The Doctor Looks at Literature

Psychological Studies of Life and Letters

Joseph Collins

• Publisher: Aeneas Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9785501308671
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A New York neurologist reads the writers of his day as a physician reads patients: James Joyce, Dostoevsky, Dorothy Richardson, Proust, Katherine Mansfield and Rebecca West, Stella Benson and Virginia Woolf, the diarists Barbellion and Amiel, Duhamel and D. H. Lawrence. Joseph Collins had reviewed Ulysses for the New York Times in 1922, and this book of 1923 carries the same mixture of admiration and clinical alarm. The method is dated and the judgements are startling, which is exactly why the book is worth reading now. Fifty-nine plates, from Thomas Eakins to Adolph von Menzel, turn the same clinical gaze on the body in portraits, tooth transplants and doctors at the bedside.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• The Doctor Looks at Literature
• Acknowledgment
• Chapter I Psychology and Fiction
• Chapter II Ireland’s Latest Literary Antinomian: James Joyce
• Chapter III Feodor Dostoievsky: Tragedist, Prophet, and Psychologist
• Chapter IV Dorothy Richardson and Her Censor
• Chapter V Marcel Proust: Master Psychologist and Pilot of the “Vraie Vie”
• Chapter VI Two Literary Ladies of London: Katherine Mansfield and Rebecca West
• Chapter VII Two Lesser Literary Ladies of London: Stella Benson and Virginia Woolf
• Chapter VIII The Psychology of the Diarist: W. N. P. Barbellion
• Chapter IX The Psychology of the Diarist: Henri-Frédéric Amiel
• Chapter X Georges Duhamel: Poet, Pacifist, and Physician
• Chapter XI Even Yet It Can’t Be Told—The Whole Truth About D. H. Lawrence
• Chapter XII The Joy of Living—And Writing About It: John St. Loe Strachey
• Chapter XIII The King of Gath Unto His Servant: Magazine Insanity
• About the Author