Discussion

IT'S BEEN A GREAT PLEASURE for me to meet Dr. Holland in person this evening—and a relief. I'd been half convinced he was really a conglomerate, a major industry. It's not just that he is immensely productive, but he covers so much intellectual ground in each one of his books. His curiosity, energy and grasp of so many fields is astonishing.

Dr. Holland, tonight, is showing us only the tip of his iceberg. His ambitious project is to conceptualize how texts give rise to meanings—and he has omitted, understandably, in this brief presentation what he has put together from his vast readings in linguistics, philosophy, literary theory, and neurophysiology: his ideas towards a theory of reading.

What he's done in this experiment is use the general psychoanalytic principal that our psychic life is more coherent and connected than appears. Specifically, he connects character (or identity) and linguistic behavior (or meaning). He explores the reader's "countertransference" to the poem, as he puts it. In another analogy that occurs to me, the poem becomes a kind of collective dream put into the minds of its readers who then associate to it, finding its meaning, in their own terms. We, studying this process over his shoulder, so to speak, are enriched not only because the associative/interpretive process in ourselves is aroused but also because new trains of meaning are set in motion.

I see my job this evening to help build from us to him, matching the bridge he speaks of building himself, to welcome him into our Interpersonal Institute by enlarging even further the scope of his inquiry and enterprise. Specifically, I want to get us going on his project by making some specific suggestions about what an interpersonal reading of this poem might open up for further thought and stimulation.

Let me start with some speculations about what I think might be going on in the very process of inquiry he presents to us with his students. In other words, before even looking at Emily