ABSTRACT
William Blake’s poetic project was to harness poetry and the imagination to liberate human consciousness. In the section of this chapter entitled “Blake, psychoanalysis and the project of liberation,” the strong affinities between Blake’s poetry and other liberation projects, including psychoanalysis, is discussed. After an overview of his career and works, the chapter draws a further comparison between Blake and psychoanalysis: the contrast between overt and latent meanings, a key to understanding Blake’s seemingly simple but enormously complex poems. The chapter next shows how Blake’s work, taken as a whole, marks a developmental journey of the self. The Songs of Innocence describe a preoedipal world of oneness and bliss, but they also provide a critique of the naiveté and danger of being stuck in that state. The Songs of Experience describe a world of guilt and woe, but they also hint at breakthroughs toward what Blake calls a higher innocence, similar to the moment when an analysand can both acknowledge and transcend his history. The chapter concludes with a case example in which a religious vision helps cure a woman who suffered from severe dissociative identity disorder.
