Science Fiction and Psychology

Miller, G. (2020) Science Fiction and Psychology. Series: Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 62. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 9781789620603 (doi: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620603.001.0001)

Abstract

The psychologist may appear in science fiction as the herald of utopia or dystopia; literary studies have used psychoanalytic theories to interpret science fiction; and psychology has employed science fiction as an educational medium. Psychology and Science Fiction goes beyond such incidental observations and engagements to offer an in-depth exploration of science fiction literature’s varied use of psychological discourses, beginning at the birth of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century and concluding with the ascendance of neuroscience in the late twentieth century. Rather than dwelling on psychoanalytic readings, this literary investigation combines with history of psychology to offer attentive textual readings that explore five key psychological schools: evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, behaviourism, existential-humanism, and cognitivism. The varied functions of psychological discourses in science fiction are explored, whether to popularise and prophesy, to imagine utopia or dystopia, to estrange our everyday reality, to comment on science fiction itself, or to abet (or resist) the spread of psychological wisdom. Psychology and Science Fiction also considers how psychology itself has made use of science fiction in order to teach, to secure legitimacy as a discipline, and to comment on the present.

• Item Type: Books
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Miller, Dr Gavin
• Authors: Miller, G.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• ISBN: 9781789620603
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © Liverpool University Press 2020
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy

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