Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Well Said: Imaginative literature and our reactions

Who has not caught some odd resemblance in an ink blot — to a tree, or a lizard, or a map of Florida? A Swiss psychologist has devised a personality test based on the "reading" of especially receptive ink blots prepared in advance. You tell what you see int he blots and unconsciously you expose your innermost self. The psychologist need not have taken all that trouble. The supreme imaginative literature of the world is a survival of the fittest ink blots of the ages, and nothing reveals a man with more precision than his reaction to it.
Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, vol. 1

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