A Psychological Perspective of the Crackdown Henry James was one of the famous writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was known as an innovative and independent novelist. One of James' novels, The Turn of the Screw (1898), has aroused much controversy among many critics, and each of them has had a particular interpretation. James's creative writing built a close bond between his novel and his readers. Readers' reactions to The Turn of the Screw can be studied psychologically by analyzing how James developed his story using questionable incidents, an unreliable narrator, unexpected changes, an interesting prologue, and effective images and words. The influences of James's writing on his readership can be clearly explained from a psychological perspective. Readers have their own individual perceptions and experiences which are termed ego. Sigmund Freud emphasized that under the effects of the external world, the ego begins to react in various forms such as storage, adaptation, learning or struggle against external events (2). The external world includes all things that happen outside the human mind, such as activities in real life, in movies, or in books. When readers react to the behaviors of the Governess and the other characters in The Turn of the Screw, it means that their ego is responding to the story which in this case is the outside world. Since each person's perception and experiences are different from another, reactions to this novel are varied. Furthermore, James' story was written in a very sophisticated way, which will likely lead to complex reactions. Henry James skillfully manages to integrate his readers into his story. As readers read T...... middle of paper ......Screw.Works CitedAuchincloss, Louis. Reading Henry James. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975.Freud, Sigmund. Notes on psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969.James, Henry. "The Turn of the Screw". The Turn of the Screw and other short novels. New York: New American Library, 1995.Luckacher, Ned. “‘Hanging Fire’: The Primal Crackdown Scene.” Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories by Henry James:. Ed. Horold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publisher, 1987. 117-132.Nunning, Ansgar. "Unreliable narrator." Encyclopedia of the novel. Ed. Paolo Schellinger. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998. 1386-1388.Wagenknecht, Edward. The Tales of Henry James. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1984.---. Seven masters of supernatural fiction. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.