The doctor looks at literature

A series of critical essays applies psychological perspectives to literature, surveying modes of mental life as manifested in fiction, diaries, and literary personalities. The author contrasts schools of psychological thought, considers the roles of consciousness and the unconscious, and evaluates how writers render inner experience, memory, and revision. Individual chapters profile a range of writers and forms, from novelists and diarists to magazine culture, testing their work against behaviourist, psychoanalytic, and dynamic notions of mind. Observations combine literary close reading with clinical insight to illuminate artistic technique and the psychological forces shaping creative expression.