Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Bernard C. Meyer questioned the validity of attempting to decipher the psychoanalytic sense of a work of art apart from the context in which it was created. He felt that psychoanalytic exegesis demands a broader point of view which includes biographical material about the artist. Dr. Meyer criticized Dr. Barchilon's method of analysis as being similar to attempts at dream interpretation in which the day residue and biographical knowledge of the dreamer are ignored. He noted, for example, that Moby Dick is a complete revision of an earlier book and that its transformation from a romantic whaling story into a great apocalyptic work of art was the consequence of the profound emotional impact that the prose and person of Nathaniel Hawthorne had on Melville. Dr. Meyer suggested that the emotional states of secret sharing, intimacy, and separation, which Melville experienced with Hawthorne, do shed light on the questions posed by Dr. Barchilon in the title of his paper. Although it is tempting to dwell on the homosexual and oedipal components of the work, to do so obscures the more elemental themes that underlie it, such as the quest for fusion and the fantasy of dying together. The importance of the circumcision of the whale resides less in the theme of "castration" than in the theme of conferring upon the wearer of this immense foreskin a mantle of omnipotence. And it was this magical identification, according to Dr. Meyer, that Melville sought in his relationship with Hawthorne; it is the union of souls that can provide the answer to Dr. Barchilon's question, "Why Ishmael, Ahab, why Moby Dick?" Dr. Quentin Anderson questioned Dr. Barchilon's claim that Melville was representing a psychic mobility in Ishmael which might ultimately lead to marriage and children for the castaway. He felt that Melville was incapable of representing autonomous growth or development in character. Melville's fictional creations are shut up in themselves and tend to