You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Bernard Paris has undertaken the exploration of the psychology of fictional characters from great works of literature in a study designed to be doubly
illuminating. He hopes both to deepen our understanding of the works in which they appear and to renew our appreciation for the ideas of Karen Horney, the lens through which he examines them. Such a two-sided approach is intrinsic to all clinical presentations since Freud's original case studies, which elucidated not only the psychodynamics of the individual patients, but by the cogency and power of the presentation, argued for the truth of the underlying theory. Paris' narrative, I am happy to say, displays all the virtues of Horney's own style and theory—its clarity and vividness of language, and the immediate appeal of a jargon-free presentation of different character styles. He provides a clear and concise outline of her mature theory that would be perfectly accessible to nonanalysts, and one that will remind those psychoanalysts who may have felt Horney's work has been superseded by the advances of self psychology or relational theories of the considerable virtues still to be found there. Horney felt character styles could be fully understood in functional terms, as variations of strategies of moving toward, against, or away from others as a way of coping with basic anxiety. Because her theory is not conceptually dependent on the uncovering of early childhood experiences, Paris thinks it particularly well suited for a discussion of the character styles of fictional characters for whom an author has provided no early history.
Paris examines the way that the realistic literary portrayal of psychological complex characters may, in light of our modem psychoanalytical understanding, be at odds with the formal or rhetorical structure of the works in which they appear. He writes, “One of the most common formal patterns in fiction is the education plot, based on the archetype of the fortunate fall, in which the protagon