ABSTRACT
"Every psychologist should read Proust.” Like many other psychologists, I had long subscribed to this pious maxim without doing much about it. Years ago when I was in basic training in World War II—more or less on a dare to myself—I had read Swarm’s Way and got through much of Within a Budding Grove before I bogged down and returned to Dashiell Hammett as more compatible with army life. Since then, the two fat volumes of the Random House edition had sat on my shelves for a quarter century. What returned me to Proust was the définitive two-volume biography by Painter, the second volume of which appeared recently in an American edition. Reading Painter, a biographer who admirably meets the dual criteria of sound scholarship and discriminating love for his subject, naturally sent me back to Proust. And the novel on its part returned me to Painter. Here I report on my involvement in this dialogue between novelist and biographer, in the hope that other psychologists may be enticed to expose themselves to it. Many should find it interesting, and even profitable.
