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This paper takes for its starting point the article by J. A. Passmore in the previous issue of the same journal, and agrees that the exposure of the roots of romanticism by psycho-analysis should in the end help the science of æsthetics, but objects that most psycho-analysts fail to make the distinction between phantasy as the subject-matter of the work, and phantasy as a distorting influence on it.
The important point in the exposure of the roots of romanticism is the demonstration of the 'backward-looking character of phantasy', the restoration of infantile bliss or even—with Rank—of a pre-natal condition. Thus it may be true of Romantic Art 'that its constructions are an overcoming of the birth trauma, a compromise between what we long for and what we are confronted with—this compromise frequently taking the form of the projection of the ideal state into the future'.
This theme is developed with literary illustrations, and reference to the 'Oedipus saving phantasy' as mentioned by Ernest Jones in his Papers on Psycho-Analysis.