Regret: The Persistence of the Possible

Regret is a painful feeling that we tend to view as an emotional indulgence, writes Landman. Yet, regret over mistakes, missed opportunties, failure or misfortunes can serve constructive ends by spurring us to pragmatic self-improvement or active engagement with the world, she maintains. Despite its stilted academic prose, this thought-provoking study rewards the reader with a wide-angled view of regret as seen through the prism of novels, poems, psychological theory and research, anthropology and decision theory. Using four classic novels--Dickens's Great Expectations , Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground , Henry James's The Ambassadors and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway , which, in Landman's schematic framework exemplify romantic, tragic, comic and ironic worldviews, respectively--she argues that how we experience regret depends greatly on our personal outlook and cultural values. Landman teaches psychology at the University of Michigan. (Nov.)