Rhythms

Despite Nicolas Abraham's fame as a psychoanalyst and philosopher, few people are aware of the direct relevance of his work to issues of poetics and literary theory. The fourth volume of his posthumous publication, Rhythms explores the relationship between the interpretation of texts and psychoanalysis. The three essays offer a new approach to the problem of literary creation and a psychoanalytic definition of temporality. In contradistinction to both Husserl and Heidegger in the German tradition, and Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in France, Abraham links the emergence of human time to a form of poetic creation. He identifies in rhythm a previously unexplored mode of inquiry elicited by poetry and by what may be called one's life as a work of art. In Rhythms, Abraham develops a systematic theory of the poetic position of writers, readers, and psychoanalysts.