An Australian psychologist thinks reading Harry Potter is a great way to introduce ideas about hope and how to deal with mental illness and has written a book called Harry Potter Power on the subject. Read all about it. Reminds me of the 2001 Associated Press article, ‘Harry Potter and the Shrinks.’
Psychologists as a rule do not believe the soul, usually called “mind,” has specific faculties as did Plato, Aristotle, and the Church Fathers (i.e. Western Civilization up to and including Freud). They have trouble, consequently, with the Eliade-Lewis-and-Ruskin inspired notion that readers respond to stories about these same faculties more profoundly than they do other tales. You’d think, though, that the alchemical symbolism, the synchronicity of cartharsis in reader and story subject, and the remarkable transference involved that engages and to some degree transforms the serious reader would draw psychological study and attention beyond clinical tricks.
I trust if any readers find an article by a psychologist on either of these subjects as it relates to Harry Potter and the profound hold Ms. Rowling’s novels have on readers of all ages around the world that you’ll share it. Please suggest the topic to any graduate students in psychology you know, too. Call it ‘Faculty Psychology, Soul Triptychs, and the Alchemical Magic of Reading: Plato and Dostoevsky to Star Wars and Harry Potter.’
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