>I've noticed this with all permutations of the psychoanalytic approach. They >always begin with the idea that one should not take the artist seriously, and >one should not take previous critics seriously. In general there is nothing wrong with a psychoanalytic approach. Or should I say, in theory there is nothing wrong with a psychoanalytic approach. Many scholars and critics with no qualification whatsoever attempt serious discussions of a creative process that involve biology, psychology, culture, communication, sociology, history, phonology, linguistics, and so on. Usually however these scholars and critics only have any qualifications of note in perhaps one or two of these fields. Yet the nature of literary research, if we intend to discuss a work in anything more than a very specific framework, requires a proper handling of all these fields in many different contexts and qualifications. Usually we will see a scholar attempt a proper handling of one aspect of a work, say history, or aspects of a specific cultural movement, or the emergence of a particular style or technique, and take in other areas to reflect on this field, or venture the occasional reflection outside the field of specialisation. It is my belief that in current literary criticism the two major problem areas are improper delineations of the area of specialisation with regards to training and/or qualifications, and the use of old-fashioned theories. To begin with the latter, we will hardly accept a heart-surgeon to proceed on his patient using late 19th century developments and equipment, and yet that is exactly what most psychoanalytic literary criticism is doing today. That this is a very topical issue is evidenced by a similar discussion about the differences in qualification between "amateur" and "professional" psychotherapists and psychiatrists on the Pound-list (where only real difference should be that a psychiatrist is qualified to prescribe medicine, basically being a doctor, and a psychotherapist limits himself to alteration of thinking and behavioural patterns). In my view, the creative process is, in theory, simple and the areas of research clearly definable: at the centre of the research is the text; on the left is the writer, on the right is the reader. The text is a form of communication between the writer and the reader. Communication involves several processes, the most important of which is the encoding and decoding of information in language. This information is gathered from the world of the writer, a world which resembles in varying degrees the world of the reader. The gathering of information by the writer involves a number of processes, among which sensory perception, memory, abstraction, organisation and personality factors. Personality factors are themselves the result of neurochemistry, which in turn is influenced by memory, inheritance, life events and so on. In summary, the text is the result of bits of the world seeping through the human system into a text, thereby passing through several boundaries of varying classifications and influence, all of which can be studied. This text can then be presented to the reader, and a reverse process takes place. The information in the text transports to the mind of the reader, again crossing several boundaries, of decoding, perspective, interpretation, association, memory, and (in nearly all cases) from there on back into the world. Each of the processes mentioned above can again be studied, but now in most cases in reverse, from a slightly different perspective. As linguists we are trained to study the areas of encoding/decoding information in language, and as scholars of literature we may add cultural history to our specialist repertoire, so that these areas will generally be our preferred field of research. Other fields should, in the current academic climate, at least be supervised by specialists who have proper and up-to-date qualifications in neurochemistry, psychology, sociology, history and so forth. I herewith stress 'up-to-date' because even outside the field of literary criticism there are active psychoanalysts with a training based on severely outdated concepts and training. Instead, however, of wishing to point a finger to the limitations of other fields, I think we would do better by taking a closer look at our own field, where a lot is left to be desired. Where are the works which study, not endless particular instances and details of literary history, but attempt to ask fundamental questions on the meta-level? And once that has been done (an easy task, because all the knowledge is there as well as endless particular instances to build meta-scholarship on), a solid scientific method ought to be developed. In science we need to be able to build on each other's work, and we need method for that to be effective. That is not to say I believe that nobody can approach all aspects of a text alone. Ultimately, the process, once written down properly and once the dust surrounding all recent breakthroughs in brain research has settled down, it will become apparent that the creative process is simple enough to be approached onthologically by one individual. Before all that has seeped into education, however, and if we want to do this now, by ourselves, and without training which at this moment is not available anyway, we will need to read up-to-date material from fields beyond those of our own. Luckily enough, many of the other fields have written clear and instructive up-to-date methodological works (Gleitman's Psychology is a good example, as is, more specialised, work by Dr Joel Robertson). The opportunities are there for the takers. Surely, once some of this more serious work has been done, we can start taking ourselves seriously. Arwin.