All artistically creative people have undergone oral masochistic regression, and they employ mechanisms peculiar to them. Creative writing is an episodic temporary sublimation, preceded by a painful and depressive struggle; it is unlike other forms of successful sublimation. 'The creative writer is a perpetual defendant

standing trial before the tribunal of his superego', accused of voyeurism and of wanting to be refused by the image of the preoedipal mother. Creative writing is an unconscious denial of these 'accusations', the work expressing not the unconscious wishes but rather the defenses against them.