Abstract
This chapter discusses the many points of contact between psychology and literature. Literature can be used to test psychological theories and to understand human behavior in the past. Psychological theories and analyses can be used to understand the behavior of fictitious characters and also the authors themselves. Finally, the question whether writing helps suicidal authors to live longer or to die by suicide prematurely is discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, Ibsen considered moving to Denmark, but never did so. Furthermore, according to Meyer (1971), Ibsen did contemplate suicide during one stressful period in his life.
- 2.
Calling this dark shading is perhaps a poor choice of terms by Piotrowski (1974).
- 3.
It should be noted in passing that creative writing has been found to be strongly associated with affective disorder (Andreasen, 1987).
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Lester, D. (2021). Psychology, Suicide, and Literature. In: Ros Velasco, J. (eds) Suicide in Modern Literature. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69392-3_1
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