Psychological dissociation in this article refers to the gap between a writer's intention and his achievement. The author focuses on such dissociations in the Victorian novel from Jane Austen through Thomas Hardy. The movement he describes is from the socially oriented novels of the early part of the century to the psychologically oriented novels of the middle and late parts of the century, in which the world presented was fragmented, personal, and isolated. The Tom Jones type of plot inherited by early nineteenth century writers disappeared and a Richardson type of novel of psychic drama appeared. Those novelists who continued for a while to use plot but who were already interested in psychic disturbance (in mid-century mainly George Eliot, George Meredith, and Dickens) were presented with the problem of finding a new form for these