In this compact but highly concentrated study, the author unites clinical and literary critical skills in an attempt to go beyond familiar psychological commentary on Henry James and conduct a detailed and rigorous psychoanalytic investigation into recurring and psychologically significant patterns in his major and minor fiction. Drawing freely on material from notebooks, letters, and other biographical sources, the volume centres on James's unconscious fantasies concerning the human body, mostly the damaged or incomplete human body. These core fantasies are firmly placed at the root of...