We want to comment on the essay by Mark Kanzer for its bearing on our evaluation of articles dealing with the psychoanalytic approach to literature and art.

Much of such criticism centers in an abstruse discussion of “the idea,” “the meaning” etc., reading in part as a “case” study and argued by invoking technical psychoanalytic terminology.—In our view, such an approach tends to bypass the specific and concrete sensuous quality of the literary and art work under discussion in that it could just as well apply to a tract, an essay or other forensic presentation. What is called for is to show how the psychoanalytic import becomes manifest through the artist's imagery and metaphor, choice of language and other aesthetic forms in the work.

By its detailed and careful analysis of the dog imagery in Julius Caesar and associated stylistic and ritualistic devices, Mark Kanzer's paper approximates for us a model for the psychoanalytic examination of literature and art.