ABSTRACT
The third dialectic that is triggered while reading literature is between the symbolic order and the disordered and chaotic aspects of life. Reading literature raises the reader’s inner struggle between these two opposing forces to the surface: the force that seeks inner order and sensible existence and the force that seeks to subvert that order both because of the unconscious’ traits and because of the unanticipated and unorganized aspects of existence itself. Reading is revealed as accomplishing an action and its reverse: it arranges and dismantles the symbolic order, exposes the madness and organizes it at one and the same time. It thus offers a transformational space for the internal psychic equilibrium between these two opposing forces. This dialectic phenomena is illustrated in a poem by Yair Horowitz (1987).
