WILLIAM PHILLIPS
11
ests. Also, conservative governments have to appease their constitu–
encies, which often have been led to think war can be averted if we
take a more benign view of the Russians - though, presumably, the
President knows better. And they are often no clearer in formulating
or pursuing their aims than the liberals or the left. How else explain
the fact that there actually has been very little difference between the
main lines of the foreign policies of the Nixon, the Carter, and the
Eisenhower administrations? The.difference has been mainly in their
rhetoric- and in small matters. And when rhetoric in foreign affairs
outreaches action, then we deceive ourselves, not our adversaries.
* * *
There is an enormous body of writing on the subject of litera–
ture and psychoanalysis, most of it bad, some good. I have read
much of this material, and I even have added to it my own observa–
tions on the relation between the creative and the psychological. I
also have edited - and co-edited with Edith Kurzweil- other studies
in the field. But not until recently has it occurred to me that the ques–
tion of the relation has not been posed properly. As everyone knows,
if you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong answer.
It suddenly seemed obvious to me that psychoanalytic criticism
is a method that has to be related to other critical methods, not di–
rectly to literature.
It
is like asking about the relation of psychoana–
lytic criticism to science.
It
has been argued - quite persuasively–
that the major themes of human existence, which have been un–
covered by Freud, such as the Oedipus complex, have supplied the
thematic material for a number of major works. But psychoanalysis
and psychoanalytic critics have been able to relate this observation
to the quality of a work or to its other meanings, though some light
has been cast on certain aspects of literature, usually on the explicit
"content." However, such an exercise is actually a somewhat more
specific application of the truism that life is related to art. Only in
rare cases have psychoanalytic critics integrated the more sophis–
ticated approaches of modern criticism into their own thinking.
As a result, we still do not have a clear idea of the relation of lit–
erature to psychoanalysis beyond the now accepted idea that the psy–
chological drives that form the basis of psychoanalytic theory playa
prominent role in the major texts of Western literature.
The reason, I believe, for this lack of clarity is that the question
should have been posed as the relation of psychoanalysis to literary
criticism. For if the findings of psychoanalysis are to be applied to
literature, they must be related to the methods of understanding and
