FICTION AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

This is a dreary Freudian study of the purpose and usefulness of reading fiction. The author labors to explain in the most turgid terms that the reader of fiction is both a participant and a spectator and that fiction is not only an idle escape, but a necessary release of tensions. Not only is the theme of the book on necessarily solemn and absurd- but the fundamentalist Freudian terminology will annoy any but the dedicated. One can only question the validity of a study such as this which is undertaken within such a limited frame of reference.