From the author: Interview on the topic of the influence of literature on personality for North-West Television. Interview: The influence of literature on personality - Does the choice of literature depend on a person’s character? How do gender differences influence the choice: what literature do men prefer and what literature do women prefer? Rather, it’s the other way around. Literature influences character development. Images of literary heroes and their behavior often serve as a kind of model for a child with which he compares his behavior. Regarding gender, there is an opinion that women read more, especially in fiction. Men, on average, prefer specialized literature. This is explained by the clichéd idea that women are more emotional than men. In fact, the main factor is education. If a child is taught to “pok his finger in a book” from an early age, if his parents themselves read a lot and enjoy reading, then there is a high probability that he will also grow up to be a book lover. - Getting carried away by reading romance novels, some women become captivated by a fictional world. In the books, a man combines all the desired qualities - he is strong, courageous and at the same time gentle and romantic, with a good sense of humor, successful, able to “read the minds” of his chosen one, etc. Life is full of adventures, and at the end of the book, as a rule, a happy ending awaits. As a result, the woman compares the relationships of literary characters with those existing in real life. If a woman is alone at the moment, she creates an image of an ideal man, often similar to one or another literary hero. How to separate the fictional and real world? What is the danger of excessive daydreaming? What can the desire to “live like in a book” lead to and is it possible? Only a naive teenage young lady who is deprived of any male communication can have an idea of ​​the opposite from romance novels. Although in our cynical times such girls are rare. If all of the above is characteristic of an older lady, then we can say that in her worldview she has not gone far from a teenager. Idealization is certainly dangerous. It prevents a person from being fully realized in real life. In severe cases, we can talk about neurotic disorders. And it is not a love affair that is the reason for idealization. A woman may not read anything, and at the same time say, “There are no men like my dad in his youth now.” Lately, scenes of violence or pornographic episodes have often been found in books, films, and theatrical productions. How do you feel about such “manifestations” of art? To what extent, in your opinion, are such fragments justified in literature? Should children be protected from reading such literature? If explicit scenes related to sex and violence are often found in the books of a certain author, could this indicate the author’s mental disorders or negative experiences he has had? Violence and explicit sexuality have always been and will be in people’s lives, and these tendencies are also looking for a form of expression. How appropriate this is is for art connoisseurs to decide. Children need to be protected from such literature, of course. Such scenes are charged with the highest possible level of affect, which the child’s fragile psyche cannot withstand, which is fraught with traumatization with sad or even tragic consequences. As for the author, the motives can be very different. Gaining popularity through scandalousness, or exploring the passions of the human soul, like Dostoevsky. - Is it possible to determine mental disorders by the literary work of the author? Or is it worth separating what is written from the author’s real life experience? There is such a protective mental mechanism - sublimation - the redirection of desires prohibited by society into science or creativity. Those. we can say that at least the hidden parts of the author’s psyche are involved in the scenes he describes. - What is the reason for the popularity of provocative literature? It touches the “living”, the “sore spot” of society. She has an aggressive spirit, she appeals to.