Creative Imagination

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LITERATURE

June E Downey, Downey, June E

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415210140
• eBook ISBN: 9781136320095
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

First published in 1999. This is Volume II of thirty-eight in the General Psychology series. Written in 1929, using creative writing and poetic imagination as a focus this text looks at the psychology of literature and the variational factor. Both literary appreciation and creation suggest fascinating problems that might be solved in the laboratory.

BOOK VII

LITERARY SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY

CHAPTER XXIII

A FEW WORDS ON EMPATHY

IMITATION has been frequently appealed to by historians in their discussions concerning the origin of art. Sculpture and painting reproduce the objects in the outer world; drama copies the actions of the world of men. Poetry in indirect fashion mirrors the human emotions. True, a conception of art as photographic is obviously inadequate. It has been rejected in toto by certain artists who even in the realm of painting and sculpture would follow the ideals of absolute music and evolve a pictorial art that rejoices in sheer melody of line and colour. Their interesting arraignment of traditional views may force us to a more intimate analysis of the origin and purpose of art production. But, in any case, in contemplation of art imitation appears in subtle fashion. It is not merely that we grow breathless with the runner on canvas as we do when watching him upon the field; not only that we writhe with Laocoön, or sink into a contemplative mood with Michelangelo's “Thinker,” but every arch of stone, every cedar box, every curving vase induces subtle personal reactions. We pause at sight of the broken column. Our sense of its meaning is a realization of the arrested eye, the checked breath. The slender pillar topped with heavy cornice overweighs us; we too yield under a too heavy burden. The misshaped pitcher oppresses us with the sense of our own inadequacy.

Not in contemplation of art only but also in that of Nature we mark these inner imitations, these psychic posturings, these organic echoes. There is a lift of the whole body upward, an intake of the breath, as the eye follows the outline of a slender Monterey pine, rising a hundred feet above the shrubbery at its feet; a deep expiration as we glimpse the fanlike boughs across the sunbright cloud. The long lines of a level sunset, the expanse of the prairies, quiet the inner tumult by their control of the pulsations of the organic life. In complete surrender to the aesthetic mood, these organic reverberations are read back into the object. The babbling brook is described as breathless; the forest glade, as mysterious. Moods are objectified and given names of natural objects. We speak of the moonlight mood; the mood of the stars, of spring, of autumn. They are as real as beams of sunlight on heavily tasseled corn.

If we are analytically exact we must distinguish actual mimetic movements from movements of perceptual adjustment. It is one thing when I copy by my attitude, actual or imaginal, the posture of Michelangelo's “Thinker” or Rodin's “Balzac”; I speak then very properly of mimetic realization. It is another thing when the lines of a statue or building release certain movements of accommodation, certain kinaesthetic and organic patterns of perception which as integral parts of an emotional complex reinstate this complex in the act of contemplation. The aesthetic object becomes coloured with the ease or inadequacy of adjustment; it is itself a pattern of grace or of incompleteness.

Famous analysts among psychologists and art-critics have given us many subtle modulations of the doctrine of inner imitation and of psychic participation. Their technical term for this process of psychic participation is empathy, or a process of “feeling-in,” in which motor and emotional attitudes, however originating, are projected outside of the self. One authority defines the term so as to include the “reading into impersonal and often inorganic objects of the organic sensations, feelings, emotions, and desires that are really in ourselves.” E. B. Titchener states that empathy is “the name given to that process of humanizing objects, of reading or feeling ourselves into them.”¹ From one point of view we subjectify an object; from another point of view, we objectify the self. We assume attitudes and emotions in obedience to demands of the outer world, then refit the world with these patterns which have become intensified through intimate realization of their meaning.

Our understanding of persons also is moulded by something akin to empathic processes. Through subtle imitation we assume an alien personality, we become aware of how it feels to behave thus and so, then we read back into the other person our consciousness of what his pattern of behaviour feels like. Much further reaching than sympathy is empathy. We may sympathize at times when we cannot empathize because of inadequacy of experience.

The doctrine of aesthetic empathy will no doubt develop in unexpected ways as its mechanism becomes better understood. It has come to be a much-inclusive term, since it covers not only consideration of mimetic realization (inner imitation) and movement patterns as contributing the emotional or mood tone to perceptual complexes, but also, by and large, the problem of the projection of all self-experience into the object.

In general, I have sought to exclude aesthetic theorizing from the present book. One speculation I wish to venture, namely, that aesthetic experience is largely concerned with the projection of affective reactions into an external world; it is an objectification of emotions; the creation of a universe of mood values.

In the genetic process, sense-qualities have long since been objectified, solidified into very substantial percepts. Sweetness is conceived as a property of sugar; yellow as a property of the sunflower. Pressed back by the philosopher, we know that sweetness arises in relationship between a tongue and chemical properties; that green is not inherent in the grass but the outcome of waves of a certain vibratory rate acting upon retinal cells; that this world of outer percepts has been built up by millions of years of organic reactions solidifying into racial habits. In aesthetic reactions, the projection of affective qualities is in process of taking place. A universe of emotional objects is in course of construction, a universe to be constituted by externalization of delicate personal emotions which are carried by subtle variations in accommodatory movements of the sense-organs, modulations of breath and of pulse. Self is the very core of such creation since it is in process of projecting or externalizing itself. The so-called secondary qualities of matter—visual, auditory, olfactory—are essential to the aesthetic product but kinaesthetic and organic qualities contribute the self-feelings that unify the object. It has been said that in many cases of empathy we subjectify an object rather than objectify the self and undoubtedly this is true. We assume attitudes in obedience to the demands of the outer world, then refit the world with these attitudes, intensified by intimate realization of their meaning.

For detailed comprehension of the processes of empathy there is need for experimental studies with simple material, such for example as Bullough's work with colours which we have already described in Chapter IX where the transition from physiological and associative reactions to the aesthetic reaction on the basis of projection into the colour of the subjective state was indicated. That something similar in nature occurs in reaction to words was suggested by my own connotation experiment. The latter analysis must, however, penetrate much further into the patterns of auditory perception, if we are to gain information in respect to it comparable with the rich material furnished us by the investigators of visual form.

¹ A Text-book of Psychology, footnote, p. 417.

CHAPTER XXIV

SELF AND ART

IN certain respects the aesthetic doctrine of empathy reminds us of the psychoanalytic doctrine of identification. Identification has been studied largely from the point of view of the organization of selves rather than the constitution of a universe of values. Two phases of it are recognized, that of inclusion within the self of alien experiences, the introjective phase; and the exclusion of inner experiences, the projective phase. Fundamental processes of psychic assimilation and repression are involved in the process of identification which, taken inclusively, cover the whole field of self-integration and individualization. The introjective phase of identification includes all that is commonly spoken of as “identification, ” the mergence of self with the crowd or group, the feeling of unity with the hero or god.¹ Projection, in contrast, attributes to the not-self the self-experiences. It ranges from imputing to others one's own sins, to projection of a whole body of memories and habits into a dual self.

The æsthetic doctrine of empathy stresses, chiefly, behavior patterns released through the sheer activity of perception, a much more evasive process than that of social identification. Moreover, while the response to art may be that of the participant (identification in the narrower and popular meaning of the term, when, for example, the reader feels himself to be the hero of drama or novel) the truly aesthetic response does not stop there. It goes beyond introjection and projection to a final assimilation of the projected experiences, a complex integration.

We will need to consider in some detail the relation of the Self to Art and to stress as with other topics the fact of individual variation. According to Müller-Freienfels¹ three types of response should be recognized : that of the Ecstatic, the Participator, and the Spectator. A few words will be given to the description of each variety of reactor.

First of all, the Ecstatic, for whom all self-consciousness is merged in the perfect unity of subject and object that occurs under conditions of intense enjoyment. There is such an identification with the objects perceived that the “I” seems utterly lost. One becomes that which he is enjoying. George Sand's description of her own ecstatic experiences have often been quoted in this connection :—

“There are hours, ” she writes, “when I go out from myself and live in a plant, when I feel myself as the grass, as bird, as tree-top, clouds—hours when I run, fly, swim, when I unfold myself in the sun, when I sleep under leaves, when I float with the larks or creep with the lizards, when I shine in the stars and fire-flies, when, in short, I live in every object which affords an extension of my existence.”

Quite comparable to this is a report by a former student of mine :—

“I am the tall white lilies and feel tall with a slender swaying feeling that goes to my head, and makes me a trifle dizzy. I am rolling masses of music; or I dance with notes with flying feet until my heart beats rapidly.

“I am in the winter snow-storm with great gusto. I seem to dance and throw my arms about and rush madly on until I feel all gloriously alive and strong.

“I enjoy particularly nature poetry that personifies as Shelley's ‘Cloud,’ because I more easily translate myself into such poetry. In the ‘Ode to the West Wind’ I may have the run of all the globe.’

Vachel Lindsay phrases the same reaction :—

“I am no longer man, but cloud or tumbled maple-leaf.’

Often, for the Ecstatic, with loss of self, both time and space orientation lapses. He passes into the trance of the mystic and may lose consciousness even of the art-stimulus. Perhaps such ecstatic enjoyment is most commonly experienced in listening to music.

There is, secondly, the Participator, (der Mitspieler) who takes upon himself another self, who can sink himself in another personality, play many rôles. The spectator may assume one personality after another, although, no doubt, with varying degrees of success. A thorough-going facile identification may coexist with a low type of art-consciousness.

“When I read, ” writes one, “I readily become quite deaf and insensible to ordinary interruptions. I am living a great number of different lives. I laugh and cry with the characters until it is a discomfort for me to read anything emotional in a place where I may be observed because there is danger that I may seem to be insane if I allow myself to enter into the book.”

Of course, not merely the type of reader is potent in determining the form of reaction but also the kind of literature read. Short stories, novels, and dramas would seem to encourage the attitude of personal assumption of emotions, often to the exclusion of all possibility of artistic evaluation of content. This is evident in many current discussions of books or plays of the day which turn upon the questions of personal liking or sympathy. Here's an interesting comment on a modern play, “The Circle.” The lady who made the comment was critical of the play because she considered that the characters—presumably of high social standing—did not show good breeding; they lost their tempers (at cards!) and were profane at slight provocation. Their manners impressed her as rather worse than their morals.

“When I go to a play, ” she said, “it is as if I made a social call and I do not enjoy meeting people whom I should refuse to call upon in real life.’

Obviously she was taking the participant attitude, although keeping herself in the background. It would be interesting getting this lady's reactions to a play featuring a level of society with which she was absolutely unfamiliar, in which case she might achieve detachment as we shall see from the discussions in the following chapters.

The participant attitude is common in prize-winning letters, that stress, usually, the human interest motive. Here is one from an “O. Henry Prize Contest.”

“To my mind the best example of O. Henry's art is the ‘Unfinished Story. ’ We can all feel with Dulcie her longing for her share of the joy of living. Poor little Atom with her beauty-loving soul and her starved and colourless existence. We sense her struggle. We sorrow for and with her in her joyless life. We want to shelter her. We want to make her life happier. We wonder how we ourselves would stand the strain of hunger, hard work, lack of clothes and loneliness.”

There is, thirdly, the attitude of the spectator who retains his own personality—in art enjoyment he is the spectator, the onlooker (der Zuschauer). Such an attitude may be found very notably in the critic, whose enjoyment never swamps his capacity to estimate the value of a work in terms of his own criteria; but it may also occur in the most artistic of spectators who maintains a godlike detachment in the face of conflicting emotions, which interplay as colours upon an extended canvas.

Merely sentimental verse depends for its appeal upon psychic identification; imaginative poetry, on the other hand, may lead to the purest form of aesthetic realization. Often, obviously, the novelist or dramatist seeks no more than to induce sympathetic identification with his characters. He is content with an ephemeral triumph, for it may be observed here that the participant attitude probably leads sooner to satiety and desire for change than does the more detached attitude of aesthetic projection.

Many details of literary method find their explanation in the relation of self to the literary experience and suggest problems for investigation. The demand of the average reader for “sympathetic” characters testifies to his assumption of the participant attitude. Furthermore, the “arbitrary character”—as Brander Mathews calls him—who for the purposes of the plot does silly things, must not be the hero or heroine although he may be the villain.

In this connection one may raise the question of the relation of grammatical form to projection of self into a given situation. The statement is frequently made that in the last analysis it does not matter greatly whether a story be told in the first or the third person. On theoretical grounds one must question this. Certainly the “I” form would seem to be conducive to the assumption of a foreign personality; the third person favours the spectator's attitude, detached or æsthetic. An intermediate form occurs where the “I” of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY
• Full Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• BOOK I
• BOOK II—THE IMAGINAL WORLD
• BOOK III.—THE WORLD OF WORDS
• BOOK IV.—THE METHOD OF STYLE
• BOOK V.—ATTITUDES, PSYCHIC PATTERNS, THE LOGIC OF THE EMOTIONS
• BOOK VI.—SPRINGS OF THE IMAGINATION
• BOOK VII.—LITERARY SUBJECTIVITY AND OBJECTIVITY
• INDEX