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A Critical Summary of

Paris, Bernard. "The Uses of Psychology." A Psychological Approach to Fiction. Indiana UP, 1974. 1-13, 23-27. Rpt. in Contexts for Criticism. Ed. Donald Keesey. 3^rd ed. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1998. 226-34.

In "The Uses of Psychology," Bernard Paris answers those critics who are hesitant to accept psychological analysis as a method of exploring and assessing literature. Norman Holland for one has argued that psychology is quite limited in its application to works of art in themselves because its focus is "not with literature, but with minds" (qtd. in Paris 226). If psychology has any application to literature, Holland maintains it is perhaps to the study of the audience's mind. Paris counters, however, that at least within realistic fiction there are two other minds that can be studied: that of the implied author and that of the leading character. Paris rejects "'the retreat from character'" evident in some modern criticism and reaffirms the mimetic roots of realistic fiction (227).

Fiction is "mainly concerned with the representation, the interpretation, and the aesthetic patterning of experience" (228). Paris acknowledges the writer's impulse toward harmonia, toward a thematically focused and aesthetically ordered vision of human experience. Recent criticism has stressed the study of harmonia in the ordered fluidity of literature's "symbolism, narrative techniques, moral vision and the like" (227). However, the novel's supreme purpose is not to interpret life, nor is it to reveal some moral of life. Rather, the value of the novel is its representation of human life and human experiences. To do this, authors create characters that are authentic. Thus, the writer's impulse toward harmonia is countered by the imperative of mimesis.

Some have argued that characters cannot be studied like real people. Paris agrees that characters need to be studied in respect to the aesthetic functions that they fulfill in a novel's harmonious structure. Nevertheless, the characters "'are what the novel exists for; it exists to reveal them'" (227). The author of realistic fiction aims to show what real life is like ­ the experiences, attitudes, and acts of human beings. Instead of designing a generalized character, the author strives to make one that possesses authentic qualities and has experiences representative of real life. The goal is to make the character seem alive. To make characters as real as possible, the author must allow them to "have a motivational life of their own" (230).

Whatever the focus required for the writer's aesthetic purposes, frequently characters take on a larger and fuller life of their own. As W. J. Harvey has noted, realistic writers "display an appetite and passion for life which threatens to overwhelm [ . . . ] their art," and "characterization often overflows the strict necessities of form" or theme (qtd. in Paris 227). Thus, Paris concludes, "in certain cases it is proper to treat literary characters as real people and that only by doing so can we fully appreciate the distinctive achievement" of the literature (228). Some characters are simply aesthetic and illustrative constructs. Aesthetic types, such as villains, help "create formal patterns and dramatic impact" (231), while illustrative stereotypes allow a reader to "'understand the principles they illustrate through their actions'" (231). Mimetic characters, however, perform the most important literary task of giving the reader "knowledge of reality" (232). A paradox of realistic literature is that its mimetic imperative defies artistic harmonia. Its "existential portrayal of reality defies [ . . . ] authorial attempts at analysis and judgment. The great realists see and represent far more than they can understand" (229). For Paris, the tools of psychology provide a means for the reader to understand the reality of human character captured in literature.

The reader can gain knowledge of reality not only through the psychological study of individual characters but also through the psychological study of the implied author, the authorial persona created in the narrative voice. Just as other characters act and make choices, this implied author makes judgments of his own in his representation and interpretation of characters. In essence, the implied author thus becomes another character in the fictional reality. Indeed, the representation of human experience shaped by the implied author in effect provides "a deep inside view of his mind, a view which makes us phenomenologically aware of his experience of the world" (232). Paris challenges the detached interpretative objectivity of the implied author: "we must set aside the fictional conventions which encourage us to invest him" with such authority; in fact, "it is essential to do so if we are to appreciate many great narrators whose wisdom we must question and whose obtrusiveness we must regret" (232). Once we recognize the implied author "as a dramatic consciousness whose values can be as subjective as those of an ordinary man, psychological analysis becomes a necessity" (232).

Paris thus sees psychology as means to making the authentic experience of literature more accessible and meaningful to readers. Psychological analysis should not simply make literature into case histories of neurotic characters. The function of criticism in general is "to talk about what the artist knows" (233). If art/literature dramatizes knowledge, criticism articulates understanding. Treating mimetic characters as real people will "give us a phenomenological grasp of experience in its immediacy" (233), and psychological analysis is the best tool for exploring these characters as real people. By bringing psychology and literature together, one's knowledge of experience is amplified: "Psychology helps us to talk about what the novelist knows; fiction helps us to know what the psychologist is talking about" (233).

updated 07/30/99