My position in this discussion will be a skeptical one. I shall question the value of psychoanalysis as an instrument of artistic criticism—certainly, I shall question the view that it has a preeminent role in that enterprise. Further, I shall question some of the suggestions put forth in the Chairman's outline for the panel, suggestions having to do with the position of the reader vis-à-vis the text and the author. I shall then try, if not to state, then to delimit the role that psychoanalysis can play in the business of critical appraisal of literature.

The history of psychoanalytic ventures into the field of literary and artistic criticism is a very checkered one, and one which has not done much credit to the field. Reductionism has, by and large, been the name of the game, and even now there are serious practitioners of the genre who seek to explain, say, the power of Macbeth's “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”