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the
psychologist
vol 22 no 12 december 2009

The power of
music
Adrian North and David Hargreaves
introduce a special issue

forum 994 music – shelter for the frazzled mind? 1018

news 1002 in search of the language of music 1022
Incorporating Psychologist Appointments
£5 or free to members of careers 1058 motivating musical learning 1026
The British Psychological Society looking back 1076 eye on fiction: Anna Karenina 1034
issu psy 12_09 p0993 contents:Layout 1 18/11/09 10:43 Page 992

The
British
Psychological
Society

Contact Welcome to The Psychologist, the monthly publication of The British Psychological
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vol 22 no 12 december 2009

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the
psychologist
vol 22 no 12 december 2009

forum 994 THE ISSUE

positive psychology; academia and applied; Strictly Come Dancing; and more
news 1002
child welfare and immigration control; placement courses; reviewing primary
education; debt and mental health; retirement; immersive VR; and more
media 1008
kidnap victims in the news; and the ethics of commenting on individuals
special issue The role of psychology in music 1016
education
Susan Hallam on the nature and
importance of musical ability
Music – shelter for the frazzled mind? 1018
Pam Heaton on music and autism
In search of the language of music 1022
Victoria Williamson on two universals
Motivating musical learning 1026
Jane Davidson, Robert Faulkner and
Gary McPherson on taking our natural
interest in music to the next level
Lost in music 1030
Lauren Stewart on amusia, and the light
it shines on musical development
Eye on fiction: Unhappy in a unique way 1034
Steven Livingstone on Anna Karenina
According to Steven Pinker, ‘music is
auditory cheesecake, an exquisite
confection crafted to tickle the
sensitive spots of at least six of our
mental faculties’. It packs a sensual
wallop, but is of little use and
interest beyond that. The
contributors to this special issue
may beg to differ, as we hear about
the impact of musical ability and
interest, or the lack of it. In addition
to the articles, we hear about music
and change in ‘Careers’, musical
genius in ‘Looking back’, and a jazz
musician of the year in ‘One on one’.
Finally, signing off for the year in
which The Psychologist turned 21, I
hope that you think we have ‘come
of age’. Considering the remit and
resources of a professional body’s
publication, I believe we manage a
decent presence, in print and online
(the October issue has received
more than 250,000 readers). But
there is always considerable room
for improvement, and I would love to
hear your thoughts on topics,
people, formats and more that could
help us to develop further.
Dr Jon Sutton (Managing Editor)

CONNLAITH COWLEY
book reviews 1038
change management; the dopaminergic mind; others in mind; masculinities; and
what your stuff says about you
society 1044
President’s column; research excellence framework; effort in testing; and more
careers 1058
music in change; working in Bahrain; all the latest jobs, and how to advertise
looking back
creative genius in classical music, with Dean Keith Simonton
1076 The power of music
one on one 1080 Adrian North and David
…with Raymond MacDonald Hargreaves introduce the special
issue with a look at how music
psychology is changing in the
digital era 1012

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk 993

psy 12_09 p1012_1015 north:Layout 1 17/11/09 14:38 Page 1012

ARTICLE

conduct their research has shifted over the

The power of music
Adrian C. North and David J. Hargreaves introduce the special issue with a look
at how music psychology is changing in the digital era
The digital revolution has led to
music being increasingly integrated
into the stream of daily life. This in
turn has led to researchers
showing greater interest in the
effects of music on a wide range
of thoughts and behaviours. This
article looks at three potential
roles of music; namely, in self-
injurious behaviours; in reducing
pain and increasing immunity; and
in promoting animal welfare.
As music becomes more commonplace
questions
he digital revolution means that the
T manner in which people obtain and
listen to music has changed radically
since the early 1990s. Legal and illegal
websites make it possible to obtain a
massive range of music within moments.
These sites are complemented by a
panoply of digital radio, TV and internet-
based stations broadcasting 24/7. High-
capacity portable digital music players
mean that we can, and often do, carry our
entire music library with us.
All this has an important implication.
North et al. (2004) and Sloboda et al.
(2001) produced quantitative evidence
that people’s everyday use of music is goal-
directed – we use it to achieve a particular
mood or state, to pass the time, to enhance
interpersonal interactions, or any of many
other possible tasks. The sheer range of
music available to us at any point in our
everyday life means that, in the digital era,
people have access to precisely the kind of
music that would help them to achieve
whatever specific goals they are trying to
meet. This in turn has a further
implication for psychologists. If the
past 20 years. During the 1970s and 1980s,
research on listening to music was
dominated by cognitive issues, such as
memory, attention and understanding of
musical syntax. It is tempting to view this
dominance as resulting from the less-
contextualised manner in which listening
typically occurred at the time. Under these
less-contextualised circumstances, the
music would, of course, more likely be the
focus of attention. So rather than
considering the social, external world, it
made more sense to focus on the listener’s
inner mental world. Moreover, this
cognitive focus and lack of consideration
of the interaction between musical
behaviour and the context in which it took
place led to highly reductionist,
experimental procedures. This approach
contrasts sharply with much of the
present-day research which, although it
certainly does not ignore cognitive factors,
is primarily concerned with the reciprocal
influence between these and
contextualised, real-life musical
behaviours.
This special issue of The Psychologist
looks at musical ability; how and why
people let music into their lives, and the
impact of musical proficiency (or a lack
of it). It becomes clear that music is
important to us; a source of pride,
enjoyment, even solace. At least two of
the articles here reflect the long-standing
interest within the field, dating back to
Ancient Greece, in clinical- and health-
related issues among particular
subpopulations. For the remainder of

opportunity widely exists to, and a our article, we address three other health-
and accessible, should society value it
significant number of people actually do, related implications of music that lie
less or more?
use music to achieve a wide range of goals, outside those that have been studied
there is a need for an applied psychology traditionally.
of music.
In our recent book The Social and
Applied Psychology of Music (North & Rock music and self-injurious
Hargreaves, 2008) we attempted to map behaviour
resources

North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J. (2008).
The social and applied psychology of
music. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
references
out what this field might look like. We
argued that the digital revolution and
subsequent emphasis of music researchers
on the implications of musical behaviour
means that the paradigm in which many
The rise of heavy rock with supposedly
pro-suicide lyrics in the 1970s and 1980s
led to legislation (e.g. attempts to ban
sales of CDs featuring a ‘parental advisory’
sticker), public protest (e.g. by the

Brennan, F.X. & Charnetski, C.J. (2000).
Stress and immune system function
in a newspaper’s newsroom.
Psychological Reports, 87, 218–222.
Hauser, M.D. & McDermott, J. (2003).
The evolution of the music faculty: A
comparative perspective. Nature
Neuroscience, 6, 663–668.
Kimata, H. (2003). Listening to Mozart
reduces allergic skin wheal
responses and in vitro allergen-
specific IgE production in atopic
dermatitis patients with latex allergy.
Behavioral Medicine, 29, 15–19.
Kirkpatrick, F.H. (1942). Music and the
factory worker. Psychological Record,
5, 197–204.
Kirkpatrick, F.H. (1943a). Music in
industry. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 27, 268–274.
Kirkpatrick, F.H. (1943b). Take the mind
away. Personnel Journal, 22, 225–228.
Lai, H. & Good, M. (2005). Music
improves sleep quality in older
adults. Journal of Advanced Nursing,
49, 234–244.
MacDonald, R.A.R., Mitchell, L.A., Dillon,
T. et al. (2003). An empirical
investigation of the anxiolytic and
pain reducing effects of music.
Psychology of Music, 31, 187–203.
McCarthy, D.O., Ouimet, M.E. & Daun,
J.M. (1992). The effects of noise
stress on leukocyte function in rats.
Research in Nursing and Health, 15,
131–137.
Mitchell, L.A., MacDonald, R.A.R. &
Brodie, E.E. (2006). A comparison of
the effects of preferred music,
arithmetic and humour on cold
pressor pain. European Journal of
Pain, 10, 343–351.
North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J. (2000).
Musical preference during and after

1012 vol 22 no 12 december 2009

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special issue

Parents’ Music Resource Center), and
many apparently bizarre local actions
(e.g. the suspension of a Michigan high
school pupil for wearing a T-shirt
promoting Korn that featured no lyrics
or words apart from the band’s name).
The assumption on which these were
based, namely that the music causes self-
injurious thoughts and actions, is not so
far-fetched as might seem, as several
studies suggest at least a correlation
between music and suicide. For example,
Stack et al. (1994) found a link between
suicide rates among teenage Americans
and variations in subscriptions to a heavy
rock magazine;
and we (North
and Hargreaves,
2006) have
found that fans
of rock and rap
were more
likely than
others to
consider
suicide and
to self-harm.
Other research,
though, is less
suggestive of
a link. We have
also found
(North &
Hargreaves, Labelling music as suicide-
2006) that inducing may be helping to create
thoughts of the problem
suicide and self-
harm precede an
interest in rock, so that the latter can’t
have caused the former. Similarly, merely
describing a song as ‘suicide-inducing’ or
‘life-affirming’ leads listeners to perceive it these cases by distracting the patient’s
as such (North & Hargreaves, 2005); by
labelling music as suicide-inducing,
campaigners and legislators may be
helping to create the problem they aim
to eradicate. Other research (North &
Hargreaves, 2006; Scheel & Westefeld,
1999; Schwartz & Fouts, 2003; Stack et
al., 1994) shows that the correlation
between suicidal tendencies and an
interest in rock is mediated by family
background and self-esteem, which raises stressor, the listener’s musical preference,
the issue of which of the latter is the and their prior level of musical experience
better predictor of the former. (e.g. Pelletier, 2004). More interestingly
still, this reduction in stress manifests itself
through physical measures, such as
Pain, stress and immunity reduced levels of cortisol, and this has a
Other research paints a more positive very provocative further implication.
picture of the relationship between music Lower levels of stress are associated with
and health. Although music therapy is greater immunity to illness of course, and
stereotyped as addressing psychological several studies have indicated effects of
problems, some recent studies have music listening on physical measures of
demonstrated its role in treating immune system strength, such as salivary
conventional physical disorders. The immunoglobulin A (e.g. Brennan &
most convincing evidence comes from Charnetski, 2000). Although the
Standley’s (1995) meta-analysis of 55 mechanism by which this occurs is not
studies concerning the effect well understood, the implication is clear:
of music on 129 medically music contributes directly to physical
related variables. Podiatric health.
pain, paediatric respiration, This allows us to make a strong case
pulse, blood pressure and use for music therapy, since it has implications
of analgesia (in dental for finance-related variables, such as the
patients), pain, medication amount of drugs that patients require and
in paediatric surgery patients the amount of time they spend in hospital.
and EMG all showed effect Furthermore, pain, immunity and stress
sizes over 2, and the mean are implicated in such a range of physical
effect size over all 129 problems that the health effects of music
variables was .88, meaning might be much wider-ranging than the
that the impact of music was present research suggests. Perhaps we
almost one standard should not be surprised, for instance, that
deviation greater than both Lai and Good (2005) and Tan (2004)
without music. showed that music can improve sleep
Arguably the largest single quality, and that Kimata (2003) showed
body of literature concerns the that music can alleviate allergic responses,
impact of music on chronic both of which have further health
pain, pain experienced during implications of their own.
and after treatment, and pain
experienced specifically by
cancer patients and those Animal welfare
undergoing palliative care (e.g. MacDonald The impact of music on well-being may
et al., 2003; Mitchell et al., 2006). Research not be limited to humans. Ethological
suggests that music can mediate pain in research on the functions and learning
of birdsong is well known; and there is
attention from it and/or by increasing their research concerning human perception
perceived control over the pain (since if of music that has considered how non-
patients believe that they have access to humans do so (see Hauser & McDermott,
music as a means of pain control, then this 2003; Panksepp & Bernatzky, 2002;
belief itself decreases the aversiveness of Wallin et al., 2000). However, there is
pain). Similar research on stress has a growing body of evidence specifically
yielded the not entirely unsurprising concerning music and animal welfare.
conclusion that it may be reduced by Perhaps the clearest example is
music; but also that the amount of stress provided by Wells et al. (2002), who
reduction varies according to age, the played classical music, heavy metal music,

relaxation and exercise. American
Journal of Psychology, 113, 43–67.
North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J. (2005).
Labelling effects on the perceived
deleterious consequences of pop
music listening. Journal of
Adolescence, 28, 433–440.
North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J. (2006).
Problem music and self-harming.
Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior,
36, 582–590.
North, A.C. & Hargreaves, D.J. (2008). The
social and applied psychology of music.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
North, A.C., Hargreaves, D.J. &
Hargreaves, J.J. (2004). The uses of
music in everyday life. Music
Perception, 22, 63–99.
Panksepp, J. & Bernatzky, G. (2002).
Emotional sounds and the brain: the
neuro-affective foundations of
musical appreciation. Behavioural
Processes, 60, 133–155.
Pelletier, C.L. (2004). The effect of music
on decreasing arousal due to stress.
Journal of Music Therapy, 41, 192–214.
Peretti, P.O. & Kippschull, H. (1990).
Influence of five types of music on
social behaviors of mice, Mus
musculus. Psychological Studies, 35,
98–103.
Scheel, K.R. & Westefeld, J.S. (1999).
Heavy metal music and adolescent
suicidality. Adolescence, 34, 253–273.
Schwartz, K.D. & Fouts, G.T. (2003).
Music preferences, personality style,
and developmental issues of
adolescents. Journal of Youth and
Adolescence, 32, 205–213.
Sloboda, J.A., O’Neill, S.A. & Ivaldi, A.
(2001). Functions of music in
everyday life: an exploratory study
using the experience sampling
method. Musicae Scientiae, 5, 9–32.

read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk 1013

psy 12_09 p1012_1015 north:Layout 1 17/11/09
special issue
pop music, human conversation, and a
control to 50 dogs housed in an animal
rescue shelter. The classical music was
arguably the most soothing, and it is
interesting that it led to the dogs spending
more time resting, more time quiet, and
less time standing. In contrast, arguably
the least soothing music, heavy metal, led
to more time barking. In a similar
unpublished study, we played fast- and
slow-tempo music to dairy cows in their
winter enclosures. Milk yield, indicative of
the cows’ well-being, was higher in the
slow than the fast music condition,
suggesting that the slower music led to
lower stress. Similarly, McCarthy et al.
(1992) found that exposing rats to stress-
inducing rock music could reduce their
ability to heal wounds; and Peretti and
Kippschull (1990, p.51) played music to
mice over two weeks and found that ‘(1)
classical music produced more interaction,
including aggression… and (5) rock
tended to increase aggression’. Just as
research on humans shows that we select
calming music to reduce the impact of a
stressful environment on us (e.g. North &
Hargreaves, 2000), so it seems that this
same calming music has just the same
effect when played to non-humans.
Again the potential implications of this
are extensive and provocative. Most
obviously, what do we mean
by ‘musical taste’ and
‘expert composition’ when “the applied psychology
we are confronted with of music has direct
evidence that a dog can financial implications”
enjoy Beethoven? Does the
possibility that a cow may
be calmed by classical
music mean that it shouldn’t be thought
suitable for the dinner menu? Are these
kinds of effect widespread and identifiable
among a variety of species, such that all
animals respond similarly to the same
music on the basis of the same
neurophysiology, and if so then would this
mean that music should be regarded as less
or more of an art form than at present? Of
course, a cynic could claim that the effects
of music we have described here are in fact
just functional behaviours that are not
Stack, S., Gundlach, J. & Reeves, J.L.
(1994). The heavy metal subculture
and suicide. Suicide and Life-
Threatening Behavior, 24, 15–23. Wallin, N.L. Merker, B. & Brown, S. (Eds.)
Standley, J. (1995). Music as a
therapeutic intervention in medical
and dental treatment. In T. Wigram, Wells, D.L., Graham, L. & Hepper, P.G.
B. Saperstone & R. West (Eds.) The
art and science of music therapy
(pp.3–22). Langhorne, PA: Harwood.
Tan, L.P. (2004). The effects of
1014
14:38 Page 1014
What do we mean by ‘musical taste’ and ‘expert composition’ when a dog can enjoy
Beethoven?
truly ‘aesthetic’. That may well be true of
course, but as we have seen already, much
of humans’ everyday musical behaviour is
similarly functional. Is there really much
difference between a tired human listening
to a soothing song on the car stereo during
the drive home, and a would argue that, as the research described
dog in a shelter being here illustrates well, the applied
calmed by
background classical
music?
In conclusion,
some might be tempted
to dismiss the applied
psychology of music as ‘nothing new’,
pointing out, for example, that music
therapy has a centuries-long tradition, or
that research on the impact of music on
employees’ productivity goes back to the
production lines of the Second World War
(e.g. Kirkpatrick, 1942, 1943a, 1943b). We
have provided a few brief illustrations here,
however, of how the applied psychology of
music has recently begun to demonstrate
numerous and varied interactions between
music and the context in which it is
background music on quality of sleep
in elementary school children.
Journal of Music Therapy, 41, 128–150.
(2000). The origins of music.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(2002). The influence of auditory
stimulation on the behaviour of dogs
housed in a rescue shelter. Animal
Welfare, 11, 385–393.
experienced, such that it is breaking new
ground quickly. Similarly, it would be facile
to characterise the field as trivial by asking
why, for example, anybody should care
about what music will help to sell baked
beans in a supermarket. In response, we
psychology of music has direct financial
implications that safeguard music and
musicians from budget cuts imposed by
politicians and accountants. It also has a
far ‘meatier’ implication, namely that the
field, and those examples of it described
here, call into question the very nature of
how we conceive of ‘musical behaviour’.
The implications of digitisation and our
changing relationship with music mean
that our understanding of ‘musical
behaviour’ and the very nature of music
psychology itself must change also.
I Adrian North
is in the School of Life
Sciences, Heriot Watt
University, Edinburgh
a.north@hw.ac.uk
I David Hargreaves
is in the Centre for
International Research on
Creativity and Learning in
Education (CIRCLE),
Roehampton University
vol 22 no 12 december 2009
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psy 12_09 p1034_1035 livingstone:Layout 1
EYE ON FICTION
Unhappy in a unique way
Steven Livingstone on difficult paths and last taboos in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
I
n summer 2004 Oprah’s Book Club
highlighted Anna Karenina. Oprah had
confessed that she always had a fear of
reading Anna Karenina, mainly because of
its length. Hence, she and her viewers
approached their summer’s reading of AK
like an arduous long-distance run.
Through the magic of the internet, I am
able to re-live the show as though it were
yesterday…
Narrator: ‘They came from across the
globe, Oprah Book Clubbers ready to take profile in popular culture: curiously it
on the Anna Karenina 2004 challenge.
Eight long sections, 817 pages, 23
complicated Russian names. The only
thing to fear was fear itself. They would
battle the elements, summer heat, busy
family schedules, obstacles at every turn.
Some would stumble, exhausted from
reading. But could they pick themselves
up and press on to the final chapter?
Could they do it? Could they read Anna
Karenina in just one summer? Could they
conquer Tolstoy?’
Group of people, chanting in unison:
‘Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna’.
The opening guest of the Book Club
episode was a regular on the couch, The
Music and the Passion himself, Mr Barry
Manilow. Manilow began by singing, to
the tune of ‘Copacabana’, ‘Her name was
Anna, Anna Karenina … The hottest
broad north of the Kremlin.’
But the final word of the show came
from Megan Mullally, aka Karen from Will both how it begins and how it ends. The
and Grace, who was most intrigued in her
reading by Anna’s mental unravelling: ‘Of
course, now she’d just, like, take some
Paxil and it’d all be good. But they didn’t
have mood stabilisers back then
apparently.’
So, that is to say that Oprah and her
army of Nike-shod women did indeed,
chapter by chapter, ‘conquer’ Tolstoy,
practically trampling him under their air-
cushioned feet. And I would not like to
say that this is a bad thing, since
doubtless Oprah brought AK to hundreds
of people who would never have
otherwise attempted it. Oprah’s Book
Club is off-air now, and her viewers are
patiently awaiting her instructions, but
1034
17/11/09 15:05 Page 1034
the question remains: if Anna were alive
today, in our more liberal society and
with a prescription for an antidepressant,
would things have worked out better
for her?
Into life’s corridor
Written in instalments from 1873 to 1877
in the periodical The Russian Messenger,
AK still enjoys huge popularity and a high
even pops up in Will and Grace, where
Jennifer Lopez makes a guest appearance
reading it on the subway. Its continued
success is striking considering its length
and complexity, as
alluded to by
Oprah. If it is a
masterpiece, it is “Anna breaks what may
certainly not the be our last taboo: she is a
‘flawless’ woman who abandons
masterpiece that her child for her lover”
both Fyodor
Dostoyevsky and
Vladimir Nabokov
described it as, and the long passages on
Russian peasant agricultural techniques
will hardly be of interest to modern
readers, if indeed they were ever of
interest. What, then, is the key to AK’s
enduring appeal?
Most of us, even those who have not
read AK, may nonetheless be familiar with
novel opens with the famous and oft-
quoted sentence, ‘All happy families are
alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy
in its own unique way.’ The novel ends
with one of the most famous suicides in
literary history, and the inevitability of
Anna’s death only serves to make the
tragedy of her life all the sadder.
Anna is married to Karenin, an
important government official, a dry and
self-satisfied man 20 years her senior. The
famous opening sentence refers to the
family of Stephan Oblonsky, Anna’s
brother. Stephan has been cheating on his
wife with his children’s French governess,
and his wife Dolly has found out. Our
sympathies are with Anna from the very
beginning, as she arrives in Moscow
to try, with her usual tact and sympathy,
to effect reconciliation.
At Stephan’s house Anna meets
Vronsky, a dashing cavalry officer, with
whom Dolly’s younger sister Kitty is
infatuated. The character of Levin is
introduced, a troubled and introspective
young man, who is in love with Kitty,
and who returns to his country estate in
despair when his proposal is rejected by
her. Vronsky, however, is fascinated by
Anna, and recklessly pursues her. She
initially spurns him, but in the end she
cannot deny that she has fallen in love
with him.
The couple leave Russia together, but
Karenin refuses to grant a divorce, unless
Anna renounces the right to see her son.
She is miserable at having left her son in
Karenin’s care, and returns in secret to see
the boy. Far from pacifying her, this
meeting only sharpens her despair.
Vronsky is restless and misses his military
career, which he had to abandon to follow
her. Anna goes from disillusionment to
disillusionment, becomes consumed with
jealousy, and ultimately her life becomes
intolerable to her. When she throws
herself under a train, she fulfills the
epigram of the novel:
‘Vengeance is mine, and
I shall repay.’ Vronsky is
consumed with remorse and
enlists to fight the Turks, a
course of action equivalent to
suicide.
In counterpoint to this
dark, violent story, there is the
relationship of Kitty and Levin.
After initially rejecting him, Kitty returns
to Levin, won over by his integrity and
strength of character. Levin is surely one
of the most rounded characters in fiction,
and one Tolstoy drew on his own
character to create. His relationship with
Kitty, which is essentially a happy one, is
complex and totally believable.
Anna’s story, on the other hand, is
primarily one of depression. One of the
few descriptions of Anna’s happiness
comes early in the novel. Recognising
the young Kitty’s coquettish excitement
before a ball, Anna says, ‘Oh yes, it is
good to be your age… I remember that
blue haze, like the haze on the mountains
in Switzerland. That haze which envelops
everything at the blissful time when
childhood is just coming to and end,
and its huge merry circle narrows to a
path which one treads gaily yet with
dread into life’s corridor, bright and
splendid as it appears… Who has not
passed through it?’
Anna will enter the bright and
beautiful path one last time to triumph at
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the ball, where she boldly dances the
mazurka with Vronsky. From that
beautiful, blue-misted high point the path
indeed grows ever narrower for Anna. But
would her path, as suggested by Megan
Mullally, be any easier to tread today?
Certainly, in the 21st century, the apex
of female achievement extends beyond
dancing the mazurka, and she would no
longer be trapped a ballroom like a great
fluttering swan. There would be no
boredom – with her intelligence, charm
and beauty, it is easy to imagine Anna
in any of the hip, high-powered Sex in
the City jobs (Sex in the City,
incidentally, being another show to
have referenced Anna Karenina. When
Carrie is turned off by her Russian
lover’s overly romantic gestures,
Miranda advises her to tell him that
‘He’s dating you, not Anna Karenina’).
With her love of literature, it is
possible to see Anna writing an
inspirational, Shirley Valentine-type
story, perhaps with the aid of
sympathetic psychologist, and – if
need be – an appropriate SSRI. Paxil
could be seen as a more sophisticated
substitute for its 19th-century
equivalent, the morphine Anna was
using to self-medicate. She might even
get a six-figure advance and a slot on
Oprah’s couch.
The last taboo
So in answer to the question posed
on Oprah: yes, thanks to the ways in
which society has moved on, in the
present day Anna’s story might have
ended happily. But this answer ignores
the fact that Anna breaks what may be
our last taboo: she is a woman who
abandons her child for her lover.
In The Female Eunuch, published
in 1970, Germaine Greer painted a
devastatingly bleak portrait of family
life, in which she argued that women
should not be afraid to walk out of their
marriages, if necessary leaving their
children behind. ‘Mother is the dead heart
of the family’, wrote Greer. But back in
the real world, high-profile women who
abandon their children face widespread
disapproval. Princess Diana was only six
when her mother left to marry another
man. She would later recollect that she
and her younger brother, Charles, cried
themselves to sleep together. The actor
John Thaw’s mother ran off with another
man, leaving him in charge of his younger
brother, while his lorry-driver father was
away. Thaw was seven. His widow, Sheila
Hancock, concluded that his abrasive
approach to life stemmed from this early
experience. As a child, the artist Sam
read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk
17/11/09 15:05 Page 1035
Taylor-Wood remembers feeling bemused
the day her mother handed her a note
that said, ‘Give this to your step-dad
because I’m leaving you all.’ Taylor-Wood
recalls how ‘one day I saw her and she
was living three doors away. I saw the
blind in the kitchen go up, and there she
was. Then she pulled it down again. I still
can’t believe she was there. It was
extraordinary.’
Stories like this are painful, the
mothers seem selfish, unnatural and hard
to understand. It’s the child we feel sorry
for, not the mother.
To me, the exploration of this
complex and still contemporary issue is
one of the keys to AK’s enduring success.
In Anna, Tolstoy has created a character
who we can understand and sympathise
with, and while the reader is left to make
up their own mind about the rights and
wrongs of her actions, most will find it
hard to either condemn or condone. To
the casual reader, the novel may seem like
nothing more than a tragic romance set in
the top tier of 19th-century Russian
aristocratic society, and as such, Anna’s
difficulties have little connection to the
way we live now. Look beyond the
surface, however, and we will see that the
major theme of the novel is the struggle
eye on fiction
to find a moral and yet also fulfilling way
to lead one’s life. Anna is trapped in the
dilemma of whether to choose her love
for Vronsky, at the expense of abandoning
her son, or to choose her love of her son,
at the expense of her own happiness. Plus
ça change plus c’est pareil, as the
pretentious and moralising Countess
Lydia Ivanovna might have put it.
The complexities involved in the
pursuit of happiness are as relevant today
as they ever were, and pose a dilemma
that will be familiar to
psychologists both in our
personal and professional
lives. In fact, the principle
that in any system no one
factor guarantees success
but many guarantee
failure, has become known
as the Anna Karenina
principle, and is based on
the quotation from the
novel, ‘All happy families
are alike, but an unhappy
family is unhappy in its
own unique way.’
Writing in the
Telegraph Magazine in
2006, Judith Wenban-
Smith, a chartered
psychologist with a special
interest in children, wrote,
‘Mothers who walk out on
their children can now
support themselves and
maintain social profiles –
they are neither beggars
nor pariahs – and that’s a
good thing.’ It is true that
today, Anna would not
have had to leave the
country, as she does in the
novel. But that doesn’t
mean children don’t get
hurt. ‘Children suffer more
from the absence of mothers
than they do fathers, undoubtedly,’
Wenban-Smith continues. ‘Almost
invariably, the mother has been the main
carer in infancy and it’s to mothers that
children have the strongest and most
secure attachment.’ Mothers who leave
can have the best possible motives, but to
a child, it boils down to one thing. ‘They
will come to the conclusion that mummy
didn’t love them enough, and that can be
devastating.’
So no, a prescription for Paxil would
not be the solution.
I Steven Livingstone is a clinical psychologist
at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College
London
steven.livingstone@iop.kcl.ac.uk
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