James Ellroy and Psychology

Pic courtesy The American Library Association, Flickr

“Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; / Breath's a ware that will not keep. / Up, lad; when the journey's over / There'll be time enough for sleep.”

- A.E. Housman, UK scholar / poet

Blood's a Rover is the third piece in James Ellroy's Underworld Trilogy, a saga I spent the whole of 2011 reading. The books provide a riveting fictionalised depiction of historical American events between 1958 and 1972. There are plenty of reviews out there on the net, so I won't clog up cyberspace repeating other people, but I will say that Rover is a good book. The hallucinogen sequences were very memorable, set in Haiti where various characters learn to live and die. It's well worth your time hammering through American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand to get to this. The book took me AGES to read- partly because of its size, and partly because of juggling it with another book. In fact, I started it around the end of September and was reading it sat outside my flat in the sun, topless, on the 1^st October, which was bizarre enough. I finished it on New Year's Eve, just before I went out. I just spent the whole of 2011 on a James Ellroy trilogy. What a journey.

I also read Teach Yourself Psychology, a good introduction to the science of understanding people. Dr Nicky Hayes takes us step by step through how psychology affects us, taking in the workplace, sports, education and how and why we think in certain ways. In fact, this is a subject that could help anyone, no matter their occupation or lifestyle. It's a good, plain-English insight into a fascinating field. I was reading the book from the perspective of someone with memory difficulties who has been in and out of psychology departments for most of my life. The book frequently comments on the way people remember-and forget- things, and used case studies to prove certain scientific facts. One trait that many people possess is a tendency to imagine certain things and mistake those thoughts for moments in real life. For instance, one case study involved a group of scientists showing some subjects a video of two cars colliding. “Half were asked, 'How fast were the cars going when they hit one another?', while the other half were asked 'How fast were the cars going when they smashed into one another?'

“A week later, they were asked whether there had been any broken glass in the film. There hadn't been any, and those who had been asked about the cars hitting one another remembered that. But those who had been asked about the cars smashing into one another distinctly remembered broken glass strewn around the road, and were surprised to find that it wasn't there when they saw the film again.”

This is something that happens to me a lot. For instance, I could be “reminding” someone of something they said to me, only to find out I've imagined it and mistaken what must have been a daydream for something that really happened. I've also found people telling me that I've said certain things, when I've known that what I actually said was quite different.

One thing the book taught me is that, even though I've got these difficulties, I'm actually not that different to most people. I make pretty much all of the same mistakes as everyone else, only on a much more frequent basis.

The book also taught me one other important lesson. Psychology affects sports, and athletes need to be not only physically prepared to win, but mentally prepared too. As well as sports, the science can affect academics in a similar way. Many athletes- and students- will use a method called visualisation, where “the person imagines him/herself going through the whole activity successfully- winning the race, or passing the exam, or whatever it is. By concentrating only on positive thoughts, and on systematically imagining the successful scene, the person leaves no mental room for the doubts and worries which would add to their level of stress.” Dr Hayes later notes that the hurdler David Hemery used this strategy the year he won an Olympic gold medal.

Even though I'm a long way from being the person who should be telling you this, I'll tell you anyway: people discuss self belief to the extent that it becomes a cliché, a mindless mantra: if you believe you can do something, you can. I always thought it was psycho-babble- if I believe I can knock a building down with my bare hands, I'm a lunatic, not a confident and successful demolition expert.

But then, I don't want to knock a building down. I want to be a successful writer, and I want to overcome a social anxiety issue- a fear of women, put simply. That's all it is. So, according to Dr Hayes, if I see myself having no discomfort, if I imagine myself talking to women- and more- with no fear at all, then there will be no fear at all.

And I am having that Goddamn Knopf contract.