therapists are not aware enough that we are singers … ways of narration are limited to four kinds: epic, comic, detective, social realism … take what comes – no matter how passionate and erotic, how tragic and noble, how freakish and arbitrary – and turn it all into one of four modes:
there are the cases showing the ego’s development, especially out of childhood, through obstacles and defeats: heroic epic
the tales of tangles, the confused identities and uncertain genders, the impossible bumbling inadequacies of the foolish victim…
unmasking hidden plots through clues and crises, indefatigably tracking down what went wrong by a taciturn but twinkle-eyed …
the detailed descriptions of small circumstances, true to life, the family as a misfortune, environmental conditions …, all presented with lugubrious sociological terminology and the heavy-handed panned shots of tendentious importance
Psychology would do better to turn directly to literature rather than to use it unawares. Literature has been friendly to us, openly incorporating a good deal from psychoanalysis. Those in literature see the psychology in fiction. It’s our turn to see the fiction in psychology.