The romances and tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne have long been recognized as inviting the kind of attention and speculation that psychoanalysis practices as art and craft. David B. Diamond comes to the romances of Hawthorne equipped with a set of skills and tools that distinguish him among those critics who use psychoanalysis to interpret Hawthorne’s fictions. As a practicing psychoanalyst who has spent decades listening to people seeking clarity and compassion, he knows that interpreting silences is at least as important as attending to the words that are uttered in the consulting room. It is on these silences—the gaps in the texts—that Diamond focuses his attention in this study of the four romances that define Hawthorne’s canon: The Scarlet Letter , The House of Seven Gables , The Blithedale Romance , and The Marble Faun .