Introduction

This book is intended as an introduction neither to English literature nor to psychoanalysis, but to a particular view of the relationship between the two. Our presentation of this relationship depends very much on the reader's sympathy with recent developments in the psychoanalytic view of its own discipline as an aesthetic and imaginative process akin to the experience of literature itself. Literature and psychoanalysis may be seen as different media for exploring the world of the mind, related through congruence and a common drive towards self-knowledge, rather than reductively related in terms of literary phantasy content and psychoanalytic interpretation. It is impossible in a book of this scope to make any attempt at a survey of literary influence amongst psychoanalysts, nor would this necessarily be very revealing; probably only amongst the most recent generation of Kleinian analysts has English literature's influence and status begun to become paramount. It is impossible to do more than sketch the underlying shape of mental action in the work of some of the seminal poetic thinkers in modern English culture (which can be said to start with Shakespeare), highlighting the model of the mind which is being figured implicitly through metaphorical means. Poets and artists have always made their explorations of psychic reality in fictional and metaphorical terms, to overcome the restrictions of the discursive language of their society. In so doing, they have made available symbolic analyses of emotional constellations and thought processes which have guided the philosophy, psychology, and prose fiction of following generations. Again, within the scope of this book, we cannot present comprehensive accounts of writers