A Thing of Temperament

2008/01/01 by Cathleen Rountree · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Poetry #Literature #Racism #Feminism #Nobel laureate #Art #Marxist philosophy #Temperament #Art history #Philosophy #Psychoanalysis #Sociology #Theology #Gender studies #Psychology #Personality #Law

paper · doi:10.1525/jung.2008.2.1.62

openalex publication_date 2008/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

In the spring of 1998, Cathleen Rountree interviewed Doris Lessing at her north London home in the west section of Hampstead. Lessing, the author of more than thirty books—novels, short stories, reportage, poems, plays, and two librettos—received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. She is best known for her proto-feminist novel The Golden Notebook (1962) and her series of science fiction novels, including The Sirian Experiments (1981) and the two-volume Canopus in Argos. In this in-depth interview, “A Thing of Temperament: An Interview with Doris Lessing,” the Nobel Laureate discusses her wide-ranging interests and concerns—the new theories of psychiatry, Marxist theory, feminism, racism, Sufism, the sciences, the destruction of the environment—all of which have found their way into the writing of this most original and unconventional woman.

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