May 25, 2003. I am delighted to have an opportunity to respond to Françoise Meltzer's thoughtful critique of my paper on Flaubert. Reading her letter I am aware of the gaps and misunderstandings that can separate two disciplines struggling to cooperate with each other and reach a common language instead of developing an adversarial relationship. I have experienced the struggle firsthand in my participation for seventeen years in the study group on psychoanalysis and literature of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

Some of the author's objections to my paper seem to be based on different assumptions we make about a work of literature, others on a misunderstanding of what I was exactly trying to do, and still others on what I would consider personal biases and assumptions that she makes