" To prove the (rather scurrile) point, the writer acts both roles—that of the giving mother and the recipient child—on his own person. He gives to himself, out of himself, beautiful words and ideas, thus establishing an autarchy. That "magic gesture," acted on oneself, showing how the neurotic child in the writer allegedly wanted to be treated—kindly and lovingly—presents in the adult an unconscious tendentious alibi and is specific for the artist. Whereas the typical neurotic needs two people (himself and an object) for unconscious re-enactment of an infantile fantasy, the writer combines both roles into one. "

― Edmund Bergler , The Writer and Psychoanalysis