Rethinking the unconscious in creative writing pedagogy

The notion of the unconscious pervades creative writing (CW) pedagogy and I examine its prevalence in CW guidebooks written by practitioners in the field, from Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer, which was first published in 1934 and remains a popular ‘inspirational’ book, to those published in the last few years. These books encourage the notion of ‘accessing’ or ‘tapping into’ the unconscious as a method of producing CW. My discussion will critique the conception of the unconscious as an unproblematic ‘container’ or personified entity, and re-examine it in the light of Freud's complex and variously-imagined model. I propose that re-conceiving the unconscious as a site of connectivity opens new possibilities for teaching CW within an intellectually rigorous university setting.