ABSTRACT
This chapter shows both the limitations and potential of the psychoanalytic approach. The early analysts were keen to make links between sophisticated sublimatory activities and early bodily functions. Thus Freud suggested that the craft of weaving arose out of female shame about penislessness and the concealment of the fact by pubic hair, while Fenichel argued that the origins of musical ability are to be found in the infant's pleasure in belching and breaking wind. William Wordsworth was 32 years old when he wrote the Ode, about to marry Mary Hutchinson and planning a secret visit to France to say goodbye to Annette Vallon, who he had met ten years earlier at the time of the revolution and by whom he had had a daughter, Caroline, whom he had never met. Wordsworth's initial image for loss centres on vision, in both its literal and ecstatic as in 'visionary' sense.
