The Net of Associations: Psychoanalytic States of Mind Brought to the Page

In my research, the concept of emotional aliveness as a stated aim of psychoanalytic work (Ogden 2010, 320) offers a way for me to consider a quality of vitality that I want to heighten in my writing practice – a quality that is in the words, in their ‘rhythmic, melodic articulation’ (Kristeva 1984, 446), and between the words, in the net of associations they create.

Psychoanalytic techniques for associative thinking and noticing (Freud’s free association and Bion’s ‘reverie’ state of mind (1962a)) then offer my research a key tool for approaching a creative writing practice as a relational experience from which the affective and emotional content that arises might be used to extend and enliven my conceptual and craft choices.

These techniques from psychoanalysis are explored outside of the therapeutic relation, with respect to their potential in creative writing process and pedagogy. Ultimately, they contribute to a revised psychoanalytic hermeneutics for the creative writer – one that moves away from a hermeneutics of the ‘repressed’ and toward expanded fields of psychoanalytic thinking.

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