The I by Norman N. Holland (review)

Book Reviews245 NORMAN N. HOLLAND. The I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. 390 p. The heart of Holland's theory lies in the first chapter of his book, entitled, surprisingly enough, "The Aesthetics of I . " According to Holland, we can think aesthetically about an I, using the themes and variations of an I concept. He explains processes that psychologists, especially Freud, study: symbolization, perception, cognition, or memory. In order to make understood the psychoanalytical answers to a theory of the I, he does make clear that his method can be shortly formulated in: "I ARC . . . I ARC DEFTLY" (xi). He defines the theory of identity, looking at an I as one looks at a work of art: . . . I act forth into the world from myself as agent (A) and the world acts back onto me, so that I am a consequence (C) of what the world does both on its own and in response to my agency. My I initiates feedback but is also the consequence of the feedbacks it initiates. One can spell out those feedbacks as: expectation (E), what I am habituated to seek in the timestream of my experience; defense (D), what I will admit into myself from the world; fantasy (F), what I project out into the world; transformation (T), the meanings outside of time that I make my experience into. The I is agency and consequence . . . It is a representation (R) of an I, either the I's own or somebody else's. In particular, it is some I's attempt to put an I into words . . . (xi) Holland's ethos is scientific; the philosophy implied positivistic or materialistic. The reader of this work is affected by the new use of "aesthetics," by Holland's rejection of any distinction between the aesthetic state of mind and surreptitiously or unconsciously indulging suppressed impulses. These provide materials that may be adapted to an author's own identity theme, which is composed of particular defenses and fantasies. A reader of the biographical quotations from letters or a biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald and two chapters from The Great Gatsby does not easily share Holland's view that "Writing would balance the books between the real and the fantastic, the finite and the infinite, the loving and the aggressive" (28). According to Holland, then, a work of literature simply provides materials to be adapted to the reader's own identity theme, defining identity as (1) an agency, (2) a consequence, (3) a representation, and thus composing themes of defenses and variations with fantasies. Another model of mind, Paul Lorenz, illustrates that his core identity theme offers variations which can be healthy or unhealthy. Thus, Holland considers mind as an aesthetic object like a literary work or a piece of music. He realizes that psychiatry cannot be neutral scientism: it must respond to the "I" of Paul Lorenz or F. Scott Fitzgerald with the same totality of mind with which their identity is created. Holland declares, "there is an identity theme in the individual that persists no matter how radical the changes" (81). He illustrates that the inner world of G. B. Shaw, Dr. Charles Vincent, or a prostitute, or an account of identity formation, based on Heinz Lichtenstein's numerous essays, establishes an identity principle, a basic trend that regulates mental functioning. In another metapsychological point of view, Holland assumes that we are constantly adapting, that we must do so to survive, that we change in response to our physical and social environment, but also that our environment adapts to us (80). In part II of the book Holland develops a psychology of I, using the concept DEFT, a convenient acronym of defense, expectation, fantasy, transformation (103). 246Rocky Mountain Review Most challenging is his chapter on perception, symbolization, and identity, confirming that we "perceive words . . . by an active process of analysis and synthesis" (123). "You and I are freely emitting centers of meanings" (126), and both perception and symbolization work together. In part III Holland illustrates a fundamental coherence in the history of an I. History becomes in each of us a kind of paralogic by which we unite our experiences. The I is a way of relating...