Blake and Freud

"In shape, style, and argument, Blake and Freud is an original and provocative work. It is readable, lively, always intelligent, daring and speculative." -Harold Bloom, Yale University
"The conjunction of Blake and Freud is a rich and intriguing one, and in this clearly and vigorously written book George handles the topic in a fascinating way. Blake and Freud makes excellent reading." -Thomas R. Frosch, Associate Professor of English, Queens College of the City University of New York
Blake and Freud emerges from William Blake's theory of contraries and from his statement that "opposition is true friendship." Diana Hume George explores the complex relationship of these two extraordinary minds by examining their systematic mappings of the human psyche.

Certainly the works of the two men seem antithetical. Freud's is the ultimate analytical mind, his theories built on division and classification, while Blake is the passionate, romantic poet in search of unity. If Blake might have placed Freud in the same category as Newton and Locke, perhaps Freud would have viewed Blake as a fascinating study in neurosis. But these apparent oppositions are misleading, according to Diana Hume George. In this original and provocative study she shows that although the emphases of the two men differ, a close comparative reading of their works reveals a far more complex and fraternal relationship.

George makes a large claim for Blake: that he anticipated the major tenets of psychoanalysis a hundred years before Freud. But just as Freud needs Blake to expand the insights offered by the psychoanalytic model of the mind, she asserts, Blake needs Freud to make accessible his own contributions to psychology. Through Blakean texts, George presents a revisionist reading of the Oedipus complex and the process of sublimation. She also discusses each thinker's view of the role of art and his concept of the feminine. Contemporary feminism, she concludes, must rethink its attitudes toward Freudian psychoanalysis.

By examining Blake as a psychoanalytic theorist and Freud as a poet, George has created a new kind of psychoanalytic literary criticism—one that transforms the relationship between psychoanalytic and literary texts.