SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM Or thinking the unthinkable in psychoanalysis

After I had agreed to write this paper, my mind went blank for quite a long time. Then I began to realize that a paper for a symposium whose overall title was ‘Beyond Words’ appropriately had to be gen – erated in that very area, namely, where blankness seemed to be. After a while, the title for the paper announced itself. I was wary of it, since it seemed both eccentric and religious. But it stuck tenaciously. For those of you who do not know it, it is taken from a short poem by W.B. Yeats called ‘The Second Coming’.