ABSTRACT
Charles Rycroft was like other early psychoanalytic pioneers in being broadly well-educated and cultured. It seems to that in the face of the transitory fads and bureaucratic lethargy that afflicts all fields, Charles did succeed in being a distinctive and original voice. Psychoanalysis has had its distinctive manner of proceeding, and British analysts worked out their own special ways of conceptualizing things. The chapter discusses Charles's paper "On Ablation of the Parental Images, or The Illusion of Having Created Oneself." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "ablation", dating back to the sixteenth century, means "removal", and ablation has come to signify cessation or remission within surgical, medical, and geological contexts. Charles's concept of ablation helps to highlight something missing in many of the early analysts. Charles's notion of the significance of ablation can help us to understand elements of phoniness and creativity.
