Man’s estrangement from the mythical realm and the subsequent shrinking of his existence to the mere factual—that is the major cause of mental illness

he was interviewed by an American journalist, who asked him a very American question: “Are you receiving any therapy or counselling?” Grant replied, “No. In England, we read novels.”

Half a century earlier, the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung developed the other side of this same observation. He phrased it in more technical terms: “Man’s estrangement from the mythical realm and the subsequent shrinking of his existence to the mere factual—that is the major cause of mental illness.” In other words, people who do not read fiction or poetry are in permanent danger of crashing against facts and being crushed by reality. And then, in turn, it is left to Dr. Jung and his colleagues to rush to the rescue and attempt to mend the broken pieces.

Do psychotherapists multiply when novelists and poets become scarce? There may well be a connection between the development of clinical psychology on the one hand and the withering of the inspired imagination on the other—at least, this was the belief of some eminent practitioners. Rainer Maria Rilke once begged Lou Andreas-Salomé to psychoanalyse him. She refused; she explained to him, “If the analysis is successful, you may never write poetry again.” (And just imagine: had a skilful shrink cured Kafka of his existential anxieties, our age—and modern man’s condition—could have been deprived of its most perceptive interpreter.)

Simon Leys
The Hall of Uselessness