The Blog, Short Story, and Psychology

The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together (http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html

Concept

I regard the Internet as a social and cultural space, allowing innovative new forms of communication. Some of these are more successful than others. Short narrative is peculiarly suited to the web, for the following reasons. 1) Psychologists have found that the web allows and encourages intimate communication, based on the unique combination of anonymity and universal access. The web allows people to connect with each other. 2) 'Form' is important: colour, shape visual theme etc. However when the novelty of Flash, interaction, JavaScript animation etc. has worn off, what you are left with is content. 3) Narrative is a fundamental and primal part of human life. In Narrative and Culture, Christopher Nash (1991) considers the role it plays in areas like science, the legal system, and psychoanalysis. We begin to understand and enjoy stories in childhood, and this continues in adulthood in different ways. It could be the novel, films, or television dramas and soap operas.

Literary Life

The analysis of Re-reading the Short Story (Claire Hanson 1989: Macmillan Press) sometimes applies to the blog.

1) The short story genre has been neglected, yet it is immensely popular (1). The popularity of the blog confirms this, because it is a kind of fragmented narrative.

2) The short story lends itself to "the partial, the incomplete, that which cannot be…entirely satisfactorily organized or explained" (3). As does the blog.

3) "The short story has been the chosen form of the exile" (3). Hanson notes that the genre has attracted a large number of women writers, allowing them a form of expression based on feelings of alienation from the dominant culture. The Internet is democratizing and empowering in a similar way.

4) Hanson notes that both the film and the short story have Altered our conception of narrative…(they) reject or deny certain levels of narrative, a certain kind of discursive 'explanation', preferring instead to work on a level on which unconscious desires and motives may be explored via associations not examined by reason. It may be that both the short story and film are modeled in part on the structure of the unconscious, which exists, Lacan suggests, in an asymmetrical relation to the dominant structure of language…The short story may partake of the worlds of both what Lacan would call the 'imaginary' and the 'symbolic', the unconscious and language, and tries to suggest some of the difficulties involved in such trafficking between image and narrative (6). The short story is characteristically suggestive; the same applies to personal Internet content.

5) "Emotion is likely to be important in response to texts" (11). Story-reading encourages a relationship between self and text. where "the imagination of the reader is stirred in a particular way by the elliptical structure of many short stories" (25). Psychologists have found that people interact with their computers in a personal way, getting angry when they 'disobey' and feeling affection towards the plastic boxes that allow them to write, design etc. and surf the web. Personal publishing taps into this audience.

6) "It is not just that short stories may literally have their origin in dreams…it is more that they may be structured like dreams" (26). Real life stories are juxtaposed against anonymous 'Internet space' where most of the people we read about do not become part of our circle of friends. They are strangers, and yet we read about and identify with their intimate thoughts. The short story also has a "combination of the elements of familiarity and strangeness" (27).

7) Personal web sites can 'tell' us things, and be 'things' in themselves. They have an immediacy because they depict people talking about their lives, and they are constantly changing and updated. "It is a form committed to the unknown" (30).

8) "When we pick up a magazine or a book of short stories…we understand that we face a structure we must enter quickly and leave soon" (45). Short attention span is a well-known factor with the Internet. Short narrative is thus especially appropriate.

9) A short story "highlights an incident small and slight in itself, presenting it so that the reader must imagine a much larger context" (48). The ongoing nature of the blog has the same effect.

10) The short story only suggests character; there is insufficient space to develop and portray it. It is photographic in the sense that it is a snapshot in time. Just like a blog.

11) "It is no coincidence that the short story as we know it and Freud arrived on the scene at approximately the same time" (52). The short story is similar to a psychoanalytic narrative (film also appeared at this time: point 4). There is a clear psychological quality to the blog, where people describe their lives and their inner thoughts with intimate detail.

12) Intimacy The short story tends to depict moments of intimacy. Anonymous safety and self- disclosure are uniquely combined on the web, where people disclose personal details and find like minded, online companions.

13) Subversive Form Blogging is often presented as a counterpoint to mainstream and paper publishing. In 2002 The Guardian ran a competition for the best UK Blog, and it was derided as an attempt to appropriate the more anarchic form of expression. Additionally, the homosexual community use the Internet and the blog as a form of expression and a personal voice which is sometimes more problematic in the offline world.

14) Narrative may relate to the Freudian superego or conscious mind, and the image to the id or unconscious (Hanson 28). Juxtaposing narrative and image has a long tradition, dating back to the illuminated manuscript. Like any web site the blog partly depends on its visual appeal, and the psychoanalytic account of story and image helps clarify this.