Listening to Oedipus: two poems by sons about fathers

Using the writings of Thomas Ogden, Donald Spence, Jessica Benjamin, Roy Schafer, Evelyn Schwaber, and others, the author discusses the "kinship" between poets and psychoanalysts. The author also attempts to demonstrate how reading and listening to poetry can greatly enhance analytic listening, as well as illuminate how language that is contained within a guiding structure, such as a poem or an analysis, can "surprise" us into new awareness and meaning. Two poems are chosen, in which the speakers describe their relationships with their fathers in order to evoke oedipal associations. A brief discussion follows of how contemporary analysts are using intersubjective and relational lenses in order to expand on and revise traditional oedipal metaphor and theory and capture new levels of meaning. Each poem is then analyzed to underline how the sounds and selection, as well as sense of language, reveal the speaker's inner world and process. Poetry provides a mirror for the increasing richness, scope, and dialectical play that can be found in contemporary psychoanalysis.