Do you believe that only medical professionals are allowed to make psychological interpretations of literature?

Sorry, but you still haven’t answered some very basic questions that I’ve already asked you once.

I’ll repeat them now.

1.) What is the harm in “armchair diagnosis” of a fictional character? How, specifically, does it contribute to the stigma of mental illness?

2.) Does one need to be a licensed professional in order to perform a psychological interpretation of a piece of literature? Who gets to interpret? If I myself have PTSD, can I talk about depictions of PTSD in media? If not, why not?

3.) Do you believe that people who experience dissociative amnesia and depersonalization would take issue with the fact that I think Niffenegger dramatized their mental illness? If so, why? If not, then why the fuss? Note, here, since you seem to be confused: the word dramatize means only “to put those mental illnesses into a story,” not “to characterize those mental illnesses as merely dramatic, as opposed to illnesses.”

Clear these questions up and I’m happy to consider your viewpoint. Otherwise, as someone with PTSD, I’m going to speak on post-traumatic stress conditions as I see fit. Thanks.

No, there’s not. Dissociative amnesia and depersonalization are not the same thing as dissociative identity disorder. So while I am not a medical professional (and don’t believe I need to be in order to interpret literature through a psychological lens), I quite clearly know more than you do about the subject.

Yeah, sorry, but I won’t be crybullied into thinking I’ve somehow harmed other people with mental illness just because you say so.

You either seem uninterested in defending your position or unable to do so. Thanks for the clarification. Now I know exactly how seriously to take you.

Where is the harm in the “armchair diagnosis” of a fictional character? Do you believe that only a licensed psychologist is qualified to perform a psychological interpretation of literature? If so, you must oppose psychological interpretations of literature virtually on principle alone. It is an extreme view, to put it lightly.

Do you believe that people who experience dissociative amnesia or depersonalization will take issue with the fact that I think Niffenegger dramatized their illnesses? If so, why? If not, then why the fuss?

Psychological interpretations of literature have been a part of literary analysis since Freud.

Just admit you haven’t read the post and move on.

This post isn’t about DID. It’s mentioned, but not elaborated upon. You’d know that if you actually read the post.

Yeah, I generally believe that most writers write out of a kind of general instinct or feeling about how their stories ought to go. But I knew a little about PTSD and dissociation when I read the passages, so it seemed interesting enough to write about.

I have a lot of Terry Pratchett saved on my Scribd account, just waiting to be read. I’ve only read The Hogfather and Guards! Guards! so far.

And I don’t think my intention was to call her a homemaker, merely to point out the fantasy of domesticity in Henry’s narrative and then to make the claim that in terms of the metaphor of time-travel, Clare stays “at home” in linear time the way that women wait for men to come home from the sea. And, in fact, this is what Clare says herself in the prologue.

I thought “this just from the first four pages” was enough of a signpost, but it appears that I was mistaken. I’ll be more clear in the future about the limitations of my analysis.

I think you can perform a close reading on any self-contained unit, and at least in my experience, close readings are usually performed on smaller units of text, because they pay very close attention to the specific language used in a text in order to build a larger interpretation of what the text means.

In this case, the self-contained unit I chose to examine was the prologue. However, it seems like my mentioning that this was “just from the first four pages” wasn’t a clear enough signpost that I was just reading the prologue. I’ll be more clear in the future about exactly what I’m up to.

Yeah, I’m now about a quarter of the way through the book and can see that the dynamics are much more complex than the prologue suggested.

Yeah, I certainly didn’t mean to give the sense that Clare is literally a 50s housewife, merely that in the metaphor of time-travel, she’s the one who stays “at home” in linear time.

It doesn’t hurt that I have three degrees in writing and literature. I’m confident in my close reading skills. But I could have been more clear that this was a preliminary exercise and not the final word on the book.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I really appreciate the opportunity to have a discussion.

First, my intention with this post was not to disparage the romance genre, but rather to give a close reading of four paragraphs to argue:

1.) because nobody actually time travels, time traveling stands in for a kind of labor, where Henry is taken away from Clare for extended periods of time while she waits at home

And

2.) the figure of Henry is a woman’s fantasy of what a man might be, who thinks of the woman he loves constantly, even when he’s literally being chaotically displaced through space and time

I admit that I don’t read a lot of romance, but it seems like these claims aren’t inherently offensive? At least I didn’t intend them to be. I think a lot of literature is a fantasy of one form or another: a fantasy of romance, a fantasy of intellectualism, a fantasy of violence, what have you.

It seems like people believe that I’m trying to make sweeping claims about TTW, when my only purpose with this post was to jot down some preliminary observations about romance based on the language used in the prologue to the book.

I hear you that many readers don’t consider this a pure romance. I think I consider it a hybrid between the romance genre and the science fiction genre (specifically HG Wells). I still think it’s interesting to think about how the science fiction elements in the book affect the romantic entanglement described in the prologue.

Anyway, thanks again for the conversation in good faith. I really appreciate it.

Cool. It’s a close reading of four paragraphs in the prologue of a book I haven’t read.

Try to argue from the text and I’ll listen.

I mean, you have a point there. I’m reading the book as part of a larger list of 3,000 works that claim to be the “best” literature. So my exposure to the romance genre in 2003 is literally just this book—and at the time of writing this post, I had read literally four pages of the book, but found the prologue interesting, so here we are.

I’m not sure I follow. What symbolism have I stuffed the book with? All I’ve done is performed a close reading of the text and offered up an interpretation of the prologue. It’s the only part of the book I’ve read so far.

Edit: do people just not know what a close reading is? The arguments I’m making are supported by the text of the prologue.

I literally just read the prologue before writing this. Haven’t read enough to make a judgment about whether I like the book. But even if I didn’t like it, that wouldn’t mean I had nothing to learn from it.

Edit: do people on r/books just not know what a close reading is? Sure seems like it.

I’m just starting! Literally only read the prologue before performing the close reading.