In her early thirties Emily Dickinson wrote the enigmatic My Life Had Stood—a Loaded Gun, a poem which has defied attempts at interpretation by literary scholars. Cody, in a convincing verse by verse analysis, contends the poem describes the breakthrough and acceptance of phallic sadistic and aggressive drive derivatives which previously had been stifled. He relates the poem to a psychotic episode and recovery therefrom experienced by the poet in her late twenties.