Kaylene Emery
When Peter Conrad wrote, "psychoanalysis is meant to be a talking cure. Its greatest boon, however, may be its gift to writers, who silently transcribe what they cannot or dare not say out loud, and in doing-so if they are lucky-heal themselves," it struck me as something I felt I understood on one level and on another I wondered…yes but what about the relationship?
In my experience relationship is an integral part of psychoanalysis so perhaps the creative writers who do heal themselves through writing, do so not so much through luck. Rather through something more tangible received in infancy or somewhere at some crucial developmental point, forgotten and then remembered through the writing process. For those who did not receive something easily retrieved or too awful to strive toward, rather as something to be avoided...it may not be so simple.
Maurice I liked very much your words, "I may have thought about it for hours or even weeks but when spoken it speaks itself". Those words bring to mind Bion's O, at least my understanding of it which is not something I can articulate. At this point in my life I can only resonate with it.
If it is true that the general public is showing greater interest in biography, auto-biography and memoir, than the novel itself it may be because we are so hungry for real contact, real anything. Perhaps its a good thing that it is no longer enough to be told a story even a true story. I always want to meet the author and each time I have done so it has been both wonderful and ordinary because always...they are a person first, as I am.
Freud and his contemporaries came from great privilege, with time and opportunity to talk and think about the issues you raise in your dinner table conversation. This fact alone may mean that "good enough" was already present when they picked up their pens or took their position behind the couch.
On the point of internal/external constraints I think the management of external constraints require us to use our brain, which is very different to identifying, managing and modifying internal constraints where we call on our mind, something I believe that can never be done outside of relationship no matter how creative the writer, who after all works in isolation playing with ideas as a word smith. "When spoken it speaks itself", to me is creative writing and it resonates creating the sense that we are talking together rather than reading/writing text. We can delete all Freudian slips with ease and work on our piece until it indeed shines with creativity but without relationship it might just as well be a love affair with Narcissus.
Kaylene Emery
