Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper sets out the findings of a series of empirical studies into the therapeutic potential of reading. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate some of the challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary study and to explore the implications of developing research methodologies which utilise a combination of tools that are rooted in scientific and literary study. In the reading experiments that will be presented here as case studies, participants took part in exercises that included diary-assisted reading, letter writing and reflective interviews. Each experiment was designed to help illuminate and capture the often illusive and oblique processes that take place when a person reads a work of literature. The principles of practical criticism provided an important guide in the development of these experiments and in the analysis of the empirical data that was collected through them. Equally, interdisciplinary working with clinical and theoretical psychologists helped to shape the experimental methodologies. It was important that throughout the processes of designing the experimental methodologies, carrying out the studies and analysing findings that both disciplines of psychology and literary studies where being challenged and stretched by the other. How can the practical applications of literature and the arts be captured, understood and communicated? How does psychology contend with the unspoken, ephemeral and unclassifiable stuff of the mind? This paper provides a blueprint for the ongoing development of interdisciplinary work between the disciplines of psychology and literature, with wider implications for scholars across the humanities who are embarking on interdisciplinary research.