ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how psychoanalysts read fragments of correspondence by five brilliant authors as they write uncensored letters home to their mothers- speaking eloquently of simple everyday experiences as well as significant emotional moments. George Sand responds to her mother's harsh critique of her lifestyle. James Joyce speaks of his "villainous hunger" and the impoverished life of a writer. Gustave Flaubert, on a long voyage to the Near East, longs to be united with his mother. Marcel Proust writes a midnight letter to his mother sleeping in the next room. Many of the emotions expressed have the intensity of an analytic session. Whatever the emotion, letter-writing helped clarify and metabolize feelings. Medieval monks copied Greek and Roman letters onto parchment, many of which survived for more than a thousand years, until the Italian Renaissance. Letters might be wrapped with string and put into a trunk in the attic, or stacked in an old shoebox in the back of a closet.
