SOURCE: Skelton, Ross. “Threads & Strands: Louis MacNeice, Freud, Lacan.” Encounter 73, no. 2 (July-August 1989): 55-7.

In the following essay, Skelton psychoanalyzes the recurring themes of threads, wires, and trains in MacNeice's poetry. Skelton asserts that these repeating images cannot be interpreted solely by using Freudian subconscious representation theories; interpretation must be balanced with Jacques Lacan's idea of purposeful, selective symbolism.

In recent times the psychoanalytic perspective in literature has been uncomfortably poised between the old Freudian reductionism and the new “punning algebra” of Jacques Lacan. It seems that we have grown dissatisfied with our home among the sexual symbols of Freud, but have not yet made ourselves comfortable in Lacan's house. In considering the poetry of Louis MacNeice, can Lacanian spirit be reconciled with Freudian letter?

The image of thread appears and reappears in MacNeice's poetry. Analogously, wool, string, cord, wire and even rope occur and recur, from first poems...