The dynamic functions of the act of reading

This study of 68 avid fiction readers demonstrated that for those who love fiction, deeply personal meanings pervade the act of becoming absorbed in a work and shape the ways that they can use fiction in their lives as a whole. Each respondent had a unique, largely unconscious relationship to the act of reading, a relationship that expressed themes and addressed functions related to self-organisation, real and fantasized relatedness, affect regulation, and the repetition or working through of conflict. To the extent that these inner determinants of the reading experience became rigid and unyielding, readers derived less newness, richness, and depth, though not necessarily less benefit, from engagement in fiction. Greater flexibility allowed reading to take place in what Winnicott called potential space. It enabled readers to involve themselves in fiction without sacrificing either the work's uniqueness or their own inner life, so permitting them to create new experience.