"What is psychoanalysis if it is not an attempt to derive and give
authority to a verbal construct of the past? The past is to be re-called
by present discourse, Orpheus walking to the light but with his eyes
resolutely turned back. Free association and the provocative echo of the
analyst are designed to make recollection or, more accurately,
collection, spontaneous as well as significant. But whatever the
methodology, the resurrection is verbal."
George Steiner, After Babel.
