632
PARTISAN REVIEW
that is not content with surface claims or appearances. Such an
approach is properly concerned with the rudiments of psycholo–
gical motivation for the creative act and with the effect of charac–
ter formation on the creative product. Edel's conclusions remain
commonsensical and do not overstep these limitations.
But practicing clinicians, who are more acutely aware of
methodological difficulties and more steeped in the subtleties of
the mind and in the specificity of unconscious fantasy , can pro–
ceed further. Works by Selma Fraiberg on Kafka and by Francis
Baudry on Flaubert, to name just two examples, belie the heavy–
handed pathographies of earlier analysts who attempted to re–
duce all literary efforts to their genetic roots in the infantile neur–
osis of the artist. (Edel is in part reacting
to
these clumsy efforts in
suggesting a new discipline.) The works by Fraiberg and Baudry
are noteworthy in their respect for what clinical conclusions the
data allow them to draw and for their awareness of psychological
complexity and pitfall. And the long years of clinical practice
permit subtle distinctions that a critic cannot hope
to
make. For
instance, the assumption that the creative act is an attempt to re–
solve intrapsychic conflict seems to underlie several of Edel's es–
says. We need to
be
aware, however, that the creative act may also
function in other ways. It may represent an id-striving, or a de–
fense against one, for instance. And the intrapsychic function
may shift within the same character, as the author's relationship
to a particular character may shift within a work, a chapter, or a
paragraph. The same character can represent different aspects of
the author at different moments, with the shifts in identification
occurring in the context of changes in action or in narrative per–
spective.
There is ironically something uesful in Edel's choice of the
term " literary psychology": its
de facto
recognition of the limita–
tion of what Edel actually does. Although literary psychology is
not psychoanalysis or applied psychoanalysis, it is a practical,
useful offshoot that opens up the unconscious processes of the
writer for literary study. However reluctant the literary commun–
ity might be to accept this uncovered depth, Edel performs an in–
valuable service by insisting on its existence and persisting in its
demonstration.
GAIL S. REED
