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William Wordsworth, author of the indelible phrase “the child is father to the man,” deserves the psychoanalyst's attention not only because he was one of the most perceptive writers about childhood, but also because he has come to be seen as an increasingly “more complex and more complete artist whose underlying theme is self-examination” (Everett, 1959, pp. 338, 350).
For these reasons he has been regarded as a forerunner of Freud. Reading Wordsworth brings Freud to mind because “nothing appealed to him more than to trace the subtler appreciations of adult life to the deep rooted instincts of childhood.” He believed, furthermore, that “nothing that passes into the deep reservoir of the subconscious mind can be lost …” (Patton, 1966, p. 153).
In a masterful essay on the poet, Lawrence Durrell (1973) links Wordsworth tightly to Freud, perhaps to the point of exaggeration. Although Durrell himself may not have prompted assessments by psychoanalysts, his view is increasingly shared by many sophisticated literary scholars, Christensen (1946), Trilling (1951), Ferry (1959), Douglas (1968), Onorato (1971), and Hartman (1977) among them. Finally, the poet's major and most successful works, so evidently autobiographical, are yielding their secrets.
To Durrell, “everything—even [Wordsworth's] less successful work—becomes significant and enriching.” In one of his lesser-known works Wordsworth reveals his exceptional perceptiveness as a psychologist