“I did not say that you could not “speculate” about the artificial “psychology” of fictional characters—I said that this is not normally how the term psychologizing is used.”
Wrong again. First, you asked rhetorically:
Hmmmm. “Psychologizing” a fictional character?
And then substituted what you felt to be a better choice, “projection.” Then you said,
“The term psychologizing usually refers to the practice of speculating about another person’s mental state,”
Quite so. Unfortunately, you arbitrarily appended this:
“which of course would not apply to a fictional character.”
The second, arbitrary, part of your definition of “psychologizing” has nothing to do with the first part. It expresses absolutely nothing about the word’s meaning except your subjective preference regarding its usage. I pointed that out already. Now you claim,
“I did not say that you could not “speculate” about the artificial “psychology” of fictional characters—I said that this is not normally how the term psychologizing is used.”
As if your personal usage of the term were, in fact, the normal one (and needless to say, the correct one). The briefest Google search disproves this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=C2oM7LrXo_YC&pg=PA196&lpg=PA196&dq=psychologizing+fictional+characters&source=web&ots=dzaUPiHO5R&sig=b_fUcPAvkCzq4W_VwUEDaCEmPN4&hl=en
http://www.lacan.com/cage.htm
http://www.stevenwingate.com/Biography.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=VXQXzUbCSygC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=psychologizing+fictional+characters&source=web&ots=ce-kX-Rbr5&sig=0iKfhOSAVUGqFZW5HUktEOj_Eek&hl=en
http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/search?session_query_ref=rbs.queryref_1204308945064&COLLECTIONS=hw1&JC=aesthj&FULLTEXT=%28psychologizing+AND+fictional+AND+characters%29&FULLTEXTFIELD=lemcontent&RESOURCETYPE=HWCIT&ABSTRACTFIELD=lemhwcompabstract&TITLEFIELD=lemhwcomptitle
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ps42TbxHQ7gC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=psychologizing+fictional+characters&source=web&ots=UAmR2re8KH&sig=NNm01PWsot9RzjKMLLYHDXeFYew&hl=en
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=4377
http://books.google.com/books?id=2eEK-55hgKMC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=psychologizing+fictional+characters&source=web&ots=JkF4D9Deh-&sig=fTH0PgKHDXIHGdO2OTDm1PneK7c&hl=en
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3612/is_199607/ai_n8739770
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/pva37.4.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=328SUmKea60C&pg=PT103&lpg=PT103&dq=psychologizing+fictional+characters&source=web&ots=d6GpcrDLbG&sig=Zt-Ptyscd2V6l7WYpjm2A1dUHPY&hl=en#PPT104,M1
http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/love_in_the_tim.html
http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=261
http://books.google.com/books?id=gNd4Asw3Lk8C&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=psychologizing+fictional+characters&source=web&ots=nhx-LANgUD&sig=p2C9CdX9z7QxOza83zhKf01GdlI&hl=en
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1704(196504)75%3A3%3C201%3ATEFOTN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N
Etc. (many more examples). Some of the above writers approve of psychologizing fictional characters; some disapprove. Either way, there are the terms psychologizing, psychologize, and psychology, as they relate to fictional characters. And there were many more examples of the use of those terms as they relate to fictional characters.
Your confidence that your particular way of using the word is the “typical” or "usual" way of using the word – despite the evidence I’ve presented to the contrary – is similar to Armaos’s confidence that Miller “has read lots of Rand and agrees with many of her ideas,” despite my citation showing that Miller appears to have been influenced in a very general esthetic sort of way by reading ONE BOOK of Rand’s, “The Romantic Manifesto.”
You obviously believe that a fiction writer is a kind of puppeteer, pulling the strings of a wooden puppet called a “character”; good writers are deft at pulling the strings; boring writers are clumsy at it. When writing dialogue, you believe that the writer is a kind of ventriloquist, putting words into the mouth of a wooden dummy. No fiction writer, including Rand, would agree with you. Rand would simply laugh at you (which actually pays you the undeserved compliment of giving your silly statements more attention than they merit).
Except for the fact that fictional characters do not have an actual psychology for you to “psychologize.”
What a concrete-bound, stick-in-the-mud you are. They are real in the possible or potential sense – that’s why those who are not sticks-in-the-mud respond to them as something more than just the wooden puppets you seem to think they are.
When readers “speculate” about the fictional “psychology” of Dominique Francon or Hank Rearden,
No need for the scare-quotes around speculate and psychology; it doesn’t strengthen your case, even if the goon squad you’ve brought along with you applauds and high-fives you. And at least you could be consistent: you should have written “Dominique Francon” and “Hank Reardon” (with scare-quotes) because these characters aren’t real people. You forgot about that.
The psychologies of these characters are real psychologies in the sense of possible or potential psychologies. That’s why they are believable. They are artificial only in the purely technical meaning of that word: i.e., they are products of art (but then, so is a skyscraper). But that isn’t what you meant by artificial. You meant unreal. But only someone who both loves fiction and respects it would understand what I’m talking about.
it’s normally called interpretation or analysis, not “psychologizing”
Wrong. See the links above. It’s perfectly acceptable to psychologize fictional characters, and it's referred to as psychologizing. Among fiction lovers, psychologizing fictional characters is both acceptable and common.
—and it is directed at the thinking and intentions of the author, not the character.
Wrong. When Objectivists ask themselves, “Gee, I wonder what John Galt would say in this or that situation,” they mean exactly that. They don’t mean what you claim they mean or what you think they ought to mean, which is, “Gee, I wonder what Ayn Rand would have put in the mouth of John Galt and forced him to say in such a situation”. That would simply be a roundabout way of asking “Gee, I wonder what Ayn Rand would have said in this situation?” Had an Objectivist wanted to ask the latter, he would have asked it.
Typical readers do not confuse the real and the fictional.
By “typical,” you mean the same sort of thing as you meant by “usual” and "normal" above: i.e., “that which is within my experience.” “Typical” for me means: the sort of reader who is a certain type; the type that responds to fiction as representing both the possible and the potential, and who agrees with Aristotle that the possible and the potential are modes of the real – they are not, as you believe, unreal. So a typical reader is one who (to use Coleridge’s phrase) “suspends his disbelief” in order to experience the possible or potential world represented by the author as an actual world. This includes “suspending one’s disbelief” in relation to the characters that live in that world, and thus being able to inquire as to the character's motivation (not the author's motivation); the character's intentions (not the author's intentions), and the character's psychology (not the author's psychology). Only someone who just doesn't understand fiction would claim that this is a confusion of the real and the fictional.
Good grief, are you even capable of reading “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” sympathetically; or are these merely examples for you of big books about non-existent cities, non-existent societies, non-existent inventions, non-existent people who have non-existent psychologies, and engage in non-existent conflicts? For you, it seems, it's all about the inside of Rand's head ("the author's intentions..."), rather than being representations of objectively real possibilities.
No need to reply. I know the answer from reading your posts on this thread.
As for your hypocritical accusation of “verbal warfare” and “snide remarks”: POT-KETTLE-BLACK. Objectivists are often the first ones to engage in verbal warfare and ad hominem arguments when anyone questions some moronic statement they’ve made (on math, on science, on esthetics, you name it). Of course, they hate being called on it, just as they hate when it’s done back to them.
The fact is, Dennis-the-Menace, you just so richly deserve it. Let it be a lesson to you for asserting an esthetic conclusion without providing esthetic evidence (breezy philosophical statements about freedom and morality as requirements for man's life on earth are not esthetic evidence); then expressing disingenuous “puzzlement” that you should be requested to do so; and then making snide remarks of your own as to whether we had seen the same movie.
Yours Sincerely,
Clyde, the Attention-Seeking Troll
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