The Marriage of Literature and Psychology

Patricia Cohen reports on the growing trend of studying literature and literary thinking through psychological techniques:

Now English professors and graduate…say they’re convinced science not only offers unexpected insights into individual texts, but that it may help to answer fundamental questions about literature’s very existence: Why do we read fiction? Why do we care so passionately about nonexistent characters? What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?

Jonathan Gottschall, who has written extensively about using evolutionary theory to explain fiction, said “it’s a new moment of hope” in an era when everyone is talking about “the death of the humanities.” To Mr. Gottschall a scientific approach can rescue literature departments from the malaise that has embraced them over the last decade and a half. Zealous enthusiasm for the politically charged and frequently arcane theories that energized departments in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s — Marxism, structuralism, psychoanalysis — has faded. Since then a new generation of scholars have been casting about for The Next Big Thing.

This could be a very interesting union of disciplines, especially in the attempt to answer the question, “What underlying mental processes are activated when we read?”  Armed with advanced brain-imaging techniques, many psychologists are well-equipped to investigate how our brain behaves when we read and, by connecting these findings to broader cognitive models, explore how our minds interact with fictional characters.

There is a dark side to all of this, though: attempting to connect literature to evolutionary theory.  Evolutionary psychology is prone to generating “just-so” stories – evolutionary explanations of our psychology that may be plausible but are untestable.  In other words, this line of thinking often results in unscientific speculation.

Now, I’m not trying to say that all evolutionary psychology is bunk.  Consider, for instance, the thoughts of William Flesch, an English professor at Brandeis:

To Mr. Flesch fictional accounts help explain how altruism evolved despite our selfish genes. Fictional heroes are what he calls “altruistic punishers,” people who right wrongs even if they personally have nothing to gain. “To give us an incentive to monitor and ensure cooperation, nature endows us with a pleasing sense of outrage” at cheaters, and delight when they are punished, Mr. Flesch argues. We enjoy fiction because it is teeming with altruistic punishers: Odysseus, Don Quixote, Hamlet, Hercule Poirot.

“It’s not that evolution gives us insight into fiction,” Mr. Flesch said, “but that fiction gives us insight into evolution.”

This represents a very nuanced understanding of how this kind of research should be carried out.  I’m not, however, personally familiar with Professor Flesch’s work, so I can’t comment on it specifically.  My worry stems not from scholars like Flesch but those who fall prey to sloppy thinking and extend unverifiable or poorly reasoned claims – an all-too-common phenomenon in evolutionary psychology.  Researchers at the interface between literature and pyschology need to tread lightly so as not to succumb to this danger.

I think the takeaway message is this: no matter how optimistic this NYT writer is that psychology can answer the question, “Why do we read fiction?” I think the answer is beyond the scope of science.  Psychology should not be the “Next Big Thing” in literary analysis.  Literature is fundamentally about meaning and significance, which are necessarily subjective, and I remain skeptical that science, in its striving for ever-more-perfect objectivity, can address questions of meaning.  More likely, every individual and society will have to decide on their own why they read literature.

–Aaron Bekemeyer

An earlier version of this post was based on an incomplete understanding of Professor William Flesch’s work.  The current post has been edited in an attempt to do that work justice.  Thanks to Professor Flesch for helping to improve this piece.