psychology, literature and nabokov in the american scholar

“Literature’s aims differ considerably from those of research psychology. Nevertheless literature draws on human intuitive psychology (itself also a subject in recent psychology) and exercises our psychological capacities. Literature aims to understand human minds only to the degree it seeks to move human minds. It may move readers’ minds, in part, by showing with new accuracy or vividness, or at least with fresh particulars, how fictional minds move, and by showing in new ways how freely readers’ minds can move, given the right prompts. Psychology also wants to understand minds, both simply for the satisfaction of knowing and also to make the most of them, to limit mental damage or to extend mental benefits. It uses the experimental method. We can also see fictions as thought experiments, experiments about how characters feel, think, and behave, and about how readers feel, think, and behave, and how they can learn to think more imaginatively, feel more sympathetically, act more sensitively.”