Books: Joseph Collins

Literature Looks at the Doctor

It must, I imagine, give a man something of the feeling of a Zeus, or at least of some lesser god, to be possessed of the training and the ability to fathom the minds and motives of mankind. Joseph Collins has that. He is a rather startling combination—the eminent physician and the literary critic. His interest in the mechanics of mentality is matched only by his interest in the literary products springing from the mentality. His The Doctor Looks at Literature has been received with a good deal of interest. It is now fashionable to probe the depths of men’s souls. Dr. Collins, however, is no amateur wielder of the scalpel; he was at one time the President of the American Neurological Association; he was a Major in the Medical Corps during the war; he has written a score of books and is a frequent contributor to the magazines.

I had expected to find Dr. Collins a bluff, hearty, rather bulldog type of man. Perhaps this preconceived notion was the result of reading his often violent opinions of men or of books. Instead, I found a slender, poised gentleman, with sandy hair and mustache; tolerant, quiet, modest, interested in his golf game as well as his other pursuits.

That genius in one or another of the arts is a sign of abnormal psychology is not a new idea, nor is it a particularly disturbing one. The popularizing of psychoanalysis has led us to jump to elaborate conclusions with regard to our own emotional equipment and that of our friends. Dr. Collins has a sane regard for this problem—and a fascinating one. He does not condemn an author for the possession of abnormalities, whether they be gifts or dangers. He does demand, however, a direction and control. Character, in the last analysis, consists in the use to which we put our natural equipment, doesn’t it?

Ibsen, undoubtedly, was a manic depressive; so, too, thinks Dr. Collins, is Papini. So, too, are many contemporary writers. Others have a varying sexual inheritance. Still others, of the type of William Dean Howells, are sober, normal citizens, who, for the most part, produce sober, normal books. That persons of the first two types are actually insane is an absurd supposition. That any number of them are degenerates is equally absurd. Yet there can be no harm in studying the workings of great minds. It is in moments of curious abnormal elation that many great works are produced, or, perhaps, in moments of terrible, abnormal despondency. This we know to be true of men like Poe, like Dostoievsky, like Oscar Wilde, like De Quincy, like Ernest Dowson. It is the less obvious cases, however, that are the most interesting. Arthur Machen in a recent book (Hieroglyphics) says that “ecstasy” is the quality which makes for the greatest literature. In Dickens he finds this quality, in Thackeray he does not. What, then, was the difference in the emotional equipment of Messrs. Dickens and Thackeray? What, do you suppose, was the psychological endowment of Longfellow as compared with that of Shelley? What can we deduce from the mystic beauty of Mr. Machen’s own work? What of William Blake and John Donne? What of Amy Lowell? Of Edna St. Vincent Millay? Of Sherwood Anderson?

Dr. Collins is now busy on a new book, dealing largely with some of our contemporary American literary men and women. Of these, he knows few personally. By their works ye shall judge them. Is it, in this case, a terrifying or a comforting thought ?

J. F.