Starting from the premise that each writer and each reader is a "unique" being (a cagey and illusive certainty), the author presents a blend of Freudian psycho-analytic and literary theory.
While he relies upon the import of symbols, for example in Freud's dream interpretation, unlike many "Freudian" disciples, he actually takes Freud's cautions and qualifications to heart -- quoting his express warning against "over-estimating the importance of symbols" [172]. Similarly, the tools of childhood demarkation (oral, anal, phallic, oedipal), the structural theory (id, ego, superego), the signal theory of anxiety, and the expanded concept of defense (not just repression but projection, reaction-formation, etc), and the concept of "character", are applied to a study of a poet's work.
The poet, Hilda Doolittle, aka "H.D.", was briefly engaged to Ezra Pound and was promoted as an "Imagist". "I keep the law,/ I hold the mysteries true,/ I am the vine,/ the branches, you/ and you." [8] She left us with an account of her analysis with Freud, which Holland uses to tell us much about both. ( )