Literature and its mirroring affect on psyche: The case of Harry Potter

This hermeneutical case study investigates the literal and storied mirrors displayed within two primary texts. The first text is the 7-volume series penned by J. K. Rowling about a young boy wizard named Harry Potter, the Harry Potter Series, and the second is Monet's the Japanese Bridge at Giverny. Through the discipline of depth and analytical psychology, this body of work delves into analysis of bridging to individual, collective, and cultural mirrors in a mimetic move towards understanding the impact of literature and its affective power on the psyche to reveal the contents within. The use of mirror and its reflection within this dissertation desired to expose the turning toward the image, the symbolic language embedded within the unconscious to make meaning from the multidimensionality of literature. The exchange between art as visual language (Monet) and literature as storied language (Rowling) enables mirroring in multiple ways, thus providing image and symbol to project psyche's reflection of what is transpiring through an individual and a collective transcendence into an informed cultural understanding.;This dissertation aimed to answer the research question that given the enormous popularity of Harry Potter and his story, what mode of inquiry is appropriate for dealing with the collective cultural psychic impact? To what extent can the mirroring quality of the Harry Potter Series serve as both individual and collective diagnosis and healing process? Through the research, the findings assert that just as dreams can be analyzed for psychic content; similarly, literature can be analyzed as a bridge to the reader's soul into reflective awareness wherein wounds are brought to light and healing may be discovered. Ultimately, individuals have the built-in capacity to heal any wound if they only learn how to use the bridge of psyche as a reflecting medium through literature. As the individual heals, the collective heals, and then the culture can begin its healing transcendence.;Keywords: Harry Potter; bibliotherapy; depth psychology; cultural criticism; narcissism; dream; literature; art; Rowling, J. K.; Mirror of Erised; bridge.