W.B. Yeats is one of the pre-eminent poets in English of the twentieth century. His verse is characterized by its accessibility and emotional power, and a meticulous craftsmanship in the service of achieving the desired effect. Yeats paid a similarly workmanlike attention to the task of creating his own identity, in a self-conscious attempt to ‘remake’ himself. This paper examines Yeats's life and poetry in order to explore the psychological origins of both his artistic creativity and his need to remake himself. It looks beyond his identification with his father's literary and artistic ideals, to evidence from the poetry for an early developmental experience of absence or failure of the maternal function. The available biographical detail from Yeats's childhood and family is consistent with this conjecture.