Poetry and Psychoanalysis

I recently wrote an essay on William Blake's "Four Zoas" and Freud's

paper on "Splitting of the Ego". Whereas for Freud and contemporary

psychoanalysts, splitting is an ego-defensive mechanism, for Blake

who considered Albion to be ancient man who is close to Nature

splitting is a complicated process which separates man from his "zoas"

which is a Greek concept symbolising man's different energies. Blake's

precocious development as a visionary poet with an acute intuition

considered the splitting process finally, as apocalyptic : once Los,

symbolising man's Fall, rejoins Urizen, man's industrial emanation,

he destroys the world in order to begin anew. Both the bard and

the psychoanalysts agree that initial splitting will continue to cause

further and further splitting. My essay can be read on "Wild Court",

King College's literary website. EB