifically, but I
consider a momentum significant in this context: it is the revelation of recognition or
realization in the act of literary reception. If a work of fiction allows psychic problems to enter
its field of vision, then it grants the reader the opportunity for more absorbed, more conscious
self-examination. However, it is not necessary for the text to provide a comprehensive model
about a psychologically defined situation: a reference or an analogy can be sufficient. Ferenc
Mérei used the term “imperative quality” to describe the dynamics of this effect factor, while
Norman N. Holland called it “feedback.” “In several cases, to grasp a specific constellation of
roles, a few similar traits are enough between the situations occurring in my own life and the
situations the fictional character found himself in. This similarity is sufficient for me to transfer
my own emotional tension […] to the fictional character and thus bring him to life. […] Lewin
calls this attractive and repulsive, helpful or hindering feature of things and characteristics in
62
the psychic field imperative quality (valence).” Holland, on the other hand, suggests that
works of fiction create such “potential places” whose liminality makes it possible for the reader
to oscillate between inside and outside, past and future, inner self and social self, while at the
63
same time s/he receives feedback regarding his/her own life and mental state.
And there is yet another aspect of literary reception, which implies a “therapeutic
effect.” Similarly to the methods of psychoanalytic treatment, a work of fiction can also trigger
long-term changes in the reader. Walter Schönau, for example, summarizes Freud’s “seminal
discovery” this way: “an individual can only understand the inner world, if they try to change it,
64
if they try to alleviate the pressure of pain with medical treatment.” The result of every actual
long-term process is the following: overwriting fruitless mental and lifestyle habits requires
conscious reflection and perseverance. Attributing meaning to literary texts is an infinite
process: this hermeneutical truth can be complemented by the fact that the real effect of
literary texts is an immeasurable phenomenon. And if they have some sort of substantial

61
“In connection with this arises the question as to how creation contributes to the maintenance of
psychic balance.” Hartmut Kraft, “Bevezetés a pszichoanalitikus művészetpszichológia
tanulmányozásába” (Introduction to the Study of the Psychoanalytic Psychology of Art), In Pszichoanalízis
és irodalomtudomány, 13–30, 27. Creative products “are generally compensatory to some ruling
collective attitudes and are meant – as dreams are meant – to have a healing effect on the society. […]
The healing effect might also consist in calling one's attention to dangerous, sick constellations in the
unconscious.” von Franz, “Analytical Psychology and Literary Criticism”, 122.
62
Mérei, Művészetpszichológia, 123, 126.
63
See also Holland, Psychoanalytic Psychology…, 71–72.
64
Schönau, “Kirajzolódnak egy pszichoanalitikus…”, 38.

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influence on everyday life events, than it must be that on the long run they can help achieve
change in the individual, help shake off mental burdens or release certain mental energies.

83

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