SOURCE: Sackett, Samuel J. “The Application of Rogerian Theory to Literary Study.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 35, no. 4 (fall 1995): 140-57.

In the following essay, Sackett argues that the focus of Rogerian theory on empathetic understanding of the other can be successfully applied to the study of literature.

The Genesis of Literary Works

Literary critics have long wrestled with the questions of why authors write at all and why a certain author wrote a certain work. The answers to these questions usually given by Freudian critics, not wholly in keeping with Freud's own attitudes, have tended to postulate that writers write because they feel tensions that they cannot resolve in the real world and hence need to resolve in fantasy. The work, then, can be seen as the fantasy in which the conflict is worked out, and its content is determined by the needs of its author. A theory of...