ABSTRACT
107This chapter is written in response to several feelings I have had about the field of psychoanalytic literary criticism, feelings that have developed in the course of closely studying, and contributing to, the field over several years. My feelings concern three matters: how the field of psychoanalytic literary criticism defines itself, and the reason that it defines itself in the way that it does; the specific way in which psychoanalytic ideas and terms are brought to bear on literature by psychoanalytic critics; and how criticism and literature are understood to relate to one another by those working in the field of psychoanalytic criticism. Which is to say, my thinking concerns the field itself, its reading practices, and the nature of its cross-disciplinarity.
