A comprehensive survey of the critical documents on Passage in the Introduction does not provide us with a satisfactory storage of information about psychological criticism for the following reasons. Firstly, the list of contributors is comparatively shorter than other branches. Secondly, the focus is invariably on Freudian psychoanalysis or Jungian analytical psychology (with two exceptions on Existential Psychology and Topological Psychology by two Chinese MA candidates). Thirdly, all these psychological practices have theoretical or methodological weakness, confining their observations within the idealist realm of "psyche for psyche's sake", without sufficient regard to the societal, historical, cultural and political context of either the characters of Passage or Forster himself.
The most misleading defense for the de-contextualization is Forster's own comments:
The book is not really about politics, though it is the political aspect of it that caught the general public and made it sell. It's about something wider than politics, about the search of the human race for a more lasting home, about the universe as embodied in the Indian earth and the horror lurking in the Marabar Caves and the release symbolized by the birth of Krishna. It is——or rather desire to be——philosophical and poetic. (Colmer, E. M. Forster 156)
It is just the "something wider than politics" that results in diverse studies on Passage: liberal-humanistic, religious, "philosophical and poetic". In addition, a brainstorming research for the symbolic meanings of the "innocent" Marabar caves becomes the centre of study, which directly leads to the popularity of Freudian or Jungian analysis on the novel. These references available are either surrealistic (religious, philosophical or poetic) or intra-realistic (psychoanalytical), totally neglecting the solid material ground of existence. Even the down-to-earth humanistic study of "only connect"——human relationship or friendship —becomes transcendental in nature. If so, here follow puzzling but fundamental questions: How do the three generally good-natured characters——Aziz, Adela and Fielding——break the most possibly cozy relationship in a vacuumed condition, and if the answer is the shock caused by the innocent echoes in the caves, then why does Adela bring a suit against Aziz? The lurking reason lies in the fact that the immanent difference among them excites the political issue in the novel. A feminist slogan provides a simple explanation: "Difference is politics". Further, this bundle of contradictions evolve around two invisible camps——Aziz as one and Adela with Fielding as the other——different in class, gender and races, full of tension, struggle, violence, oppression and resistance. Then, could it be possible that Adela and Fielding's mind is loaded with the "invisible bullets" of racial prejudice or even violence in the epistemological way implanted by an "orientalist" or "occidentalist" discourse? And how does the trial trigger and foster Aziz's "black consciousness" and the "psychology of resistance"?
In order to lay a solid foundation for a sound explanation of these challenging questions with the construction of a brand-new interpretive perspective, this chapter starts with a political and ideological critique on the psychological readings of Passage available, then furthers the critique to the Freudian psychoanalytical theory, and finally to the whole Western mainstream psychologies.
2.1 Critique of Psychoanalytical Criticism of Passage
In the fall of 1957 Robert L. Selig completed a MA thesis at Columbia University entitled"Passage to More than India: The Mythological Meaning of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India", which tried a mythic interpretation of the novel from Hinduism, anthropology, psychoanalysis and other sources. First of all, he accepts Glen O. Allen's interpretation of the echo, and shifts then to a comparison of the cave episode with the allegory of the cave in Plato's Republic; he also turns to Frazer's The Golden Bough, "to try to show that Miss Quested's belief that she had been sexually assaulted in a cave was actually a frustrated attempt on the part of her unconscious to enact a rite of fertility"; he interprets the "snake imagery as phallic and the caves as female orifices" (Selig 471); he finally refers the concluding section to both The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance, etc.
He sent a copy to Forster himself and a few weeks later Foster replied with detailed comments. Due to its importance for the argument against the Freudian and Jungian methodology, the complete letter is presented below:
Dear Mr. Selig,
Many thanks for your interesting and generous thesis on A Passage to India, and for the M. S. copy of it which I am glad to possess.
I hope you won't think me ungrateful and discourteous, but——as perhaps you presume——I fail to follow most [the original word that Forster wrote was "much, "but he canceled it and wrote the sterner "most" instead] of your criticism. For one thing, you [Forster originally wrote "it" but crossed out the impersonal word and replaced it with the more accusing "you"] credit me with the reading of much I have never read [my italics]. I never thought of Aum when I wrote Boum, and I was unaware of the subdivisions of the mystic syllable. I have never read Miss Weston, have once glanced at Frazer, have never been interested in Plato, never thought of his Cave in connection with the Marabar, and throughout your thesis have encountered inferences and comparisons that surprised me [my italics].
You may reply that I knew all the above subconsciously, and then of course you have got me! And I realize even on the conscious level that there is plenty of sex in the book. All the same I think you go too far. You tend to make every hole, and every object that's longer than it's broad, into a sexual symbol [my italics]——rather like G. K. Chesterton who regarded all objects interesting at right angles as proofs of the truth of Christianity.
Your affection for the book is evident, and I much appreciate it .... I also agree with many isolated judgement——e.g. the approximation of Godbole and Mrs. Moore, and my failure to present Ralph. It is your critical method that I feel compelled to reject [my italics]——and maybe my subconscious will one day rise to the surface, and demonstrate to me that I am wrong!
Yours truly
E. M. Forster (Selig 473)
Forster's response to Selig's criticism is ironic but sincere, and the complaint about his overinterpretation ("I think you go too far") is obvious. Selig and other critics might defend with Roland Barthes's "Death of the Author" (1967) or Harold Bloom's "Map of Misreading" (1975), but we will also respect Susan Sontag's disbelief of overinterpretation in Against Interpretation (1966) and Umberto Eco's warning in "Interpretation and Overinterpretation" (1992). To put it simply, it is Selig's "critical method" that Forster feels"compelled to reject", including the surprising Jungian "inferences and comparisons" that he fails to follow and plenty of Freudian sexual symbols.
Twenty years later when glancing at his own thesis, Selig confesses that "it seems of interest now only as a na?ve foreshadowing of much learned irrelevant criticism of A Passage [my italics] by subsequent decades of myth hunters" (473-474). These "hunters" include James McConkey on echo "ou-boum"; Wilfred Stone, Louis Dauner, Malcolm Bradbury and McDowell on the identification of Marabar caves with Plato's cave; Dauner, Keith Hollingsworth, Stone, and Bonnie Finkelstein on the sexual symbolism of Forster's holes and protrusions; Ellin Horowitz on the fertility rites as the key to the novel's meaning, and so on.（注：See Notes 4-9 on pp.473-474 of Selig's "God is Love".）In the following sections, the present thesis will provide more detailed comments on a few Freudian and Jungian criticisms on Passage, of which Wilfred Stone's serves as the primary target.
2.1.1 A Critique of Wilfred Stone's Freudian Criticism on Passage
Wilfred Stone's article "The Caves of A Passage to India" is famous for its Freudian interpretation of the Marabar caves and the echoes. It consists of three parts. The first part stresses the centrality of the caves: "The caves are central both structurally and thematically [...] out of which emanates the novel's meaning". Forster said in 1953 that he knew"something important" happened in the caves and that "it would have a central place in the novel". Stone believes that they were an area where "concentration" could take place. "They were to focus everything up; they were to engender an event like an egg", and therefore, "we need to study the caves if we want to understand this novel" (Stone, "The Caves of A Passage to India" 16). Part two is to raise the question of what happens in the caves. On the surface level, it is about a dark-skinned local attempting to rape a white lady; or it is about Adela's panic and Aziz is fixed out of terror as the object of that terror. But if Aziz really committed that crime or what on earth happened is still a "mystery". In the middle of the trial, Adela confessed that "nothing" happened, and hereafter the "nothingness" becomes an eternal topic concerning Passage. On the other hand, Stone takes the mysteries as what Forster discusses in Aspects of the Novel under the heading of "Prophecy", which "exist not to be 'solved', but to be wondered at, like religious mysteries" ("The Caves of A Passage to India" 17).
Part three suggests the readers turn to psychology instead of religion for an explanation of the caves and their echoes. "In Hindu mythology, " Stone believes, "the caves represent the 'womb of the universe', from which, by some miracle of androgynous fertilisation, emanated all the forms of created life [...]. There are many varieties of the myth, but basic to them all is the identification of caves with some primordial, prehistoric nothingness from which life emerged." ("The Caves of A Passage to India" 20) It is just the "primordial, prehistoric nothingness" that corresponds to the psychological notion of the Freudian subconscious,（注：Stone's argument is similar to Louise Dauner's in his "What Happened in the Cave? Reflections on A Passage to India". Upon entering the cave, a symbol of the unconscious, the instinctual, and of motherhood and fertility, Adela becomes out of control, suggesting a rejection of sexual union. See Modern Fiction Studies Vol 7.3. West Lafayette: Purdue University, 1963.）which locates below the conscious mind as the storehouse of all that is repressed by the "superego" or neglected by the conscious mind. According to Stone, the panic that Adela and Mrs. Moore experience is "the unconscious breaking into the conscious mind, and for one not accustomed to such visitations it can seem——as it did for Adela——like a rape of the personality"; while for Mrs. Moore, it is "a virtual abdication of the moral sense" ("The Caves of A Passage to India" 21-22). Furthermore, the caves represent the unconscious in two senses: "the repressed elements in the individual life and the survivals in modern man of the pre-historic and the pre-human, those elements that Freud termed the id". This is the state of "nothing", a condition of no distinction, which for a logical and reasonable mind like that of Adela, is "terrifying", because "to lower one's guard before the primal forces of the unconscious is, to one trained in repression, nothing less than an abdication of all culture and a return to something like savagery". Consequently, the caves become the "echo chamber" and those echoes are "emanations from the unconscious of mankind" (Stone, "The Caves of A Passage to India" 22).
To make his argument convenient and persuasive, Stone's critical logic is as follows: first of all, he stresses the centrality of the caves, which "have nothing to do with the 'plot'in any usual sense", highlighting the unsolvable mystery of "nothingness"; secondly, he drives other main characters except Adela and Mrs. Moore out of the critical horizon; finally he focuses on a metaphysical and transcendental analysis of the "unconscious" in a Freudian sense.
Though Stone's illustration is lucid and self-justifiable, I still "feel compelled to reject"his "critical method" as Forster puts it. The fundamental mistake is the ground hypothesis of the whole argument, namely, the sole centrality of the caves. "Structurally" speaking, the caves provide the name for the central part of this three-part novel and they are the milieu of the crises as well as the turning point of the story. However, the mysteries of the caves are well-woven net with unsolvable knots. The pursuit of them leads to "uncertainty" or even relativism. As a matter of fact, even Forster himself does not know how to handle the caves episode:
The numerous drafts of the famous cave episode, which take up fifty-five rectos out of 101 in Manuscript B, reveal that in one version the echo is given in the form of a dialogue between Edith / Adela and Aziz, while in another the echo is linked with Fielding's very literary meditations, which include quotations from Milton and Meredith and Persian verse learned from Aziz. One fragment of four leaves makes it clear that there was an assault in the caves. This is confirmed by some notes headed"Situation at the Catastrophe". Later Forster deliberately resorted to the "trick" of leaving everything uncertain and unexplained. (Colmer, "Review" 453)
I wonder if a deliberate "trick" could possibly serve as the center of an important novel.
Moreover, Stone's Freudian reading of the caves is constructed on the decontextualization of the material objects, similar to a positivist psychological experiment in ideal conditions with controllable variables for measurable results, wiping out historicity, culture and politics. First of all, Stone alleges that "there are mysteries in this novel that cannot be solved, that have nothing to do with 'plot' in any usual sense [my italics]" ("The Caves of A Passage to India" 17), which means an isolation from the context of the novel. Secondly, he stresses that "'nothing' happened in the caves", and this "nothingness"leads his following interpretations away from a material to mysterious, transcendental and metaphysical direction. Thirdly, another isolation conduct is the choice of the subjects of psychological test, in which all the main characters whose reactions do not meet the possible interpretation conditions are taken as exceptions.
Aziz, being Moslem and bored by most things Hindu, is a mere tourist to the caves and immune to their deeper significance; Fielding, that sensible 'holy man without the holiness', is curious about the caves as he is curious about everything, but he is baffled, and a little guilty, by his inability to penetrate them spiritually; Godbole alone, the devout Hindu, can enter the caves without fear and without evil consequences, for he is accustomed to wandering in such depths and caves are at the very heart of the Hindu place of worship. (Stone, "The Caves of A Passage to India" 18)
After the exclusion of all other characters, the focus of study is on Adela and Mrs. Moore, or to be more exact, the unconscious of the two female characters. "The unconscious is, in short, " according to Stone's understanding, "the inner cell of the World Mountain, as the world of mind and will is its surface, and the world of abstracting ideality the peak——or point of release." Those people
most resistant to the unconscious and most devoted to 'the daylight of mentality and morally lucid consciousness' [...] crumble or panic when the echoes invade [...]. This is the unconscious breaking into the conscious mind, and for one not accustomed to such visitations it can seem——as it did for Adela——like a rape of the personality [my italics]. (Stone, "The Caves of A Passage to India" 21)
Feminist critics, no doubt, will complain about Stone's "unconscious" prejudice toward female fragility on the one hand, and on the other will challenge the universalization of this female "weakness" to the whole human psyche.
However, Stone's universalism is denied by himself in the interpretation of the echoes. Stone insists that these echoes are "emanations from the unconscious of mankind" —collective unconscious in Jungian term——and come "in infinity of forms, as sight as well as sound, in seen as well as unseen form, as words and bees, as puns and divine visitations" ("The Caves of A Passage to India" 22). Then the question is, if the panic of Adela and Mrs. Moore is out of the collective unconscious, why does the collective unconscious exclude other male characters? Stone may think it comes to them in other forms, like Godbole's religious ecstasy during the feast of Gokul Ashtami, or his memory of the same wasp that Mrs. Moore sees much earlier in the book. No matter which one Stone prefers, his interpretation finally leads to relativism and agnosticism, the impasse of criticism.
The worst of all in Stone's echo and caves analysis is his erasion of "distinctions" of unconscious. Stone holds that besides the "individual" unconscious, the cave also represents the "collective" unconscious, the id, which embodies the "survivals in modern man of the prehistoric and the pre-human". So the echo "ou-boum" is "something before language, a sound emanating from that dark, distant, prehistoric distance before language——and before morality. It is a time and condition on which Anglo-India built its culture and empire [my italics]" (Stone, "The Caves of A Passage to India" 22). Ironically, the notion of "Anglo-India" itself is heavily loaded with political and historical implications, and the discussion of the unconsciousness of a colony is not different from a psychoanalytical interpretion of a colonized subject.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon critiques Mannoni's interpretation of seven dreams of "terror" dreamed by the Malagasy as we critique Stone's reading. One is dreamed by Rahevi, a thirteen-year-old boy, in which two black men stop him in the woods and wish to show him "what death is". They show their rifles and lead the terrified boy to their chief. Finally the boy survives by diving into a river and hiding in a rocky cave. Mannoni's Freudian interpretation of the rifles surely refer to the sexual organ, which excites Fanon's often-quoted answer. "The rifle of the Senegalese soldier, " Fanon says, "is not a penis but a genuine rifle, model Lebel 1916." (Black Skin 106) And on the same page of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon records the comments of Pierre Naville（注：Pierre Naville (1903—1993) is a French Surrealist writer and sociologist.）on the historicity and politicality of both societal and individual dreams, equivalent to collective and individual unconscious, which best serve as the summary of the critique on Stone.
To speak of society's dreams as one speaks of the dreams of the individual, to discuss collective will to power as one discusses individual sexual drive, is to reverse the natural order of things once more, because, on the contrary, it is the economic and social conditions of class conflicts that explain and determine the real conditions in which individual sexuality expresses itself, and because the content of a human being's dream depends also [...] on the general conditions of the culture in which he lives. (Fanon, Black Skin 106)
2.1.2 A Critique of Jungian Criticism on Passage
Within psychological readings of Forster's Passage, the adoption of the psychological theories of C. G. Jung and his methodological postulates are also an indispensible part. Among the Jungian attempts, David W. Elliott's MA dissertation of East Tennessee State University, "A Psychological Literary Criticism from a Jungian Perspective of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India" (2005) is the most frequently referred to. In addition, Cumhur Yilmaz Dadran's PhD dissertation of Middle East Technical University, "An Archetypal Analysis of E. M. Forster's Fiction" (2004) is, though not as focused as Elliott's, also includes an important part on Passage studies.
David W. Elliott's dissertation uses the psychological theories of Jung and the methodology of Jungian literary critic, Terence Dawson, to study the novel's characters and some psychological implications. This dissertation also pays much attention to Forster's biographical information, especially his homosexuality, and its influence to the making of the novel. Without exception, this psychological reading also stresses the significance of the caves and the echo. The conclusion of the paper is that the Marabar caves are the central psychological symbol of the novel, representing what Jung calls the collective unconscious:
Both Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore, the novel's effective protagonist, encounter heretofore unconscious material in the caves that precipitate psychological growth for each. Adela's encounter is best understood as an animus confrontation while Mrs. Moore's more profound journey is best characterized as a meeting of the self archetype. (Elliott 2)
One feature of Elliott's paper is to identify Mrs. Moore as the "effective protagonist" of the literary text, which is "the character that can best be defined as the primary carrier of the author's unconscious personality" (13). Mrs. Moore, both in her characterization and in her contrast to the other characters, brings the reader to the core of the novel, to the primary concerns of the author, and to the author's artistic vision. Elliott believes that in the analysis of Mrs. Moore, Jungian theory is more efficient than Freudian. "For most psychoanalytic systems, including that of Freud, Mrs. Moore is beyond the pale of interpretation. But Jung's analytic constructions, including the archetype of the self, stages of projection withdrawal, individuation and synchronicity, assist the reader in understanding Mrs. Moore's significance" (Elliott 76). Moreover, Elliott uses the archetypal images Jung termed "anima / animus" at a deeper level of the unconscious as the analytical tool. The pressing question raised, on one hand, is "how a homosexual imagination may differ, if at all, from a heterosexual imagination", and on the other hand, "how to approach the character of Adela Quested in relation to Forster's imagination" (25-26). Above all, the whole paper evolves around the centrality of the Marabar caves in the novel. As for Adela, it is through the caves that she achieves her growth into personhood; and it is also through the caves that Mrs. Moore realizes her growth toward wholeness.
To some degree Elliott's Jungian study does make some contribution to the body ofPassage readings. Firstly, it deepens readers' understanding of Jungian theory, especially the Jungian methodologies adopted by literary critic Terence Dawson. It also familiarizes readers with the psychological growth of the main characters. The archetypal criticism of the caves and the echo from the perspective of collective unconscious extends the Freudian knowledge on individual psyche to the prehistoric being.
Elliott's argument is rooted in the psychological criticism which appeared in the 1960s. The chief influence comes from Louise Dauner with the first treatment of the Marabar caves experience using Jungian archetype (1961), Ellin Horowitz's mythological approach on the text (1964) and Wilfred Stone's The Caves and the Mountain (1966). However, none of their study addresses the novel in any way like Terence Dawson's methodology.
The cornerstone as well as the "Achilles' heel" of Elliott's argument just lies in Terence Dawson's theories." The whole point of a psychological critique," Elliott holds, "is to discover the psychological implications that are explicit, or, more often, implicit in a text [my italics] [...]. Dawson assumes [...] that there is a symbolic relationship between the text and the author." (Elliott 12) In Dawson's approach, the sole focus should be on the writer's psyche reflected or implied through either the narrative or the characters. In Effective Protagonist Dawson explains that the writer's character construction in the text, from a psychological point of view, represents "personification of different aspects of the writer's personality, and that the course of their interactions gives expression to a significant psychological dilemma facing the author at the time of writing" (Elliott 12 - 13). The statement that "the whole point of a psychological critique is to discover the psychological implications" is no wonder an over-exaggerated generalization. Obviously, the efforts on"implications" lead to the symbolic or mythological meanings projected by a deeper-level of the psyche, whose existence, which is the most important contribution by Freud to human knowledge, has already been accepted though it is still kept mysterious and ambiguous. The seeking for both Freud's unconscious and Jung's collective unconscious directs academic"libido" towards human biological and physiological nature and neglects the human world. This is the fatal wound of psychoanalysis which is blind to social, cultural, historical and political reality, and at the same time fragile to their critique.
An important notion of Dawson's methodology is the "effective protagonist" of a literary text, which is the "axial character to which all the events of the novel can be related, without exception [...]. In other words, the effective protagonist is the character that determines both the structural and psychological coherence of the entirety of the narrative in question" (Elliott 13). Jung, same with Freud, believes that one's dream reveals the real self. To interpret a dream, Jung needs to figure out the "primary carrier" of the dreamer's ego and then it becomes the "dream-ego". When applying this idea into literary criticism, Dawson believes that "the first task must be to identify the character that can best be defined as the primary carrier of the author's unconscious personality" (Elliott 13). And then here comes Mrs. Moore as the effective protagonist in Elliott's dissertation. There appears one disagreement between Elliot and Dawson, who holds that the effective protagonist should be of the same sex with the author. Elliott guesses all the male characters including Aziz, Fielding and Godbole are not qualified effective protagonists in terms of their psychological growth. But he guesses so far as Forster is concerned, if the homosexual imagination may possibly differ from a heterosexual imagination.
Elliott's focused study on Mrs. Moore indeed enriches the existing records about this minor character, since possibly most critics would not agree that the whole story evolves around her and consequently their arguments do not centre on her either. In order to explore a deeper level of Mrs. Moore's unconscious, Elliott introduces a pair of Jungian archetypal images termed anima / animus. In the simplest words, Jung defines anima as "the inner feminine side of a man and the animus as the inner masculine side of a woman". "Like other archetypes, " Elliott explains, "they are inherited images from the collective unconscious and appear in a person's dreams and fantasies [...]. In other words, this archetype in the unconscious provokes projection." (17) The results of projection are the images, symbols, thoughts, behaviors in the literary text, and behind all these phenomena lies the confusion of men and women. That is, they often embody the images of the other sex. However, as Elliott himself admits, "[t]here is no more controversial archetype than anima and animus, and this archetype more than any other has caused splits in the Jungian therapeutic community into different schools." (17) Polly Young-Eisendrath points out that Jung's problem is assigning fixed gender roles for the sexes and gender roles are culturally conditioned, and that "no long-standing personality traits are connected to any consistent differences between male and female people" (Elliott 17).
The last but the most important archetype in Elliott's analytical toolbox is the "self". Jung describes the self as "completely outside of the personal sphere, and appears [in human consciousness], if at all, only as a religious mythologem", and the self archetype"transcends the psyche, exists only in a boundary area beyond the psyche (the psychoid), and delivers its symbols to the psyche. The symbols are those of unity and wholeness" (Elliott 18). In his dissertation, Elliott tries to show that Mrs. Moore is a projection of Forster's own creative struggle with the self archetype. Since projections arise from the unconscious, Elliott confesses that "I have less confidence than Dawson in the ability of a critic to know how much the author of a text is 'possessed' by a particular projection" (24). The uncertainty of the founding theory is more than this. In an e-mail to the author, Dawson believes that the unconscious of the author is not carried by any character, which brings about another question; namely, if Forster is present the self archetype through the figure of Mrs. Moore, how much is his conscious psyche directing this, and how much of it is a struggle of the author's unconscious to bring material into consciousness. As for this, Elliott also admits that "I am not sure the answer to this can be fully known by a critic" (24). To explore the unconscious of the author through one central fictional character seems much uncertain and coincidental.
Adela Quested is another female figure that drives forward the plot of Passage and her psychological development is as profound and complex as Mrs. Moore's, which focuses on the cave experience. To put it simply, "Adela approaches the caves as an animus dominated female who experiences there a coming to consciousness of her anima (which she first experiences as rape)" (Elliott 24). Then what information can Adela's case provide for our understanding of Forster's psyche, or how is Forster's psyche related to Adela? Elliott does not quite agree with Dawson that Forster's unconscious is involved with Adela and still holds that his self archetype is solely represented by Mrs. Moore. Once again Elliott admits it is a difficult issue to decide if Adela's experience is an encounter with the animus or the anima. In any case, "[t]he period between Adela's episode in the cave and the trial represents that split personality, and the period after the trial shows Adela coming to personhood, becoming a psychological individual, beginning to integrate her cave experience" (Elliott 54).
Besides all the above-mentioned uncertainty in the application of the Jungian psychological theory or Dawsonian literary theory, there still remain some defects in Elliott's argument. The fatal one in general is its elimination of concrete social, cultural and historical realities and the quest for an ideal psychological being, kind of isolated "psychological individual" stripped of the specific being on the level of space and time. Firstly, the notion of"effective protagonist" highlights the main character who best represents the "self archetype"of the author. This point-to-point method prescribes an enclosed tunnel instead of a radiative"passage" from two assumed equivalent psychological state of being. Then the questions follow: if Forster's psyche is projected to the figure of Mrs. Moore, then what specific psyche under specific time and conditions is reflected? If Forster's psyche is simply taken as anima or animus dominated, or "the dissociation of the ego from reality" and "self-dividedness" (Elliott 82), the point does not seem make much sense for the understanding of either the novel or Forster himself.
Secondly, Elliott insists that "[ t ] he whole point of a psychological critique is to discover the psychological implications that are explicit, or, more often, implicit in a text" (12). The discovery and interpretation from psychological perspective of symbolic, mythological and archetypal implications seem the sole task of both Freudian and Jungian criticism. However, this circumscribed point of view confines the interpretive activity within a limited field, deliberately losing sight of all other elements. In Elliott's practice and to meet the requirements of the theory, three main characters are ignored including Aziz, Fielding and Godbole. They are buried in oblivion because Fielding "indicates little psychological change in the novel, and, like Aziz, his experience in the caves yields no psychological impact [...]. No, Fielding is not the psychological center of the text". The same can be said about Aziz. "Besides Godbole, he is the least changed of the major character. Aziz's primary psychological bent is that of the oppressed Indian. He plays the victim" (Elliott 28). The purposeful and skillful neglect of these characters reveals the "Achilles' heel" of the theory and the manipulation of interpretive activity.
Thirdly, a careful reader will discover that, like Stone's analysis, the subjects in Elliott's research are also two female characters with the complete neglect of male characters, one Anglo-India, two native Indians with two different religious beliefs and of different classes. Elliott can readily defend his stance from the theoretical stance of Jungian anima / animus and Dawsonian "effective protagonist"; however, the real practice is misled by a reductionism, which means it reduces complicated texture of a painting to a symbolic literary sketch. Moreover, the feminists will challenge the implied sexual bias; the postcolonial critics will cast doubts upon the focus on white middle-class figures.
Another study on Passage with Jungian theory is a PhD dissertation, "An Archetypal Analysis of E. M. Forster's Fiction" (2004) by Cumhur Yilmaz Madran of Middle East Technical University, Turkey. With the method of archetypal criticism and collective unconscious, it deals with different primordial symbols and images in Forster's novels and short stories including the analysis of Passage as one important part. The study focuses on the functions and significance of the mythical images and archetypal patterns represented in nearly all his works.
One conspicuous feature of this dissertation is the emphasis on universality. The argument of the dissertation is that "Forster progresses from fantasy to prophecy. Depending on this progress, Forster's archetypes evolve. This investigation familiarises the reader with how mythical motifs and archetypes enable the author to communicate his vision of reality, which is essentially timeless [my italics]" (Madran Ⅴ). On the one hand, Madran turns his attention to the issue of reality, which is applaudably different from aforementioned psychological criticism. On the other hand, it is a pity that Forster's "vision of reality" is proved to be "essentially timeless". To stress the universality the author adopts "universal archetypes" such as good, evil, love and friendship. "Forster's main preoccupation, "Madran thinks, "is to express the issues that are universal by using universal archetypes" (211), including evil archetype, mother archetype, etc. In terms of the reality, he tries to fill the gap between the universality and reality:
Forster's archetypes reflect the main dilemmas the modern man is confronted with. He writes from the cultural context of the twentieth century. His fully-fledged archetypes cannot be dissociated from the social, political and economic conditions of the period in which they emerged. There are many social and psychological reasons which led to the rise of his archetypal characters. (218)
The universal archetype of evil, for instance, emanates from the Marabar caves and spreads to the whole universe. They represent disillusionment and depression while at the same time they have "primordial nature having existed before time and space [my italics]" (Madran 213). According to Madran's analysis, the "social and psychological reasons" for Mrs. Moore's collapse and even death are "[s]hattered beliefs, loss of faith, decline of the significance of religion, and the effect of the First World War" (218). The whole argument is shaken by the breach:
The focus is on how Forster employed these traditional motifs to universalize a particular vision of reality. Forster tried to reflect the insecurity and rootlessness of modern life, and especially man as the pitiful victim of a world of brute force who becomes alienated from himself and nature. Forster dramatized complete loneliness which an emphasis upon the private world and the interior journey toward personal understanding could cause. (Madran 8)
Obviously, there exists a gap that cannot be bridged by the author's effort because it is innate in the psychological methodology used. From Freudian personal unconscious or the specific experience of the individual to Jungian collective unconscious, both are immanently indifference to reality (except Freud's notion of superego). The evolution from Freudian psychoanalysis to Jungian analytical psychology is a development from One man to One Man. In neither of their theories, reality is practically absent. Therefore, Madran's effort to fill the gap is doomed to a self-contradiction and failure.
2.1.3 A Critique of Other Psychological Criticism on Passage
Besides psychoanalytical and analytical psychological methods are frequently tried to interpret Passage, some other tentative psychological theories also come into the horizon. Guo Lin's "Status Anxiety in A Passage to India" (2010) is one of the attempts. It employs Existential Psychology, a branch of Humanistic Psychology especially the theory of R. D. Laing and Rollo May to analyze the psychological conditions of three main characters: Mrs. Moore, Adela and Aziz. The focus of the research is on their anxiety that leads to their failure in communication. Guo Lin believes that "the status anxiety, which is derived from the sense of alienation, constitutes the ultimate cause that gives rise to the failure of ' the only connect'" (3). He wishes to prove that the status anxiety is popular among modern people due to various cultural, religious and regional backgrounds, which results in psychological disturbances leading to frustration and failure of communication. It is S. M. Gilbert, an American scholar, who first discovers the foreshadowing of existentialism in Passage but never expands his argument. Guo Lin furthers this argument and adopts Existential Psychology to analyze the status anxiety.
According to Alain de Botton in his Status Anxiety, "status anxiety" implies "not only angst towards the outside environment but also insecurity towards one's inner self" (Guo 6). Based on R. D. Liang's classification, there are three forms of anxiety caused by ontological insecurity in a person, namely, engulfment, implosion and petrification. Rollo May, another Existentialism psychologist, points out that human beings exist in three worlds at the same time:
The first one is that we exist in Unwelt ("world around"), which indicates the natural world or material world, including the nature as well as our heredity, biological urge and drive. Secondly, we exist in Mitwelt ("with-world"), which refers to the world of our experiences in social and interpersonal relationships. The last form is Eigenwelt ("own world"), meaning the subjective world of the self with the prerequisite of self-awareness. (Guo 11)
Guo Lin analyzes the three characters respectively and the psychological portraits drawn for them are Mrs. Moore's collapse of sense of relations, Adela's loss of ability of love and Aziz's discard of basic values.
This dissertation is a nice piece of training practice of literary criticism with psychological knowledge, which borrows the Existentialist Psychology format, finds the suitable elements of fiction and makes the two combined with each other. The author analyzes three main characters from three perspectives, namely, Unweilt, Mitwelt and Eignwelt, to explore Mrs. Moore's implosion angst, Adela's engulfment angst and Aziz's petrification angst. The final goal is to prove the alienation of the modern people and their status anxiety and "the status anxiety, which is derived from the sense of alienation, constitutes the ultimate cause that gives rise to the failure of 'the only connect'" (Guo 3).
However, the weakness of this psychological criticism is also rooted in its detachment from social reality, though it turns its attention to Unwelt ("world around"). The problem lies in the abstraction of the status anxiety and the alienation in the "modern world". Actually, it is the common error of both Humanistic Psychology and Scientific Psychology. Gao Fengqiang points out in The Dilemma and Way out of Modern Psychological Paradigms that though Humanistic Psychology appeared as the opposite of Behaviorism in the 1960s, it also pursues the legitimacy and universality; above all the self it proposes is also ahistorical and asocial; both Scientific Psychology and Humanistic Psychology extract people from their special cultural background and make them abstract; therefore, the cultural contents are taken as accidental and partial while the psychological process becomes essential and universal. There seems exist double abstraction, namely, the isolation from both the cultural contents and the social and historical contexts. Therefore, both Scientific Psychology and Humanistic Psychology are to be surpassed (高峰强161).
The last sample psychological analysis is another MA dissertation with the title of "The Conflict Between Microscopic Social Relationships and Macroscopic Social Relationships —A New Perspective upon A Passage to India" (2008) by Liu Lei. It claims to develop a new interpretive perspective——the conflict between microscopic social relationships and macroscopic social relationships based on German psychologist Kurt Lewin's typological psychology to illustrate the influence of two strands of forces on the four characters of the novel, namely Aziz, Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Adela. As for the microscopic social relationships, there are altogether four natural tendencies of humanity——the natural tendency towards similarity, the natural tendency towards harmony, the natural tendency towards benevolence and the natural tendency towards beauty, which respectively coordinates with the character traits of the aforementioned four main characters. The macroscopic social relationship is embodied in seven social fields——colonial political-economic force field, non-colonial political-economic force field, colonial ideological force field, Christian ideological force field, Islamic ideological force field, Hindu ideological force field and Indian nationalist ideological force field (Liu 4). The solution to the conflict between the microscopic and macroscopic social relationships and the way of the attainment of the "Only Connect" is to break the unreasonable social orders and establishment of new systems of social relations. Finally, the author turns to Lao-tzu and his Tao Te Ching, for his teachings ask all the people to comply with the principles of "nature", even though Lao-tzu's nature is different from that of the nature under discussion in this thesis.
The feature of this article is the introduction of social factors into psychological analysis. For the theory of topological psychology, which is established by the German psychologist Kurt Lewin, the central concept is psychological force field, which nominates "all the realities that determine behavioral and psychological acts of individuals in a specific temporal dimension" (Liu 2). For Liu, the concept of "microscopic social relationship" is "devoted to the discussion of the major factors in the main characters' personalities, rather than an all-sweeping discussion of the structure of individual personality", while the "macroscopic social relationship" is "devoted to the analysis of the sociological categories that determine the influence of individuals' acts, rather than an analysis of a certain individual's psychological force field" (Liu 3). However, in the practice of analysis with the badge of topological psychology, Liu's analysis is detached from psychological terminology and methodology, especially with the construction of four natural tendencies of humanity and seven social force fields. Obviously, the interpretive paradigm is transformed into an interaction between natural tendencies and social factors with the disappearance of the influence of the "psychological force field" upon the individual psyche and their actions.
Another conspicuous weakness of the argument is the solution of conflicts between microscopic social relationships and macroscopic social relationships with the idea of "nature"by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu for the attainment of nature, the perfect human relationship, and the attainment of Forsterian "Only Connect". This transcendental swerve further deviates from the psychological path.
2.2 Critique of Psychoanalytical Criticism
In the section above we ruminate over five sample criticism on Passage from different psychological perspectives such as Freudian Psychoanalysis, Jungian Analytical Psychology, Existential Psychology and Typological Psychology. Turning to the alternative theories provides new insights into the literary text, especially the psyche of the characters and the motives of their actions, clarifies the deep-layer relationships in the "muddle" and helps solve the mysteries. However, the weakness of the available criticism is also self-evident, some of which lies more in the inherence of the theories themselves than in their application and some totis caelo. Freudian Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analytical Psychology belong to the former, while Existential Psychology and Typological Psychology belong to the latter.
2.2.1 Why Freudianism
In terms of literary criticism, psychoanalysis, which originates from Freudianism through Jungian Analytical Psychology down to Lacanian Theory, has become the synonym for psychological literary criticism. The Norton Anthology: Theory and Criticism, for example, has a section of Psychoanalysis, instead of Psychology, in the part of "Modern and Contemporary Schools and Movements", with the most possibly expansive inclusion of above-mentioned professional psychoanalysts and other interdisciplinary psychoanalytical critics such as Louis Althusser, Harold Bloom, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Julia Kristeva, Laura Mulvey. Of course, this common practice of exclusion is out of choice and necessity as well. On one hand, "a century of psychology as science" cannot go hand in hand with literature and literary criticism of a fundamentally imaginative, humanistic and aesthetic nature, which will be illustrated in the next section of this chapter; on the other hand, the three sample psychoanalytical essays on Passage with both Freudian and Jungian theories reveal that even these theories themselves bear fatal defectives. Therefore, a critique of psychoanalysis as a literary theory becomes necessary.
So far as psychoanalytic literary theory is concerned, Freudianism is far more influential than Jungianism and serves as a better target of critique. One interesting phenomenon is that Jungian theory is always illustrated with its comparison with Freudianism. It is partially due to Jung's seven-year discipleship with Freud. As Douglas A. Davis observes:
Jung never fully overcame his pivotal friendship with Freud. His subsequent work can be understood in part as an ongoing if unanswered, discourse with Freud. The tensions in Jung's relationship with Freud are ... and the drama of their intimacy and inevitable mutual antipathy has taken on the character of tragedy, a modern iteration of the Oedipal myth, the prototype of father-son competition. (39-40)
This personal and intellectual entanglement between these two psychoanalysis giants connects their doctrines tightly together. Moreover, the "father-son competition" goes on in the field of literary criticism. David W. Elliott's, the above-mentioned writer of "A Psychological Literary Criticism from a Jungian Perspective of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India", introduces and adopts Terence Dawson's Jungian literary theory. In "Literary Criticism and Analytical Psychology", Dawson outlines the development of Jungian literary theory, especially its comparatively marginalized situation. He thinks that the first literary criticism written from psychoanalytic perspectives appeared in 1907; it became topical around the 1950s and 1960s because most people believe everything that can and needs to be said from this perspective has already been said.
Another reason for the choice of Freudianism as the target of critique in this dissertation instead of Jungianism is the inheritance and closeness of thoughts. The feature of Freudian theory in the simplest words is the unconscious, sexual complex and repression, while the key term for Jungian psychoanalysis is the collective unconscious, the deepest layer of the psyche. Jung accepts Freud's division of personal consciousness and unconscious and tries to explore into a deeper level shared by all humanity, namely, the collective unconscious. Despite the divergence of the focus of research and Jung's detachment from anything personal but turning to the level common to all man, both sides still bear much similarity in pursuing universality. Their difference is no more than a shift from One man to One Man. The Oneness is achieved at the expense of crucial elements in the formation of one's psyche such as society, culture, history, politics, etc.
2.2.2 Basic Exposition of Freudianism
Psychoanalysis which has been with us for decades refers to the description of human psyche and its associated system of psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud in Vienna in the 1890s. Psychoanalytical literary criticism created by Freud (also called Freudianism) has been known at least since 1908 when Freud published his brief essay "Creative Writers and Daydreaming". The importance of Freud and his theory is never overstated: "It is hard to imagine the twentieth century without Sigmund Freud. Along with Charles Darwin (1809—1882), Karl Marx (1818—1883), and Albert Einstein (1879—1955), he helped revolutionize the modern Western conception of human life and its place in the universe" (Leitch 913). Freud's psychoanalysis is called the "second force" of psychology. The first and third forces are John Watson's Behaviorism and Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Psychology respectively. The best single sourcebooks for the brief outline of psychoanalytic theory are the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933) and much briefer Outlineof Psychoanalysis (1940). Today, Freud's books in standard translation are easily available from Penguin Books and in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud by the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis. The secondary materials are countless. Consequently, a brief outlining of Freudian theory is indispensible for the further critique and argument.
The quintessence of Freudian theory as well as one of the greatest Freudian contributions lies in its emphasis on unconscious mental processes as the determinants of behaviors. Freud believes that there exist three regions within an individual's psyche, the conscious, the unconscious and the preconscious; the conscious consists of what appears in the mind at this moment or remembers later, while the unconscious is the content which will never be realized except with a psychoanalytical method; the preconscious refers to the thoughts which are temporarily unconscious but not repressed, therefore intermittently accessible to memory. These three regions or systems of the psyche are in a constant state of interaction and the conscious and the unconscious are always in conflicts. "Each mental act, each manifestation of human behavior, is to be regarded as a result of the competition and conflict between the conscious and the unconscious——an index of the correlation, reached at a given moment of life, in the power struggle between these two ever-opposing sides" (Voloshinov 29). In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Freud further develops his theory of unconscious with the help of the concepts of condensation and displacement. All these contribute to his final paper on the issue entitled "The Unconscious" in 1915.
The concept of unconscious is first introduced in connection with the notion of repression, to explain what happens to repressed ideas and Freud states explicitly that the discovery of the unconscious is based on the theory of repression. Then what is repression? In the early stages of development, our psyche is governed by one principle alone——the"pleasure principle". So in the child's soul everything is permitted. At later stages, this principle begins to lose its dominant position and operate a new principle of psychical life, namely, the "reality principle". With the guidance of the double principles consequently follows a process of psychical selection, a twofold test from the viewpoints of the both principles. The mental formations that pass the examination enter into the conscious or becoming preconscious, while those that fail to pass are naturally repressed into the system of unconscious. One fact we must stress is that the repression is an unconscious process and the individual is completely unaware of it. So it takes psychoanalytical tools to uncover the process and the concerning knowledge can be used to give clues.
Freud divides the human psyche into three parts: id, ego and superego, which is first discussed in the essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920) and much more fully elaborated in "The Ego and the Id" (1923). The id is described by Freud as a seething container of energy and excitement, full of instinctual, sexual, aggressive demands and desires. The id follows the pleasure principle. If the desires are unsatisfied, tensions are created and then unpleasure follows, so release has to be sought. Dreams and the utterances of psychotic patients can be taken as the outlets of the tensions. Generally speaking, though cultures vary from country to country, the content and extent of control of desires and drives are also different, the id in most societies is to be tamed. The ego, one of the controlling aspects of the mind, is the agency to contact with the outer world and it follows the reality principle. The ego may generally equal to reason. This rational ego always tries to make a balance between the hedonism of the id and the moralism of the superego. For instance, we do not seek immediate sexual satisfaction even if sexually aroused by a possible partner on a bus trip, because we know there are legal, moral and practical principles that make the attempts pointless. For Freudian psychoanalysis, to confirm the importance of ego control over id is important. In a famous analogy, Freud compares the relationship between id and ego to that between the horses and the charioteer: while the horses provide the power and drive, the charioteer provides control and direction. The division of ego from id happens with the growth of the child. However, the ego of a child is not strong and complete. Later on, the ego should be much stronger to stand the stresses of relationship. The superego is roughly equal to consciousness, concerning with the moral aspects of the psychological process and judging right and wrong.
Freud regards his book The Interpretation of Dreams, which contains his well known but complicated theory of dreams, as his finest book. The quintessential points are as follows: All dreams represent a wish which is usually an unfulfilled wish; Dreams are the guardian of sleep without which the wishes form the id would become conscious and fill the ego with anxiety and sleepers would wake; Dreams are shaped by the censor which is equivalent to the superego; The changes and disguises are known as dreamwork (Kline 30).
Next crucial concept in Freudian theory is Oedipus complex which Freud regards as the core of neurosis. He argues that the human psychosexual development will experience the oral stage, then the anal stage and finally the phallic stage. In the oral stage, an infant enjoys the pleasure in nursing; in the anal stage, the toddler enjoys evacuating his or her bowels. Freud believes that in the phallic stage the male infants are fixated on his mother as the sexual object, which is called the Oedipus complex. This phase is brought to an end by the castration complex, which refers to the unconscious fear of a boy has that in talion revenge for his jealousy against his father, his father will castrate him. This castration fear finally effectively nullifies the Oedipus complex. In Freud's later writings, he raises an equivalent Oedipus postulation for infant girls, the sexual fixation on her father, which is called "Electra complex".
Of course, Freud as the founding father of psychoanalysis enjoys a far more complicated theoretical framework with a large amount of terms. While on the basis of the aforementioned outline, a critique of Freudian psychoanalysis from such perspectives as Marxism, feminism and postcolonialism lays its solid basis.
2.2.3 A Marxist Critique of Freudianism
The contribution of Marxism to psychology is comparatively less conspicuous than to economy, politics, history, etc., even though some radical philosophers in politics try to study psychoanalysis in their philosophical realm, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse and other members of the Frankfort School like Max Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno. On the other hand, Marxist critique of Freud's theory is already an old topic. Erich Fromm and other Freudo-Marxists attempt to integrate psychoanalysis with Marxism on the ground of the crisis of psychoanalysis. Fromm's famous The Crisis of Psychoanalysis (1970) consists of four aspects, including the social character theory of psychoanalysis, the amendments of psychoanalysis, a critique of industrial society and other religious and developmental analysis of man. Freud has been accused of his conservatism with the prejudice of Western middle-class white male, who tries to maintain the patriarchal dominance and white male superiority. Fromm also criticizes Freud's dynamic theory and points out that its fatal defect relies on its expunging of social determinants and consequently the man in its theory becomes a general abstract individual. He believes that a man as a subject of study should be the product of interaction of psychological and social elements; therefore an individual is a combination of biological, physiological, psychological and social influences.
In The Crisis of Psychoanalysis Fromm delivers a comment on the contribution of Marxism to the understanding of man, in which he highly thinks of the importance of Marxism in this respect. In the public view, the contribution of Marxism to psychology is usually neglected, which Fromm holds, is caused by various reasons:
One, that Marx never put his psychological views in any systematic form, but that they are distributed all over his work and have to be pulled together to display their systematic nature. Second, the vulgar misinterpretation of Marx as having been concerned only with economic phenomena, or the misinterpreted concept of historical materialism, according to which Marx assumed that man is by nature driven primarily by the wish for economic gain, obscured Marx's real picture of man and his contribution to psychology. Third, Marx's dynamic psychology came too early to find sufficient attention. (62)
In this short article, Fromm also outlines briefly the kernel contents of the contribution, which stresses the relationship between consciousness and life from the aspects of the nature of psychology as a discipline, the general definition of human nature, the concept of driving force and need, etc. Marx's general attitude towards the interrelationship between life and consciousness determines his idea of deep psychology. German Ideology records Marx's classic expression: "It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness". Elsewhere in the "Preface to the Contribution to the Critique on Political Economy", Marx says, "[i]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, it is their social existence that determines consciousness." (qtd. in Fromm: 73-74)
According to Fromm, Marx defines psychology as "a natural science of man", identical with "a human natural science". Then according to Marxism, what is the definition of human nature? In Capital Marx defines man as a "social animal" and his definition of man is that of a being of "praxis". Furthermore, his psychology is a "dynamic psychology", which "is based on the primacy of man's relatedness to the world, to man, and to nature, in contrast to Freud's which is based on the model of an isolated Homme machine" (Fromm 64).
The Marxist critique of Freudian psychoanalysis is performed within the general framework of Marxism, especially Marxist psychology. Moreover, such critical practices have a long history. One of the oldest and most influential attacks is V. N. Voloshinov with his Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (1976), a combination of Marxist sociology, psychoanalysis and "an interdisciplinary semiotic investigation, an anticipation of structuralism, a discourse model, a theory of language" (xi). Voloshinov goes directly deep into "the unconscious", the central concept of psychoanalysis, and charges that Freudianism presents human beings "in an inherently false, individualistic, asocial, and ahistorical setting" (vii). Comparatively speaking, Isaac Prilleltensky, a famous critical psychologist, launches three reprehensive charges dealing with his (a) decontextualized view of the individual, (b) emphasis on "biologism", and (c) antifeminist implications (46), the first two of which are also covered by Voloshinov (and the third one will be illustrated in the following part of this section). The general argument of Voloshinov is as follows:
The abstract biological person, biological individual——that which has become the alpha and omega of modern ideology——does not exist at all. It is an improper abstraction. Outside society and, consequently, outside objective socioeconomic conditions, there is no such thing as a human being. Only as a part of a social whole, only in and through a social class, does the human person become historically real and culturally productive. [...] Only this social and historical localization makes him a real human being and determines the content of his life and cultural creativity. All attempts to bypass this second, social, birth and to derive everything from the biological premises of the organism's existence are vain and doomed beforehand to fail [...]. After all, "the essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in each separate individual. In its reality it is the aggregate of social relationships." (15)
At the end of the chapter entitled "Ideological Motif of Freudianism", Voloshinov explicitly states his Marxist stance in the opposition between Freudian "biological premises of the organism's existence" and "social and historical localization". He emphasizes the importance of socioeconomic, historical and cultural factors for the real being of humans by distinguishing the first birth "as an abstract biological organism" and the second "social birth", which can also be classified as the lower and levels of human development. An object quantitative study carried out by the so-called "a century of psychology as a science" on the biological functions of the lower level of human psychology is not meaningless; while it is not enough or even misleading for the higher level of development when every single psychological action is inevitably influenced by the social, cultural, historical and political factors. The critique of Freudianism from Marxist, feminist and racial perspectives no doubt is tinged with political orientation; on the other hand, the neglect or even intentional erasion of the materiality of psychology is also a political and ideological stance. That is just why Freudian theory is severely criticized by the three branches of knowledge and its practitioners.
In his critical analysis of Freudianism, Voloshinov delivers the following three charges: Freudianism as a variant of subjective psychology, the dynamics of the psyche as a struggle of ideological motives and not of natural forces, and the content of consciousness as ideology.
In Freudianism, Voloshinov distinguishes such two basic trends in modern psychology as the subjective and the objective. As for the former, psychical life is accessible to human being"within his own self", namely, "a human being directly through internal apprehension, observes the occurrence of various mental experiences——thoughts, feelings, desires" (18). As for the latter, people "can observe only the outward expression of psychical life in terms of the various reactions of other organisms to stimuli [...]. This outward material-corporeal language of psychical life is, of course, observable by a human being with respect to himself, as well" (18-19). Voloshinov classifies Freudian psychoanalysis into subjective psychology, even though Freud never tries to connect his doctrines with other psychological trends and methods, and he and his followers only quote themselves, trying to exclude themselves from the world. "The fact of the matter, " Voloshinov insists, "is that Freudianism transferred into its constructs all the fundamental defects of the subjective psychology of the time." (68) For Freud, the usual method of introspection is a conscious process and the point of view of consciousness lays the basis for all the subjective psychology. If one studies his own actions he has no choice but to refer to his feelings, desires and presentations; the Freudian labels of"unconscious", "preconscious" and "conscious" never leap over the confines of subjective consciousness. Voloshinov discovers that:
Freud has tried erecting a completely new, quasi-objective edifice of the human psyche out of the old subjective bricks [...]. But Freudianism does even worse things than that. It not only transfers elements of the conscious to the unconscious, it preserves fully intact in the unconscious the specific differences and logical distinctions of all theseelements. (70)
Comparatively speaking, therefore, the notion of unconscious does not draw Freudianism little close to materiality and the breach between the inner-subjective realm and the material nature remains exactly the same in psychoanalysis as in the old subjective psychology."Having taken a subjective position, " Voloshinov concludes, "psychoanalysis has deprived itself of a direct and unmediated approach to the material world. It can have nothing to do with that world and must either ignore it altogether or dissolve it in the psychical world." (70-71)
The second charge against Freudianism is the dynamics of the psyche as a struggle of ideological motives. Voloshinov as a semiologist takes Freud's unconscious as a fiction, a social phenomenon because it is the product of verbal interaction. We have proved that Freudianism also belongs to subjective psychology; however, there exist some features that distinguish its theory from other subjective trends and the dynamics of the psyche is just one, which refer to the struggle, the chaos and the adversity of human psychical life. Freud believes that he detects the nature of human psyche and divides it into "id", "ego" and"superego". Are they the real elemental components of the psyche?
To answer this question, Voloshinov introduces the concept of "verbal utterances" and holds that "Freud's whole psychological construct is based fundamentally on human verbal utterances; it is nothing but a special kind of interpretation of utterances. All these utterances are, of course, constructed in the conscious sphere of the psyche" (77). The real interest of Freud is the "unconscious" and his sole method is, as mentioned above, introspection, which requires his patient to retell about himself and his behaviors on the basis of his own "internal apprehension". "For introspection, " however, "all the products of the unconscious take the forms of desires or impulses, find verbal expression and in that shape, that is, in the shape of a motive, enter into a person's awareness" (Voloshinov 77). The interrelation between Freud's "conscious" and "unconscious" is possibly like that between two ideas or two ideological notions instead of two natural and material forces. Therefore, "the whole of Freud's psychical 'dynamics' is given in the ideological illumination of consciousness" (Voloshinov 77). To be specific, Voloshinov refers the "ideological illumination" to the expression of class consciousness. The similar case is religion which reflects the real economic and social contradictions. So far as Freudianism is concerned, it is believed to be a"projection" of some kind of external relations into the human psyche. "What finds expression there is, " Voloshinov holds, "in the first instance, the extremely complex social interrelationship between doctor and patient." (78)
What is this interrelation like? First of all, it is very complicated and full of struggle. The patient wants to force his experiences upon the doctor, while the doctor hopes to compel the patient to face up to his illness and consequently enforce his authority upon the patient. During this complex social encounter, the role of verbal utterances is ambiguous. The problem is whether we can acknowledge the patient's utterances as his real psyche. The answer Voloshinov provides is definitely "No" and insists that every verbal utterance is "the product of the interaction between speakers and the product of the broader context of the whole complex social situation in which the utterance emerges" (78). He calls this process a special kind of "projection", which implies "a means whereby we project into the 'individual soul'a complex set of social interrelationships [...]. What is reflected in these utterances is not the dynamics of the individual psyche but the social dynamics of the interrelations between doctor and patient" (78).
Another important aspect of the Freudian system Voloshinov turns our attention to is the Oedipus complex. He casts doubts upon the credibility of the "retrospection" of the adults'discourse about the earliest stages of human development since the direct analysis of children's psychical actions seems rare. "Thus, the whole construct of infantile complexes was obtained by retrospective means; it is based on the interpretation of the remembrances of adults and of those compromise formations with the aid of which those remembrances could be reached" (Voloshinov 81). If it is an interpretation of the past from the point of view of the present, the objective observation is out of the question: we see in the past only what is important for the instant in which we remember out past, which is also full of ideological-evaluative content informed for the present. Therefore, the facts recollected by the adults cannot prove the Oedipus complex because those facts belong to a different level. They belong to the external, objective sphere while the infantile psyche belongs to the inner experiences. Consequently, Freud makes arbitrary construct, which is actually a kind of ideological formulation. "The construct of the Oedipus complex, " Voloshinov continues, "is just such a purely ideological formulation projected into the psyche of a child. The Oedipus complex is not at all the unadulterated expression of objective psychological facts." (82) In fact, it is the verbalized expression, reflecting the "nature" from economic and social points of view. "Verbal discourse, " Voloshinov believes, "not in its narrow linguistic sense, but in its broad and concrete sociological sense——that is the objective milieu in which the content of the psyche is presented. It is here that motives of behavior, arguments, goals, evaluations are composed and given external expression. It is here, too, that arise the conflicts among them." (83)
The third fatal charge of Voloshinov against Freudianism is about the content of consciousness as ideology. From the notion of verbal reactions we can extend to the idea that the disclosure of the unconscious with the help of "free association" is nothing but another conscious activity. Voloshinov thinks that they are different "not in kind of 'being', that is, ontologically, but only in terms of content, that is, ideologically. In this sense Freud's unconscious can be called the 'unofficial conscious' in distinction from the ordinary 'official conscious'" (85). Since both are verbal, they are social, which means that all the components of the content are determined by social factors. "The social environment, " Voloshinov continues, "is what has given a person words and what has joined words with specific meanings and value judgments; the same environment continues ceaselessly to determine and control a person's verbal reactions throughout his entire life [...]. The verbal is not his property but the property of his social group (his social milieu)" (86). At the same time, he reminds his readers that in the present argument he refers to broader social connections, instead of immediate context of verbal utterances. Any given single utterance even from the most private and inner part of an individual is performed according to social norms, in consideration of interrelationship with others or through the eyes of his peers; therefore, the act is out of self-consciousness and, according to Voloshinov, leads to "class consciousness".
Then, the following question is how we reach the roots of human psyche? Firstly, the precondition is that there is no such clear dividing line between the human mind and the social ideology. Then the "single route" leading from the content of the individual psyche to the content of culture is "determined by one and the same socioeconomic governance" (Voloshinov 87). The junction of the two is ideology since both are complex ideological constructs. Voloshinov distinguishes "behavioral ideology" and "official ideology". The former is the "inner and outward speech that permeates our behavior in all its aspects", which is "in certain respects more sensitive, more responsive, more excitable and livelier" than the latter "that has undergone formulation and become 'official'". The interrelation between these two is as follows:
In the depths of behavioral ideology accumulate those contradictions which, once having reached a certain threshold, ultimately burst asunder the system of the official ideology. But on the whole, we may say that behavioral ideology relates just as much to the socioeconomic basis and is subject to the same laws of development as ideological superstructures in the proper sense of the term. Therefore, the methods for its study should be, as already stated, basically the same methods, only somewhat differentiated and modified in accordance with the special nature of the material. (Voloshinov 88)
Therefore, the psychical conflicts between the conscious and the unconscious seem purely psychological struggles, but objectively performed in the element of inner and outward speech, namely, they are performed in the element of behavioral ideology. In fact, they are not psychical conflicts within the sphere of the individual psyche, but ideological conflicts.
2.2.4 A Feminist Critique of Freudianism
Marxist theorists launch the most severe and systematic attack upon Freudianism. Later during the early 1970s, it is gradually challenged by feminists for its blatant phallogocentrism and patriarchal thoughts. Comparatively speaking, the feminist critique is less comprehensive and fundamental, focusing on the phallogocentrism, penis envy, castration and Oedipus complex, the misrepresentation of femininity, etc.
Phallogocentrism (or phallocentrism) is the root of prejudice against women. This term evolves from the notion of Logocentrism created by Jacques Derrida, the founder of the philosophy of deconstruction, which is generally regarded as the cornerstone of the discourse of postmodernism. The logocentrism of Western philosophy and literature believes in the centrality of logos, the absolute eternity and universal truth. From the ancient Greece the Western epistemology is based on dualism, emphasizing the authority and superiority of centre, celebrating rule and the sense of class. Therefore, in the binary opposition of man /woman, the former is dominant and superior and the latter is submissive and inferior."Phallogocentrism" as Jonathan Culler puts it, "unites an interest in patriarchal authority, unity of meaning, and certainty of origin" (On Deconstruction 61). Culler doubts:
What does psychoanalysis have to say about the hierarchical opposition man / woman? Or rather, how is this opposition constituted in psychoanalytic theory? It is not difficult to show that in Freud's writings the feminine is treated as supplementary, parasitic. To define the feminine psyche in terms of penis envy is an indubitable instance of phallogocentrism: the male organ is the point of reference; its presence is the norm, and the feminine is a deviation, an accident or negative complication that has befallen the positive norm. [...] Woman is not the creature with a vagina but the creature without a penis, who is essentially defined by that lack. (On Deconstruction 167)
The inferiority of women makes them marginalized and reduced to the position of the"other". Consequently, they lose their "voice" and suffer from aphasia; they also lose their independence and self consciousness and their identity can only be measured in relationship to and by comparison with men. For instance, in Freud's "notorious" Three Essays on Sexuality, he scorns that a woman who falls into oblivion becomes eye-catching and lovely only after she is considered into a relation with a man.
In the above quotations, Culler raises the important notion of "penis envy", which becomes a main target of feminists. In Three Essays on Sexuality Freud explains that when a girl catches a glimpse of a boy's different sexual organ, she immediately realizes the importance of this recognition and with the rise of the envy she increasingly wishes to become a boy. In fact, the notion of "penis envy" itself reflects the superiority of "phallus" in a patriarchal discourse. The sexual organs of both male and female are biologically equal in importance for human reproduction and undertaking different responsibilities. Simon de Beauvoir holds in The Second Sex that a woman is not born but made. The crucial element for the "making" of a woman is the social surroundings and ideological conditions, which echoes the ideas of Marxist critique in the above section.
Another target of critique that follows is Oedipus complex and Castration complex, which are also fundamental in Freudianism. Oedipus complex comes to a boy of 3 to 5 and the conquering of this complex is the repression of his desire of his mother and the identification with his father, which also means the surrender of his ego to superego. While the infant girls do not experience Oedipus complex and the success of superego, they will inevitably suffer from Castration complex and turn out to be an incomplete being. The consequent labels on women are narcissistic, passive, emotional, self-abased, defective, even mad, etc. However, it is clearly demonstrated that it is another example that the development of girls'psyche is gauged according to the standard of boys. Earnest Jones takes it as phallogocentrism and misogyny which is typical in Western thoughts and culture.
Furthermore, "penis envy" also reveals another fatal defect of Freudianism, namely, its biological determinism. Early in the sixties when the second wave of Feminist movement was riding the crest of history, feminists neglected the derogation and prejudice of Freudianism. But in the mid-1970s, feminists began to criticize its anti-feminist stance as if by prior agreement. Kate Millet's Sexual politics criticizes the theory of femininity on the basis of biology in the psychoanalytical sense and holds that Freud's biological determinism brings serious damages to women. Other feminists also launch attacks against biological determinism, including Existentialist feminist Simon de Beauvoir with her The Second Sex (1949), liberal feminist Betty Freidan with her The Feminine Mystique (1963), and radical feminist Shulamith Firestone with her The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1972).
Just as the title of Juliet Mitchell's book, Women: the Longest Revolution (1966), indicates, women's struggle against patriarchy and for equality is "the longest revolution"with a critique and improvement of Freudianism as an initial and important step. This step is essential. "Readings of Freud, " as Culler suggests, "have taken up a further opposition that is deeply sedimented in our thinking and the deconstruction of which may have more immediate social and political consequences: the hierarchical opposition of man and woman." (On Deconstruction 165) With the deconstruction of the old ideas and the construction of the new, the revolution will be abloom and fruitful.
2.2.5 A Postcolonial Critique of Freudianism
Compared with the Marxist and feminist critique of Freudianism, the literature of postcolonialism in this respect is insufficient. Therefore, the issue of the interrelation between psychoanalysis and racism seems irrelevant. However, from the 1960s and through the early and mid-1970s, with the boom of Freudo-Marxism of Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse, the inquiry on psychoanalysis and the attempts of its transformation became more and more popular. The reason for this "turn to psychoanalysis" is ironic:
It is, in other words, a lot easier to turn one's attention to the focus of psychoanalysis, that is the individual psyche, to what is supposedly 'inside' one, than it is to look outwards to the wider society. The former does not require one to do so much as to analyse and analyse; the latter calls upon one to make decisions and act. (Gordon 18)
Not surprisingly, psychoanalysis seems to have very little to say about racial issues. One chief reason for its silence is to avoid leading readers to think that racial issue might be a focus of their thinking for reason that once psychoanalysis itself was labeled "a Jewish science" and thus suppressed, which caused the harassment and imprisonment of individual psychoanalysts and the burning of Freud's books.
To trace the origin of the encounter of the two, we have to come back to the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud. "A postcolonial reader who comes to Freud looking for insights and concepts, " Greedharry complains, "is faced with the difficulty of dealing with his problematic discussion of non-Western civilization." (1) Freud himself seems to have nothing to say about the subject of racism. However, his racial prejudice is clearly manifested through his comments on "primitive peoples" or savages. In Totem and Taboo (1913), his major"anthropological" work, Freud indicates that the study of savages is of particular interest since though they embody an early form of civilization, they are the same with neurotics. "If our supposition is correct, " he continues, "a comparison between the psychology of primitive peoples, as it is taught by social anthropology, and the psychology of neurotics, as it has been revealed by psycho-analysis, will be bound to show numerous points of agreement and will throw new light upon familiar subjects." (qtd. in Greedharry: 1)
Moreover, Paul Gordon collects his description of South Africans and South Pacific Islanders as primitive scattered in his writings. For instance, Freud claims that both savages and neurotics believe in the "omnipotence of thoughts" and in magic, while in his "general theory of neuroses" he writes of "modern primitive peoples" who, as a result of their ignorance and helplessness, are afraid of "every novelty and of many familiar things which no longer cause us any anxiety today". Besides, in terms of the notion of some supposed "herd instinct", which involves "a lack of emotional restraint, an incapacity for moderation and the inclination to exceed every limit in the expression of emotion", Freud declares himself "not surprised" to find evidence from this among "savages" (Gordon 18).
Obviously, Freud as the founder of psychoanalysis who tries his best to be fair and scientific, is still tinged with many of the prejudices of his time. Bart Moore-Gilbert concludes in his Postcolonial:
The contrast Freud makes between the healthy and the neurotic, the European and the non-European, is a clear instance of how psychoanalysis as an institution"constituted itself as a form of modern knowledge [...] which contributed significantly to the Othering of non-Western cultures, by defining them, explicitly or implicitly, as lacking or anterior in comparison with domestic metropolitan'norms'". (Greedharry 1)
2.3 Critique of Western Psychology
Modern Western psychology in the name of "science" was born in Germany in the latter half of 19th century. In the past one hundred years this "new science" made remarkable headway. Borrowing the theoretical system and framework of empiricism and rationalism of traditional philosophy and the methodology and operational tools of natural science, especially physics and physiology, psychology owns its independence as a discipline, getting rid of the dependency on theology or philosophy. After the independence of psychology, there appears the opposition between content psychology of Wilhelm Wundt (1832—1920) and act psychology of Lujo Brentano (1844—1931); Oswald Külpe (1862—1915) tries to reconcile these two with dual psychology but fails. Furthermore, the 20th century witnesses more diversified schools with various objects of study, methodologies, paradigms, though they begin to learn from each other.
With the diversification of psychologies, its identity as a discipline has always been challenged. Many scholars both at home and abroad feel pessimistic about the past and especially the future of psychology, believing that psychology is a science of crisis. Sigmund Koch, the well-known theoretical psychologist, points out that psychology can never be a coherent science. He believes that in the century psychology has been trying to be an independent experimental science, but in fact it is neither independent nor a science. W. Bevan, the former chairman of APA, worries about the disastrous effect of the excessive diversification of psychology; American psychologists G. A. Kimble and A. C. Richards publish essays respectively to express their worries about the future of psychology. The list goes on with the aggravation of the situation.
The literature on the crisis in modern Western psychology is abundant. As far as this dissertation is concerned, it is unnecessary to provide a full illustration, so here some comments of the most prominent representatives will be recorded, laying a foundation for the future theoretical construction of critical psychology as a remedy of the old psychologies. The voice home is out of Gao fengqiang, a Chinese scholar, with his The Dilemma and Way out of Modern Psychological Paradigms: A Study of Postmodern Psychological Thoughts (2001), and that of the West is uttered by Ian Parker, a well-established critical psychologist, with his The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology and How to End It (1989).
Before the revelation of the crisis, some general information about the status quo of Western psychology as a discipline is necessary. Jonathan A. Smith, Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove exclaim in their Rethinking Methods in Psychology:
This is an exciting time for psychology. A number of methodologies consonant with a shift to a post-positivist, non-experimental (my italics) paradigm are now emerging and they are beginning to be used in a wide range of empirical studies [...]. For many years, discontent has been expressed with a narrowness in the discipline of psychology, with its emphasis on laboratory studies, experimental design and statistical analysis and an epistemology based on a particular conception of the natural sciences (my italics). (1)
This part of exposition clearly and concisely shows the keynotes of "shift" and emphasis of criticism. The necklace of modern psychology with the pearls of key words (especially my italics) above-mentioned is presented as follows: it endeavors to be a natural science with positivism and experiments as its paradigm and laboratory studies, experimental design and statistical analysis as its methodologies. Unfortunately, this is just the origin of the crisis.
Thomas Teo briefly illustrates the origin and development of the crisis. It was Willy who published probably the first book on this issue in 1899, already proclaiming a "chronic crisis"of psychology at the end of the 19th century. His main argument is that "speculation has not been purged from the psychology of his time (including Wundt)" (Teo, The Critique of Psychology 28). Other critical voices are from Buhler's reflections on the crisis, and Vygotsky's discussion of "the historical meaning of the crisis of psychology". Since then there appear a large body of reflections on the crisis of psychology. The crisis literature after 1945 includes social psychology, personality psychology, and experimental psychology, a crisis of psychometrics, an identity crisis of developmental psychology, a statistical crisis, a methodological crisis, a scientific crisis, a philosophical crisis, a theoretical crisis, an anthropological crisis, a pragmatic crisis, an ethical crisis, a political crisis, a crisis of German psychology, a crisis of the psychological labor market, a publication crisis, "a crisis of crisis proclamations" and so on (Teo, The Critique of Psychology 28).
Modern Western psychology can be divided into two conflicting camps as the natural scientific and the humanistic-social. The natural scientific orientation takes science as its object of study regardless of human matters; it originates from positivism and therefore tries to conform philosophy to scientific norms and makes it positivistic; its representative is experimental psychology, for instance, behaviorism and modern cognitive psychology, with introspection as the major research methodology. The humanistic-social orientation is based on existentialism and phenomenology and takes complex universal psychological processes as the object, whose representative is social psychology and others including act psychology, the Wurzburg school, Gestalt psychology, Kurt Lewin's group dynamics, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology and transpersonal psychology.
Scientism is a belief that the prospects about nature provided with scientific technology are real and essential; therefore, compared with humanistic and social sciences, scientific methodology is the only reliable and practicable way of research. Gao Fengqiang holds that a psychology with the orientation of scientism is positivist psychology, whose main features are: ① to emphasize the objectivity and observability of the research object; ② to persist in empiricism; ③ to adopt element analysis principle; ④ to insist on the method-oriented strategy and quantitative research; ⑤ to implement the principle of reductionism. Gao also insists that the advantages of positivism is objectivity, accuracy, operability (38). Of course, scientism in psychology at the same time wipes out sociality and historicity, driving psychology into a dilemma of reductionism and objectivism.
At the same time when postmodern philosophers and thinkers discuss the crisis of political legitimacy, a large number of psychologists are turning their attention to the same issue on modern Western psychology. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of modern psychology, APA developed a discussion with the emphasis on "Where do we stand at the present time? ". Then a series of papers by famous psychologists were collected and published with the title A Century of Psychology as Science (1985) edited by Sigmund Koch and David E. Leary. In that book, G. A. Miller, A. Giorgi, S. L. Chorover, D. D. Braginsky, A. Catania, J. J. Gibson, J. Derivera, N. Sanford, W. J. Mcguire and many others express their worries about the past and especially the future of "psychology as a science".
When scientific psychology insists on such principles as the objects' observability, universality of truth, method-orientation, neutrality of values, and the model of "man as a machine", it encounters insurmountable obstacles, which Gao concludes as atomism, reductionism, objectivism, determinism and quantitative study (60-73).
Atomism——a dismemberment of human being. Any psychology that holds that experience and behavior can be divided into separate and often disparate elements is called atomistic psychology. The most faithful follower as the most extreme example is Edward Titchener who claims that he discovers 38, 850 visual elements, 11, 550 auditory elements and 3 alimentary canal elements. With the research methods of physics and chemistry, this principle cuts a man into pieces and consequently loses his wholeness.
Reductionism——reification of human nature. Reductionism is a philosophical idea which advocates that any advanced forms of motion can be reduced to lower forms of motion; since any phenomenon in real life can be taken as the aggregation or combination of the lowest and most basic phenomena, the law of the advanced motion forms can be substituted by that of lower motion forms. In the eyes of scientism, the world can be reduced to mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.; therefore, the most fundamental methodology of scientific psychology is to adopt reduction analysis, trying to reduce the complex psychological phenomena to physical, chemical and physiological processes, and interpreting them in relation to biological, physiological and mechanical forms of motion. The problem is that there inevitably exist great differences between the lower and higher forms of motion. In the commonest practices, human beings are reduced to white mice or computers, losing the particular features of human psyche.
Objectivism——the loss of subjectivity. Objectivism is also called objective paradigm or objective theory, whose conspicuous features are to insist on "objectivity" in scientific study and usually takes observable and verifiable objects as the research objects; to adopt objective and positive methods; researchers always take value-neutral stance in the course of study. The defect of this doctrine is that it dramatically diminishes the scope of study; on the other hand, it leads to the direction of "value-neutrality" of research and meanwhile makes the discipline mutilated and broken.
Determinism——the rejection of subjective initiatives. Determinism believes that there exist objective laws and causal relationship in both natural world and human society; or any theory that admits the objective universality of causal relationship and objective inevitability is determinism. Determinism in psychology holds that any activity is the result of certain previous cause or cause; human activity can be predicted and controlled according to previous conditions and experiences. Two crucial forms of determinist are cladism and mechanical determinism. However, it is natural that human beings are different from animals since their reactions to the objective things are active, conscious and dynamic. We should stress the importance of surroundings to human beings and the transformation of nature by human beings.
Quantitative studies——"the puppet engraved with scales". Before the birth of scientific psychology, people try to probe into human psyche qualitatively, intuitively and abstractly. From 17th century mathematics and mechanics became the model of science. Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795—1878), Gustav Theador Fechner (1801—1887), Wilhelm Wundt (1832—1920), Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850—1909), Edward Bradford Titchener (1867—1927), Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904—1990) and many other best-known psychologists are all the adherents and practitioners of quantitative methods. Quantitative methods emphasize the natural features of human psyche, which is objected by Humanistic psychology and Gestalt psychology since they attach great importance to the immediate experiences and qualitative features of human psyche. More recent postmodern psychology advocates that the opposition between qualitative and quantitative methods should be surpassed and the fusion of the two will be the ideal method, which is welcomed by many psychologists.
Based on all these charges, Critical psychology launches severe critique on the mainstream Western psychology, which opens up a vast space for the future development of literary theory and indicates the direction of the combination of literary texts, psychology and politics.