Writing and Dreaming Primary and Primal Scenes

The primal scene has become something of a Freudian cliché, yet if considered in a broad narratological sense, the concept can offer a useful template and terminology in investigations of the writing process. This discussion explores how primal scenes, and variants of the term such as ‘primary scenes’, hold a pivotal position between imagination and memory, between history and fantasy, in the creation of stories. Such scenes not only represent the first glimmers of creativity, tentative starts in the making of a novel, but they also feature centrally in the ensuing writing process providing narrative momentum, propelling writers’ further investigations of the narratives they become intent on writing. The concept and terminology has also been used in wider psychological contexts (see Freeman 1993) and by narrative theorists (see Brook 1985 and Lukacher 1986); this offers possible connections between criticism and the creative process. Illustrations from a novel and essay by Rose Tremain will be surveyed, alongside other authors’ initiating images, and scrutiny of a starting scene of my novel, The Book of Guardians (Neale 2012). The significance of these scenes and images will be considered in the context of a possible psychoanalytic theory of creativity, with specific reference to the case study which first gave rise to Freud’s use of the term ‘primal scene’.