“The Craving” – a Psychological Short Story “The Craving” by Nathaniel Hawthorne may require a correct interpretation by a psychoanalyst because it is truly a “psychological” story in its themes and in the approach to the representation of characters - and this essay will amply demonstrate these statements. Henry Seidel Canby in "A Skeptic Independent with His Time and His Past" speaks of the value of Hawthorne's "literary psychology": This irreverent generation [of the 1950s] made fun of Hawthorne's troubled souls that torture themselves for peccadilloes such as adultery and are morally destroyed by obsessions that (so it is assumed) any good psychoanalyst could remove. Studies of nerves seem to us more important than studies of morality, and we are certainly right in supposing that common sense and a practical knowledge of science would have prevented half of literature's victims. Hawthorne might retort that without moral sense there are obviously no moral tragedies, and an observer of either era might add that the value of his literary psychology lies not in the actions analyzed but in the framework of a struggle between right and wrong. where the state of mind of the characters in conflict is immensely significant without regard to the rightness of what they think is right or the wrongness of what they think is wrong (62). There is probably unanimity among literary critics that Hawthorne is a "psychological" writer. Consider some of their statements chosen at random from various criticisms of Hawthorne's literary works: Stanley T. Williams in “Hawthorne's Puritan Mind” says: What he wrote of New England was. . . .the subconscious mind of New England. Era. . . . unforgettable stories of afflicted men and women...... center of paper...... Collection of critical essays, edited by AN Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. McPherson, Hugo. “Hawthorne's Use of Mythology.” In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.Melville, Herman. “Hawthorne and His Mosses,” The Literary World 17, 24 August 1850. http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/hahm.htmlPeckham, Morse. “The Development of Hawthorne Romanticism.” In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.Swisher, Clarice. "Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography." In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.Wagoner, Hyatt. "Nathaniel Hawthorne." In Six Nineteenth-Century American Novelists, edited by Richard Foster. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968.