The Myth of Narcissus: Ovid and the Problem of Subjectivity in Psychology

Extract

This article discusses an engagement between the worlds of classical poetry and contemporary empirical psychology. What starts with a return to a classical text through the lens of psychology turns into a review of psychology through the lens of the Classics, inspiring some fresh ideas about subjectivity and how to handle it in psychological research. The question of subjectivity is, of course, a key one for the humanities, because the personhood of the reader, the interpreter, or the researcher exerts a vital influence on the way in which any text is read and its meaning extracted.