ABSTRACT
The relevance and cogency of case histories have been challenged frequently. One common criticism is that they trade too heavily on their aesthetic persuasiveness and as “narratives” fail to measure up to scientific criteria. But what kind of science are we dealing with if it refuses to admit the validity of impressions, feelings, and subjective experience? Take the wealth of inner experience we encounter when we read a fine novel. Such experience is “real” in the truest sense of the word: it has an effect; it helps. We could, of course, restrict ourselves to “genuinely” scholarly content analysis methods and use them to work out precisely how often, say, positive and negative ascriptions figure in the novel. But if we did so, we would be turning away from the full richness of experience afforded by the effect of the story on our imagination, the way it grips us, speaks to us, and shows us things in a new light. I have already indicated that aesthetic experience is not merely subjective and random. As cultural history shows, fine speech is more than mere gilding the lily. We need only recall the biblical figure of Joseph, or Sheherazade from 1001 Nights, both of whom were able to free their lords from “psychological distemper” with the eloquence of their tales. Stories bring a different truth to light 18than the form of psychology that is orientated to statistical verification.
