In this panel we will explore what and how psychoanalysis can contribute to literary criticism. We will not assume as a basic axiom that psychoanalysis can illuminate literature; we will have to earn our place outside the consulting room. Nor will we assume that literature, if only we read it correctly, will clarify psychoanalysis. What we will try to do instead is delineate certain theoretical constructs and clinical skills which psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts can contribute to literary criticism. Kris (1952) explained the eagerness with which psychoanalysts turned to the study of art in terms of the need to establish the validity of the earliest psychoanalytic hypotheses. Art could be used to demonstrate the ubiquity within the normal and creative of constructs originally used to explain or describe psycho-pathology.