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Norman N. Holland, the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the University of Florida and faculty member of the McKnight Brain Institute, is the author of 15 books on the psychology of the arts. In this work he attempts to address the question of why we respond with real emotion to works of literature that we know are not real. He turns to neuroscience for his answers, and in doing so, he also provides a summary of our contemporary understanding of how the brain works to provide a mind that determines who we are and what we perceive. Written in an informal first person narrative style, his book is easy to read for both the professional and non-professional, and is filled with useful information for both.
Holland begins by observing that when we read a story or a poem or when we watch a movie or a play and become “transported,” our mind functions abnormally. It suspends our reality testing and actions while allowing us to respond with real emotions to what we know to be fictitious. Holland also notes that every culture has developed a literature. He offers an explanation for both through the findings in neuropsychoanalysis. He divides his book into four parts: Part I is an introduction to the questions to be raised and addressed and to the field of neuropsychoanalysis; Part II looks at how and why we experience literature as we do—how do we suspend reality testing, how are we transported, why do we not act in response to our emotional reactions?; Part III examines how and why we get enjoyment and pleasure from literature; and Part IV attempts to answer what is creativity and why all cultures develop literature.
In his efforts to explain our responses to literature (which include drama and cinema), Holland cites numerous supporting psychological and neurological experiments, many of which are quite fascinating in and of themselves. For example, when he explores the reasons for our responding to fictional characters as if they were real, he brings