Insights, epiphanies, and working through: on healing, self-healing, and creativity in the writer and the analyst.

The author discusses similarities and differences between the way that writers and psychoanalysts go about their respective tasks. He raises questions about the role of creativity and its sources in both these vocations. He illustrates his points by relating a brief clinical vignette from his work with a patient who was a writer, and by sharing the description of a creative story he wrote many years before becoming an analyst. After presenting a story by James Joyce as also illustrative of these themes, the author concludes by comparing and contrasting the inner experiences of the writer and the analyst.

On the adolescent neurosis.

The author discusses the lifelong impact of adolescence in shaping the adult psyche. Some patients may appear to be as influenced by conflicts of adolescence and the individual solutions arrived at during this period as they are by conflicts and solutions of the oedipal phase, the author maintains. The subphases of early, middle, and late adolescence are discussed both in terms of a review of the psychoanalytic literature and of representative works of literary fiction. Illustrative clinical vignettes are presented as well.

James Joyce and Molly Bloom: reflections on their relationship.

The relationship between James Joyce and his memorable creation, Molly Bloom, is explored in relation to Joyce's remarkable creativity and various factors that may have contributed to it. A character forged primarily out of Joyce's perceptions of his wife Nora and memories of his mother, Molly also contains aspects of Joyce's warded-off and wished-for self-representation. A focus on both biographical and dynamic contributions to the creation of Molly helps to illuminate aspects of Joyce's psychology.