Can the Writer 'Resign' from his Calling

In treating writers afflicted with 'writer's block', there invariably comes a time when one is confronted with the objection that 'the best solution' would be to resign from the torturing profession. Arguments range from 'Perhaps I am not a writer at all?' through 'It isn't worth the torture and effort' and 'Why did I have to choose such a monstrous profession, instead of living the peaceful life of the average person', to 'Perhaps I have written myself dry—or perhaps I never could write in the first place and what I have done was just a flash in the pan—and now I'm definitely through'.

In some writers, these questions are purely rhetorical, and are not seriously meant. In other cases, especially those of writers who make their livings in a tangential profession, these questions are descriptive of a seriously intended deliberation.

The melancholy truth is that the problem is a sham. The resignation may be spuriously or earnestly submitted; the dictum 'I'm through with writing' may be stated with fury, determination, or half-tragic acceptance: these variations do not affect the outcome, for the inner conscience does not accept such resignations.

I have never met a writer who successfully—and without endless depression—resigned from the writing endless depression—resigned from the writing profession. Moreover, I have never met a temporarily sterile writer who did not suffer intensely from his creative impotence. Finally, theoretical considerations, connected with genetic reasons for writing, make it highly improbable that such a calm 'resigner' could exist in the first place.

The clinical fact is incontestable: creative impotence, manifesting itself in 'writer's block', is accompanied by intense guilt, depression, self-reproach. Also on record is the fact that this feeling of depression has no connexion with the real or imaginary 'talent' of the writer.

It is no less remarkable that, despite extensive analytic experience with writers, comprising more than thirty-si