Psychoanalytic biography has been chronically beset by the inverted pyramid effect: a bewildering variety of manifestations at the surface, all resting on a few etiological molecules. To be sure, some molecules are more important than others, and as in embryonic development, influences at critical phases of mental development have consequences out of proportion to their apparent magnitude. The trouble is that often too many consequences flow from too few recognizable influences, and the principle of overdetermination has to be invoked on faith. The crux of the difficulty has been exposed frequently; books cannot talk back, as patients can, and reconstructions of the unconscious memories of authors cannot be scrutinized in the light of present memories and affects.

John Cody, a psychiatrist, in this very engaging and massively researched psychoanalytic biography of Emily Dickinson, reminds his readers of the biographer's advantages over the analyst working with the living patient. His subject's life is over, and it is a whole