Linda Loman and Cognitive Psychology in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman by Robert C. Evans Linda Loman, the wife of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, often receives much less attention than the many male characters who mostly populate the drama. Her husband and sons, of course, are the three most prominent characters, but most of the important secondary characters are also males. A few minor female roles are included, but, with the possible exception of the person called “The Woman,” the significance of these other women seems very minor indeed. 1 Linda, however, is clearly a central figure, and she is arguably far more sensible, intelligent, grounded, selfless, and levelheaded than either her husband or her two sons. By contrast with her, the major male figures seem far less emotionally mature. They seem far more selfish and unstable and far less equipped to deal with the everyday realities of life. They tend to be so wrapped up in their own private fantasies that they have trouble coping with the necessities of everyday existence. Linda, for the most part, is different. She is the sort of person who deserves not only attention but also admiration, not only from readers and playgoers in general but perhaps especially, as I will ultimately suggest, from feminists. Why is Linda so much more rational, mature, and, in a word, stoic than her husband and children? Why can she deal with the world in such an adult fashion when the men closest to her cannot (or at least do not)? Some of the answers to these questions can, perhaps, be provided by the insights associated with what is now known as cognitive psychology, although this relatively new development in the history of psychological theory actually has much in common with ancient Greek and Roman stoicism. Unlike Freudian psychoanalysis, which emphasized complicated and often implausible explanations of psychological problems, and which often tried to trace those problems to remote causes in early childhood, and which frequently tied the problems to complex sexual roots, cognitive psychology, at least in one of its most popular versions, is much simpler, much less grounded in theories that seem almost impossible to prove, and much more in line with standard common sense. In essence, cognitive psychologists argue that emotional and psychological problems are often the results of failures to reason properly. The ways we think help determine the ways we feel. If we can change our thinking by making it more rational, more logical, and more levelheaded, we are likely to actually feel better. 2 Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Therapy In fact, one of the clearest and most popular of all books that attempt to explain and promote cognitive psychology is titled Feeling Good. Its author, David D. Burns, freely acknowledges his debt to such pioneering cognitive psychologists as Arnold T. Beck, who wrote the book’s original preface. Burns not only lucidly explains the basic assumptions of cognitive psychology but shows how those assumptions can easily be applied in daily life to help readers cope with serious psychological problems, including deep depression. Burns begins by noting that at the time his book was originally published, in 1980, “very few people had heard of cognitive therapy.” By 1999, however, the year of the publication of the second, updated edition, “cognitive therapy [had] caught on in a big way among mental health professionals and the general public as well.” In fact, it had by that time “become one of the most widely practiced and most intensely researched forms of psychotherapy in the world” (xvii), and the same is true today. Cognitive psychology is much more widely respected and practiced in actual departments of psychology than Freudian psychotherapy, although Freudianism (and its even more complicated offspring, Lacanian theory), still holds wide sway in many departments of English. What is cognitive psychology and how does one practice cognitive therapy? Burns explains that the “powerful principle at the heart of cognitive therapy” is that “your feelings result from the messages you give yourself. In fact, your thoughts often have much more to do with how you feel than what is actually happening in your life.” As Burns readily admits, this “isn’t a new idea. Nearly two thousand years ago, the