ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis and poiesis, the journey of self inquiry that is psychoanalysis and the poetic activity that is creativity, both work to enrich the meaning of life, giving life significance in the face of inexorable endings. Before turning directly to those endings, it is fitting first to consider what the endings conclude, the qualities that constitute psychoanalysis and poetry. Psychoanalysis strives in the name of therapy and science; poetry, in the name of art. The direction of each is the same, and, similarly, their having to come to their ends reminds us of death no matter the distractions we struggle to conjure. First, psychoanalysis. Whatever broad psychotherapeutic techniques may be used clinically, it is concern for the unconscious and determined efforts to expose and explore the power of the mind outside awareness that define psychoanalysis and give it its uniqueness. Psychoanalysis and poetry have characteristics that distinguish them, no matter how those qualities may at times be present in other forms.
