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Merle Molofsky's first three words in her title are inversely mirrored by the following final three words in the title. I feel curious to find out what she has in her mind—or in her memory. As I begin her article, I also start to pay more attention to what comes into my mind.
The author sets the stage for readers with various quotes. After paying homage to Freud, she adds her concept of culture to her conviction that “psychoanalysis has clearly emerged as a worldwide cultural force, defined by interdisciplinary cultural (italics, mine) knowledge”. Given the controversy in some psychoanalytic thinking around the concepts of “interdisciplinary” and “culture”, often not being the mark of a “real”, psychoanalyst, Ms. Molofsky already throws her hat into a controversial ring. Ms. Molofsky emphasizes a dichotomy here when Freud speaks about his discovery of the scientific method while maintaining that the poets and philosophers discover the unconscious.
Following her word play of the first three words in the title, Ms. Molofsky cites author Lionel Trilling commenting about Freud …“ probing the eye of the scientist the creating eye of the poet”. Another citation, among many in the opening pages, is by Muriel Rukeyser who maintains “the universe of poetry is in the universe of emotional truth. Our material is the way we feel and the way we remember…. For poetry is, at every instant, concerned with meaning” (p. 23; p. 161).
I read the author's words and am both confused as to where she is going with her quotes about words, their meaning, her definition and use of culture, poetry, and the deeper role of interdisciplinary ideas in her psychoanalytic canon. The quoted passages make definitive statements and/or interpretations without context in the quotes cited or what they mean to the author—as though “answers” may equal a truth of some kind, i.e., “emotional truth” and “our material is the way we feel and remember”; (Rukeyser, Muriel 1949, 1996 “The Life of Poetry”, Paris Press,