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In 1982, the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis celebrated its 50th anniversary by sponsoring an interdisciplinary conference on psychoanalysis and biography. This volume is an outgrowth of the conference, which had as its central theme, biography as a psychological document involving both the writer and the
reader in creative dialogue. This volume's first part is titled, “Twin Paths to Creativity—The Biographer and His Subject.” Leon Edel, the keynote conference speaker, leads off with his paper, “Confessions of a Biographer.” Over the past 25 years, Edel has written five scholarly volumes of a comprehensive biography of Henry James. In this paper, Edel describes some of his subjective experiences in familiarizing himself with the intimate details of Henry James's life to the point where he felt emotionally fused with him.
Edel's confessions concern his own personal life and how it influenced his psychological understanding of Henry James. Edel is selective and reveals some significant historical facts about his own life but withholds other important data. He discloses how he grew up in a Jewish family within a Protestant community on the Canadian prairie. He felt like an outsider there and this feeling continued when his family moved to Montreal. He attended McGill University where he was surrounded by older, more worldly students of literature. His McGill professor suggested that he write his thesis on Henry James, a writer unknown to Edel.
Edel asks the question, “Why did I latch on to Henry James? What invisible attachment was formed and why did it last as long as it did?” One explanation is the similarity in atmosphere found in both the James and Edel homes. Both families encouraged their children in freedom of thought and applauded artistic and intellectual ideas. Edel was also “reared on nostalgia and the elegies of lost countries, a sense of exile and disinheritance” (p. 24). Henry James poignantly described similar feelings when he wrote of the Americans