The author’s thesis is that Anaïs Nin used the creative process as a way to mourn and to individuate. Nin suffered from narcissistic conflicts which were experienced at a phallic-oedipal level. As a result of a traumatic relationship with her real father, who did not provide mirroring self-reflection and self-affirmation, Nin’s desire was focused on the figure of an internal father—an extension of herself with phallic omnipotent connotations. Those narcissistic strivings were contained in a wish for an adoring mirroring reflection from the “masculine other.” Kavaler-Adler believes Nin was able to work through her narcissistic pathology by combining poetic and analytic exploration in her writing. She recreated her father and then confronted the fallacies of her idealization, as well as her suppressed anger that had kept her bound to her wishes for his mirroring admiration. Her fictional abandonment of her father was not vindictive but occurred through insight. It involved a renunciation of her idealization and a mourning for its loss.